The bourgeoisification of the Green-Line: The new Israeli middle-class and the Suburban Settlement

Abstract

This paper focuses on Kochav-Yair and Oranit, two localities that exemplify the Israeli Suburban Settlement phenomenon. With the first being developed by a selective group of families and the latter by a single private entrepreneur, yet both with the full support of the state, they represent the selective privatisation of the national settlement project during the 1980s. Examining the geopolitical, social and economic interests that accompanied their development, this paper illustrates how both projects incorporated the upper-middle-class bourgeoisie in the national territorial effort along the border with the occupied West-Bank (the Green-Line). Analysing the planning and construction process of both case studies, as well as their spatial characteristics, this paper explains how the upwardly middle-class and its contractors were granted substantial planning rights. Consequently, enabling them to influence the production of space while promoting a new local suburban typology that is based on better living standards, private family life and a distinctive isolated community. Therefore, this paper illustrates the Suburban Settlement typology as an outcome of the bourgeoisification of the Green-Line, which domesticated the former frontier area and enabled its inclusion in the greater national consensus.

Introduction

The 1980s witnessed the rise of the Israeli Suburban Settlement.¹ Interchangeably referred to as Yeshuv Parvari or Toshava (Benvenisti, 1987, p. 49; Nahoum Dunsky Planners, 1991; Central District, 1980), it was used by the Israeli administrations to attract middle-class and upper-middle-class families to the fringes of Tel Aviv and the coastal plain. Easing the pressure off of existing cities and settling regions of national interest, such as the border area with the occupied West-Bank (the Green-Line). Unlike earlier national decentralisation efforts that included peripheral development towns or small-scale rural settlements, the Suburban Settlements were independent localities housing up to 2000 families, offering spacious and relatively affordable houses in isolated homogeneous communities (Settlement Division, 1981); all just a car-ride away from main Israeli cities. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, there are currently around 20 localities that fit the description of a Suburban Settlement.² They are all located close to the "internal frontiers" (Yiftachel, 1996) of the predominantly northern Arab Galilee, the occupied Palestinian West-Bank and the southern Negev. Yet, still close to the main metropolitan areas of Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva. They are all characterised by an upper-middle-class socioeconomic Jewish Ashkenazi population (ICBS, 2016b), and except for two West-Bank settlements, they all belong to the secular and politically central-left leaning sector (ICBS, 2016; ICEC, 2019a; ICEC, 2019b).

This paper argues that the Suburban Settlement of the 1980s was a spatial phenomenon that derived from the involvement of the Bourgeoisie middle-class in the national geopolitical project. Therefore, it focuses on two Israeli settlements built in the early 1980s on both sides of the Green-Line, Kochav-Yair and Oranit (illustration 1). Exploring their development, this paper sheds light on the emergence of the local hegemonic middle-class and how it was incorporated in the national geopolitical agenda. Using historical protocols, correspondences, reports and interviews this paper analyses the territorial role of each site and planning rights and support given to its developers; explaining how the new Bourgeoisie middle-class was able to influence the production of the local built environment, promoting the creation of isolated small homogeneous communities. Then, studying regional outline plans, town zoning schemes, and building permits, this paper explains how the desire for social and cultural distinction was manifested in the settlements' urban and architectural form. Focusing on two case studies on both sides of the Green-Line, this paper claims that this phenomenon was not restricted to official Israeli territory and succeeded in appealing to the secular, politically central-left upper-middle-class that is usually considered as an opponent of settling occupied territories. Consequently, the bourgeoisification of the Green-Line blurred the differences between the settlement campaign in some parts of the West-Bank and that inside Israel's official borders, establishing a wide national consensus. This was made obvious in the construction of the West-Bank Separation Barrier in 2006, which did not follow the official borderline; de facto annexing parts of the occupied territories.