Design and Contestation in the Jewish Settlement of Hebron, 1967–87

Abstract

In Design and Contestation in the Jewish Settlement of Hebron, 1967–87, Noam Shoked explores how this settlement, built on lands Israel captured from Jordan in the Six-Day War of 1967, became a site of both collaboration and confrontation among architects, settlers, and government officials. Working for the government, architects at first sought to mitigate the ambitions of the settlers, but their plans were undermined by unexpected actors, such as amateur archaeologists and volunteer architects, who commandeered their designs. Unearthing the architectural history of the settlement, this article questions the received history of settlement design as the outcome of military strategy and points to the unanticipated ways in which Hebron's religious settlers drew on mainstream architectural culture to fashion their identities.