Form Follows Metaphors: The Case of the New Israeli High Court Building in Jerusalem

This article examines critically the role of architecture in the construction of national identity, using the case of the Israeli Supreme Court building. Through critical discourse analysis of texts that accompanied the design and construction of this building, I propose to study the interrelations between the production of the architectural object and the practice of the construction of an Israeli national identity. The existing body of knowledge that supports this article claims that the creation of national identity is a socially constructed process, which involves a variety of practices including education, music, army service, as well as the design of the built environment. It is important to note that the realisation of such practices does not occur as a natural process, but rather as a result of power relations, embodied within the national sphere. Following this line of argument, the paper proposes a critical approach, which aims to move towards the politicisation of the term ‘sense of place’. In this context, concentrating on the Israeli Supreme Court building is not an arbitrary decision, since this institution is at the focus of the Israeli civil arena, and its building became a ‘land-mark’ and symbol of architectural quality. Following the texts written by the architects and critics, I would argue that this building reflects – and thus strengthens – the hegemonic interpretations of Israeli social and cultural reality. This interpretation is characterised by using selective historical and biblical references, in order to create through architecture an ‘iconographic bridge’ into an imagined collective past. However, this bridge reproduces the antinomies that frame Israeli space and transform it into ‘our place’, that is West versus East and Local versus Diaspora

Introduction: Infrastructural Stigma and Urban Vulnerability

In this introduction to the Special Issue ‘Infrastructural Stigma and Urban Vulnerability’, we outline the need to join up debates on infrastructural exclusion on the one hand and urban stigma on the other. We argue that doing so will allow us to develop a better understanding of the co-constitutive relationship between the material and the symbolic structures of the city shaping urban exclusion and vulnerability. Positing that stigma is not merely a symbolic force but has significant material effects, we show how urban dwellers often experience it in deeply embodied ways, including through impacts on their physical health. Furthermore, stigma is not only imposed on the built environment through discourse, it also emanates from the materiality of the city; this agentic role of the city is often disregarded in sociologically-informed approaches to urban stigma. When infrastructures become sites of contestation about urban inclusion, stigma can be utilised by stigmatised residents to demand connection to public networks, and the wider symbolic inclusion this entails. Through examining the issue of infrastructural stigma in cities and urban territories across the Global North and Global South, as well as the places in between, the nine articles in this Special Issue pay attention to the global relationalities of infrastructural stigma. Ultimately, our focus on the infrastructural origins of stigma draws attention to the structural causes of urban inequality – a reality which is often occluded by both stigma itself and by prevalent academic approaches to understanding it

Spaces of sovereignty: A tale of an unrecognized Palestinian village in Israel

This article discusses the spatial and political dimensions of an unrecognized Arab village in Israel, which is a subject of houses demolition during the last decade, taking part in parallel to a legal struggle for recognition. This case is part of a wide political act in Israel, where Palestinians are rendered ‘criminal’ and their spaces illegitimate. We will suggest that the unrecognized villages cannot be seen solely as a product of planning policies, but are essential to the understanding of the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is embodied. We will discuss the case using legal documents regarding the latest petition made to the High Court of Justice. Through those documents, we will try to analyse the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is being embodied using theoretical tools by Carl Schmitt and his debate with Hans Kelsen. At the conclusions, we will suggest some thoughts regarding the possibilities of resistance

Planning, Land Ownership, and Settler Colonialism in Israel/Palestine

This article discusses the challenges that the settlement process poses to Israeli property regimes, examining the ways that public apparatuses, specifically those related to urban planning, are creatively mobilized to address and mitigate such challenges. The article focuses on two case studies: the Palestinian village of Kamanneh in the Upper Galilee and the Ganey Aviv neighborhood of Lydda, one of Israel’s so-called mixed cities. Based on these case studies, the paper argues that the planning process’s technical and legal manipulations as well as the raw political power involved produce and reproduce the settler-colonial logic of ownership in land as a territorial and symbolic mechanism of control

Beyond "causes of causes": Health, stigma and the settler colonial urban territory in the Negev\Naqab

This article critically analyses and theoretically conceptualises the links between settler colonialism, planning and health. Based on the case of the Bedouin community in the Negev\Naqab, we argue that the production of settler colonial space has a profound impact on health, and should therefore be referred to as a specific category for analysing health disparities, simultaneously entangling territorial control and biopolitics towards indigenous communities. Furthermore, we suggest that this relationship between space and health constructs stigma that justifies and facilitates – in turn – the ongoing territorial control over the indigenous Bedouin population in Israel. By reviewing existing data on health and planning, especially in relation to infrastructure and access to services, we contribute to the growing literature on the nexus of settler-colonialism\health with urban and regional planning. Importantly, throughout this paper we refer to the Bedouin localities as part of the production of urban territory, illuminating the urban as a multidimensional process of political struggle, including the metropolin informal fringes

The Geo-biographies of Spatial Knowledge: Regional Planning from Israel to Sierra Leone and Back

This article examines the flow of spatial knowledge in different locations and territorial scales, focusing on the geographies of regional planning and its transplantation in the work of two Israeli planners, Arie and Ursula Oelsner. We argue that too often, researchers focus on the movement of spatial knowledge from Western countries to developing countries. We shed light on alternative ways in which this traffic follows different models, that are related to specific political and national constellations. Based on historical study and a thick description of two projects in Israel and Africa planned by these two Israeli planners, we show that spatial knowledge is not only the generator of discourse and of the professional community partaking in it, but also traverses space, crossing national borders and geographies. This dynamic, we suggest, has a politics of its own, as part of its movement and development within the global space, particularly in the movement between first and third worlds

Settler Colonialism (Without Settlers) and Slow Violence in the Gaza Strip

Israel's ongoing settler colonialism in occupied Palestinian territory impacts Palestinians' everyday life in all its aspects. In this article we demonstrate how Israel's interventions, in particular since its "withdrawal" from the Gaza Strip in 2005, can be conceptualized through a combined lens of settler colonialism and slow violence. We suggest that settler colonial violence and strategies of carceration, exploitation and elimination of the existing population - without the physical presence of settlers inside Gaza - is not only inherent in the production of a new reality and geography, but also at the core of the transformation of life of Gazans into non-life. While Israel has fewer and weaker moral obligations over Gaza's population, at the same time it creates the possibility of manipulating destructive power and violent practices. With a specific focus on Israel's interventions in the field of health, we examine how power, violence and health are entangled in conflict zones in general and in Gaza in particular, by documenting and critically analysing the effect of violence in general and infrastructure demolition in particular, on the everyday life of Gazans. We conclude that Israel's withdrawal marks not only a continuation but even a radicalization of settler colonialism in the Gaza Strip through (often) slow violence

The urban geopolitics of neighboring: conflict, encounter and class in Jerusalem’s settlement/neighborhood

This article examines a unique, yet paradigmatic, case study of a colonial neighborhood in East Jerusalem that is undergoing a significant demographic transformation.1 The French Hill neighborhood, built in 1971, was one of the first settlements in East Jerusalem. Initially, it was populated primarily by upper-middle class secular-Jewish residents. This group has been steadily diminishing as two other distinct new groups moved into the neighborhood: Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Palestinians. This volatile social mix has caused intense inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic collisions. Based on qualitative and quantitative studies, we argue that the juxtaposition of colonial and neoliberal logics of space reveals a shared, yet fragile, middle-class identity. We suggest that this new geopolitical space of neighboring calls for a discussion of political conflict, housing and current colonial conditions that brings class back to our understanding of the production of contested space

Zionism in a white coat: Israel’s geopolitics of medical aid development assistance of health to Africa

This article focuses on Israel’s export of medical knowledge to African states during the 1960s. Its aims are twofold. First, to evaluate and discuss the place of medical assistance and health aid within scholarship, examining the relationships between Israel and African states. Second, it will show how a discussion of Israel’s medical and health projects are linked to the regional geopolitics that shape the movement of materials, individuals and knowledge between Africa and the Middle East. By exploring the themes of security and geopolitics, positionality towards Africa, and the movement of knowledge; resources and people this paper unravel how deployment of medical aid and development assistance of health were entwined into the effort to secure Israel’s regional geopolitical objectives to position itself in proximity to different polities in Africa and interchangeably confirmed and challenged Israel’s presence in the continent. Unpacking the place of health and medical knowledge, enables a better understanding of the reciprocal relations between medical knowledge, the spaces this knowledge shapes, and the sites where it is produced

Walls, enclaves and the (counter) politics of design

This paper focuses on the political role of urban design in the transformation of urban and rural, central and peripheral, formal and informal landscapes in Israel. Based on design anthropology methodology, the political role of urban design in the production of aesthetic objects and landscapes that signify the control over individuals and communities will be explored. As this paper suggests, such a new form of political influence is hidden beneath an aesthetic and user-oriented façade, making it even more dangerous than previous more direct actions, such as gated communities separated from public space by stone walls. The paper’s interdisciplinary approach that is rooted in anthropology, design, architecture and politics will also point out some similarities between specific sites that are often considered different, namely Tel Aviv’s global and privatized gated communities on the one hand and the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the peripheral Negev region on the other. It will be argued that these similarities are the product of the politics of militarization, privatization and social fragmentation that are translated into urban design practices from ‘above’ via state and municipal planning policy as well as formal design, and from ‘below’ through informal and often unauthorized construction initiated by marginalized communities