Download - Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
1/20
Environment and Planning A 2013, volume 45, pages 497 516
doi:10.1068/a45108
The politics o suburbia: Israels settlement policy and
the production o space in the metropolitan area o
Jerusalem
Marco Allegra
Centro de Investigao e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES), Instituto Superior de Cincias
do Trabalho e da EmpresaInstituto Universitrio de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Avenue das
Foras Armadas, 1646-026 Lisboa (PT), Portugal; e-mail: [email protected]
Received 29 February 2012; in revised form 23 June 2012
Abstract. Israels settlement policy in the West Bank represents a crucial issue in the IsraeliPalestinian confict. Through the examination o a single case studythe planning history
o the Jewish settlement o Maale Adummim, located in the eastern periphery o the
citythe paper addresses the complex nexus between planning and state-building practices;
building on Henri Leebvres theory o space, he oers an account o the role o Israels
settlement policy in the transormation o the material, symbolic, and political landscape
o the metropolitan area o Jerusalem. My main argument is that the observation o the
development o large suburban communities in the metropolitan areaa blind spot both
in media and in academic discourseis crucial or our understanding o the settlement
policy as a whole, and its impact on IsraeliPalestinian relations.
Keywords: Jerusalem, Maale Adummim, Israel, Palestine, planning, Jewish settlements,
Henri Leebvre
Just a few miles east of Jerusalem, along the road to Jericho, in a brown, barren lunar
landscape of enormous boulders and talcum-powder-fine sand, miles of ridges have been
covered with three- and four-story apartment complexes made of glass and shimmering
white stone. The settlement is called Maale Adummim.
Robert Friedman (1992, pages xxivxxv) (1)
1 Producing (state) spaces: Israels settlement policy
As Henri Lefebvre noted, space is at the same time a social product and a tool that individuals
and groups use in framing their relationsas a means of mobilization, production, and
control. For the French philosopher:
[a]ny social existence aspiring or claiming to be real but failing to produce its own
space, would fall to the level of folklore and sooner or later disappear altogether,
thereby losing its identity, its denomination and its feeble degree of reality (Lefebvre,
1991, page 53).
Indeed, statesmen and nationalists of all times would agree with Lefebvre. The vast
literature on state building and nationalism emphasizes the role of the state in creating new
spacesmaterial, administrative, symbolic, etcin order to build and strengthen a common
self-perception of the national community and to advance the goals of determined social
groups (Anderson, 1983; Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Mitchell, 1991; Taylor, 1994). As
Oren Yiftachel (1998) observed, there is an intimate link between planning, the logic of
(1) Multiple transliterations can be found of the name of the settlement. My choice is MaaleAdummim, but I decided to keep the different forms appearing in articles, reports, and other sourcematerial.
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
2/20
498 M Allegra
the modern nation-states attempts to control the production of space within its boundaries
(page 399; see also Brenner and Elden, 2009).
The settlement of tens of thousands of Israeli Jews in the territories occupied in 1967
represents an extreme example of the nexus between the production of space and statebuilding, and a major element in the process of transformation of the material, symbolic, and
political landscape of IsraeliPalestinian relations.(2)
Despite its relevance, the literature on Israels settlement policy remains scarce. To be
sure, almost every book and article dealing with the IsraeliPalestinian conflict devotes some
attention to the issue of Jewish settlements; only a limited number of researchers, however,
have so far delved into the specific issue of settlements. After the second half of the 1980s,
academic interest in the topic steadily declined, overshadowed by the emphasis which the
peace process placed on the so-called two-state solution. Since then, the issue of settlements
has been approached almost exclusively from the point of view of conflict resolutionby
considering settlements as a whole as obstacles to peace or detailing territorial proposals for
Israels disengagement from the World Bank and Gaza Strip (see, for example, Reuveny,
2003). Overall, research on the topic remained surprisingly scarce, with an almost total
absence of case studies and an emphasis on the hard-line nationalreligious component of
the settlers world.(3)
The only comprehensive accounts of Israels settlement policy to date are the volumes by
journalists Gershon Goremberg (2006, covering only the period 196777), Akiva Eldar and
Idith Zertal (2007), and the more scholarly study of settlement policy and decision making by
William Harris (1980) and Peter Demant (1988). Still, as Menachem Klein (2007) notes in his
review of the volume by Eldar and Zertal, these contributions analyze primarily the symbiosis
between the political establishment and its settler agents and not the social dynamic of
a single settlement over time or the variety of social relations and internal interactionsdeveloped in different models of settlement (page 127). With few exceptions (Newman,
1996; Portugali, 1991; Segal and Weizman, 2003; Weizman, 2007), academic output on
Israel settlement policy continues to be characterized by loose theoretical frameworks and
an emphasis on description, rather than interpretation or analysis. Indeed, the main bulk of
knowledge produced about the settlements in the last twenty years derives from the activity
of NGOs devoted to monitoring settlement expansion, such as the Foundation for Middle
East Peace, Peace Now, Bimkom, and BTselem.
(2) For the purposes of this paper the term settlement identifies every locality built by Israel on landoccupied in 1967irrespective of its status in Israeli law. As of 2007, I estimate the number of settlersat around 465 000, of whom 190 000 are in East Jerusalem and 275 000 in the rest of the West Bank(ICBS, 2010, table 2.6; JIIS 2010, table III/14). The reader should remember that it is difficult toestimate the settler populationand in particular in the area of Jerusalemas Israeli figures fromthe Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) do not distinguish between East and West Jerusalem.The figures in tables 1 and 2 are therefore my own best estimates for the end of 2007, based on data
produced by the ICBS, the Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies (JIIS), and the NGO BTselem;I chose to consider figures for 2007 as figures for the Palestinian population are available for thesame year. The last figure published by the ICBS (2011) for the number of Jewish residents in theWest BankEast Jerusalem excludedis 311 100 (end of 2010). Recently, an article appeared in theIsraeli newspaperIsrael Hayon (2012) in which the number of settlers in the West Bank in 2011 wasestimated at 722 000, including 300 000 Jews living in East Jerusalemto my best knowledge, aninflated figureand 60 000 students enrolled in educational institutions located beyond the pre-1967
border.(3) See Aran (1986; 1991), Don Yehiya (1994), Friedman (1992), Isaac (1976), Lustick (1988), Newman(1985), Newman and Herman (1992), Ravitzky (1996), Sprinzak (1991). Feiges (2001; 2002; 2009)work offers a relatively rare example of case-study sociological analysis, while other contributionsdeal with the settlers narrative, political attitudes, and place attachment from the point of view of
psychology (for a review see Possick, 2004).
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
3/20
The politics of suburbia 499
The aim of this paper is to begin to fill this void by presenting an account of the history
of the Jewish settlement of Maale Adummima suburban community of almost 40 000
residents founded in the periphery of Jerusalem at the end of 1970s. This history, I argue,
is a single but significant episode in Israels settlement policy, and a telling example of itscomplex role in the process of the production of space in a contested region.
The paper is articulated in four main sections. In section 2 I illustrate the history of
Maale Adummim. Building on this account, in section 3 I introduce a more theoretically
oriented discussion, based on Brenner and Eldens (2009) reading of Lefebvre. In sections 4
and 5 I discuss Israels settlement policy in the light of the notions of territory effect, and
the production of territory, respectively.
2 Of brides, dowries, and suburban dreams
After the war of 1967 Levi Eshkol, the Israeli Prime Minister, noted how Israel did covet the
dowry [the conquered land], but not the bride [the Palestinians] (Gordon, 2008, page 29).
This was especially true for the area of Jerusalem, given the citys status as Israels capital,
the contested sovereignty of the eastern neighbourhoods, and the presence of a significant
Palestinian communityboth within and immediately outside the newly expanded city
limits.
In order to bridge the inherent contradiction between territorial and demographic goals,
Israeli governments resorted to the Zionist tradition of territorial settlement. In the mid-
1970s, after the construction of several settlements within Jerusalem municipal borders
(see figure 1), many Israeli politicians looked forward to strengthening Israeli control over
the capital through the development of an outer ring of Jewish settlements (Dumper, 1997,
pages 114119; MERIP, 1977).
The history of Maale Adummim begins in the summer of 1974, when the idea of buildingan industrial park in the eastern periphery of Jerusalem began floating through officialdom
(Goremberg, 2006, pages 297298); in November, the government approved the teams
proposal for the establishment of an industrial area and a workers camp for the employees
on a group of hills located approximately 5 km east of Jerusaleman area belonging to
surrounding Palestinian villages but inhabited only by small Bedouin groups (Bimkom, 2009,
pages 1213).(4)
A metropolitan outlook clearly surfaced in the governments decision to establish the
industrial area:
[p]lanning of the area will take into account Jerusalems municipalindustrial development
needs (quoted in Bimkom, 2009, page 12).
The government also executed a formal expropriationat the time a highly unusual
procedure which involved a permanent change in the ownership of the landof an area
of 30 km2 (Bimkom, 2009, pages 914).(5) In December 1975 the first two dozen families
moved to Maale Adummim workers camp, but, according to a senior Israeli planner in the
Ministry of Housing Program Department (interview, Jerusalem, November 2010), at that
time a plan had already been put forward for the construction of three new planned towns in
Jerusalems periphery: Maale Adummim, Efrat, and Givat Zeev. In 1977, in one of the last
cabinet sessions before its electoral defeat, the Labour government approved the plan for the
construction of a new large settlement (5000 housing units) in the Maale Adummim area
(4) On the Jahalin Bedouin tribe and Maale Adummim see BTselem, 1999, pages 34, 2122; Bimkom2009; and the website of the Jahalin Association (http://www.jahalin.org).(5)The common procedure before the High Courts landmark ruling on the case of the settlement ofElon Moreh in 1979 was the (theoretically temporary) requisition for military purposes. It should be
pointed out that various legal arguments have been raised against the legality of the expropriationprocedure of the land in 1974 (see Bimkom, 2009).
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
4/20
500 M Allegra
(Jerusalem Post1978). After the election, the new Likud government moved to implement
the plan for the new town, which was dedicated in 1982.
Since the early 1980s almost every Israeli government has worked to expand and
consolidate Maale Adummim. The settlement enjoyed the support of Ariel Sharon during his
tenure as Minister of Housing under Yitzhak Shamir, and escaped the partial freeze enacted
by Yitzhak Rabin after 1992 (Friedland and Hecht, 1996, pages 444446). Under Rabin
and after the beginning of the Oslo processthe municipal jurisdiction of the settlement
was extended to an impressive 48 km2 area (against Tel-Avivs 52 km2), so that it touched
Jerusalems city limits. The 1994Metropolitan Jerusalem Master and Development Plan
approved by the government but never formally adopted as policy documentforesaw a
fourfold increase in Jewish population in the growth area of Maale Adummim (Bollens,
2000, pages 5557, 141148). During the years of the Oslo Process (19932000) Maale
Adummims population grew from 17 000 to 25 000 residents.
(6) Givaat Zeev(7) Har Shmuel(8) Modiin Illit(9) Modiin-Reut-Maccabim(10) Bet Shemesh
(11) Beitar Illit(12) Efrata(13) Gilo(14) Har Homa(15) Ramat Shlomo
Jewish settlements:built-up areas
Palestinian localities:built-up areas
Maale Adummim:built-up area
F-1 area (OutlinePlan 420/4)
Green Line
Municipal boundariesof Jerusalem andMaale Adummim
Figure 1. Jewish and Palestinian localities in Metropolitan Jerusalem (source: authors elaboration on
maps by BTselem and Weizman, 2002; Bimkom, 2009, page 19).
(1) Maale Adummim(2) Mishor Adummim industrial area(3) Pisgat Zeev(4) Neve Yaakov(5) Ramot
(16) Mevasseret Zion(17) Kfar Zion
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
5/20
The politics of suburbia 501
Since the early 1990s all Israeli governments have explicitly linked the status of Maale
Adummim to that of Jerusalem. Following Rabin, Israel borders after the final status
agreement would include First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both
Maale Adummim and Givat Zeev (Rabin, 1995). In 1998, during a visit to the settlement,the new Likud Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, declared:
the greater Jerusalem area is of equal value to the city of Jerusalem. Therefore the building
here will continue as it does in Jerusalem (Settlement Report, 1998, page 5).
One year later his successor, the labourite Ehud Barak, reiterated the concept saying that his
government considered the settlement to be part of the state of Israel (quoted in Felner,
1999)a position maintained during the Camp David summit of 2000 (see, for example,
WINEP, 2004). Despite strong Palestinian and US opposition (PLO 2009; Rice, 2005),
political consensus on Maale Adummim also included bipartisan support for the construction
of about 3500 new housing units in a 12 km2 area located between Maale Adummim and
Jerusalem (see, for example, Haaretz, 2009;Jerusalem Post2009). The so-called E-1 plan
designates broad expanses of land for regional needs, and the social and economic benefit
of the population of Maaleh Adummim and the district [that is, Jewish settlements and
Jerusalem] (quoted in BTselem, 1999, page 37; see figure 1).
Despite its political genesis as shield to Jerusalem, however, the rapid development and
steady growth of the settlement derived from a wide and diverse basket of other favourable
conditions. First, Maale Adummim represented an answer to a structural need for suburban
housing, due to the congestion of the crowded inner city of Jerusalem (Benvenisti, 1984;
Newman, 1996; Portugali, 1991) and the shrinking of open space in the traditional area of
expansion of the cityon the JerusalemTel-Aviv axis. As a former Jerusalem City Engineer
and member of the Maale Adummim planning team notes:
if we do not regard the political aspect of it, I think [building Maale Adummim] was anormal step giving Jerusalem more time to deal with building in the city , as within
the city you have to go with the spoon ; if there would not have no political pressure,
and still you would say: no, we are not going to let the market to dictate [a development
westward of Jerusalem], but we are going to plan it, where would you recommend to
build a new city? It would be [eastwards] (interview, Tel-Aviv, February 2010).
The planning team also seized the occasion to apply cutting-edge theories and technologies:
efficient metropolitan planning, a new, postmodern outlook based on the variety of spaces
and the search for a local architectural language; and innovative technical solutions such
as the systematic use of climate-measuring stations (interview with former Jerusalem City
Engineer and Maale Adummim planning team member, Tel-Aviv, February 2010; Tamir-Tawil, 2003, pages 156157). The original government guidelines foresaw a new town with
autonomous infrastructure and social services, offering a high standard of living that would
make it competitive with Jerusalem (Tamir-Tawil, 2003, pages 153155; interview with
former Jerusalem City Engineer and Maale Adummim planning team member, Tel-Aviv,
February 2010). The settlement was, therefore, planned to offer a wide range of commercial
services and facilities for culture, education, recreation and sports (Leitersdorf, undated,
page 5).
In order to translate the relatively mild governmental guidelines into reality, the planners
who drafted the project for Maale Adummim changed the location and the scale of the
projectfrom 5000 to 10 000 housing units (interview, Maale Adummim planning team Chief
Architect, Tel-Aviv, November 2010)citing architectural and planning reasons that wouldmake Maale Adummim an attractive residential opportunity and a viable, self-contained,
entity: climate; morphology of the terrain, proximity to employment centres, accessibility
to infrastructures; and, of course, the possibility to see the light of Jerusalem from Maale
Adummim (interview with former Jerusalem City Engineer and Maale Adummim planning
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
6/20
502 M Allegra
team member, Tel-Aviv, February 2010; see also Leitersdorf, undated; Tamir-Tawil, 2003,
page 153).
The implementation of the project involved the mobilization of considerable skills and
resources: the project was carried out through the parallel design of outline and detailedplans of the neighbourhoods and the rapid mobilization of 10 construction companies, 80
consultants and the allocation of massive resources by the Ministry of Housing (Leitersdorf,
undated, page 1). As a result, the whole process proceeded at a very fast pace: 2600 housing
units were built at a unique rate of development in Israel (Leitersdorf, quoted in Weizman,
2007, page 112). The preliminary survey took place at the end of 1977; in November 1979 a
ground-breaking ceremony was held, and the town was dedicated in September 1982. By 1983
the families who arrived in Maale Adummim found eighteen kindergartens, seventy-five
small factories, and three synagogues (Thorpe, 1984, page 117).
New buildings, sound planning, schools and kindergartens, beautiful views of Jerusalem
and the Judean Desert in a large, modern settlement within minutes of the inner cityMaale
Adummim had much to offer the average middle-class Jerusalemite. An advertisement
published in theJerusalem Postin 1983 read:
Outside JerusalemYet so NearA 7 minute ride from Jerusalem and youll find
yourself at Maaleh Adummim . A well-planned neighbourhood in the best location in
town! (reproduced in Thorpe, 1984, page 119).
Much to the chagrin of Maale Adummim residents, the vast majority of whom work
in Jerusalem, today the 7 minute ride promised by real estate agents during the 1980s is
often a fantasy, due to the huge traffic problems of the Jerusalem area. Nonetheless, large
infrastructural investments offer the residents the advantages noted in general with respect to
the separate system of roads serving the settlements:
a fast and uncomplicated connection and the feeling that they live almost inJerusalem that they are not at the frontier, but a natural expansion of suburbia into the
mainstream of Israeli life (Pullan et al, 2007, page 182).
After the opening of the new road between the settlement and Jerusalem, and the tunnel
under Mt Scopus, the surrounding Palestinian communities almost disappeared from
the landscape, as is shown in the experience described by Meron Benvenisti of the road
connecting Jerusalem to Gilo:
the person travelling on the longest bridge in the country and penetrating the earth
in the longest tunnel may ignore the fact that over his head there is a whole Palestinian
town he does not come across any Arab, save for some drivers that dare go on the
Jewish roads (Weizmann, 2002).Indeed, its political genesis notwithstanding, the development of Maale Adummim came
to reproduce the basic principles of all planned suburbs since the early 1920s:
order/efficiency, daily exposure to natures beauty and goodness, use of technology to
improve the residents quality of life, aesthetic quality, and the values of individuality,
family and community (Modarres and Kirby, 2010, page 116).
Today, the Jewish Agency offers the following description of Maale Adummim to potential
olim (Jewish immigrants):
[t]he diversity and services of a city, the warmth and quiet of a small town and the
cleanliness and preplanned design of suburbia . Surrounded by the breathtaking hills
of the Judean desert, permeated with the dry, yet cool desert breeze and adorned with
wide flowered boulevards and an abundance of parks, Maaleh Adummim offers a highstandard of living, a rich community life, cultural diversity and excellent schools and
facilities . Offering the social diversity of the city, Maaleh Adummim nonetheless
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
7/20
The politics of suburbia 503
maintains a camaraderie of neighbourhood connection, synagogue affiliation and a
general sense of community involvement (Jewish Agency, 2010).
The settlement received various awards from Israeli authorities for the quality of its
educational facilities and environment. As theIsrael Environment Bulletin (1993) reportedafter the award of the Environmental Prize for Local Authorities, Maale Adummim surpassed
its [52] municipal competitors in such categories as physical appearance, cleanliness,
gardening, street signs and solid waste management (see also BTselem, 1999, page 18).
As Robert Friedman noted, settlements like Maale Adummim are not only affordable,
but are also attractive suburban housing developments that would not look out of place
in Phoenix or Orange County, California (1992, pages xxivxxv). The new, fast-growing
modern town just outside Jerusalem came to be perceived as part of Jerusalem both by its
inhabitants and by Israeli public opinion. The first residents of Maale Adummim had no
specific political affiliation or strong organizational links to the settler movement, and the
settlement grew up maintaining this original feature: the population of Maale Adummim
grew as fast as it did because of the influx of nonideological Jerusalemite commuters looking
for better housing opportunities.
Political and institutional factors did remain relevant in the process of development of
suburban settlements: attractive suburban utopias such as Maale Adummim were realized
with generous financial backing from the government. Of course, settlers did enjoyand still
doa wide and diverse basket of public incentives adding to the market-related price gap
between Jerusalem and the suburbs: artificially low land prices, public incentives to developers,
state allowances for mortgages, etcnot to mention the budget for security-related issues
(Hever 2010, pages 6268; Reuveny 2003, pages 359360).
Nevertheless, whereas incentives were applied throughout the West Bank to the point that
in many locations housing availability regularly surpassed demand, this was never the casein Maale Adummima community of almost 40 000 which is still growing. When asked
about the current expansion project of the settlement, even many stern critics of Israels
settlement policywhile still contesting the idea that any settlements should be allowed
to grow at alladmit that Maale Adummim has almost exhausted the land available for
residential construction due to population increase (interviews with a researcher working
for BTselem and an architect working for Bimkom, Jerusalem, February and November
2010, respectively).
3 Lefebvre in Jerusalem: the production of space in a contested metropolitan region
What does the history of Maale Adummim imply for an analysis of Israels settlement
policy? And how can Lefebvres theory of space be used to illuminate the role of this policy
as an engine of the transformation of IsraeliPalestinian relations? A useful starting point
is Brenner and Eldens (2009) account of Lefebvres work as theorist of territoryand
especially with reference to the notions of territorial strategies, production of territory,
and territory effect.
Following Brenners and Eldens reading of Lefebvre, territory represents a historically
specific political form of (produced) space (page 363) that is defined by its relation with
the state and state-building practices. In this respect, we see settlement policy as a territorial
strategy for the creation of a new state space in the land occupied by Israel in 1967. Planning
broadly defined as the formulation, content and implementation of spatial public policies
(Yiftachel, 1998, page 395)can be seen as a crucial tool in this process. At the same time,Lefebvre insists that the process is not simply a one-way, instrumental one, with the state
making and remaking a purportedly pregiven, malleable space . For Lefebvre, the
geographies of state space are themselves arenas, stakes and outcomes of such struggles
(Brenner and Elden, 2009, pages 364, 369).
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
8/20
504 M Allegra
In other words, Lefebvre invites us to consider theproduction of territory as a multifaceted
and dynamic social process. For Lefebvre space is not only composed of different fundamental
componentsspatial practices (the perceived space, the spatial structure of social relations),
abstract representations of space (the conceived space, the formalized space of planners andsocial engineers); and spatial perceptions (the lived space, the space as directly experienced
by individuals through a complex lens made up of senses, symbols, and culture)but is
historically and contextually produced through social practices that are qualitatively different
from a simple straightforward exercise of sociospatial engineering.
Against this background, Brenner and Elden define as territory effect the fetishization
of territory or, as Lefebvre describes it, the illusion of transparency (pages 370373), the
deceptively simple and natural appearance of spacesee also John Agnews (1994) notion
of the territorial trap. The task of social scientists would be, on the one hand, to avoid
fetishization of territory by carefully exploring the social dynamics of production of space;
and, on the other hand, to investigate the very emergence of the territory effect as a result of
the production of space itself.
A Lefebvrian account of Israels settlement policy, I argue, offers a more coherent
and nuanced understanding of the process of incorporation of the West Bank into Israels
state space than do other theoretical approaches: see, for example, Lusticks (1993)
thresholds model, or the suggestive but sparse insights of Weizmans (2007) architecture
of occupation. Although not inherently comparative (see, instead, Bollens, 2000; Lustick,
1993, or the concept of the laboratory of extreme put forward by Weizman, 2007), it also
allows meaningful generalizations and lays the ground for comparative analysis. In addition,
a careful and nuanced engagement with the notion of production of territory offers us a
way out from the reification of history and collective identities that is implicit in much of
the literature on contested cities (Anderson 2008; Kotek 1999; for the same argument, seeAllegra et al, 2012).
In order to do so, and to understand Israels settlement policy as a process of production
of space, I consider the history of Maale Adummim by adopting the metropolitan area of
Jerusalem as the fundamental sociospatial scale of my investigation arena, and as a social
product of the struggle for appropriating the contested landscape of Jerusalem. A few
considerations on the idea of metropolitan Jerusalem are therefore in order, along with a
tentative, broad-brush, definition of the metropolitan area.
Every definition of a metropolitan area is, to a certain extent, arbitrary. In Jerusalem a
further difficulty derives from the existence of an intricate grid of jurisdictionsdetermined
by the mixed and fragmented nature of sovereigntyand from the extreme politicizationof almost every issue linked to urban policies and development: from archaeology to public
transportation, housing, and nature reserves. Jerusalems intricate tangle of overlapping
boundaries and political issues is reflected in the lack of systematic data collection on a
metropolitan scale. The yearly Statistical Abstractpublished by the ICBS, for example,
presents data for the metropolitan areas of Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Beer Sheva, but not for the
metropolitan region of Jerusalem (2008, table 2.16). Although in 2010 the JIIS published
for the first time in its Statistical Yearbookdata on Jerusalems environs, it only included
Jewish local authorities (JIIS, 2010); as one of the JIIS planners remarked: we wont have
data on the Palestinian population on the metropolitan area [in the Statistical Yearbook],
although this data is available we will not publish it (interview, Jerusalem, February
2010).For practical purposes in this paper I assume the definition of the Jerusalem Region put
forward by the JIIS as a territorial base, and therefore refer to an area included in a range
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
9/20
The politics of suburbia 505
Table 1. Metropolitan Jerusalem: territorial and demographic components (figures for 2007) [source:
authors estimates based on data from the Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies (JIIS 2008, table III/16,
XVII/4) and the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics (PCBS, 2009)].
Population Jews Palestinians
A Jerusalem a 750 000 490 000 260 000
A.1Of which in East Jerusalem 450 000 190 000b 260 000
B Israel (West Jerusalem excluded) 210 000 200 000 10 000
C West Bank (East Jerusalem excluded) 980 000 195 000 c 780 000 d
Jerusalem Region (A+ B+C) 1 940 000 885 000 1 050 000
a Jerusalem in the Israeli-defined municipal borders, including the about 70 km2 of East Jerusalem,whose occupation is not recognized by the international community.bThis figure was determined by summing the population of the city subquarters (JIIS, 2008, table II/16)listed by BTselem (2011) as located east of the Green Line. I added to BTselems figures the 1362Israeli Jews living within the Old City but outside the Jewish Quarter (from JIIS, 2008, table III/16).cThis figure includes Jewish communities east of the Green Line, where the main population centresare Modiin Illit (38 000), Maale Adummim (33 000), Beitar Illit (32 000) and Givaat Zeev (10 900);the area includes also the Regional Counciladministrative units reuniting smaller centresof Matte
Binyamin (43 400) and Gush Etzion (13 600).dThis figure includes Palestinian localities in the governorates of Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
and Hebron. The major population centres in the area are Hebron (163 146), al-Bireh (38 202),
Ramallah (27 460), Bethlehem (25 266), Halhul (22 128), and ar-Ram/Dehiyat al-Bareed (20 359); 11
other centres have a population larger than 10 000, and other 24 larger than 5000.
Palestinian localities:built-up areas
Figure 2. Metropolitan Jerusalem (source: Authors elaboration on a map by De Jong, 1997).
Jerusalem:municipal boundaries
Small metropolitanJerusalem(de Jong, 1997)
Large metropolitanJerusalem(authors elaboration
Green line
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
10/20
506 M Allegra
2030 km from the Old City, with a population of about two million people with a slight
prevalence of Palestinians (see figure 2 and table 1).(6)
4 Settling for suburbs: unveiling the Jerusalem effect
Adopting a Lefebvrian angle means interrogating the very notion of space, and unmasking
the territory effect. This is even more necessary because of the fragmented and contested
nature of jurisdiction in the West Bank, where practices of gerrymandering are part and parcel
of the confl
ict itself. In taking the metropolitan area of Jerusalem as the unit of analysis anddelving into the history of Maale Adummim, my goal is precisely to call into question some
longstanding, implicit, territorial assumptions inherent to the discourse on Israels settlement
policy.
More specifically, I argue that a sort of Jerusalem effectthe adoption of the
Israeli-defined municipal boundaries of Jerusalem as a territorial watershedhinders our
understanding of Israels settlement policy. As Janet Abu-Lughod (1982, page 25) observed,
settlements such as Ramat Eshkol, French Hill, Neve Yaakov, Gilo, East Talpiyyot, or
Ramot, disappeared from the academic production on Israels settlement policy precisely
because of their inclusion in the Israeli-defined municipal borders of Jerusalem. This shielded
them from the criticism more easily directed towards other localities in the West Bank, but
also obscured the fundamental suburban component of the settlement policy.Still, it is easy to point out that the absurd (Benvenisti, 1995, page 53) new municipal
boundaries of the cityredrawn in the aftermath of the 1967 war to include about 70 km2
of former Jordanian territoryalready had an explicit metropolitan character: Major
Rehavam Zeevi, head of the ministerial committee charged with the matter, summarized
the principles guiding the drawing of the new boundaries by referring to the maximum
increase of territory allowing the city to expand into a great metropolis (Gazit, 2003,
(6) Figures presented in table 1 and table 2 are my own very raw estimates; many other possibledefinitions of metropolitan Jerusalem can be adopted (see, for example, Benvenisti, 1984; DeJong, 1997, Hochstein, 1983; Portugali, 1991; Rosen and Shlay, 2010; Sharkansky and Auerbach,
2000; Stern, 1990). Another debatable issue is that of how to define the metropolitan area in thelight of movement restrictions applied to Palestinians (on this issue, see Khamaisi, 2008, Nasrallah2008). I considered a large Jerusalem Region as defined by the JIIS (2010, table XVII/4, figuresfor 2007see figure 2) and added population data (from the Palestinian Census realized in 2007
by the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, PCBS, 2009) for 143 Palestinian communities locatedwithin the area.
Table 2. Settler population in Metropolitan Jerusalem and in the West Bank (figures for 2007)
[source: authors estimates based on data from the Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies (JIIS, 2008,
table III/16) and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS, 2008, table 2.9)].
Settlerpopulation
A West Bank (Metropolitan area of Jerusalem) 385 000
A.1of which inside East Jerusalem 190 000 a
A.2of which outside East Jerusalem 195 000
B West Bank (excluding Metropolitan area of Jerusalem) 80 000b
Total settler population in the West Bank (A+B) 465 000
a See note b in table 1.bThis figure was calculated by subtracting the figure A.2 from the total settler population of the West
Bank as calculated by the ICBS (2008, table 2.9; the figure for 2007 is 276 100); the ICBS does not
consider the Israeli residents of East Jerusalem as part of the population of the West Bank (Judea and
Samaria following the official label used by the ICBS).
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
11/20
The politics of suburbia 507
page 246). Many settlements built after 1967 within the municipal bordersas an Israeli
planner working for the JIIS notes with respect to Gilo, Pisgat Zeev and Ramot,
would they be separate from Jerusalem, they would get immediately the status of
city . [T]hese neighbourhoods function as suburbs and the inner city function as a coremetropolitan area, but we dont see it so much in the data because those neighbourhoods
are inside the municipal borders (interview, Jerusalem, February 2010).
In other words, despite their different status in the Israeli administrative system, Gilo
and Pisgat Zeev (built within Jerusalems municipal boundaries, by Labour and Likud
governments, respectively), as well as Maale Adummim (an autonomous municipality) are
all state-sponsored suburban settlements in the metropolitan area of Jerusalem.
One important implication of the adoption of metropolitan Jerusalem as my unit of
analysis is that, as far as the development of Israels settlement policy is concerned, the
similarities between the policies implemented by the Likud and the Labour government,
respectively, appear much more significant than their differences. Much of the literature on
the conflict explains the so-called settlement boom of the 1980s by referring to the new,
more aggressive, settlement strategy of the Likud as a turning point. As Weizman puts it, after
the Likuds electoral victory in 1977, the government [of Menachem Begin, the first Likud
Prime Minister] made an early attempt to transform the settlement project from improvised
undertaking into an elaborate state project (2007, page 111). Segev, in rejecting Gorembergs
claim that the policy of the Likud was simply an escalation of preexisting trends, argues that
[a]lthough by 1977 settlers had already started moving into the territories, at that point
they numbered less than 60 000, and about 40 000of them lived in East Jerusalem (2006,
page 148, emphasis added).
However, these interpretations are based on the arbitrary distinction between the
settlements inside and outside Jerusalem municipal boundaries. If one refers, for example,to the metropolitan area of Jerusalem instead of to the municipal boundaries of the city,
Segevs figures hardly prove his point. What they really tell us is that, to use Weizmans
words, settlement policy outside the inner city of Jerusalem was already an elaborate state
project during the Labour era. In fact, ten years after 1977 the settler population outside East
Jerusalem had grown to 50 000 people (Peace Now, 2009; Maale Adummim alone had about
11 000 residents at that date) an increase comparable with the one which Segev reports for
the first decade of the occupation. Indeed, senior planners in the Israeli Ministry of Housing
(Jerusalem District and Program Department) describe the various phases of metropolitan
developmentfrom the early construction of settlements within Jerusalems city limits after
1967, to the birth of Maale Adummim, Givat Zeev, and Efrat, to later development in the1980sin terms of an overall process of strengthening Jewish Jerusalem through the creation
of a Jewish hinterland east of the city (interviews, Jerusalem, November 2010).
At the same time, even after 1977 Jewish colonization of the West Bank was mostly part
of the metropolitan expansion of the Tel-Aviv region and the metropolization of Jerusalem;
the inner city of Jerusalem, in particular, has contributed more than any other Israeli town
to Jewish colonization of the West Bank because of the huge flows towards the surrounding
suburban settlements (Portugali, 1991, pages 33, 46). Maale Adummim is an example of
how even the territorial maximalism of the Likud adapted to suburban trends. Although
apparently the development of a large metropolitan settlement did not fit the original Likuds
ideological settlement patternthe conquest of the land through the establishment of
small Jewish settlements in the central massif of the West Bank, aimed at sabotaging anyfuture territorial compromise with Israels neighbours (Benvenisti, 1984, pages 5255)
Likud politicians showed flexibility towards planning arguments and acknowledged the
suburbanization trend operating in Israeli society. It was under the Likud that the original
location chose in 1977 by Labour for the new town of Maale Adummima few kilometres
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
12/20
508 M Allegra
eastward toward Jericho, the furthest place from Israel that was conceivably possible
[Thomas Leitersdorf, Chief Architect for the Maale Adummim Planning Team, quoted in
Tamir-Tawil (2003, pages 152153)]was changed at the planners request in favour of the
present site, nearer to Jerusalem (Jerusalem Post1978).The Likud understood that the demand for suburban housing, if channelled towards the
West Bank areas adjacent to Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, could produce the quantitative shift in
the settler populations which was otherwise impossible to achieve. This new outlook found
its concretization in the Master Plan drafted in 1983 by the World Zionist Organization and
the Ministry of Agriculturea plan which cannot be viewed as other than the official land
use plan for the West Bank at the time (Benvenisti, 1984, page 28; see also pages 2629,
5763). The plan emphasized the role of semi-urban settlements of high quality of life in
demand zones (1983 Master Plan, quoted in Benvenisti, 1984, page 58, see also page 60).
The unleashing of the suburban potential of the settlements, in turn, did produce political
consequences that were not lost even to the ideologized Gush Emunim pioneers:
[f]rom the outset, we talked about the fact that Samaria will be a success when people will
move here exactly for the same reasons they move from Nethanya to Hadera [two cities in
Israel]. I am not sorry about the decline in ideological tension ... . In order for a settlement
to become normal, it must not consist of idealists alone (Feige, 2009, page 72).
As Pinhas Wallerstein (head of the Binyamin Regional Council, and former Secretary
General of the Yesha Council) noted with respect to depoliticized settlers of Beitar Illit:
I expect nothing from the Haredi settlers. But even if they didnt come here for ideological
reasons, they wont give up their homes so easily (Haaretz, 2003).
And indeed, nonideological settlers were coming. Despite governmental policies of
financial incentives favouring settlement in more remote areas of the West Bank, during
the decade after the creation of the Maale Adummim, seven out of the ten fastest growingsettlements were located within the metropolitan area of Jerusalem (FMEP, 2010). In 2002,
77% of Israeli residents in the West Bankexcluding East Jerusalemcited quality of life
factors as primary motivation for living in the settlements (The Guardian 2010). Today, as my
calculations show (see table 2), the vast majority of settlers live in large suburban communities
around Jerusalem. Even adopting a narrower definition of the metropolitan area, the picture
does not change: in 2008 out of twenty-one settlements with a population of more than 5000
inhabitants, nine were inside Jerusalems municipal borders, and five (Maale Adummim,
Givaat Zeev, Efrata, Betar Illit, and Modiin Illit) were located in the main settlement blocs
just outside the city limits, between 5 km and 10 km from the Green Line; the population of
these fourteen settlements alone was about 310 000 people (BTselem, 2010).In other words, the turning point which Segev and Weizmann are talking about is much
less evident if we do not consider the somewhat arbitrary distinction between the settlements
inside and those outside Jerusalems municipal boundaries. Despite their differences in terms
of planning preferences (Reichman, 1986), both Labour and Likud focused their efforts
on settling the metropolitan area of Jerusalem, and this convergence represents the most
important feature of Israels settlement policy as a whole.
At the same time, the Israeli government was not so successful in promoting
settlements in more remote areas of the West Bank. The demographic weight of Labours
strategic settlements remained negligible. The score of the Likudwhose territorial and
demographic stated goals were more explicit and radical than those of Labourhas not been
very different. Under the 1983 Master Plan, for example, settlements located in the highdemand areasdefined by commuting distance with respect to the outer ring of Tel-Aviv
and Jerusalemreceived less government subsidy than did the high priority areasmainly
located on the hills of the West Bank (Weizman, 2007, pages 122125). Nonetheless, if we
consider the twenty-four settlements with a population of 2000 or more (figures for 2007),
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
13/20
The politics of suburbia 509
only five are located in the 1983 high priority areasthree of which are in any case located
in high-demand areas around Jerusalem [authors elaboration on data from Benvenisti (1984,
page 81), BTselem and Weizman (2002), Peace Now (2011)]. In other words, the policy of
differential financial assistance provided by the government has been largely unable to pushthe settlers outside the metropolitan belt of Jerusalem (see also Newman, 1996, pages 6466),
to more remote locations where architecture replaces human presence (Segal and Weizman,
2003, page 22).
5 Maale Adummim is Jerusalem: producing a new metropolitan space
Suburban settlements such as Maale Adummim are a key element of this process of
suburbanization of Israels settlement policy, which is usually interpreted as a purely
political enterprise: as a project of conquest of the land carried out by the settlers movement
and the Israeli state for nationalistic or millenaristic motives. In Lefebvrian terms, this
interpretation establishes a sort of hierarchy among the three dimensions of space/territory,
and the territorial struggle in the West Bank is often portrayed in terms of an imposition of the
colonial conceived space (a project of sociospatial engineering linked to political ideology and
planning practices) over the indigenous lived spaceas in Libby Porters (2010, pages 15,
45) Lefebvrian description of the complicity between planning and colonialism in Australia. I
argue that this would be a superficial understanding both of the dynamic of Israels settlement
policy and of Lefebvres work.
It is, of course, impossible to ignore the role of the Israeli state in the process. As Eyal
Benvenisti (1989, preface) pointed out, the pre-June 1967 borders have faded for almost
all legal purposes that reflect Israeli interests. The history of Maale Adummima planned
town built by the Israeli government on occupied territorybears the mark of a direct
intervention of the Israeli state, pursuing goals linked to Zionist ideology, national interest,and perceived security reasons. As such, it stands in marked contrast to the interpretation
of the settlement policy as an incremental phenomenon driven by bottom-up pressure from
settlers grassroots organizations (see, for example, Eldar and Zertal, 2007)and, of course,
with its description in terms of an accidental (Goremberg, 2006), foolish (Gazit, 2003),
innocent (Shimon Peres, in Gazit, 2003, page xix), and ultimately unwanted, entanglement.
At the same time, it would be impossible to deny that politicized urban planning has
been one of the main drivers of the development of the metropolitan area of Jerusalem since
the reunification of the city after 1967. As Andreas Faludi puts it, although Jerusalem lacks
a planning doctrine, what is evident, however, is a strong sense of purpose behind
developments in East Jerusalem, namely, [t]he widely, if not unanimously shared political
goal [of] the permanent unification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule (1997, page 98). This
broad ideological frame has been translated into a partisan urban planning policy whose aim
has been winningrather than settlingthe conflict in Jerusalem by further strengthening
Israels control over the city (Bollens, 2000; Dumper, 1997; Yacobi and Yiftachel, 2002).
Planning in Jerusalem is, of course, the product of an overall ethnonationalist governing
ideology favouring Jewish development and national goals over Palestinian ones (Bollens,
2000, pages 1933, 307324; see also Yacobi and Yiftachel, 2002).
Nevertheless, acceptance of a linear account of Israels settlement policy means that
our analysis of the phenomenon as dehistoricized and decontextualized, to the point that
the crucial dimension of the real contextual rationality of the planning process (Flyvbjerg,
1996) is lost. To think of Israeli planning as war carried out by other means (Coon, 1992,page 210), while correctly acknowledging the partisan nature of the planning system, suggests
the idea of the existence of a fully fledged, carefully calculated, strategy behind planning, and
reduces planning to a subordinate and instrumental roleultimately leaving no room for any
analysis of the agency of other actors beyond the dichotomy of complicityresistance.
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
14/20
510 M Allegra
As for the first point, while a discussion of the nature and coherence of Israeli decision
making is outside my purposes in this paper, it can be pointed out that even the development
of the state-planned new town of Maale Adummim does not reproduce the mechanism
of comprehensive, controlled and efficient architectural experiments like that whichmarked the Israeli policy of population dispersal of the Sharon plan in the 1950 (Efrat,
2003, page 60). The key to the success of Maale Adummim lies precisely at the junction
between centralized planning, market preferences, and suburbanization trends. Concepts
such as Yiftachels (2003) settlement instinct or reflex action appear, therefore, likely to
be more fruitful in explaining Israels settlement policy than is referring to a comprehensive,
centralized, plan.
As for the second point, planners have not simply been a tool in the hands of politicians.
While is fair to say that geopolitical and national considerations created the context in which
Maale Adummim was born, professional and neutral arguments have been important in
determining the development of the new town. At the same time, as Yiftachel (1998) notes
in his critique of the dark side of planning, and contrary to widespread perceptions among
Israeli professionals, the influence of planning expertise on the development of Maale
Adummim did not diminish the political consequences of Israels settlement policy. Rather,
it can be said that sometimes those consequences were even maximized. The mobilization
of planning arguments in defining the location and scale of the settlementemphasizing the
need to create a functioning urban unitproduced permanent political consequences: directly,
by cutting the Palestinian West Bank in two through the construction of a Jewish town from
scratch; and indirectly, by creating the conditions for the success story of an ultimately
controversial urban policy [for a similar conclusion about infrastructural investments, see
Pullan et al (2007, page 178)].
More broadly, the experience of Maale Adummim suggests that the relative successof Israeli settlement policy in producing a new set of sociospatial arrangements cannot be
reduced to the execution of a top-down political project of sociospatial engineering: rather,
it depended instead on a variety of factors. Discussing how the Likud government had come
to terms with the contradiction between its original policy of population dispersal inherent to
the concept of conquest of the land, and the creation of a large satellite town near Jerusalem,
Thomas Leitersdorf notes that:
[Maale Adummim] was a success story and every apartment that went on the market
was instantly grabbed. So the politicians said, Ok, the population in Judea and Samaria
is growing, we have no marketing problems and we dont have to pay huge subsidies to
support mobile homes on various hills . I would say that the glory of that time wasthat the planning and political considerations went hand in hand (Leitersdorf, quoted in
Tamir-Tawil, 2003, pages 155156).
What determined the convergence of the preferences of (Israeli) politicians, planners, and
consumers? For Brenner and Elden, Lefebvres own work is a reminder that the production
of territory does not take place on a tabula rasa:
[s]tates make their own territories, not under circumstances they have chosen, but under
the given and inherited circumstances with which they are confronted (2009, page 367).
Building on Lefebvre and borrowing from the vocabulary of actor-network theory, we could
say that territory has agency: this convergence found its locus, its centre of gravity, in the
metropolitan area of Jerusalem.(7)
(7)An often forgotten fact about Israeli settlement policy is the role of constraints posed by thephysical, human, and legal landscape of the West Bank on the unrestrained expansion of settlements.The strategy of capturing the hills, for example, did not answer only to Israeli politico-military needs,
but also resulted from the preexisting distribution of Palestinian settlement and agricultural land, aswell as the legal geography of the Ottoman land law (see, for example, Weizman, 2007, page 117).
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
15/20
The politics of suburbia 511
While still conceding that the post 1978 wave of settlement reflected to a certain extent
Likuds rise to power, Portugali notes that it also implied the unfolding, or the realization,
of most of the spatio-economic potentialities of the West Bank hitherto unrealized. Namely,
its close proximity to the metropolitan region of Tel-Aviv and the city of Jerusalem (1991,page 32). The peculiar situation in which this rush toward bourgeois utopias (Fishman,
1986) took place in Jerusalem did create obvious differences from the much more market-
driven American urban development; however, after 1967 the Green Line acted as a boundary
of price discontinuity of land prices, thereby creating new incentives for Israelis to move to
bedroom communities in the periphery of the cityincentives that run parallel to the political
impetus toward colonization (Newman, 1996). As Yiftachel observes, beyond the powerful
impact of the settling ethnocratic culture, there are some influential groups that gain from
the establishment of settlements, such as developers and upwardly mobile groups who
seek quality of life often an euphemism for the rush of middle-class families into gated,
or controlled, suburban localities, protected from the proximity of undesirables (2003,
page 36), be they Palestinians or fellow Jews.
The very experience of suburban settler-consumers makes a stark contrast with the
description of Hebron offered by a local settlers leader:
this is not the place that you come to in order to build a cottage and cultivate a garden.
It is a place that is meant to articulate the fact that the people of Israel will not desert the
city of the Patriarchs (quoted in Feige, 2009, page 182; see also Feige 2001).
Elsewhere in the West Bank, however,
a cottage and a garden were exactly what many settlers wished for. Many were not
dedicated to the idea of a Greater Israel, but grasped the opportunity, given them by the
state, to improve their standard of living. Although they reside in the occupied territories,
these settlers define themselves as normal Israelis and distance themselves from thoseliving on the mountain ridge of Judea and Samaria, whom they define as religious
fanatics (Feige, 2009, page 182).
The suburban formula Maale Adummim is Jerusalemfound in planning documents,
political leaflets, and real estate commercials, each dimension strengthening and legitimizing
the otherlaid the conditions for the rapid growth of the settlement as the territorial common
denominator of the preferences of different sectors of Israeli society. For politicians, Maale
Adummims link to Jerusalem was essentially politico-strategic, as the fast-growing new
town represented a permanent territorial and demographic fact on the ground in the political
game for Jerusalem. Planners saw this link in terms of urban planning issues, as Maale
Adummim constituted an appropriate answer to the need for a rational expansion of the cityand an occasion to apply their professional skills to the creation of a new town from scratch.
In addition, for the Jerusalemite Jewish middle class, hungry for housing opportunities, the
quiet suburban community of Maale Adummim was the best place in town in terms of
affordability and quality of life within commuting distance of the inner city.
At the same time, the multifaceted nature of the process of place-making embodied
in the development of settlements such as Maale Adummim represented the fundamental
force that gradually transformed the spatial and social perceptions of what Jerusalem is
(Shlay and Rosen, 2010, page 384). After the evacuation of the settlements in the Sinai,
following the IsraeliEgyptian peace treaty, Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nuna settler leader of
the timeobserved that the settler movement had been unable to settle in the heart of the
nationmeaning that the settlement project remained controversial for Israeli society aswhole. Indeed, the settler-consumers of Maale Adummim succeeded in this purpose: albeit
in ways that the Rabbi would probably consider too mundane, they did manage to settle in
the heart of Israel. A new community of Jerusalemites, and a new self-perception of
indigeneity, arose not simply from Zionist ethos or planning documents, but from Maale
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
16/20
512 M Allegra
Adummims villas, from the shopping mall, from the neat boulevards beautified by palms
and olive trees.
6 ConclusionThe underlying argument of this paper is that the observation of suburban settlements in the
metropolitan area of Jerusalem represents an important inroad into the dynamics of Israels
settlement policy.
Consideration of the metropolitan area of the city offers a more realistic picture of Israels
settlement policy. This allows us to get rid of the misleading reference to the legal status
of settlements under Israeli lawand, in particular, the arbitrary distinction between Israeli-
defined Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, on which the narrative describing structural
differences between the Labor and Likud governments is based. The development of suburban
settlements such as Maale Adummim is also an example of the complex dynamics of the
production of territory in the contested metropolitan landscape of Jerusalemthereby
contradicting its representation in terms of a top-down, controlled, experiment of sociospatial
engineering, as well as the simplistic linear accounts of the nexus between politics and
planning.
The struggle for the production of territory reshaped the metropolis of Jerusalem
along the three Lefebvrian dimensions of conceived, perceived, and lived space. Abstract
images of the metropolis (the political dream of Jewish Jerusalem, as well as blueprints
detailing commuterflows) have been used by Israeli planners and policy makers to draw
models and future images of the metropolis. At the same time, however, a comprehensive
redefinition of the material infrastructure of the metropolitan space has been realized, which
transformed Jewish Jerusalem from the pre-1967 truncated border city into a metropolitan
hub for a vast Jewish hinterland beyond the Green Line. Last but not least, the developmentof suburban communities like Maale Adummim created a new perception of the boundaries
and the very nature of Jerusalem deeply rooted in the mind of the Israeli public. In its role
of territorial common denominator of the preferences of different sectors of Israeli society,
Maale Adummim can be considered a success story of Israels settlement policy. Thriving
suburban communities such as Maale Adummim have been a crucial factor in the process
of obliteration of the pre-1967 Green Line: today, almost no one in Israel considers the
possibility of evacuating Maale Adummim as either a desirable or a realistic option under
any scenario, because of its size, as a senior member of the Geneva Initiative group noted
(interview, Tel-Aviv, January 2010).
However, There is a continual production of territory, rather than an initial moment
that creates a framework or container within with future struggles are played out (Brenner
and Elden, 2009, page 367). The success story of Maale Adummim cannot hide the inherent
contradictions of Israels settlement policy. After more than four decades of settlement activity,
the resulting bundle of Jewish and Palestinian territorialities, of conflict and proximity, today
represents the core issue in the conflict. Indeed, as the recently leaked Palestinian papers
(Aljazeera, 2011a; 2011b) confirmed, Maale Adummim represents a major obstacle for
the so-called two-state solution. Ironically, the existence of communities such as Maale
Adummim is also one of the main arguments of the supporters of the so-called one-state
solution for the creation of a single democratic state in the whole of Israel/Palestineand
thereby the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Despite its success, the development of Maale
Adummim is a stark reminder of the illusion that urban contradictions could be supersededby urban design (Castells, 1983, page 94).
Acknowledgements. The author would like to thank Haim Yacobi and the three anonymous referees
for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
17/20
The politics of suburbia 513
References
Abu-Lughod J, 1982, Israeli settlement in the occupied Arab Lands: conquest to colonyJournal of
Palestine Studies11(2) 1654
Aljazeera, 2011a, The Palestine Papers the biggest yerushalayim , 23 January,http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011122112512844113.html
Aljazeera, 2011b, The Palestine Papers. The napkin map revealed, 23 January,
http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011122114239940577.html
Allegra M, Casaglia A, Rokem J, 2012, The political geographies of urban polarization. A critical
review of research on divided cities Geography Compass6 560574
Anderson B, 1983Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism
(Verso, London)
Anderson J, 2008, From empires to ethno-national conflicts: a framework for studying divided
cities in contested states , WP 1, Conflict in Cities and the Contested State Programme,
http://www.conflictincities.org/workingpapers.html
Aran G, 1986, From religious Zionism to Zionist religion: the roots of Gush Emunim Studies in
Contemporary Jewry2 116143Aran G, 1991, Jewish Zionist fundamentalism: the block of the faithful in Israel (Gush Emunim),
inFundamentalism ObservedEds M E Marty, R S Appleby (University of Chicago Press,
Chicago) pp 265344
Auerbach G, Sharkansky I, 2000, Which Jerusalem? A consideration of concepts and borders
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space18 395409
Benvenisti E, 1989Legal Dualism: The Absorption of the Occupied Territories into Israel(Westview
Press, Boulder, CO)
Benvenisti M, 1984 The West Bank Data Project. A Survey of Israels Policies (American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington and London)
Benvenisti M, 1995Intimate Enemies. Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land(University of California
Press, Berkeley, CA)
Bimkom, 2009, The hidden agenda. The establishment and expansion plans of Maale Adummim
and their human rights ramifications,
http://eng.bimkom.org/Index.asp?ArticleID=142&CategoryID=125
Bollens S, 2000 On Narrow Ground: Urban Policy and Ethnic Conflict in Jerusalem and Belfast
(State University of New York Press, Albany, NY)
Brenner N, Elden S, 2009, Henri Lefebvre on state, space, territoryInternational Political
Sociology3 353377
BTselem, 1999, On the way to annexation. Human rights violations resulting from the
establishment and expansion of the Maaleh Adummim settlement,
http://www.btselem.org/english/publications/index.asp?TF=08
BTselem, 2011, Settlement population, XLS,
http://www.btselem.org/download/settlement_population_eng.xlsBTselem, Weizman E, 2002, Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Built-up areas and land reserves.
May 2002, http://www.btselem.org/Download/Settlements_Map_Eng.PDF
Castells M, 1983 The City and the Grassroots. A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements
(University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
Coon A, 1992 Town Planning Under Military Occupation (Dartmouth Press: Aldershot, Hants)
De Jong J, 1997, Metropolitan and Greater JerusalemJan 1997,
http://www.fmep.org/maps/jerusalem/metropolitan-and-greater-jerusalem-jan-1997
Demant P, 1988Ploughshares into Swords. Israeli Settlement Policy in the Occupied Territories,
19671977PhD thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Don Yehiya E, 1994, The book and the sword: the nationalist yeshivot and political radicalism in
Israel, inAccounting for Fundamentalism: The Dynamic Character of Movements
Eds M E Marty, R S Appleby (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL) pp 262300
Dumper M, 1997 The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967(Columbia University Press, New York)
Efrat Z, 2003 The plan, inA Civilian Occupation. The Politics of Israeli Architecture Eds R Segal,
E Weizman (Babel and Verso Press, London) pp 5978
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
18/20
514 M Allegra
Eldar A, Zertal I, 2007Lords of the Land: The War Over Israels Settlements in the Occupied
Territories, 19672007(Nation Books, New York)
Faludi A, 1997, A planning doctrine for Jerusalem?International Planning Studies2(1) 83102
Feige M, 2001,Jewish settlement of Hebron: the place and the other GeoJournal53 323333Feige M, 2002, Do not weep Rachel: fundamentalism, commemoration and gender in a West Bank
settlementJournal of Israeli History21(1) 119138
Feige M, 2009 Settling in the Hearts. Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories (Wayne
State University Press, Detroit, IL)
Felner E, 1999 Apartheid by any other name. Creeping annexation of the West BankLe Monde
Diplomatique November, http://mondediplo.com/1999/11/08israel
Fishman R, 1986Burgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (Basic Books, New York)
Flyvbjerg B, 1996, The dark side of planning: rationality and realrationalitt , inExplorations
in Planning Theory Eds S J Mandelbaum, L Mazza, R W Burchell (Center for Urban Policy
Research Press, New Brunswick, NJ) pp 383394
FMEP, 2010 Ten fastest growing West Bank settlements, 19942004,
http://www.fmep.org/settlement_info/settlement-info-and-tables/stats-data/ten-fastest-growing-west-bank-settlements-199420132004
Friedland R, Hecht R, 1996 To Rule Jerusalem (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Friedman R, 1992Zealots for Zion: Inside Israels West Bank Settlement Movement(Random House,
New York)
Gazit S, 2003 Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories (Frank Cass, London)
Gordon N, 2008, From colonization to separation: exploring the structure of Israels occupation
Third World Quarterly29(1) 2544
Goremberg G, 2006 Occupied Territories. The Untold Story of Israels Settlements (I B Tauris,
London)
Haaretz, 2003, The price is right, 25 September,
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/the-price-is-right-1.101174
Haaretz, 2009, Israel plans to build up West Bank corridor on contested land 1 January,http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-plans-to-build-up-west-bank-corridor-on-contested-
land-1.266848
Harris W, 1980 Taking Root: Israeli Settlement in the West Bank, the Golan and the GazaSinai
19671980 (Research Studies Press, Chichester, Sussex)
Hever S, 2010 The Political Economy of Israels Occupation. Repression Beyond Exploitation
(Pluto Press London)
Hobsbawm E, Ranger T (Eds), 1983 The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge)
Hochstein A, 1983Metropolitan Links between Israel and the West Bank(West Bank Data Project/
Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem)
ICBS, 2008 Statistical Abstract of Israel 2008 Israeli Central Bureau of StatisticsICBS, 2010 Statistical Abstract of Israel 2010 Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics
ICBS, 2011 Statistical Abstract of Israel 2011 Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics
Israel Environment Bulletin 1993, Environment Week, Summer 19935754 16(3),
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Communiques/1998/ENVIRONMENT%20WEEK
Israel Hayon, 2012, Jewish population in Judea and Samaria increases by 4.3 percent, census says,
15 January, http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=2676
Isaac R, 1976Israel Divided: Ideological Polictics in the Jewish State (Johns Hopkins University
Press, Baltimore, MD)
Jerusalem Post1978, Country-club suburb from pioneer start, 4 July
Jerusalem Post2009, Rivlin: no peace without E-1 building, 10 August
Jewish Agency, 2010 Maaleh Adummim,http://www.jewishagency.org/JewishAgency/English/Aliyah/Absorpton+Options/Municipal+and+Co
mmunity+Absorption/Maaleh+Adummim.htm
JIIS, 2008Jerusalem Statistical Yearbook 2007/2008 Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies and
Jerusalem Municipality, Jerusalem
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
19/20
The politics of suburbia 515
JIIS, 2010Jerusalem Statistical Yearbook 2008/2009 Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies and
Jerusalem Municipality, Jerusalem
Khamaisi R, 2008, Between competition and integration: the formation of a dislocated and distorted
urbanized region in Jerusalem; inJerusalem and Its Hinterland(The International Peace andCooperation Center, Jerusalem) pp 6886
Klein M, 2007, Lords of the land: the settlers and the State of Israel, 19672004 (review article)
Jewish Quarterly Review97(3) 125127
Kotek J, 1999, Divided cities in the European cultural contextProgress in Planning52 227237
Lefebvre H, 1991 The Production of Space (Blackwell, Oxford)
Leitersdorf, undated, Maaleh Adumima new town developed by the Ministry of Housing,
Thomas Leitersdorfs personal archive, Tel Aviv
Lustick I, 1988For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel(Council on Foreign
Relations, New York)
Lustick I, 1993 Unsettled States, Disputed Lands : Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel
and the West BankGaza (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY)
MERIP, 1977, Israel settlement policy, Middle East Research and Information Project,MiddleEast Report59 1823
Mitchell T, 1991, The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their criticsAmerican
Political Science Review85 7796
Modarres A, Kirby A, 2010, The suburban question: notes for a research program Cities27
114121
Nasrallah R, 2008, Jerusalem and its suburbs: the decline of a Palestinian City, inJerusalem and
Its Hinterland(The International Peace and Cooperation Center, Jerusalem) pp 4752
Newman D (Ed.), 1985 The impact of Gush Emunim (Croom Helm, London)
Newman D, 1996, The territorial politics of exurbanization: reflections on 25 years of Jewish
settlement in the West BankIsrael Affairs3(1) 6185
Newman D, Herman T, 1992, A comparative study of Gush Emunim and Peace NowMiddleEastern Studies28 509530
PCBS, 2009Population, Housing and Establishment Census 2007, Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics, Ramallah
Peace Now, 2009, West Bank settlementsfacts and figures, June 2009,
http://peacenow.org.il/eng/node/297
Peace Now, 2011, Full settlements list, http://peacenow.org.il/eng/content/settlements-and-outposts
PLO, 2009, The Adumim bloc and the E-1 expansion area background paper, PLO, Negotiations
Affairs Department, http://www.plomission.us/index.php?page=resources
Porter L, 2010 Unlearning the Colonial Cultures of Planning(Ashgate, Farnham, Surrey)
Portugali J, 1991, Jewish settlement in the occupied territories: Israels settlement structure and the
PalestinansPolitical Geography Quarterly10(1) 2653
Possick C, 2004, Locating oneself as a Jewish Settler on the West Bank: ideological squatting andevictionJournal of Environmental Psychology24 5369
Pullan W, Misselwitz P, Nasrallah R, Yacobi H, 2007, Jerusalems Road 1 City11 176198
Rabin Y, 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: ratification of the IsraelPalestinian interim
agreement, The Knesset, 5 October, 1995,http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1990_1999/1995/10/PM+Rabin+in+Knesset-
+Ratification+of+Interim+Agree.htm
Ravitsky A, 1996Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, IL)
Reichman S, 1986, Policy reduces the world to essentials: a reflection on the Jewish settlement
process in the West Bank, inPlanning in Turbulence Eds D Morley, A Shachar (Magnes Press,
Jerusalem) pp 8396
Reuveny R, 2003, Fundamentalist colonialism: the geopolitics of IsraeliPalestinian conflict
Political Geography22 347380
Rice C, 2005, Quartet Statement, 20 Sep 2005,http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Reference+Documents/Quartet+Statement+20-
Sep-2005.htm
-
7/28/2019 Israel Settlements en Jerusalen Palestina
20/20
516 M Allegra
Segal R, Weizman E, 2003, Introduction, in Occupation. The Politics of Israeli Architecture
Eds R Segal, E Weizman, A Civilian (Babel and Verso Press, London) pp 1926
Segev T, 2006, A bitter prize: Israel and the occupied territories Foreign Affairs85(3) 145150
Settlement Report, 1998, Settlement timeline Settlement Report8(3),http://www.fmep.org/reports/archive/vol.-8/no.-3/settlement-timeline
Sharkansky I, Auerbach G, 2000, Which Jerusalem? A consideration of concepts and borders
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space18 395409
Shlay A, Rosen G, 2010, Making place: the shifting Green Line and the development of Greater
metropolitan Jerusalem City and Community9 358389
Sprinzak E, 1991 The Ascendance of Israels Radical Right(Oxford University Press, New York)
Stern D, 1990, Ethno-ideological segregation and metropolitan development Geoforum21 397409
Tamir-Tawil E, 2003 To start a city from scratch. An interview with architect Thomas M
Leitersdorf, inA Civilian Occupation. The Politics of Israeli Architecture Eds R Segal,
E Weizman (Babel and Verso Press, London) pp 151162
Taylor P, 1994, The state as a container: territoriality in the modern world-systemProgress in
Human Geography18 151162The Guardian 2010, We were looking for a nice, peaceful place near Jerusalem , 25 September,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/25/west-bank-settlers
Thorpe M (Ed.), 1984Prescription for Conflict. Israels West Bank Settlement Policy (Foundation for
Middle East Peace, Washington, DC)
Weizmann E, 2002, The politics of verticality: roadsover and under,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ecology-politicsverticality/article_809.jsp
Weizman E, 2007Hollow Land: Israels Architecture of Occupation (Verso, London)
WINEP, 2004, Palestinian characterization versus actual proposal at Camp David (PDF),http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateS03.php?contentType=MapsAndImages&author=&S
ID=9&year=&subType1=&subType2=&SortOrder=SortDate%20DESC,%20ppwIssueNumber%20
DESC&recordsPerPage=10&R=40
Yacobi H, Yiftachel O, 2002, Planning a bi-national capital: should Jerusalem remain united?
Geoforum33 137145
Yiftachel O, 1998, Planning and social control: exploring the dark side Journal of Planning
Literature12 395406
Yiftachel O, 2003, Settlements as a reflex action; inA Civilian Occupation. The Politics of Israeli
Architecture Eds R Segal, E Weizman (Babel and Verso Press, London) pp 3239