White But Not Quite: Normalizing Colonial Conquests Through Spatial Mimicry

Ram, Moriel

doi:10.1111/anti.12071

Cited by 25 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Such acts can be both physical and conceptual: the demolition of Jaffa neighborhoods surrounding Tel-Aviv, a city that was imagined to be 'born from the sands' (See Rotbard, 2005) on the one hand; and the 'normalization' of the occupied territory of Mount Hermon by re-inventing it as a Western ski resort (Ram, 2014) on the other. As such, the Israeli spatial project is essentially contradictory to the possibility of recognizing and legitimizing Palestinian spaces within its boundaries, since it is based on the idea of 'Judaisation' of space (Yacobi, 2009;Yiftachel, 2006 occupying property by legal orders, using the British emergency orders and passing laws meant to legally establish the occupation of territories.…”

Section: Spaces Of Sovereigntymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spaces of sovereignty: A tale of an unrecognized Palestinian village in Israel

Milner

Yacobi

2017

Planning Theory

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PrefaceInformal housing environments, namely the construction of houses without acquiring building permits, are perceived as chaotic spaces of illegality, developing outside and against the formal planning system in Israel. Yet, as Ananya Roy (2011) suggests, such informal urban development cannot be viewed as external to the planning system, a matter that has been discussed by several researchers studying planning and legal geography in Israel (Kedar, 1998;Fenster. 2012;Yiftachel, 2006;2009;Tzfadia and Yiftachel, 2014).The main argument raised by these scholars is that legal unrecognition of Palestinian habitat by the state causes informality, especially in peripheral areas outside the Israeli urban core, and mainly regarding the Bedouin settlement in the Negev (Weizman and Sheikh, 2015;Roded, 2012). Furthermore, as claimed by Yacobi (2009), informal housing production is a response to unrecognition which constitutes constant minority challenges to the prevailing order. This is expressed in the growing phenomenon of urban informality that emerges as a permanent feature of different cities in Israel, and becomes a central strategy of both ruling authorities and resisting, peripheral groups.In other words, policy-makers allow urban informality because it provides indirect and inexpensive rule of the 'ungovernable' (Roy, 2005). The tactic is avoidance and containment from a distance, but the result is the condemnation of large communities to un-serviced, deprived, and stigmatized urban fringes. In this way, urban informality emerges as a planning strategy; it allows the urban elites to represent municipal government as egalitarian, civil, and democratic, while at the same time, denying some urban residents basic rights and services in the locations into which they were forced. City and state elites draw legitimacy from this partial and distorted representation of planning as 'professional,' enabling the preservation of the privileged ethno-class strata, and a precarious maintenance of the system (Yacobi, 2009).The case study that will be examined in this paper -the unrecognized Palestinian village of Dahmesh 1 -is such a case of informal housing environment and can be read using these theoretical tools. Nevertheless, in this paper we wish to expend the discussion on informality by analyzing it from a different perspective and examining the role of the unrecognized village in

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Section: Spaces Of Sovereigntymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spaces of sovereignty: A tale of an unrecognized Palestinian village in Israel

Milner

Yacobi

2017

Planning Theory

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“…Mori Ram (2014) shows how the Mount Hermon site was utilized to normalize Israeli control of the Golan Heights through the mimetic copying of a 'normal' ski site, meaning one in a European and alpine style. (6) Ram points out the ways in which the discourse of whiteness (in this case the actual physical whiteness of the snowbound summit) was used both for laundering the control (it is not a disputed territory, a battleground, or a biblically historical site but just a 'regular' ski and fun site), as well as for laundering the Israeli settlers (who, if they own a 'European' ski site become 'European' themselves).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wine-washing: colonization, normalization, and the geopolitics of terroir in the West Bank's settlements

Handel

Rand

Allegra³

2015

Environ Plan A

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Terroir describes a set of special characteristics of a given place-geography, geology, climate, and human agricultural traditions-that incarnates in the unique taste of its products, usually wine. In contrast to modern perceptions of territory as an abstract legal-political entity, terroir invokes images of organic relations between people and a specific land with a unique 'character'. The paper will analyze the evolving discourse in the West Bank settlements in recent years, which shifts the emphasis from biblical history, ideology, and security-to tourism, vineries, and terroir. The argument will be that the usage of sophisticated wine language enables normalization of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank in a paradoxical way that is emphasizing their location and blurring it at the same time. While the concept of normalization is usually applied to the 'quality-oflife' urban settlements, our paper concentrates on the small and 'ideological' settlements, which are located in the densest Palestinian regions. By that, we wish to contribute to the growing research body on the West Bank settlements, as well as to the fields of geopolitics, colonial and postcolonial studies, and cultural geography.

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“…… The act of spatial mimicry was crafted first by cleansing the local population and then through control and manipulation of the space and visiting public. (Ram, 2014: 737)Like in the Hermon ski resort example, the takeover and development of the West Bank springs is also part of a much larger enterprise for promoting tourism infrastructure in the Israeli settlements (Allegra et al., 2017). This enterprise includes a range of endeavors such as the design and promotion of archeological sites and museums, new hiking and biking trails, observatories and scenic spots, and regular cultural and artistic events.…”

Section: The Spring As a Tourism Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

“…… The act of spatial mimicry was crafted first by cleansing the local population and then through control and manipulation of the space and visiting public. (Ram, 2014: 737)…”

Section: The Spring As a Tourism Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Silent springs: The nature of water and Israel’s military occupation

Braverman

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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Drawing on interviews with, and observations of, officials from Israel’s Nature and Park Authority, fieldworkers from environmental and human rights nonprofits, and local Palestinian farmers, this article tells stories about springs in the occupied West Bank. Entangled with the physical decline of the springs’ water supply and quality, it examines this waterworld also in a broader sense, which includes cultural, political, and religious—with a specific focus on legal—spring-related practices. After discussing the relevant water and land regimes within which springs exist, and their socio-geological uniqueness, I pause to tell the story of Ein Kelt—a desert spring on the way from Jerusalem to Jericho. Next, I move to discuss a variety of colonial dispossession tactics at work in the West Bank springs. In many cases, such tactics are performed by Jewish settlers with the tacit support of Israeli authorities. Inspired by legal geography scholarship on the coproduction of law and matter, I examine Israel’s seemingly paradoxical preoccupation with the rule of law in the administration of springs in the occupied territories, what I refer to here as a hyperlegality, on the one hand, and its disregard of formal law in the face of settler misconduct at these sites, on the other hand. Complicating the story, I also describe recent spring-based practices of purification carried out by Jewish Hasidic groups. The springs newly emerge in this context as sites of recreation, pilgrimage, and purity. Simultaneously, they are becoming places of danger for the Palestinians and are increasingly figuring in the mobilization of Palestinian protest. After all is said and done, one is left wondering whether water is actually different from land and soil. Could springs possibly serve as an alternative socio-material foundation that moves away from traditional colonial regimes?

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White But Not Quite: Normalizing Colonial Conquests Through Spatial Mimicry

Cited by 25 publications

References 76 publications

Spaces of sovereignty: A tale of an unrecognized Palestinian village in Israel

Spaces of sovereignty: A tale of an unrecognized Palestinian village in Israel

Wine-washing: colonization, normalization, and the geopolitics of terroir in the West Bank's settlements

Silent springs: The nature of water and Israel’s military occupation

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