Erez Tzfadia

Abusing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Recognition and Land Allocation in Israel:

The logic behind land allocation for residential purposes has undergone a dramatic shift in many states with a colonial legacy in the recent decade, from an ethnonational logic that favors the ethnonational majority to a more liberal-democratic, market-based logic that disregards ethnicity. In Israel, following this shift, a new claim for biased allocation has been voiced by the ethnonational majority, politicians, and administrators, which is based on multiculturalism and recognition. According to this claim, land allocation should serve the communal needs of the majority by limiting the access of minority groups to the majority groups residential areas. In this paper I argue that, despite the decline of ethnonationalism, the discourse of multiculturalism remains a substitute discourse that rationalizes the interests of the majority group, hence contributing to the stratification of societies on the basis of ethnicity. Through an analysis of three case studies of land allocation in Israel, the paper explores the material and cultural weaknesses of a multiculturalism that has been imported from societies with a strong liberal-democratic tradition into societies with a profound ethnonational legacy.

Public Housing as Control: Spatial Policy of Settling Immigrants in Israeli Development Towns

This paper examines the relationship between inter-ethnic power relations and public housing policy for immigrants in Israel since 1948. Based on a comparative analysis of Israeli policy of housing Mizrahi immigrants in the 1950s and Russian immigrants in the 1990s, the paper argues that despite the perceived decline in the states capacity, the implication of public housing policy has remained unchanged since the 1950s. By moving Jewish immigrants into development towns in sparsely populated and overwhelmingly Palestinian regions of the country, Israeli policy has served to Judaize these regions and to reinforce ethnic stratification among the countrys Jewish population. In this manner, Israeli public housing policy was neither consistent with conceptions of post-Second World War public housing policies in welfare states nor with the recent impact of globalization and the free-market dynamics on public housing policies.

MULTICULTURALISM, NATIONALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF THE ISRAELI CITY

One of the central issues in the study of urban politics today is the fact that many cities have become multicultural arenas. The liberal viewpoint stresses the potential of the city—unlike other spaces—to offer many and equal opportunities for all residents regardless of religion, gender, or ethnic affiliation, but the critical body of knowledge highlights the ways in which the city, although apparently released from the shackles of nation- and state-building projects, continues to reproduce existing power structures and is a stratifying place, maintaining patterns of discrimination, exclusion, and segregation. This tension between the city as an enabling space versus the city as a reinforcer of socionational stratification is at the center of this article.

Local autonomy and immigration: Mayoral policy-making in peripheral towns in Israel

Abstract The paper examines the discretionary powers of Israeli local mayors in small peripheral towns under conditions of changing patterns of decentralisation and attempts to ascertain the contribution of national ideology, social structure and financial constraints in understanding the limits to these powers. Research on immigration policy-making generally focuses on the role of the state and of its institutions. Recently, as part of an underlying trend towards greater decentralisation, a new direction in immigration policy study is emerging, emphasising the power of local authorities in decision-making in Israel and elsewhere. However, it is usually considered separately from national ideologies or policies at the state level. Research into how mayors of small Israeli peripheral towns (development towns) responded to the settlement of a large wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union during the 1990s, sheds light on the economic and national constraints which limit the discretionary power of local mayors. In the Israeli case, the responses of the mayors to the settlement of immigrants in their towns range from active endorsement of a policy of immigrant absorption to objection and protest against it, while remaining within the boundaries and legitimacy of the Zionist conception of ‘homecoming’. In this sense, decentralisation emphasises the separateness of small peripheral towns and their mayors, in contrast to the assumption of political realignment between the urban and the national that brings cities ‘back in’.

Academic Discourse on Making New Towns in Israel: Three Approaches in Social Science

This paper places the making of twenty-eight new development towns in the Israeli periphery at the junction of political ideologies, spatial policy, and academic discourse. The objective of the paper is to delineate the policy of making the development towns and the reasons explaining their relatively disadvantaged state against the backdrop of three master approaches in the social sciences in the 20th century: the modernist – functionalist approach, particularly the planning perspective within this approach; the neo-Marxist approach; and the colonial approach. Each places the planning and establishment of the new towns within a wider political context and sociospatial structure, hence suggesting different explanations for the backwardness. Yet, combining the approaches yields a comprehensive picture of the towns. Finally, the juxtaposition of these master approaches with the making of new towns elucidates the contribution of geography and public policy to the general discourse in social science. That said, it also exposes the weaknesses of the modern and rational approaches, and portrayed public policy and spatial planning as ingredients of multilayered control and domination, which are expressed in cultural (ethnic), geographical, and economic terms.

Neo-settler colonialism and the re-formation of territory: Privatization and nationalization in Israel

Abstract In this article we critically analyse the production of Israeli territory vis a vis the ongoing transformation of land and planning policies from ones based on pure nationalism to those purporting neo-liberal logic. Unlike the existing literature − including the most recent critical body of knowledge on planning, resource management and public policy in Israel − we contend that this transformation must be understood within the framework of settler colonialism. Our main argument is that the growing dominance of neo-liberal policies, expressed in the form of new public management, privatization of space, planning and territorial management, is bound up with Israel’s settler-colonial politics. Based on our detailed study of the dynamics of the privatization of space in Israel, we conceptualize the interplay between centralistic-national territorial management and new public management, free market-driven, privatization-prone, liberal planning and land policies as neo-settler colonialism. This concept focuses on the symbiotic relationships between these two vectors, with the latter providing a new mechanism of colonial control.

Privatization and Nationalization of Space in Israel: Are They Complementary Processes?

In this chapter, we address the relationship between ethno-nationalism, capitalism, and privatization. Our critical analysis of the production of Israeli territory in relation to the ongoing transformation of land and planning policies, from a pure nationalistic approach toward one based on neoliberal logic, suggests that privatization is not necessarily encapsulated in ideas of liberty, fairness, or economic efficiency but, rather, can also reflect the ethno-national logic of control. Our main argument is that the growing dominance of neoliberal policies expressed in the privatization of space, planning, and territorial management is entangled within Israel’s ethno-national politics. The chapter critically studies the dynamics of the privatization of space in Israel, highlighting the interplay between centralistic-national territorial management and market-driven privatization and liberalization of planning and land policies.