This review essay is an attempt to read Jasbir K. Puar's The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability in Palestine studies. It argues that by revealing how settler power, colonial violence, and imperial havoc shape the mechanisms, structures, and systems that target resistance, The Right to Maim both contributes to and disrupts the field of Palestine studies. Exploring the implications of Puar's thesis about maiming as a tool of settler colonial violence within imperial frameworks, the book both disrupts the field of American studies and contributes to areas of inquiry around the study of Zionist violence against Palestine and Palestinians. This essay investigates the lines of Puar's argument in relation to Palestine and as a challenge to discrete conceptualizations of field studies.

The British Mandate in Palestine was a time of significant change for the social character and demographic feel of Jerusalem. As it grew into a colonial capital and expanding cosmopolitan city, the city became home to a large number of non-elite Arab Palestinians, specifically the fellahin from the villages of the western corridor, who became central to Jerusalem's social, political, and economic life. A great deal has been written about Jerusalem's traditional families and their role in the development of the city as a national Palestinian capital, but not much is known about the contributions of Jerusalem's Arab residents beyond those families. In seeking to rectify that lacuna, this article focuses on the important historical moment of the Buraq Revolt, demonstrating how the city's evolution as a hub of mass resistance was driven by unprecedented demographic and social changes, resulting in the emergence of what may be called a “new Jerusalem.”