Marco Allegra

Rethinking Cities in Contentious Times: The Mobilisation of Urban Dissent in the ‘Arab Spring’

Throughout history, cities have been the theatre of social and spatial struggles. The issue of urban protests, however, has not yet been investigated in detail in the light of the growing concern of the need to rethink urban studies, from theoretical and epistemic assumptions, to methodological issues. It is argued that the mobilisation of urban dissent in the so-called Arab Spring offers a good opportunity to develop a critical approach based on the observation of the nexus between an event (a punctual expression of dissent) and a site (the urban environment in which the former takes place). The goal is to avoid theoretical rigidities inherent to the assumptions about the intrinsic qualities of cities or social movements. The paper also aims at connecting different academic and disciplinary traditions across linguistic divides—and especially the Anglophone urban studies with the Francophone stream of city-focused political science and political sociology.

Two States or Not Two States? Leadership and Peace Making in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

The debate around the viability of the so-called ‘Two-State Solution’ and the perspective of an alternative ‘One-State Solution’ began to attract renewed the attention after the collapse of the Oslo process. We suggest that instead of debating the viability of rival constitutional schemes, a more fruitful approach to the issue of peace making in Israel/Palestine should focus on the structural elements of the picture more than on future possible outcomes of the diplomatic process. This article focuses on the role of the two leaderships by analysing their historical background, discourses and policies in order to understand to what extent the debate on the TSS/OSS dichotomy reveals the hidden logic of the alternatives. Our aim is to describe the ‘primordial soup’ that enables discussion and decisions with respect to the different scenarios addressed by the debate. We conclude that the TSS/OSS alternative hardly identifies meaningful coalitions for peace making and the attainment of either of the two solutions seems to be unlikely without a dramatic change the very identity of Palestinian and Israeli leadership; the rhetoric about the ‘missed opportunities’ of negotiation contributes instead to obscure the resilience of the status quo.

Citizenship in Palestine: a fractured geography

This article deals with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through an approach based on citizenship. The article considers the whole historical Palestine (Israel and the so-called Occupied Territories) as a unique unit of analysis, and suggests that the dynamics of citizenship in this area should be analysed through the exam of two fundamental dimensions, relating to membership and territory. In general, the example of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict offers the chance to address the conventional meaning of concepts such as ‘state’, ‘democracy’ and ‘citizenship’, underlying the complex dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of individuals and groups within a collective decision-making process. As far as Palestine is concerned, the centre of gravity and the horizons of the conflict are described through the notion of ‘ruptured demos’, suggesting new directions for comparative research and drawing the attention to the progressive demise of the so-called ‘two-state’ solution.

Planners amid the storm: Lessons from Israel/Palestine

How do planners reconcile their professional role with the surrounding political environment? How do we measure and make sense of the gap between the progressive potential associated with planning as a social practice and the considerably grimmer reality emerging in so many concrete examples of planning conflicts and controversies that deny this potential? These are amongst the fundamental questions raised by Cliff Hague’s (2016) commentary in issue 17.1 of this journal (February 2016), based on his experience as chair of a UN-Habitat international advisory board that authored a report on planning in Area C of the West Bank. These issues remain a central concern for planning theorists and practitioners who have been engaged directly in addressing these issues for at least 30 years: most readers of Planning Theory and Practice would certainly consider the idea that “planning is politics” as a rather obvious starting point for any conversation on the subject. And as a student of Jerusalem and Israel’s settlement policy, I cannot but concur with Hague when he notes how the reality of Israel/Palestine reminds us of these dilemmas in a particularly dramatic manner; indeed, the UN-Habitat report is just the latest addition to a long and ever-expanding list of reports, books and papers focusing on planning conditions in the Israeli-controlled West Bank – all invariably pointing to the partisan and asymmetric functioning of the local planning system. But where exactly does this leave us if we are to reflect on the implications of this (admittedly rather extreme) case study for planning as a profession and a discipline? Hague calls for international professional bodies to denounce the instrumental use by Israeli authorities of bogus planning arguments with the purpose of containing Palestinian development: as he notes, often in the West Bank “‘good planning’ is the rationale for oppressing poor people”. While Hague’s call certainly deserves support, his commentary also invites further reflection on the very idea of “good planning”. As I have argued elsewhere (Rokem & Allegra, forthcoming), the reality of Israel/Palestine provides at least two interesting lessons in this regard. To begin with, Hague’s piece is a stark reminder of the obvious: planning challenges typically have a social and political dimension that needs to be carefully considered; in this respect, the quest for “a set of propositions that are defensible in deeply rational terms that can enable planners to advocate for authoritative choices” (Hague, 2016) is destined to failure. This is the first lesson coming from Israel/ Palestine: “rationality” and the “public interest” do not exist in isolation; rather, various rationalities and interests compete for legitimacy and influence over the planning process. During my research in Jerusalem I have interviewed professionals working in Israeli planning institutions. My respondents were invariably ready to acknowledge the politicization of planning issues

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

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

Colonizzazione per consenso: Ma’ale Adumim e la politica israeliana degli insediamenti

The exam of the events that brought about the creation of the first nucleus of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim (1975) challenge some of the widespread stereotypes on Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank, as well as the conventional wisdom emerging from most scholarly contributions on the theme. The history of Ma’ale Adumim demonstrates how the proliferation of the settlements was the product of active cooperation between sectors of the Israeli Labour party, the Likud and the settlers movement, and eased by the existence of a broad consensus on the creation of large suburban settlements in the periphery of Jerusalem.

Il 1948 nella storia di Israele. Appunti su un dibattito tra storiografia e politica

Il 1948 nella storia di Israele. Appunti su un dibattito tra storiografia e politica - The article addresses the issue of the relation between historiography and the political debate. It examines the historiographic works concerning the events which lead to the emergence of the State of Israel between 1947 and 1949 as one of the key-periods in the history of the contemporary Middle East. In particular, the analysis focuses on the debate originating in the mid 1980s on the revision of traditional Israeli historiography undertaken by the so-called ‘New Historians’, of whom Benny Morris is a leading representative. By drawing on the notion of the ‘public use of history, the author reverses the perspective, showing how the academic debate itself is characterised by strongly polemical aspects. The historiographic research on 1948, to which the works of the New Historians provide the latest significant contribution in terms of analysis of new sources, constitutes a firmer knowledge than the tones of the debate would suggest. Key words: public use of history, Israel, New Israeli Historians, first Arab-Israeli war, Palestine, Israeli-Palestinian conflict.