OREN YIFTACHEL: ABSTRACTS

Alexander, I. and Yiftachel, O. (1997) 'Sacred Site or Sacred Cow? Urban Development and Racial Politics in Australia, Progress In Planning, 46: 33-49. ABSTRACT: In this paper we analyse an urban racial conflict in Perth, Australia, over a traditional Aborigines sacred site which hosted a large brewery for a century. It is now planned to be reused as a commercial centre by the West Australian government and a leading private developer. This conflict is placed within a broader theoretical framework which deals with the evolution of settler states and their policies towards indigenous groups. Given the longevity and ferocity of the conflict, the brewery affair came to represent the 'frontier' of racial relations in Western Australia. The detailed examination of this protracted struggle, in which Aboriginal demands were eventually rejected, exposes two notable phenomena: (a) a continuing subservience of State policy-making to capital, as represented by a sequence of entrepreneurs and developers who were involved in redevelopment proposals for the brewery; (b) a growing (but still hesitant) challenge to the state from 'below'. This was represented by broad community resistance to the State development strategy. In this case the resistance co-incided with the Aboriginal position, and an increasingly militant Aboriginal campaign. The case thus exposes the inherent contradiction between the 'sacred cows' of capitalist settler states, and the 'sacred sites' of their indigenous peoples.
Yiftachel, O. (1997) 'Nation-Building or Ethnic Fragmentation? Ashkenazim, Mizrahim and Arabs in the Israeli Frontier', Space and Polity, Vol. 1: 2: 149-169. ABSTRACT: The paper analyses the evolution of collective identities from a critical geographical perspective, and argues that certain territorial practices associated with the nation-building project may actually sow the seeds of social and ethnic fragmentation. The analysis focuses on the impact of 'internal frontier' settlement in settler societies, during the course of nation- and state-building efforts. It highlights the key role of space, place and social control policies in the formation of ethnic identities. These identities are shown to be shaped, reshaped and reproduced during the process of settlement, migration and intergroup territorial conflict. Within that theoretical framework, the paper explores the case of Israel, and the impact of the settlement and spatial planning in the Galilee region on the formation of regional collective identities. The analysis shows that the process of settling the frontiers has given rise to ethnic, social and institutional fragmentation, particularly between Palestinian-Arabs, Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews. These divisions may -- paradoxically -- undermine the very nation-building and state-building settlement projects which had instigated the settlement of the internal frontier region.
Yiftachel, O. (1998) Nation-Building and the Social Division of Space: Ashkenazi Control over Israeli Periphery, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 4: 3: 33-58. ABSTRACT: Studies of nationalism have only rarely explored the intra-national stratification associated with the politics of nation-building. The paper focuses on these processes from a spatial perspective, by studying the population of 'internal frontiers' in settler societies, focusing on the case of Israel. The settlement of the frontiers in the Israeli 'ethnocracy' exacerbated the marginalised incorporation of Mizrahi (Eastern Jews), as many of them were settled in peripheral, low status and segregated localities. These structural conditions help explain the persisting disparities between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews. The case of Israel thus exposes a paradox: the very frontier settlement promoted as essential for nation-building, may cause intra-national fragmentation and conflict.
Yiftachel, O. (1997) 'Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation: Ethnocracy and Its Territorial Contradictions', Middle East Journal, Vol. 51: 505-519. ABSTRACT: The paper argues that Israel's settlement and socioeconomic policies have caused internal ethnic and class divisions which now threaten the prospects of Jewish-Palestinian reconciliation. It highlights the role of these policies in constructing an Israeli 'ethnocracy', spanning over both Israel and the occupied territories. This regime is characterised by layers of ethnic hierarchies, geographic segregation, economic inequalities and conflictual collective identities. The Israeli ethnocracy has generally enhanced the privileged position of the country's (mainly Ashkenazi and secular) elites and middle classes at the expense of Palestinians, Mizrahi and some religious peripheries. The socioeconomic interests of these elites have also been a major driving force behind Israel's push for Jewish-Palestinian reconciliation, together with recent policies of privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation. The association of 'peace' and territorial compromise mainly with the narrow interests of Israel's economic and cultural elites has alienated most social peripheries, particularly the Mizrahi and Haredi Jews. Therefore, the current reconciliation moves and territorial compromise finds Israel in a deep identity and socio-political crisis. The crisis is born of the surfacing of an overt contradiction -- for the first time in Israel's history -- between two major Zionist goals: territorial expansionism and economic growth. This contradiction, and its associated ethnic and class tensions are likely to present on-going obstacles for future efforts to advance Jewish-Palestinian reconciliation.
Yiftachel, O. and Segal, M. (1998) 'Jews and Druze in Israel: State Control and Ethnic Resistance', Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 21: 3: 476-506. ABSTRACT: The article examines the evolving relations between the settler state of Israel and a an Arab-Druze indigenous village community. Theoretical aspects are initially discussed, highlighting a structural conflict embedded in the ethnocentric processes of nation- and state-building in 'pure' settler societies. The place of the Druze community and the village of Bet Jan are then analyzed within the Israeli (Jewish) 'ethnocracy' which imposed territorial control policies over the village. This control was intensified by environmental groups which campaigned to constrain Druze land usage in village lands zoned as a natural reserve. However, growing awareness among the Druze to their ethnic discrimination, and their increasingly effective political mobilisation, have resulted in the development of a protracted land control conflict. The Bet Jan case demonstrates that the modern 'nation-state' in general, and the ethnocentric settler state in particular, are fragmenting. Ironically, this process is partially caused by the state's own ethnocentric policies of land and minority control.
Yiftachel, O. (1998) 'Planning and Social Control: Exploring the Dark Side', Journal of Planning Literature, 12: 4: 395-406.
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 ABSTRACT: In this paper I argue that our theories of urban and regional planning have been deficient, neglecting to account properly for its regressive and oppressive functions. A new theory which addresses these functions should reconceptualise planning as an integral arm of the nation-state apparatus which tends to advance two parallel goals: economic growth and ethno-national identity. These goals represent projects driven by elites, for whom urban and regional planning provides an important mechanism of oppression and control, exercised both on state-wide and urban scales. Most accounts of planning neglect to explain its frequent application for purposes of (deliberate) social control, as expressed in the oppression of peripheral groups. This is not to claim, of course, that planning is inherently regressive, but rather that its well-documented progressive potential should also be understood as having a more sinister accompanying 'dark side'. This dark side is particularly evident when planning is used by 'ethnic states' as part of their territorial policies, but is also rife in western societies governed by formal democratic principles of governance. The paper 'shed light' on this dark-side by developing a conceptual framework within which the 'planning as control' phenomenon can be theorised and studied, and by linking the public production of space to recent social science and Foucauldian formulations of states and space. The framework delineates four principal dimensions: territorial, procedural, socioeconomic and cultural, each with a capacity to influence intergroup relations. These dimensions should be understood as double-edged, with the influence of each potentially stretching between emancipatory reform and oppressive control in a ceaseless dialectical process. The paper concludes by offering some explanations for the neglect of the 'dark side' by most theorists, and by sketching a future agenda for a revised critical theory of planning.
Yiftachel, O. (1999). 'Between Nation and State: 'Fractured' Regionalism among Palestinian-Arabs in Israel', Political Geography, Vol. 18: 3: 285-307. ABSTRACT: Theories of nationalism have often overlooked variations in ethnic spatial settings, and have too easily subsumed nation and state. But nationalism surfaces in a variety of dynamic forms, isuch as among homeland ethnic minorities 'trapped' within states controlled by others. In such cases 'ethnoregional' identities often emerge, combining ethnonational and civic bases of identity with attachment and confinement to specific places or territories. Ethnoregional movements denote SPATIAL and POLITICAL entities which mobilise for rights, resources and political restructuring within their states. This is the case in the Israeli Jewish 'ethnocracy', where an oppressed Palestinian-Arab minority resides in stable but confined enclaves which make up an Arab 'fractured' region. The spatial, socioeconomic and political characteristics of the Arab struggle in Israel provide early signs for the emergence of an ethnoregional movement. This movement is creating a new collective identity, situated between Palestinian nation and Jewish nation-state. The ethnoregional interpretation challenges existing accounts which perceive the minority as either politicising or radicalising, and points to a likely Arab struggle for autonomy, equality and the de-Zionisation of Israel. Arab mobilisation also resembles other ethno-regional movements, whose persistent struggles expose embedded contradictions in the global 'nation-state' order.
Yiftachel, O. (1999). 'Ethnocracy: the Politics of Judaizing Israel/Palestine'. Constellations, Vol. 6: 3: 364-390 ABSTRACT: The paper pursues two main goals: theoretically, it describes and explains a regime type labelled as 'ethnocracy'; empirically, it accounts for the making of the Israeli ethnocracy. Ethnocratic regimes enhance a rule by, and for, a specific ethnos, and a dominance of ethnicity over citizenship. Ethnocracies are neither authoritarian nor democratic, and typify governments which maintain a relatively open regime, yet facilitate the expansion of one ethnic group over contested territory or polity. Ethnocracies emerge from the fusion of three key forces: colonialism, ethnonationalism, and the 'ethnic logic' of capital. They manage ethnic relations on two main levels: ethno-nations and ethno-classes. The case of Israel well illustrates the making of an ethnocratic regime. It has evolved around the central Zionist (and uni-ethnic) project of Judaising and de-Arabising Israel/Palestine. The 'momentum' of the Judaisation project led to the rupturing of the state's borders, to the continuing governmental role of extra-territorial Jewish organisations, and to the subsequent undermining of equal citizenship and popular sovereignty. The paper then traces in some detail the evolving relations between the various ethno-classes in Israel/Palestine, and the impact of the Judaisation process on these relations.