The metropolitanization of Israel's settlement policy: The colonization of the West Bank as a strategy of spatial restructuring

Allegra, Marco; Maggor, Erez

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102513

Cited by 13 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Here it is worth mentioning Lustick's (1993, p. 44) definition of normalising territorial expansion, in which a territory becomes "an integral part of the state, not as a problematically occupied asset… [but when its status becomes] part of the natural order of things for the overwhelming majority of the population." Therefore, the state's geopolitical "territorial strategies" (Allegra & Maggor, 2022) had to constantly adapt to the dominant geoeconomic rationale of the "production of territory" (Brenner & Elden, 2009), and rely on a corresponding terminology that ensured it would become "part of the natural order of things." Accordingly, the terminology of frontier domestication and its physical materialisation continuously evolved, shifting the focus from pioneers to homeowners, and from homeowners to investors, while passing from dwelling units to private houses, and from private houses to assets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Accordingly, the various settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories (Allegra et al, 2017;Dalsheim, 2008;Segal & Weizman, 2003;Weiss, 2011), or within Israel proper (Falah, 1991;Shafir, 2018), continued to follow the focus on achieving territorial dominance through the settlement of Israeli Jews on the expense of Palestinians. In their recent article, Allegra and Maggor (2022) analyse the Israeli Cohen (1952Cohen ( , 1962. settlement campaign in the West Bank since the late 1980s as a process of metropolitanization.…”

Section: Evolving (Israeli) Frontier Terminologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Homes to Assets and From Pioneers to Shareholders: An Evolving Frontier Terminology

Schwake

2022

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Frontier settlements played a key role in the formation of Israeli society and its territorial project. In the pre-statehood years and during the first decades after the establishment of the state of Israel, settling the frontiers formed one of the main national objectives, securing the nation’s control over space while promoting a unified local identity. Appropriately, settlement practices and discourse focused on pioneer rural communities and industrial towns, with a clear emphasis on housing units and residential estates. With the privatisation of the local economy, the national settlement development mechanism was privatised as well, the former state-led enterprise was harnessed to the interests of the market, and the earlier focus on housing was thus replaced by a property-oriented approach. This article studies the transformations in Israeli frontier settlement practices while analysing their changing modes of spatial production and the terminology they relied on. Studying the development process of Tzur-Yitzhak and Harish, two Israeli localities on the border with the occupied Palestinian West Bank, this article demonstrates how they first emerged as small-scale rural settlements and eventually turned into corporate-led projects. Presenting the geopolitical and societal interests behind both case studies, as well as the manner their proposed planning altered over the years, this article illustrates the transforming modes of production and the evolution of the local settlement terminology, demonstrating the shift from a pioneer-oriented to a market-led frontier settlement.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evolving (Israeli) Frontier Terminologymentioning

confidence: 99%

From Homes to Assets and From Pioneers to Shareholders: An Evolving Frontier Terminology

Schwake

2022

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“…While this commenced following the 1948 War as Israel began promoting spatial dominance by settling Jewish families in former Palestinian neighbourhoods depopulated from their original inhabitants, it continued with similar efforts to replace the remaining Palestinian population in socalled 'mixed cities' like Lydda, Jaffa, Acre, and Jerusalem, by constantly attracting additional Jewish families (Yacobi, 2009;Yacobi and Tzfadia, 2011). Appropriately, what began as direct state-led settlement initiatives, gradually adapted to the privatising neoliberal economy, turning into state-directed market-oriented interventions that promote ethnic dominance through economic means; thus, harnessing socio-cultural and economic shifts, demonstrated in increasing individualism and private investment to the state's territorial enterprise (Allegra and Maggor, 2022;Schwake, 2022a).…”

Section: Note On the Israeli Settler-colonial Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonisation, gentrification, and the settler-colonial city: Reappropriation and new forms of urban exclusion in Israel

Schwake,

Yacobi

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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Focusing on the immigration of upper-middle-class Palestinian families to the Israeli town of Upper-Nazareth, originally built by the state to enhance Jewish presence in the area, this paper frames the concept of decolonising gentrification. Accordingly, it studies a unique inconsistency between economic class and ethnonational hegemony, which enables upwardly Arab minority families to overcome ethnic barriers and to exercise social and spatial mobility. Therefore, this paper explains how these socio-political dynamics challenge the local settler-colonial aspects of urban development and enable the reappropriation of colonised urban space. Focusing on the case of Upper-Nazareth and its former ‘Officers’ Neighbourhood’, we examine a distinctive contradiction between political power and economic abilities that triggers a unique case of gentrification, where the colonised minority gentrifies the colonising hegemony. At the same time, this decolonising gentrification, as we argue, takes place in restricted urban enclaves, and relies on an ethno-class price gap as it is only the minority upper-class who is willing to pay the increasing prices, due to their limited options. Therefore, as this paper shows, decolonising gentrification simultaneously challenges and recreates urban settler-colonialism, enabling limited market-oriented reappropriation while triggering ethnic-based accumulation and new forms of neoliberal exclusion.

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“…This discourse identifies the normalization of the Israeli occupation through multiple avenues of social and economic planning and policies of development, housing, suburbanization and privatization. These serve to normalize the development of the West Bank as a “compensatory mechanism” in the context of receding welfare state policies in Israel (Allegra and Maggor, 2022: 8). Bottom-up activities of planning and production of space substantiate the macro-politics of occupation, as “daily acts regularly become issues of sovereignty” (Yacobi and Pullan, 2014: 532).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology, environment, and open space in conflict arenas: The discrepancies and harmonizing strategies of West Bank Israeli settlers

Arieli

Schaffer

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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The natural environments of conflict arenas often embody invisible contexts for political analysis. This study questions how environmental agendas are framed and acted upon by mid-level environmental professionals engaged in land-focused conflict. Ideological attachment to contested land together with engagement in the polemics of conflict, facilitate unique engagements with environmental agendas, particularly regarding open space preservation. This engagement prioritizes conflict-related goals and thus creates discrepancies between environmental knowledge, attitudes, and actions. Our study focuses on Israeli West Bank settlers who serve as mid-level environmental professionals and share professional dilemmas. Mid-level environmental professionals, rather than high-level policy and decision makers, are “street-level bureaucrats” and therefore a potentially novel and revealing source of environmental positions within the settler community. Through interviews focused on Israeli environment-related policies in the West Bank, we reveal disparities between environmental knowledge and the positions grounded in this group’s political identity and loyalties and identify the three particular harmonizing strategies employed in narrating the realities of their professional initiatives and agendas. We expose a distinct dual agenda, one which acknowledges environmental values and concerns, and yet only selectively recognizes and engages in goals of open space preservation when these challenge settlement infrastructure and expansion. These environmental discrepancies can be interpreted as the cynical political manipulation of environmental values, yet we propose that at a mid-level professional level, they can serve as self-rationalization in resolving dual loyalties to both political and environmental agendas. Personal realities and life experiences of environmental professionals affected by the conflict are identified as significant to the design and support of the resulting selective environmental agenda.

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The metropolitanization of Israel's settlement policy: The colonization of the West Bank as a strategy of spatial restructuring

Cited by 13 publications

References 79 publications

From Homes to Assets and From Pioneers to Shareholders: An Evolving Frontier Terminology

From Homes to Assets and From Pioneers to Shareholders: An Evolving Frontier Terminology

Decolonisation, gentrification, and the settler-colonial city: Reappropriation and new forms of urban exclusion in Israel

Ideology, environment, and open space in conflict arenas: The discrepancies and harmonizing strategies of West Bank Israeli settlers

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