David Newman

• Head of Faculty at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

The growth in the number of rurban communities has been a major feature of the changing settlement space in western societies. Attempts to define these communities according to traditional criteria is problematic, owing to the mixture of "rural" and "urban" features. This problem is all the more difficult in Israel, where rigid institutional and or...

This chapter focuses on the relationship between the military and environmental dimensions of the security discourse in Israel and Palestine.

The implementation of the first stages of the peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has generated a dynamics with the potential for the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a ‘state in formation’. At the present writing (September 1995), it would appear to be well on...

Settlement activity in the West Bank and Galilee mountain regions is examined to establish the extent to which the changing ideologies in Israeli society are reflected. While settlement location and settlement type are both seen to have influenced Jewish colonization over the past 100 years, it is the former that provides the dominant framework for...

This special issue of Israel Studies focuses on some of the spatial and territorial dimensions of Israeli society. The authors can be loosely described as constituting the academic discipline encompassed by Geography, although this is a broad definition in the sense that it includes urban planners, an environmental scientist, an architect, and a ge...

The current Israel-Palestine peace process is expected to result in a final territorial solution and the ultimate formation of a separate Palestinian slate in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By all definitions, such a state would be small in terms of its population size, its areal extent, and its economic capacity. Given existing conditions, a West B...

The renaissance of border studies during the past decade has been characterized by a crossing of disciplinary borders, bringing together geographers, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, literary scholars, legal experts, along with border practitioners engaged in the practical aspects of boundary demarcation, delimitatio...

The study of borders has undergone a renaissance during the past decade. This is reflected in an impressive list of conferences, workshops and scholarly publications. This renaissance has been partly due to the emergence of a counternarrative to the borderless and deterritorialized world discourse which has accompanied much of globalization theory....

Colonization in the traditional sense of implanting a civilian population and establishing settlements in an occupied territory has, with few historical exceptions, taken place in distant lands. The “mother” country encourages its citizens to settle these lands as a means of ensuring long-term territorial control. Colonizing populations gradually t...

Introduction: The analysis of territory as a changing focus for political power has moved beyond the exclusive confines of the geographic discipline during the past decade. The study of territory and borders now constitutes a multidisciplinary research focus, drawing in political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and legal experts, as they...

Israel Studies 10.3 (2005) 192-224 The impact of Gush Emunim on Israeli society, thirty years after its establishment in 1974, can not be underestimated. The literature appertaining to the movement, its history, ideology, settlement activities, and political effectiveness, has been wide–ranging. While the movement as such ceased to exist in the 198...

The term geopolitics is understood and used in a variety of ways. Political geographers typically invoke the term with reference to the geographical assumptions and understandings that influence world politics. Outside of the academy, geopolitics often connotes a conservative or right-wing political-territorial calculus associated with the strategi...

This paper raises the question whether it is possible to develop a theory of bordering which will encompass the diverse types of border and boundary experience. I have previously argued that the only way to create a common language between the different disciplinary languages (including geographers, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologis...

The study of the Israel–Palestine conflict is a live laboratory for political geographers and this is reflected in a number of studies undertaken by Saul Cohen during his career. Despite the recent collapse of the Israel–Palestine peace process, the ongoing attempts at conflict resolution continue to focus on the territorial dimensions of the confl...

Territory remains a central component of national identity in the contemporary political discourse between Israelis and Palestinians, both populations opposing power sharing within the same space, for fear of the other's domination. The contemporary political discourse relates to conflict management and the desire for separate spaces within which n...

Notions of territory and space have become more common in the writings of political scientists in recent years. Notwithstanding, there is a tendency not to cite the works of political geographers. Due to the power asymetry within the social sciences, political geographers have a greater need to publish within political science journals and to cite...

State boundaries have constituted a major topic in the tradition of political geography. Boundary analysis has focused on the international scale, since international boundaries provide perhaps the most explicit manifestation of the large-scale connection between politics and geography. The past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in boundaries...

In the space of one year, the high hopes for peacefully solving the Israel‐Palestine conflict have turned sharply for the worst. From Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin's assassination to the election of the Benjamin Netanyahu's right wing government to the delaying tactics taken to block the Oslo II Agreement's remaining clauses, the immediate prospect...

Much of the postmodern discourse on territory focuses on the diminishing significance of the role of boundaries and the eclipse of the nation state. This argument bears little relevance to the many regions throughout the world in which ethno‐territorial conflict continues to play its way through the complex processes of aspirations by minority grou...

Self-determination and autonomy are only transitional moves towards statehood and independence. A key element in the process of state formation is the crystallization of a territory which serves as the spatial focus for political power. The ability of protagonists to enter into negotiation aimed at conflict resolution is dependent on the extent to...

The Israel-Palestine peace process has been implemented in a series of stages, beginning with limited Palestinian autonomy in part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, followed by the territorial expansion of the self government region to include all major Palestinian population centers. The current peace process is no more than a transition stage on t...

Boundary studies in political geography have largely focused on the presentation of empirical case studies. There has been little development of a theory focusing on the multi-faceted nature of both spatial and group boundaries, and the interlinkages between them. An analysis of the boundary concept within the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict p...

The delivery of public services in rural areas is a problem encountered not only by declining and peripheral areas but also by newly founded exurban communities. The problems of small size are exacerbated by the demand within these communities for high levels and a high quality of service provision. The existing local government network in these ru...

[Newman DH. Introduction. Ann Emerg Med. January 2001;37:103.]

State formation is a complex process. Using the notion of the ghetto state, the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are analyzed. State formation processes among the Palestinians are shown to be a direct reaction to the processes of political and military control put into operation by Israel since 1967. The continued administrative and political s...

Social scientists know that one person's ‘truth’ may be another person's ‘propaganda’. Both (and also other) perspectives may be valid… Legitimate differences of opinion are to be expected, respected and encouraged—unless there is a bogus basis to the research and thus ‘findings’. It is hoped that scholars in all states will always he open to accep...

Rural development in the Western world takes place within a framework of constraints set by a variety of public institutions, both political and managerial. The latter are largely technocratic in that they operate according to a specific planning ideology, with their own set of in-house rules and regulations. Grass-roots aspirations are often subor...

The transformation of sovereignty into effective territorial control may be implemented by a variety of methods, ranging from agreement (based on legitimization) to imposition (based on force). The imposition of control through a combination of military and civilian presence takes place in many societies. Both of these forms of imposed control have...

The changing nature of settlement structures in Israel are described in the context of the response offered by the highly centralised and bureaucratised planning establishment. The study notes the tension that exists between the establishment with its strong rural ideological bias on the one hand, and the need to adapt to the reality of an ever-inc...

The zoning of land for cemeteries provides an example of locational conflict between local residents and planners. The nature of the conflict is dependent on the differential perceptions held by residents and the degree to which they perceive cemeteries as having a negative influence on the landscape. The planners' guidelines as well as the residen...

"This paper identifies the changing locational patterns of the Jewish community in Britain during the past century. Two major trends are identified. At the national level there has been movement out of many small provincial communities to the large urban centres, particularly Greater London and Manchester. Within the city, there has been movement o...

One of the most intractable problems concerning the negotiations over Palestinian autonomy on the West Bank is the issue of Jewish settlement. Under the Mapai Government of 1967-77, settlements were established along the line of the Jordan Valley in accordance with a policy of securing the borders as laid down in the Allon Plan conceived of by Yiga...