Elisha Efrat

The geography of a population mass-escape from the Tel Aviv area during the Gulf War

During the Gulf War Israel experienced an unexpected population mass-escape of about 100000 residents from the Tel Aviv area to the peripheral regions of the country. This paper provides a geographical interpretation of the directions, routes and destinations of that flow. The Jerusalem area and the Negev were the most favoured areas of refuge. The escapers chose their destinations according to their mental map of the country and their assumptions about regions of danger based on speculation concerning the range of the Iraqi missiles. This event exposed, for the first time, the relative weakness of the execution of Israels population distribution policy which has existed as a national security issue since 1948.

Geographical distribution of the Soviet-Jewish new immigrants in Israel.

The State of Israel is facing now one of the most difficult absorption challenges it has ever had. About 250.000 Soviet-Jewish immigrants have arrived to the country since 1989 and another million are waiting in the Soviet Union for immigration. A direct absorption plan around an “absorption basket” of a few thousand dollar per family of three for the first year enables the immigrants to choose their place of habitation. They concentrate in big cities and veteran settlements along the coastal plain where employment possibilities are better. This trend is against the governments plans to direct them to peripheral regions. The current mass-immigration creates an unexpected change in the population and settlement pattern of Israel.

Geography of the Intifada

The conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis has steadily expanded since December 1987. This article provides a geographical interpretation of the widening of the conflict. Demographic factors strongly favor the Arabs. Newly established Jewish settlements in the occupied territories provoked the Arabs, and their refugee camps became the initial foci of conflict. The uprising then diffused along principal routes of access in both the Gaza Strip and JudeaSamaria. The unity carefully fostered by the Israelis since 1967 for Jerusalem proved to be ephemeral. EARLY December 1989 marked the two-year anniversary of the Palestinian uprising against Israel in Judea-Samaria and the Gaza Strip, which are also known as the occupied or administered territories. The intifada, to use the Arabic word for the uprising, came as a great surprise to many Israelis and emerged from an array of Arab political demands: self-determination, an independent Palestinian state, and evacuation of Israeli military forces from the occupied territories. The intifada began with an incident in the Gaza Strip, spread quickly to other locations there and in Judea-Samaria, and eventually assumed the character of a violent revolt throughout the Palestinian Arab areas. The purpose of this article is to analyze the geographical characteristics of the intifada and its stages of development, with an emphasis on the spatial perspectives of the uprising and their relationship to political events and activities. To demonstrate how geographical features have shaped the development of the intifada, we analyze three important elements: the demographic balance between Israelis and Arabs, the dispersion of the Arab refugee camps in the territories, and the problems stemming from the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem.

British town planning perspectives of Jerusalem in transition

British town planning in Palestine during the Mandate period 1918–47 was a turning point in urban development in the country, and especially in Jerusalem, a city in which Christians, Moslems and Jews found always great interest. During the British regime in Palestine, western town planning guidelines and architectural approaches were implemented in Jerusalem, which emphasised the separation between the Old City and the modern public and residential zones, the preservation of its holy and historic sites, and the north‐west and south‐west axes of future urban development. In planning Jerusalem there existed a transition of perspectives by British planners such as McLean (1918), Geddes (1919), Ashby (1922), Holliday (1930) and Kendall (1944). Their planning directives had a significant influence on the planners of Jerusalem during the 1950s and the 1960s. Even in the 1968 master plan of Greater Jerusalem much of their imprint was recognized, although the city underwent many political changes during these years.

New development towns of Israel (1948–93): A reappraisal

Abstract More than 30 new towns, in which about 18% of its Jewish population live today, were established in Israel between 1948 and 1963. The establishment of these towns was the most important change to the settlement map of a new-born state. This paper analyses the aims of the new towns and the means of their establishment, the policy which stood behind them, and the extent of their success in absorbing the Russian-Jewish mass-immigration at the beginning of the 1990s.

Problems of reunified Jerusalem

Abstract The reunification of Jerusalem following the war between Israel and Jordan in 1967 has not solved many of the most difficult problems facing the city. More than 20 years later the same difficulties persist here as in the West Bank.

ISRAEL'S PLANNED NEW 'CROSSING HIGHWAY' /

Abstract This paper provides a brief evalution of the transport and economic development relationships of a planned highway, which aims to shift traffic eastwards to the populated and congested regions of Israel. The paper focuses on four geographical aspects of that highway: traffic, land use, suburbanization and politics.

Human Ecology and the Albedo Effect in an Arid Environment

The results of a comparison of agricultural settlement and land-use and local precipitation patterns in the arid region of the Arava in Israel indicated that as the number of settlements and the area of cultivated land has increased since the 1950s, the albedo effect in the region has decreased, and the amounts of precipitation at the first October rains have increased. It is suggested that the albedo effect in desert areas is influenced by extended agricultural land-use.

Optimum versus reality in Israel's town system

Israels town system consists of 37 towns of different size, 28 development towns, and 24 semi-urban Jewish and Arab settlements, most of them consisting of 5,000–10,000 inhabitants. In the existing town system there is an exaggerated concentration of large towns in the Tel Aviv region; an excessive number of development towns; slow urban growth in the Negev and the Galilee; failure of semi-urban settlements to attain urban status; and the absence of urban settlements in many regions where they would be needed.A proposal to outline an optimal system of Israels town development is discussed. It was found that the existing urban system in Israel shows a distortion which is four times bigger than the optimal one. A comparison between the optimal lay-out of towns and the real one uncovers the gaps where new towns should be established in the future, and points out the locations where no further urban development should be encouraged.

Industry in Israel's new development towns

ConclusionsThe industrialization of the development towns is one of the main factors in the creation of a modern productive economy in a new social environment. The proportion of Israels large industrial plants that have been located in the developments town is much larger than the corresponding proportion of all the countrys industries. The tendency to establish relatively large industries in the development towns will probably continue for a considerable time, and it will necessitate the chanelling of large government resources to the development regions.A more serious obstacle is the shortage of labour, and particularly of skilled labour. In contrast to the supply of capital, this difficulty cannot be solved by administrative decisions taken in accordance with an agreed economic policy. What is needed here is a revolution in vocational training, and a diversification in plant sizes, the smaller plants supplying services to the larger industries.Vocational education is one of the most important conditions for the success of the industrialization process in the development towns. Jews have no technological and industrial tradition, and when they established their state, they did not attach sufficient importance to the rapid training of a labour force that would be able to take its place in the new factories. In making up for this omission, it is important to avoid concentrating on the conservative and traditional trades, and attention should be paid to the needs of the newer and more sophisticated industries.