Abstract
ABSTRACT The ‘Stars’ are series of suburban settlements adjacent to the border with the occupied West-Bank which illustrate the increasing privatisation of the Israeli settlement mechanism. Unlike earlier examples, which were dictated by pioneer ideology or individualistic attempts to achieve better living standards, during the 1990s the state adopted a supply-side territorial policy, which tried to ensure the continuation of its geopolitical project by securing the economic feasibility of the private sector. Analysing the development of the ‘Stars’, this paper sheds light on the privatisation and commodification of the Israeli settlement mechanism and with it the transformation of its spatial product.
Highlights
Territoriality, in its broader definition, is the effort to bound space and to subject it to the exclusive control of a certain political entity
While Brenner and Elden, in their analyses of Lefebvre, present the state mode of production and its territorial mechanism as a means to repeatedly ensure the survival of capitalism, the cases studied in this article illustrate a reverse scenario
As we have seen in the constant modifications and alterations, the new settlement mechanism was not static and continued reshaping space in order to promote capital accumulation and commodity exchange; regenerating the state’s territorial mechanism once again while securing its power over space
Summary
Territoriality, in its broader definition, is the effort to bound space and to subject it to the exclusive control of a certain political entity. In the Israeli version of territoriality, the efforts to expand the state’s spatial control is usually attributed to the national settlement mechanism. The late 1970s witnessed the privatization of this mechanism, which relied on a collaboration of national institutions, settling movements, small-scale private entrepreneurs and construction corporations. By the 1990s and with the ever-intensifying privatization, the state increasingly relied on large-scale private developers. This paper focuses on the ‘Stars’ settlements – eight new sites initiated by the state in the early 1990s which demonstrate the transitions in the local geopolitical development mechanism. Using a variety of sources that include meeting protocols, reports, statistical data, correspondences, regional plans, urban outline schemes and building permits, as well as interviews with planners, architects and policymakers, this paper analyses the new Israeli settlement approach during the 1990s, defining it as supply-side territoriality
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