Traditions and Transitions in Israel Studies: Books on Israel, Volume VI

3. Controlling Territory: Spatial Dimensions of Social and Political Change in Israel

3. Controlling Territory: Spatial Dimensions of Social and Political Change in Israel David Newman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev This essay examines the roles of territory, space, and place within Israeli society as reflected by several important new studies. These works herald a new appreciation for spatial elements, both territorial and symbolic, which have always been crucial to the relations among different population groups in Israel and how each relates to the hierarchy of spaces in which they all reside, work, and interact. The author analyzes four dimensions of territory covered by the books under review: (a) tangible territorial division (demarcated boundaries); (b) the symbolic and mythical dimensions of territory and the use of places in the formation of a Zionist national identity; (c) the geographic differentiation among Jews and between Jews and Arabs, as reflected by the distribution of resources; and (d) the central role of territory in the ultranationalist and irredentist political discourse, versus its marginalization in an emerging postnationalist, post-Zionist, discourse. Ben-Ari, Eyal, and Yoram Bilu, eds., Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. 67 Benvenisti, Meron, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Gonen, Amiram, Between City and Suburb: Urban Residential Patterns and Processes in Israel, Aldershot, England: Avebury Press, 1995. Portugali, Juval, Implicate Relations: Society and Space in the IsraeliPalestinian Conflict, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993. Schnell, Izhak, Perceptions of Israeli Arabs: Territoriality and Identity, Aldershot, England: Avebury Press, 1994. Yiftachel, Oren, and Avinoam Meir, eds., Ethnic Frontiers and Peripheries: Landscapes of Development and Inequality in Israel, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. T he role of territory and space is central to any understanding of Israeli society in general, and to the Arab-Israel conflict in particular. Yet, with the exception of geographers, most social scientists have ignored this dimension in their studies during the first forty years of scholarship. A notable exception to this was the study, Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics, by Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, published in 1983.1 During the past decade, space has figured more prominently in the writings of Israeli social scientists, not only with respect to the hard-core territorial dimensions of the Arab-Israel conflict (borders , settlements, state territories, etc.) but also in terms of the multidimensionality of spatial analysis that views space in both concrete and symbolic terms, and that perceives territory as a changing, dynamic phenomenon, both in terms of its physical configuration as well as the way in which space is perceived by those residing within its limits.2 The renewed focus on the spatial dimensions of Israeli society is partly a response to the general rediscovery of space by the social sciences in general. What was traditionally seen as an exclusive construct of the geographic discipline has now been reformulated by many other disciplines, most notably sociologists, political scientists , and economists. This is part of a postmodern social science discourse that has begun to cross the traditional lines separating the 68 David Newman compartmentalized social scientific categories and that has come to understand the importance of the territorial dimension to any analysis of changing social processes—the inherent relationship between society and space.3 For their part, geographers have become more aware of the multidimensionality of spatial analysis, not simply as a bounded physical construct, but also as a metaphor for social relations, both real and perceived. This is also reflected in the changing nature of much geographic work on Israel itself, drawing on wider theoretical constructs and frameworks in their respective analyses of territorial change, as contrasted with the largely descriptive geographic studies of the past. This essay reviews the spatial theme within Israeli society as it is reflected in a number of recent studies by geographers and other social scientists. For some of them, space is the explicit focus for their analysis, while for others it is implicit in the subtexts of their narratives. For some, territory is a concrete construct that undergoes change as a result of political decisions and their implementation , while for others it is a perceived and metaphysical construct that cannot be defined in rigid geographic terms, but that is central to the way in which people—Israelis and Palestinians, religious and secular, Ashkenazim and Mizrahim (Sephardim)—understand, and react to, the hierarchy of...