Jerusalem – Figment of the imagination

Jewish tradition refers to the city of Jerusalem in both abstract and concrete terms, celestial Jerusalem and earthly Jerusalem. The two are intricately bound up with each other and Jerusalem, the eternal capital city of the Jewish people, derives its powerful mystique, from its original appearance in Jewish history, although Biblical Jerusalem, the ancient city surrounded by hills, and modern Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, surrounded by satellite urban appendages, lack geographical congruity. In general, this is geo-politically relevant given the potent sensitivities that most Jews in Israel and elsewhere have for the symbolic value of their ancient capital. Significantly, most of the Arab inhabitants the capital city of Israel, are not Israeli citizens and the vast majority of them refuse to participate in municipal elections, even though Israeli law allows non-citizens who are permanent residents to vote in local elections. That Israel permits several countries to maintain separate consulates, in the western and eastern parts of Israel's capital, indicates Israel's implicit recognition of a dual status in Jerusalem. After the 1967 war, while careful to avoid using the formal language of annexation, Israel generally considered that east Jerusalem and some surrounding areas had become part of Israel, when by Basic Law: Jerusalem, the Capital City, it was declared to be the united and eternal capital of the State of Israel. This paper examines these political and legal developments.     

Territoriality of negation: Co-production of “creative destruction” in Israel

Based on an examination of Israel’s territorial conceptions, strategies, and achievements since the establishment of the state, this article shows how state territoriality subsumes ideology and political agendas and may, under certain circumstances, lead the state to negate its very self-conceptions and harm its own perceived interests. Its analysis pays special attention to the state’s inadvertently produced territories of negation, which run counter to its own conception of territoriality, and considers the kind of social–spatial entities produced by the state. It also considers Israeli territoriality’s more recently asserted goal of shaping Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, in addition to the goals of controlling Jerusalem and Judaizing the Galilee and the Negev. To illustrate the theoretical assertion that discriminatory and marginalizing state territoriality has the distinct potential to bring about its own negation, the article concludes with two prominent expressions of this phenomenon. The first is manifested in green-line Israel, where the state’s territorial policies and the resulting marginalization of the Palestinian minority has resulted in collective resistance against the state and its policies, basic Jewish-Israeli symbols such as the anthem and the flag, and Israel’s very definition as a Jewish State. The second is manifested in Israel’s inadvertent creation of bi-national spaces both within Israel proper and in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, indirectly promoting the solution of a single bi-national state and posing a serious challenge to the very goals that Israeli territoriality has consistently strived to achieve.     

Water scarcity problems in Israel

The demand for scarce fresh water requires Israel to cease squandering this limited resource on agriculture, at present consuming about 70% of the annual supply. Environmental pollution must cease as well, for untreated urban water effluent contaminates ground water. All Israel's 700 million cubic metres sewage water must be suitably purified to irrigate about one hundred thousand hectares. Climatically controlled greenhouses and advanced agricultural research will reduce the amount of water and land required for the cultivation of the fresh vegetables and fruit, and small proportion of the dry fodder needed for the country's consumption. Israeli agriculture's association with moral, ideological and social ideas obstructs meaningful reduction in the allocation of water to agriculture. The Zionist movement has always seen transforming land into a means of production as the index of its success. Failure in this would signify an inability to adapt to adverse environmental conditions and be a sweeping repudiation of Zionism. The protracted Israeli-Arab national conflict also affects water policy. Israeli Jewish society has always considered rural settlement, agricultural activity, as part of the substance of its national identity and power, bonding the people with the land and consolidating territorial sovereignty. Since the 1970s, capitalism, which has dominated Israeli ideology, has favoured the individual's interests over the community's. Thus agriculture is mobilized to accommodate the private struggle for the good of the farming sector against the needs of the national collective.     

Religious factors in territorial disputes: An intra-Jewish view

This paper concerns the internal political controversy that polarises the concepts of sanctity and sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel; Palestine). The controversy has deep religious roots in the history of the Jewish people's bonds with their country. The historical elements of which derive from a longing for religious perfection, which included observing Commandments associated with the Land. The destruction of the Temple, the Exile and the devastation of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel broke the chain of such continued observance. Polarisation of the concepts of Sanctity and Sovereignty accentuates the problem of the relation between political sovereignty and national bonds with it. The association of religious affinity with the relatively recent phenomenon of Nation-State sovereignty led many to see religious connotations in political sovereignty. The traditional, religious bond with Eretz-Yisrael, which many of the more secular Israeli public also feel, has existed for generations; conversely, national sovereignty continually changes form, not always conforming to traditional, religious perceptions of dominion over the Land. This raises problems about the link between Jewish religious laws and the political world. Abandoning the knit between national sovereignty and religious bonds may lead to the loss of religious and cultural bonds. The conflict between beliefs and opinions on the one hand and new objective circumstances on the other leads to confrontations that may cause serious harm. Time becomes critical and expediting the processes of appeasement and adaptation is a matter of redoubled importance.     

Jewish settlement of Hebron: The place and the other1

Kiryat-Arba and Jewish Hebron are communities planted in the most heated front of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This paper examines how the Hebron Jewish settlers' collective memory interprets the `truth' of Hebron as a typical Israeli Place that reveals Zionism in its purest form. Today the populations of Kiryat-Arba and of the Hebron Jewish enclaves number about 5,000 and 500, respectively. Kiryat-Arba functions as an economic and educational centre for the nearby Jewish settlements in the region. Rejecting the segregative concept of a separate Jewish settlement overlooking Hebron, the settlers treat Kiryat-Arba as part of Hebron. Some 70,000 Palestinians live in Hebron, many more residing in neighbouring towns and villages, cutting Hebron – Kiryat–Arba off from the nearest Jewish urban centres of Jerusalem and Beer-Sheva. The settlers initiated the narrative of `Return' to the city after the massacre of Jews in 1929 in the city, as the key symbol Symbolically, the first place Hebron Jews reidentified with was its ancient Jewish graveyard. Today, IDF soldiers protect settlers and their visitors who want to tour Hebron. The huge gulf between `metaphorical Hebron' as a symbolic centre and `actual Hebron' as a poor development town creates tensions fuelling violent events. The Jews in Hebron take the Israeli logic of `Place' making to its extreme, thus testing concepts of Israeli territoriality. If Israeli society rejects Hebron as a `Place' constructed from intense memories and violent national encounters, it would leave the Hebron Jews out of the so-called Israeli normalcy.     

Arab-Jewish socio-spatial relations in Arab adolescents' representations

It seems that beyond differences among the drawings several generalisations may be made, relating to the ethno-spatial relations in Israeli Palestinian adolescents' perceptions, two years after the emergence of the uprising.

How Viable will the Agricultural economy be in the New State of Palestine?

A key objective of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in Palestine has been to render the economy of these regions dependent on the Israeli economy and thus hamper their economic development. Large areas of land have been confiscated or expropriated by the Israeli authorities to establish Jewish settlements. Other severe measures imposed include control of irrigation water and obstacles for the Arab agricultural and industrial sector in the Occupied Territories aimed at preventing Arab competition with Israeli products.Palestinian agriculturalists have met this challenge and have worked to achieve higher production levels in agriculture. Nonetheless, economic development there was blocked, and many agriculturalists sought employment inside Israel. The Intifada since December 1987 has aimed at encouraging Arab economic independence and intensification of efforts to meet national requirements of greater self-sufficiency in subsistence crops and stimulation of agriculture-related industries. The Intifada is thus functioning as a stimulus to development and economic viability.     

Ethnicity and geography in Jewish perspectives

It is said that the Jewish people has had a surfeit of history but not enough geography. Deprived of its independence, expelled from its homeland, and dispersed among other nations, Jewish communities internalized different socio-cultural manners and customs. Throughout history, Jewish leaders — political and rabbinical — expresssed various attitudes toward territoriality and political aspirations for Jewish independence. As Zionism and the return of Jews to the Land of Israel became a real movement, those different attitudes had to confront a new reality, in which Jewish history meets Jewish geography. This paper discusses the encounter of a Jewish culture that developed under Diaspora conditions with the new reality of Jewish territoriality and sovereignty.     

Power and changes in the balance between ideology and pragmatism in the right wing Likud Party

When the Zionist executive abandoned Jewish rights to Trans-Jordanian Palestine, Jabotinsky established the Revisionist movement from which Etzel the Jewish right-wing underground movement in Palestine developed. This was the precursor of the Herut (Freedom) Party, from which the Likud party emerged in September 1973 to challenge the Labour Alignment (headed by the Israel Labour Party). Between the War of Independence (1948) and the signature of the Camp David accords (1978), the Government of Israel came under strong international pressure to solve the problem of the Arab refugees. During this time, dramatic changes took place in Herut's ideology and political status. In 1948, Herut was an outcast political party with a radical ideology, demanding the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth on both sides of the Jordan. It perceived the Arab refugees to be a potential fifth column and the contiguous Arab states to be inimical. It strenuously opposed the Mapai led political Establishment's willingness to sign Armistice Agreements and make compromises with regard to Arab refugees. After Levi Eshkol replaced Ben-Gurion as the head of Mapai, Herut began to become part of the Israeli consensus and a member of the political Establishment. Herut served in Levy Eshkol's National Crisis Government before and during the 1967 war, and as the major force of Gahal, after the war. Concomitant with this, there were great changes in Herut's expressed ideology, chief among these were the tacit renunciation of trans-Jordan Palestine as part of the Jewish Commonwealth and the explicit acceptance of the Arab refugees as potential citizens of the State of Israel.     

The Jewish colonization of the Nablus region —perspectives and continuing developments

While the mounting Jewish colonization of the Occupied Territories, especially the Nablus region, is considered against the backcloth of notions on Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, the settlement-development must also be viewed as suburbanization outwards from Israeli metropolitan space and penetration into the essentially peripheral, dominantly rural Palestinian domain of the West Bank. Recent relaxitions in Soviet emigration controls and tighter US immigration policies towards Soviet Jewish emigrants are realizing a quite dramatic increase in the number of Soviet Jews immigrating into both Israel and the Occupied Territories. In turn, this will herald increasing and deeper competitions over land. Various assistance programmes and initiatives for the Jewish settlements within the West Bank are outlined with a consideration of Ariel, The Capital of Samaria, providing a specific case study. The continuing attempts to broaden the economic bases of the colonial settlements are also considered. Problems are set to continue. The contentious nature of the subject is to be emphasized.     

Transformation in territorial concepts: from nation building to concessions

The transition to globalization, socio-cultural fragmentation and an era of peace all constrain Zionism to a restructuring in its territorial perspectives. In the nation-building era, Zionism made the territory the focus of Zionist activity, which necessitated seizing territory, controlling it, and creating an affinity and attachment and a bond of identity between the nation and the territory. Pure colonization as a central strategy for realizing these national goals originated mainly from the unique historical circumstances of Zionism and from the adoption of an ethno-national ideology. This also led to the Palestinian-Jewish conflict that concentrated on the control of territory. The national economy regime that influenced Israel in different ways also served the territorial ideology to a great degree. Peace borders will require Israel to cooperate closely with Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon in managing resources, external influences and additional common interests. The peace economy will integrate with the multi-national economy. Furthermore, in the reality of peace, Israel will have to abandon the internal colonization of areas populated by Israeli Arab citizens and give greater legitimation to their more prominent inclusion the Israeli identity. It will also become difficult for any elite group to dictate the national agenda to other marginal groups, such as Israeli Arabs, and Sephardic or Orthodox Jews, each group creates for itself considerable degree of autonomy in its own territory. In the main, the national periphery divides into an Israeli Arab periphery beside the periphery of the traditionally religious Sephardic Jews. The ultra-Orthodox Jews take control of increasingly larger Israeli space and expanding the horizons of their public involvement beyond their traditional ghettos. Each group creates for itself a different symbolic space with differing views concerning the limits of Israeli sovereignty.     

From national to post-national territorial identities in Israel-Palestine

Territory remains a central component of national identity in the contemporary political discourse between Israelis and Palestinians, both populations opposing power sharing within the same space, for fear of the other's domination. The contemporary political discourse relates to conflict management and the desire for separate spaces within which national identities are strengthened through territorial/national homogeneity. The Zionist national ideology of most Jewish citizens of Israel has strong territorial roots; hence they reject the post-Zionist post-nationalist ideology, regardless of whether they accept the possibility of change in Israel's territorial configuration or of a diminishment in the importance of the territorial dimension of national struggle. The rights of residency and citizenship even of second and third generation Jewish citizens remain linked with the territorial configurations of a State that will continue to be called Israel and have a national anthem expressing the aspirations of a single, exclusive, national group. But within territorial readjustment, issues of configuration may become less relevant and in it is this sense that post-Zionism focuses on a discourse of territorial pragmatism, rather than the disappearance of territory from the nationality-citizenship debate altogether. It is part of a process of re-territorialization and spatial reconfiguration of political and national identities, not a reversal of territorialization, if only because there is no such thing as a post-territorial notion of the organization of political power. The boundaries of national identity become more permeable, more inclusive, but they do not disappear altogether.     

From multi-confessional to mono-confessional state. State–church relations in Poland following World War II

According to Madeley’s (2003) comparative framework of state–church relations in Europe, Poland is part of the historic Northeast-Southeast multi-confessional culture belt. The aim of this paper is to analyse the historic relationships between the Polish state and church in relation to this framework with special attention to the post-Second World War period and to the consequences for the Polish religious landscape. In contrast to the multi-confessionality of the historic Polish polities, after the Second World War Poland became a mono-confessional, Roman-Catholic country. Territorial changes, the resettlement of people and the annihilation of the Jewish population by the Nazis were responsible for this religious homogenisation. Consequently, the relationship between state and church was almost completely confined to the relationship with the Roman-Catholic Church. During the 45 years of communist dominance, that church became the largest public organisation independent of the state authorities and played the most important role in the struggle against the ‘atheisation’ of Polish society as a consequence of the strong support for the church by the majority of people. The post–1989 period is characterised by a liberalisation towards non-Catholic religious communities and – after an initial reluctance – a positive attitude of the Polish Roman-Catholic Church (strongly supported by the Polish Pope John Paul II) towards the Polish membership of the European Union.

Mediation agreement to resolve an environmental conflict and its social implications: the case of Wadi Zalmon (Israel National Park)

Mediation refers to an informal process in which a neutral third party helps parties in conflict attain an agreement which they were unable to reach on their own. It is mainly used to solve social, economic and political problems, but its characteristics allow using it to resolve also environmental disputes. The purpose of this article is to examine over a period of time the different attitudes of some groups of populations (communities, municipalities and governmental authorities) toward mediation agreement and its implications. The agreement was signed for an area which was declared a National Park due to its unique landscape—characterized as a cultural landscape (a landscape which represents a combined works of nature and of man). Examination over time is intended to expose whether changes have taken place in the populations in respect to the agreement and its social and cultural influences on them. The paper is dealing with Wadi Zalmon, a stream flowing from east to west in Western Galilee, in the north part of Israel and its environs. In this declaration are involved many populations, which represent the multicultural distinctiveness of Israeli society: Christians, Moslems, Bedouins and Jews.     

Centralized power and divided space: `Fractured regions' in the Israeli `ethnocracy'

This paper uses a critical political-geographical perspective to account for the high centrality of power found in Israel. It suggests that the concentration of power have not been solely caused by national solidarity and integration or by metropolitan development, as commonly explained, but also by the territorial `fracturing' of the main social and ethnic groups in Israel/Palestine. This has prevented the emergence of effective pressure for regional devolution. Israel's character as a settler and settling state, and its central project of Judaizing contested territories, enabled the Israeli `ethnocracy' and its (mainly Ashkenazi and secular) elites to create a political geography of `fractured ethnic and social regions'. Dispersing minorities and legitimizing segregation and inequality, all in the name of the `national interest', achieved this. The Israeli political landscape is therefore organized as `fractured regions', each representing a distinct and interconnected, yet geographically dispersed, set of localities, and resembling a `chain of beads'. The logic of dispersal and segregation, in turn, has also influenced patterns of development and residential separation within Israel's main urban areas. Thus, ethnic and social fragmentation and conflict, and not a putative process of national or metropolitan integration, can explain much of Israel's highly centralized power structure.     

Development plans in the West Bank

Development plans in the West Bank are prepared under the 1966 Jordanian law which requires regional, outline and detailed plans to be prepared and all development to have a building permit. The only approved regional plans are those prepared under the Mandate: these envisaged little growth and are used by the Israeli authorities as a pretext for refusing building permits almost everywhere outside the municipalities. Two amendments have been prepared (but not approved) by the Israelis and are being implemented: a plan which implicitly reserves extensive areas around Jerusalem for Jewish settlement, and a plan for a road network which would promote the integration of Israel and the West Bank, and sterilise development in large areas of the West Bank. Outline plans for hundreds of villages and municipalities have been drawn up, but hardly any have been approved. Consequently, no framework for the orderly and balanced development of Arab communities exists. There are no development areas outside municipalities (and few within them)to provide opportunities for Arab development, though the planning and development of new towns and villages for Israeli citizens of the Jewish faith continues apace.     

The spatial pattern of Bedouin Sedentarization in Israel

The bedouin in Israel form a small group (13%) within the state's Arab minority, and they completed their transition stage towards settled habits in the middle of the present century with the establishment of a relatively high number of villages and hamlets. It is the object of this paper to examine and define the nature of these patterns of rural settlements, which emerged in the two distinctive areas of Galilee and the Negev.The discussion in this paper is confined to the period of the state of Israel (1948–83), when changes in both the processes and the patterns of bedouin sedentarization took place under entirely new political conditions. After the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948, both Galilee and Negev bedouin sedentarization was completed within a period of a single decade (1950–60). However, the sedentarization pattern has further evolved during the past two decades and is likely to continue to do so until the end of the present century.In the Israeli period, the pattern of bedouin sedentarization has developed in two distinct directions. First, the bedouin themselves have built permanent structures for residential purposes, a process usually referred to as spontaneous bedouin settlement. Secondly, the state authorities have planned and established settlements. In this planned bedouin settlement, the state has been dominant in shaping the pattern. It is important to note that most bedouin settlement in Israel belong in the first category where the whole tribe or individual groups were the initiators of their settlements. This paper which was written by an author who belongs to the bedouin community, is based mostly upon fresh evidence from field research data, and is the first attempt to indicate the importance of the role of the state in shaping the settlement pattern. It is hoped to contribute to the study of nomadism as well as to the study of the Arabs in Israel.Paper presented at the 25th International Geographical Congress Paris 27–31 August 1984. The author would like to thank the Centre for Arab Heritage without whose support his attendance at this conference would not have been possible.     

From overt rejection to enthusiastic embracement: changing state discourses on Israeli emigration

This paper deploys a critical discourse analysis methodology to examine the emergence of three (sometimes overlapping) discourses on emigration in Israel. It examines the linkages between the various discursive phases and processes of (trans-) national identity formation among emigrants. It argues that emigration discourses have often been strong predictors of subsequent changes in state policies—and other programmatic initiatives—aimed at Israeli citizens abroad. By juxtaposing the discursive construction of emigration (and its linkages to nation-forming political strategies in Israel) and the effects they have had on emigrant identities the paper contributes to the emerging literature on state-diaspora relations and transnational politics.     

Irrigation in sub-humid environments: a comparison of three cultures

The use of irrigation to intensify crop production is widespread. Superficial morphological, administrative, and socio-economic similarities between sites separated by time, space and culture prompted an analysis of three cultural groups in similar geographical settings to determine the extent of cross-cultural similarities in irrigation practice. The groups analyzed were Mormon settlements in the Wasatch Mountains of the United States, and Jewish and Arab settlements in the Jordan Valley of Israel and Jordan. Analysis of irrigation use among the three groups revealed marked similarities in organizational, administrative and technological practices. In each case, irrigation practice has progressed from simple community-based diversion to large-scale diversion schemes as population and political organization increased. Minor differences concerning ownership of water rights were the only notable exceptions to the broad similarity between the groups. In terms of water development practice, each group progressed through essentially similar stages, reflecting the level of water demand in each society. We hypothesize on the basis of the examination of the study groups that irrigation-based societies progress through a sequence of irrigation practices, from Stage 1 (simple diversion) to Stage 5 (societal-wide adoption of laws and projects to maximize efficiency of water use), as population growth intensifies demand on limited water resources in sub-humid environments.     

Water resources in the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict

The quest for water resources by Zionist leaders started in the early years of the Zionist movement. Attempts were made to delimit Palestine according to rivers and headwaters. This quest has been independent of the political status of the territory of Palestine. The quest was intense in the early 1950s during the Johnston negotiations, and it became especially crucial after the 1967 occupation by Israel of the rest of Palestine, the West Bank. Lebanon's Litani river has been included in Israeli considerations, as well as the Jordan river's tributary the Yarmuk river. The Kingdom of Jordan's development plans for the latter may be compromised. Control of underground water resources in the West Bank is deemed essential to Israel, given their importance to the ground supply of pre-1967 Israel. Israel is unlikely to relinquish control of the water resources of the West Bank in the event of a political settlement.