The role of mimicry in the construction and deconstruction of social identities has enriched our understanding of power relations considerably. However, as a spatial practice, mimicry has received scant consideration. In what ways can space itself become an object of mimicry? What strategies and practices are involved in this process and with what political objectives? The current paper treats these questions by analyzing processes of mimetic spatial production aiming to transform the Israeli-occupied territory of Mount Hermon into an "ordinary" western ski resort. Yet this concerted effort produces a variety of tensions and contradictions that ultimately undo the normalization of the colonial space, comprising a test case of the convoluted ways in which mimicry of space, not merely in space, generates various forms of slippage, excess and ambivalence.

a b s t r a c tThe space of exception has been extensively discussed as a location in which governing technologies are deployed through the suspension and manipulation of the norm. The scholarship on the subject has underscored the ways in which various localities can be encamped, which alludes to the dynamic in which spaces of exception can be shaped through the application of various means of sovereign violence that produces new and unpredictable norms. Building on this literature, the article analyzes the ways in which the exception is intentionally used in order to spatially construct the norm. Two case studies are discussed: Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights and the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus. The article's main aim is to show how the state of emergency, which provided the justification for deploying exceptional meansdoccupation and subsequent colonizationdwas domesticated. By domestication I mean a situation whereby the state of emergency is not fully negated, but rather rearticulated and redeployed in order to reshape the space and transform it so that it is concomitantly both threatening and normal. I go on to show, however, how despite the processes of spatial normalization the state of exception always resurfaces.This article examines how occupying forces deploy exceptional means to reconstruct contested territories so as to normalize and in thus way fortify their presence. Analyzing two case studiesdthe Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights and the Turkish occupation of Northern CyprusdI show that the objective of the normalization process has in each case been different. Israel normalized its presence in the Golan in order to incorporate this region into its own territory, while Turkey has been normalizing its presence in Northern Cyprus in order to craft it as Turkish without fully integrating it into its own body politic. However, and despite these differences, a similar rationale has in both cases led the core statesdIsrael and Turkeydto employ a twofold normalization strategy during the conquest and subsequent occupation.On the one hand, the core states accentuated the geostrategic risks (real or constructed) embodied in the territories captured and presented them as constituting a threat that could be dealt with only through the imposition of a state of emergency and the deployment of exceptional means (e.g., ethnic cleansing, widespread destruction). On the other hand, and simultaneously, the core states strove to transform these contested spaces and reproduce them as normal in order to render them non-threatening.In other words, the core states present the spaces they had occupied as both an exception (a threat that needs to be controlled and managed) and simultaneously as normal. Examining how the strategies employed by the occupying states are informed by this tension, I show that the incongruity cannot be fully managed. The fact that these territories are colonized and are therefore constituted as spaces of exception is ultimately re-exposed.Following a brief literature r...

The Daily Show was well-known for its left leaning political satire. Although the program focused on the United States, from time to time Stewart broadened the coverage and examined political events in other countries. Over the years, the policies adopted by the Israeli government had been among his satirical targets. A section dealing with Israel's 2014 military campaign in Gaza caught our eyes, since in the map suspended behind Stewart Israel's borders were not drawn according to the internationally recognized 1949 armistice agreements (Figure 1). The map is accurate in the sense that Israel's borders do not encompass the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, but its depiction of the Golan Heights as an integral part of Israel is flawed. The fact that Stewart's team chose this map is, however, hardly coincidental, since many existing maps have erased the line separating the Golan from Israel. Figure 1 about here Reflecting on the difference between the West Bank and the Golan Heights, two areas that Israel occupied in the June 1967 War, Meir Shalev, one of Israel's most popular authors, remarked that 'The holy sites of the West Bank represent today the pinnacles of lunacy, evilness and stupidity… The Golan, on the other hand, is the only normal territory we have left. It has no holy tombs, sites of religious frenzy or a large downtrodden and rebellious population' (Shalev 1994, emphasis added). Normal for

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By employing Max Weber's (1949) concept of objective possibility, this article offers a theoretical conceptualization of a methodological approach to studying roads not taken in divercities. The article incorporates Weber's insight from the realm of sociohistorical analysis into an analysis of urban environments. In search of 'other' possibilities of planning, the article presents a case study of the informal synagogues set up in Israel by members of Judeo-Arab communities. In this case, the possibility that was not actualized is 'intimate publicness,' which encompasses new forms of organizing the relationship between private and public spaces.