Strategic Sprawl: Suburbanisation as Warfare in the Occupied West Bank

摘要

Throughout its history, the state of Israel has used the strategic placement of settlements as a means to formulate its claims over territories that have been outside its internationally agreed borders since the 1967 war. Over the past few decades the nature of these settlements has undergone a crucial paradigm shift. Whereas Labour governments produced mainly kibbutz-and moshav-type settlements - self-sustained agricultural collectives with a strong emphasis on a shared social life among its members - the conservative Likud party, which came into power in 1977, promoted a new suburban typology of settlement. This has resulted in the so-called 'community settlement', a dormitory enclave of single-family houses that are placed, without any local economy, on the hilltops of the occupied territories of the West Bank.