2001 Shehadi New Writers Award Winner

From Urban Panopticism to Spatial Protest: Housing Policy, Segregation and Social Exclusion of the Palestinian Community in Lydda-Lod

Haim Yacobi

(Haim Yacobi is an architect and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, Israel.)

In Israeli parlance, the city of Lod is defined as a "mixed city" -- an urban locus shared by an integrated population of Jews and Arabs. However, critical analysis of the socio-political and spatial dynamics in the city reveals a different reality.

Until the war of 1948 and the establishment of the Israeli state, Lod was a Palestinian city. After 1948 the city witnessed rapid Judaization, on one hand, and de-Arabization, including the expulsion of most Palestinians, on the other. When the city was first occupied, the Israeli Military Administration gathered the remaining Palestinians in a surrounded enclosure, and restricted their movements as well as their self-management. Such urban panopticism enabled consistent surveillance, through direct and indirect apparatuses of control.

In April 1949 the Military Administration regime in Lod ended. The Palestinian community became an oppressed minority of citizens, dominated by a majority of mainly Mizrahi Jewish immigrants who were settled by the authorities in the "vacant" Arab houses. The Military Administration was replaced by other forms of control: formal legislation, planning rules and public discourse all shaped Lod's contested urban landscape. As a result of this process, most Palestinians in Lod, as in other formerly Palestinian cities and villages, were forced to integrate into the Israeli economy, mainly as unskilled and cheap labor, deprived of land and planning rights.

Today, this situation is expressed by ethnic segregation as well as by a rapid process of creating informal districts in the city. Indeed, it is reported that in the city of Lod around 60 percent of the Palestinian population live in informal conditions. However, I propose to relate to this fact not only as a means to achieve adequate housing and infrastructure, but also as an apparatus of resistance, expressing the need to redefine the meaning and contents of citizenship.

Cities and Citizenship

[W]here differences in capacities, culture, values, and behavioral styles exist among groups, but some of these groups are privileged, strict adherence to a principle of equal treatment tends to perpetuate oppression or disadvantage. The inclusion and participation of everyone in social and political institutions, therefore, sometimes requires the articulation of special rights that attend to group differences in order to undermine oppression and disadvantage.[4]

A significant theoretical analysis of the interrelations between the social and the spatial aspects of the urban phenomenon originated during the 1970s from the Marxist school of urban sociology. This literature includes The Urban Question by M. Castells and David Harvey's Social Justice and the City, both of which refer to the urban as an arena of power relations, shaping cities' meaning and space. This school views urbanization as a process that produces spatial structures and forms, supporting the recreation of social relations for the reproduction of capital. Still, the critique of this attitude calls for a wider analysis of the complex and diverse power relations within the urban fabric.[5]

A theoretical shift appeared in Castells' The City and the Grassroots, in which he dissociates himself from class analysis as the only vehicle for social change in the urban context. According to Castells, the autonomous role of the state, gender relationships, ethnic, national and citizens' movements are among other alternative sources of urban change. These social entities that are struggling for political self-management and identity recognition, and working to gain standards of collective consumption, have opened a path for a comprehensive theory of urbanity, that results not only from the actions of the dominant interests, but also from the grassroots alternative to them.

Later, Lefebvre's concept of the "right to the city" shifted the discussion from class analysis to wider aspects of power relations, including different ethnic groups and peoples forming both the urban population and human society at the global level.[6] The changes that have occurred following the process of globalization have increased the relevance of this approach. Major cities in the highly developed world have become loci of contested space, with growing numbers of marginalized people (Castells defined them as "structurally irrelevant people") who are now claiming their rights to the city as well.

It is possible to generalize about urban spaces across differing regional, national and historical contexts. A conjunction of conditions linked with urban poverty, violence, ethnic and migrants' concentration is spatially expressed in "invisible" urban enclaves. Very often, these places -- in spite of their scale -- are not marked on city maps, and are categorized by the majority as "illegal." These places become the signifiers of the socially constructed and demonized image of the "other."[7] The communities that have been defined in the literature as "spontaneous settlements," "squatter enclaves" or "shantytowns" are all the result of labor exploitation, colonial legacy, ethno-national antagonism and social exclusion that have pushed people -- occasionally residents of the city in question -- to act "illegally" and claim their right to the city.

Indeed, the city separates different types of people; these differences are visible in the spaces they occupy and inhabit. Referring to the body of knowledge that deals with segregation, I would suggest that the spatial organization of the city is not an organic or natural process reflecting solely economic differences. Rather it is integrated into unequal urban niches that spatially express power relations. These segregated battlefields are the locations in which struggles for the right to the city take place. Hence, understanding the patterns of segregation in housing, economic activities and everyday life is tightly linked with the analysis of minority-majority power relations.

The existing research points out that residential concentration cannot be seen only as enforced by others. Specific groups may prefer to isolate themselves in order to protect their common political entity and collective consciousness. The segregated group is able to establish communal functions and a sense of security, as well as political organization when necessary. This article attempts to go beyond the debate of whether segregation is enforced by others or a result of community motivations and interests. Such an analytical dichotomy reduces the complexity of reality, since beyond the fact that segregation is a territorial phenomenon it frames social norms and constructs the image of the "other." I propose that spatial segregation should be understood as a useful political tool for categorizing places in the city. These places are spatial boundaries that defend and separate the majority from the minority and reproduce the existing power relations.

Judaizing "Terra Nullus"

Urban processes and spatial dynamics do not occur in a social void; rather, they are tangible expressions of a wider political and cultural discourse. Hence, in this section I will discuss the problematic nature of the Israeli context that presents itself as a democratic regime, while legally, spatially and culturally ethnicizing a variety of public and civil spheres. In order to understand the inherent nexus between the Israeli-produced spatial realityand Israeli political regime -- I will use the concept of ethnocracy.[8] This model analyzes in detail the Israeli regime that supports the expansion of the Jewish national group within a bi-ethno-national and contested territory.

According to the concept of ethnocracy, despite some democratic characteristics, Israel lacks a democratic structure. Furthermore, ethno-national identity and dominance have constructed a "hierarchical and fragmented citizenship structure"in Israel,[9] which is reflected not only in unequal allocation of resources, but in institutional and political structures that have emptied the Palestinian minority's citizenship of its content. According to the 1998 report of the legal aid group Adalah: "Israel citizenship laws are based on the principal of us sanguinis (blood relations) and not jus soli (territory). National identity is the primary factor in deciding questions involving the acquisition of Israel citizenship." According to Oren Yiftachel, Israeli ethnocracy does not comply with basic requirements of democracy. Rather, he suggests:

The demos, as defined in ancient Greece, denotes an inclusive body of citizens within given borders. It is a competing organizing principal to the ethnos, which denotes common origin. The term "democracy" therefore means the rule of the demos, and its modern application points to an overlap between permanent residency in the polity and equal political rights as a necessary democratic condition.[10]

Jewish hegemony within the national territory is spatially expressed in the production of purified spaces, using the settlement projects as efficient means. Hence, I will introduce the concept of settler society as a complementary analytical model. This model relates to the colonial legacy in which European invaders immigrated to other territories and settled there, perceiving these places as "terra nullus." The Zionist discourse empowers this attitude, claiming that the Jewish people returned to "a land without people for a people without land."

In Israel one can recognize the social and spatial patterns that characterize the settler society model. Three social groups can be schematically marked. The first is the founding charter group, which has gained the dominant political, cultural and economic status during the first period of establishment. In Israel, this group is composed of mainly Ashkenazi Zionist Jews, the "founders" of the state. The second group is composed of the waves of migrants that followed the charter group, who are often ethnically different and fixed in an inferior social status. These are the Mizrahi Jews and those who immigrated in the last decade from the ex-Soviet Union. The indigenous people forming the third group have been excluded from the process of constructing the new state, and members of this group are generally fixed in their inferior ethno-class status. In the Israeli context this group includes the Palestinian citizens who are discriminated against in various spheres of public life. This model, though schematic, will be used in the following section as the scaffolding for constructing the urban narrative of Lod.

Urban Panopticism and Demographic Engineering

The theoretical aspects presented above are apparent in the processes by which the Palestinian city of Lydda has been transformed into the Israeli city of Lod. Lod is located at the edge of the coastal plain of Israel, and has developed around a junction of routes leading from west to east (Jaffa-Jerusalem) and from south to north (Egypt-Syria-Lebanon). There is extensive historical evidence of intensive commercial activities in this area, and the first railway line to Lod was constructed as early as 1892. The British occupied the city in 1917, and invested widely in developing the city, including the construction of the train station, the renovation and enlargement of the railway tracks and the establishment of the airport. In 1920 Lod was declared as the capital of its region. In 1922 the British Mandate Department of Statistics reported 8,103 inhabitants, including 7,166 Muslims, 926 Christians and 11 Jews. In 1944 the Anglo-American committee counted 16,780 inhabitants, including 2,000 Christians. Beyond the demographic and economic developments, some changes had occurred in the administrative and municipal levels since Ottoman rule. In 1934 a new law was passed concerning municipal elections, and as a result some of the elite families gained dominance in the city. These changes caused the city's spatial extension outside the borders of the old city, according to a new urban scheme initiated by the Mandate regime and designed by British planner Clifford Holliday.[11]

The notion of urban panopticism is derived from the work of Michel Foucault.[13] Foucault explored the characteristics of panoptic institutions where there was no need for bars, chains and heavy locks:

[A]ll that was needed was that the separations should be clear and the openings well arranged. The heaviness of the old "houses of security" with their fortress-like architecture, could be replaced by the simple, economic geometry of a house of certainty.[14]

Foucault developed the conceptualization of this theme far beyond an analysis of the architectural form itself. It reflects and symbolizes the location of bodies in space and the hierarchical organization of power whenever a particular form of behavior is imposed:

[The] panopticon…is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use.[15]

Adopting this concept is not arbitrary. After 1948, urban panopticism was used as a means for constant surveillance, through direct and indirect mechanisms of control over the Palestinians that were perceived as enemies.[16] This policy included transferring hundreds of Palestinian laborers from the Galilee to work in the abandoned vineyards in and around Lod. Those workers lived in the Arab enclave and were not allowed to remain in the city at the end of the agricultural season.[17]

The security forces were the main body that coordinated relations between the Palestinians and the Israeli governors. Archival documents show that these forces had total control over the Palestinians' conduct, including their movements and their right to work.[18] In order to gain these rights, proper political behavior of the Palestinian individual towards the Israeli governing body was necessary.

Israeli public discourse supported this approach through the construction of the image of the "other." Prime Minister Ben-Gurion blamed the Palestinians in Israel for supporting the surrounding Arab countries, and President Ben-Zvi claimed that the Palestinians aimed to complete Hitler's project.[19] In April 1949, the Military Administration regime in Lod ended, but there was still wide agreement concerning the necessity of controlling the Palestinian population in the city. Every aspect of this population's life was (and still is, as I will present later) under surveillance, including education, social services and above all spatial planning.

The Palestinian community became an oppressed minority -- refugees in their own city -- dominated by Jewish immigrants, who were part of a governmental scheme that has been defined as demographic engineering. Jewish immigrants were settled in the abandoned Arab houses. The massive expropriation of Palestinian land and houses, and their transformation into Jewish state property through legislation, was one of the efficient means of control. In Lod, for instance, all properties and land were listed under the name of the Trustee of Absentees' Property and the Development Authorities, who financed renovation, subdivision and adjustment of the Arab houses, and rented them out very cheaply to the Jewish migrants. This process reflects the social construction Arabs as enemies and the Jewish immigrants as agents:

On one hand, state authorities move agents, that is groups which are intended to perform a function on behalf of the state. State agents are normally settled, that is made provision for, and they are normally moved to peripheral parts of the state occupied by minorities. On the other hand, the authorities move enemies, that is, groups, which in their present location pose a problem for the authorities and an obstacle to their goals. "Enemy" status is subjectively assigned by the authorities, and need not correspond with anti-state activity on the part of targeted groups.[20]

However, the "enemies" in Lod, as reported at the time, were a fragmented society that could not endanger Jewish hegemony.[21] The Palestinians who remained under Israeli rule became powerless, their urban culture as well as their collective identity and leadership undermined.

Lod became an internal frontier. In the first period after the war, Palestinian refugees tried to penetrate and resettle in their vacant houses in Lod. The authority's reaction included military acts against them as well as a massive settlement of Jewish immigrants, mainly Mizrahi Jews.[22] As of 1949, 126,000 (66 percent) of the 190,000 Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel were settled in abandoned Palestinian houses in the "mixed" cities, including Lod.[23] From the mid-1950s, in the name of modernity and the "physicians of space," in Lefebvre's words, Lod witnessed massive construction of modernist housing blocks, infrastructure and public services. The Arab urban fabric, the "diseased space," to use Lefebvre's terminology again, became subject to intensive demolition by the authorities.

Segregation and the Obsession for Numbers

Thank God! What really saved us demographically was the mass immigration of 15,000-16,000 newcomers who arrived in Lod. -- Lod municipality spokesman, October 1, 2000.

In spite of Israeli efforts to control the balance in numbers between the Jewish and Palestinian populations, an ongoing process of internal migration and natural growth affects the ethnic balance.

Data drawn from census figures shows that in the last decades the Palestinian population has increased from 9 to over 20 percent, while the Jewish population decreased from 91 to less than 80 percent. In order to understand these changes, one should follow the historical events that have undermined the seemingly hermetic process of Judaization.

In addition to the Palestinians who remained in Lod after 1948, waves of Palestinian internal refugees have settled in the city since the fifties, recomposing the demographic profile of the city, and thus presenting more complex demographic strata than what I have already presented in the theoretical model of settler society. One of the dominant groups included families from villages in the Sharon region. This group was resettled in Lod as part of an agreement with the Israeli authorities. Their original land had been confiscated and each family was compensated by a new plot, 10 percent in size of its original property. This area in the western part of Lod is known as Pardes-Shanir and was originally owned by a Palestinian family that fled the city during the war. Yet the case of these families is unique, since unlike other Palestinian groups in the city, they are the owners of their land.

During the 1960s, a wave of Bedouin migrants settled in the city. The policy towards this group was to resettle them in existing Arab villages, towns and mixed cities. In Lod, they were settled in the northern part, in the railway district (Rakevet), and were integrated into the Jewish economy as cheap labor. The location of Lod, close to the Tel Aviv metropolis, has also attracted other groups of Palestinian internal migrants. Some of them have illegally occupied vacant and often half-demolished houses in the city. Another group of Palestinians that were resettled by the authorities includes the "collaborators" -- Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and West Bank, territories occupied by Israel in 1967. These Palestinians had cooperated with the Israeli security authorities, and are therefore viewed by other Palestinians as traitors. The authorities had moved these families from their original villages and cities, where their lives were in danger, and compensated them with housing in the Wardah quarter that includes 50 housing units built on state land.

Similarly to other mixed cities in Israel this demographic flow embodies political, cultural and economic tensions that are spatially expressed. Palestinians dominate two areas in Lod: one includes Pardes-Shanir, the Old City, Ramat-Eshkol and part of the city center, and the other includes the northern part of the city. These segregated enclaves are the locus of the Palestinian citizens' daily lives, and they reflect the debate concerning city space and citizenship as theoretically discussed. These places lack basic infrastructure and a survey of 500 Palestinian households in the city shows that over 30 percent of the Arab houses in Lod are not connected to the sewer system, 49 percent have complained about humidity problems, 43 percent have rainwater leakage, 29 percent have structural problems, 28 percent of the houses are marked for demolition, and 26 percent are used for dwelling although unfinished.[24]

Furthermore, these segregated enclaves are characterized by what has been defined by the authorities as massive illegal construction. According to my findings, 60 percent of the Palestinian population in the city live in "illegal" structures, forming the largest informal construction activity within non-Arab cities in Israel. Worldwide, between 40 and 70 percent of the population in major cities live in what have been defined as "illegal conditions."[25] In those cities, as in the city of Lod, people have to step outside the law in order to have access to basic citizens' rights.

The physical forms of the "Palestinian areas" in Lod became signifiers that shape the image of the Arab population in Lod. The Palestinians in Lod are presented in the media not just as the "Arab enemy," but as a "social hazard" and the main source of illegal activities, crime and drug dealing, as we learn from the municipality report: "Minorities in Lod form 20 percent of the population, while their involvement in criminal activities in the city reaches 60 percent."[26] Some clarifications must be made in relation to the above data. First, the report counts illegal construction as the leading criminal act. However, it does not mention that this is a result of the demographic engineering policy, which does not respond to the housing needs of the Palestinian citizens of the city. Second, Lod has indeed become a center for drug dealing. Yet, representatives of the Arab neighborhoods in Lod argued that this is a result of a policy that sees the concentrating of drug dealing in Lod as more convenient to the police.[27] The policy towards the Palestinian citizens of Lod has not changed over the years. They are still the "enemies," subject to spatial and demographic oppression.

In the last two decades a new flow of Jewish immigrants has arrived in Lod, mainly from the former Soviet Union. They now form 25 percent of the city's population, and are the second generation of "agents." The 2000 municipality report treats the demographic characteristics of the city as a fundamental issue, claiming that the relative growth of the Jewish population is based on immigration, while the Arab population increases by natural growth. Nonetheless, at this point it is important to note that not all new "agents" in the city are Jewish. Around 30 percent of the newcomers to Israel in the last wave of immigration have been non-Jewish -- able to settle in Israel by virtue of the Law of Return. Ian Lustick argues that despite the contradiction between the Jewish nature of Israel and the non-Jewish immigrant-agents, this migration serves the goal of demographic engineering and hence the shaping of Israel as a "non-Arab State."[28]

From the Rakevet to Neve-Shalom

The following section presents the most recent project initiated by the Israeli authorities for the Palestinian inhabitants who live in the Rakevet district. The railway district was founded during the British Mandate period in Palestine. Fairly distanced from the newly planned city center of Lydda, this area was built in order to house the railway clerks, engineers and workers. The architectural design was an example of typical British colonial planning, dominated by principles of the garden city such as health, light and air, as well as on a set of social and aesthetic norms.

Unlike the existing urban landscape of Lydda at that time, the new quarter was characterized by a European style: red tile roofs, brick chimneys, front and back gardens, as well as a planned road system. In an interview with one of the oldest inhabitants of the neighborhood I was informed that the population had to follow a strict set of rules, especially in relations to sanitation. As already mentioned, part of the population, mainly Christians, were permitted to stay when the Israeli army occupied the city. The high-quality structures in Rakevet served as housing for the Jewish newcomers who were settled in Lod. According to the report of the Authority for Rehabilitation Areas, in 1972 one third of the population in Rakevet were Jews living mainly along the road to the city of Ramla, while Arabs were an absolute majority in the Arab core of Lod. In this report 242 buildings were counted, 190 used as housing and the rest as storage and services. 73 percent of the buildings were built of solid materials while the rest were built from wood and metal sheets. Only 19 percent of the households in 1972 were defined as buildings in good condition.

During the 1950s the authorities channeled migration of the Bedouin population from the Negev Desert area to the Rakevet district, and later other Bedouin families migrated to the city in search for employment. The density in the neighborhood grew and physical conditions deteriorated; the need for shelter forced the Bedouin families that arrived to the city as unwelcome inhabitants to build informally, often on invaded state land. The Jewish population, on the other hand, gradually left this area. Indeed, the Rakevet site had changed from a decent British-style colony into an Arab ethnic ghetto characterized by poverty, unemployment and socially polarized community.

The first attempt of the Israeli authorities to "solve the problem" was the Neve-Yerek project, which offered 300 new housing units for the recorded Arab tenants, mainly Bedouins. However, this housing solution was culturally blind to the Bedouins' housing needs, and was therefore rejected by part of the population. Moreover, some of the families suspected that the Neve-Yerek project would strengthen the exclusion and ghettoization of the Palestinians in the city:

I think it was at the beginning of the 1970s, the first Arab neighborhood was built in Lod [Neve-Yerek]. The plan of evacuating the Rakevet neighborhood started then, but until now they have not manage to do it, because the population is always changing here for poorer and more problematic people. However, part of the Rakevet inhabitants were moved to the new project (Neve-Yerek)…But my father was wise. He said that he is not going to another ghetto. The new neighborhood was planned and indeed apparently ordered. Today it has two entrances, but when it was built there was only one; you could only enter from one place. All movement inside was like in a trap, do you know these drawings of mouse traps? That's how it was. My father refused to move, he preferred to stay in the Rakevet.[29]

From the 1970s onward, invasion of state land in the Rakevet area by Arab inhabitants increased, followed by massive construction. In November 1983 the Israeli Parliament assigned a special committee to deal with this subject. The committee, as cited in the 2000 municipality report, declared that:

Dealing with this neighborhood is beyond the financial ability of the local government. The committee's opinion is that this issue is a task that should involve the Ministry of Interior Affairs, the Housing Ministry, Ministry of Education as well as the land authorities.

In 1986 mayor Maxim Levi noted that the waves of Arab migrants into the city could not be controlled. This was also acknowledged in a report initiated by the municipality and the ministry of housing and construction. Indeed, this situation was followed by the development of an informal housing market in the Rakevet neighborhood; purchasing and renting shelters on invaded land are known phenomena among Arab migrants newly arrived to the city.

In 1985 it was decided to designate the Rakevet area for total demolition. All registered tenants were required to start a process of negotiations with the authorities for financial compensation for leaving their houses. According to Haaretz and to interviews with inhabitants, the Arab families were encouraged by the authorities to find new housing outside of Lod, in one of the Arab cities. Families that agreed received higher compensation. This encouraged a "passive transfer" of the Arab population from the city, as declared by Levi:

In relation to the special demographic characteristics of the city…[it is] appropriate to consider unconventional solutions, and to act toward the dispersal of groups out of the city as well as to entirely prevent the continuation of illegal invasion in the future. The problem of the Arab population is difficult and urgent, it demands an overall fundamental and immediate solution.[30]

In 1987 the authorities started a massive project of documenting the existing situation in the Rakevet, and intensive negotiations with the registered tenants in the area. The massive act of evacuation started in 1998. In an interview with the person in charge of evacuation, I was informed that following negotiations -- which were often followed by violence from both sides -- 40 families out of 200 received financial compensation and left the city. Only households that had no property elsewhere, and that agreed to move to a new housing unit in a new project called Neve-Shalom could receive housing compensation.

After signing the contracts the first group of 51 families received the keys for their new apartments. During the same day a massive destruction of the shacks and houses in the Rakevet district started. However, the empty spaces left after destruction were occupied immediately by other inhabitants that remained in the quarter. In an interview, the city engineer O. Arnon said:

Why should I be Don Quixote? The government established a committee, the mayor signed a demolition order, but because of policy and circumstances there is, in fact, no demolition. There is no law and order and it is difficult to enforce it. We want to enlarge the school in the Rakevet neighborhood but it is impossible. The Arabs have invaded the land and we are in the midst of negotiations to transfer them to Neve-Shalom. It is free, but they do not want to move since they do not want to pay taxes, and the shacks are more convenient for drug dealing.

Finally, the solution for the constant invasion of land in the Rakevet area was found in the form of big boulders placed immediately after demolition.

The Neve-Shalom project is intended to house 200 evacuated families, and around 50 percent of the units have already been built. The compensation key related to the size of each nuclear family: families that count four members are moved to an 80-square meter apartment, families that count up to seven members are moved to a 100-square meter apartment and families of more than eight members are moved to a 130-square meter unit. All housing units can be extended up to 160 square meters. From a distance, one can see how the chaotic environment of illegal shacks and houses of the Rakevet and Pardes-Shanir surround Neve-Shalom. The project is characterized by ordered colorful cubes one and two floors high surrounded by walls. Infrastructure is supplied in the form of asphalt roads, electricity, water and sewerage systems. Until now around 120 households have signed the contract, and 50 families have refused to do so and were taken to the court, which gave an order to evacuate them.[31] Furthermore, one should not forget that these numbers relate to the "official" inhabitants. According to my estimate there are around 100 "unofficial" families who live in the Rakevet, and according to some testimonies more of these are moving in.

The former Minister of Housing and Construction, Ben-Eliezer, considers this project to be a success of the Israeli housing policy towards the Arab citizens. At the dedication ceremony of Neve-Shalom on September 17, 2000, he said:

These days, while the extremists of the Arab sector are trying to inflame hostility towards the state and its institutions, I am happy to inaugurate the Neve-Shalom neighborhood in Lod, built instead of the Rakevet neighborhood which is known as the center of crime and drugs. Instead of the deteriorated shacks, the inhabitants get beautiful single-family houses, and instead of the negligence and filth, they will now gain welfare and respect.

Furthermore, according to Haaretz, Ben-Eliezer claimed that this case must be used as a successful model for other mixed cities such as Jaffa, Akko and Haifa, but "only if the Arab population will cooperate with the Ministry of Housing and Construction, with good will and confidence." The minister also noted that soon the construction of a family health center, a school, a kindergarten and a public park would begin. He emphasized that in spite of the doubts raised in the past concerning the success of the project, those who profit are those who believe in Jewish-Arab coexistence.

Beyond the paternalistic rhetoric, my observations and interviews conducted with Neve-Shalom inhabitants point to unequal planning standards in terms of density and plot size, in comparison with new Jewish neighborhoods built at the same period. The building standards are low, and a year after the dedication ceremony, rainwater is leaking into the new houses, and cracks have appeared in the walls. Except of one kindergarten, there are no services such as a post office, shops and alike.

Likewise, the controlled architectural order as originally designed is disturbed by informal constructions made by the inhabitants, that create conflicts with the authorities. All "illegal" structures I documented in this area reflect a mismatch with the inhabitants' social, cultural and ethnic housing needs. Some of the Bedouin families have added a shik -- the traditional men's gathering space -- as well as an outdoor kitchen that serves the women for open-fire cooking. Other families have added living space from cheap materials that suit their economic ability, and some families have heightened the surrounding walls around the house "because of women's modesty." One of the families, despite the warning of the authorities, has opened a local "illegal" grocery shop.

The Arab Orchard and the Jewish Garden

Despite the fact that I had given the highest offer twice in a tender, they avoided me. I was not surprised, and to some extent I had expected it to happen. Even if I will buy an apartment here, other problems will appear. The racist policy will stay like this...However, I am not waiting for my rights to be given to me by someone. I take them, I claim them. -- K., a Palestinian inhabitant of Lod, August 28, 2000.

In the following section I will present the case of Pardes-Shanir[32] in Lod. As I have mentioned, this neighborhood houses Palestinian families that own their land. However, urban ethnocracy in Lod prevents them from transforming the land from agricultural use to housing. Thus, there was (and still is) a rapid process of informal construction. Yet, the above description is partial since unlike other informal districts in Lod, large houses of three to five floors, built from solid materials on each family plot characterize Pardes-Shanir. A narrow asphalt road paved by the inhabitants themselves surrounds this area, partly on land owned by Nir-Zvi, the nearby Jewish agricultural settlement, and the sewer system has been connected to the city sewer system -- an additional project initiated and carried out by the people themselves.

Indeed, the portrayal of the nature of this place as "irresponsible and unrestrained" is questionable. The characteristics of this informal settlement bear evidence to an internal leadership, a dominant group of inhabitants that heads the informal planning regulations, and by doing so fills the vacuum intentionally created by the ethnocratic urban regime. The inhabitants have elected this body with the political support of religious leaders and respectable members of the community. In an interview with one of the activists, I heard the following:

I am trapped within two circles of discrimination. The first is the national circle that relates to me as a "problem." The second is the municipal circle, and here the situation is worse since it affects my daily life -- discrimination on this level is total and deep. My basic rights are abused, my right for housing, my right to have proper schooling for the children. These services are supplied on the municipal level, and we are struggling to achieve them. My point is that there are no planning initiatives for Arabs in Lod. Maybe it is our luck, since if there was some degree of planning, we would not be able to rise against it, and the authorities could claim that they plan for us…This total withdrawal, this total ignorance of our needs motivates us.

The large scale of informal construction in Pardes-Shanir raises the question of how such activity is ignored by the authorities. It seems that the answer to this question lies in a term defined by Fernandes and Varley as "degrees of illegality." Some forms of illegality tend to be more acceptable to the authorities and public opinion. Acceptable illegal acts are mostly those involving the existence of documentary evidence about land ownership or acquisition. Unacceptable acts are those that endanger the state's control over state land, through the invasion of land by informal settlers, as other cases in Lod demonstrate.

However, in 1999, shortly before the elections, the authorities initiated a new urban scheme aimed at changing land use from agriculture to housing. According to the municipality report, the proposed plan will enable the construction of 2,500 housing units, "but the semi-pastoral image of the area will be kept." It seems that such a shift towards this informal neighborhood is an achievement, but the invisible subtext is more important. The statement concerning the "pastoral image" reproduces the image of the "other," as constructed by the hegemonic Zionist discourse. The image relates to the Palestinians as a rural, backward and peripheral society in need of Western modernization and progress.

Moreover, a "semi-pastoral image" means limited building rights and low density, especially when compared to Ganey-Aviv[33], the new Jewish immigrants' neighborhood across the road. This road is the visual axis of a deformed mirror image, reflecting spatially the inequality between the "indigenous" and the "agents," and representing the way in which planning serves the ethnicization of Lod. On the southern side of the road lies the Palestinian informal district; on the northern side is the Jewish district, populated during the 1990s mainly by migrants from the former Soviet Union, who enjoy urban services. This area is a result of a fully privatized project, characterized by high building rights. One would accept that the capitalist logic of the privatization of planning and the need for marketing will cross borders of ethnic division.

Indeed, the proximity of these neighborhoods "endangers" the new Jewish neighborhood, which attracts the young generation of Palestinians in the city:

After all we were born here and we do not have any other alternative to house ourselves. Ganey-Aviv offers a big stock of flats and it is also very close to some of the existing Arab districts; so, why shouldn't I live there?[34]

This quote illustrates the tension between the city's promise to be an open locus for its inhabitants, and the ethnic logic of space that contradicts it. For the Palestinian citizens in Lod the road in-between the "Jewish garden" and the "Arab orchard" is a sealed though transparent wall. Buying or renting an apartment in the Jewish neighborhood is impossible; the developers and the housing company have restricted Arabs from this "purified" neighborhood.

A Kol Ha'ir advertisement for apartments in Ganey-Aviv on sale in the seemingly free market says:

Despite the tempting conditions offered to potential clients in Ganey-Aviv, do not think that we accept everyone here…[T]here is a special committee in charge of upholding the standard of living and maintaining the social status of the inhabitants. By doing so we aim to avoid conflicts.

In the sale contract the above is legally formalized:

In order to control the [social] level of the neighborhood's population, the Management Company has formed a committee that will categorize the requests to buy apartments... Every sale or renting of apartments, must receive the approval of the committee... A warning, formulated according to this clause will be written in the Land Registrar and in the Condominium Order.

In light of this essay, I would suggest that the purpose of this committee is to keep this neighborhood purified and to control the infiltration of Arab inhabitants. The request of K., a young Palestinian dentist, to buy an apartment in Ganey-Aviv, was turned down. Despite the fact that K. offered the highest bid in an "open" tender, the housing company refused to sell him an apartment.[35]

The Double Trapping of the "Mixed City"

This essay has outlined the process in which a contested urban landscape is produced. This process involves formal legislation, cultural discourse and invisible apparatuses of control, which are rooted in complex historical circumstances and are shaped by the dominance of ethnic logic. This logic frames Israeli national identity and thus blocks the promise of the city to be a democratic locus for its citizens. Indeed, walls surround the Arab ghettos in the city of Lod, articulating the panoptic model. Often these walls are invisible, their foundations are constructed ideologically by those in power, and the bricks are made of technical, "objective" planning rules, urban policy and professional terminology. Ongoing institutional arrangements and individual actions maintain Arab segregation within these walls in the "mixed" city of Lod, seen as a natural outcome of impersonal social and economic forces.

But the urban processes presented in this article did not just happen. Rather they were manufactured by the ethnocratic regime through purposeful actions and arrangements that demonstrate the ambiguity concerning the interrelations between city and citizenship, as well as the way in which planning is used as a tool for transforming physical and mental landscapes in the name of modernity. This approach is common to settler societies where conflict with the indigenous population plays a central role in the formation of national collective consciousness.

Moreover, in the urban context it seems that the Palestinian citizens of Lod are trapped twice. In a state that defines itself as a Jewish state and thus allocates resources according to ethnic hierarchy, the Arab citizens of Israel are discriminated against. They are further discriminated against in a city that declares itself "mixed" but at the same time excludes its Arab inhabitants, their planning needs and their identity. However, hegemonic oppression calls for a reaction, which comes in the form of initiatives of the Palestinians to achieve their right to the city via grassroots mobilization and informal practices, aiming to fill the gap created by the ethnocratic regime.

Generally, it can be also concluded that residential segregation is not a neutral fact; it systematically disables the social and economic mobilization of the Palestinian citizens of Lod. Because of ethnic segregation, significant numbers of them are experiencing a social environment where poverty, crime and unemployment are the norm, where social and physical deterioration and educational failure predominate. The effect of segregation on the Palestinians is structural and not individual. It lies beyond the ability of any individual to create a change in his/her life according to personal motivations or private achievements. This situation, in turn, constructs the image of the Palestinian population in the eyes of the Jewish inhabitants.

This article has validated the arguments presented in the introduction. Although some cases point to positive changes in housing policy and to "cracks" in the hermetic urban policy, it seems that the ethnic logic within the urban arena is overpowering, since no strategic changes have occurred in power relations or in the authority's ideology. In both case studies, beyond the significant differences in land ownership, level of state intervention and characteristics of the subject population, housing supply is focused on demographic engineering and social control prior to achieving means of collective consumption.

To sum up, it can also be concluded that social inequality and segregation are strongly associated in the city of Lod, reflecting the multiple mechanisms that reproduce ethnic power relations and territorial reality. Indeed, viewing Lod as a city, at least by the utopian definition of an open space for its citizens, is a dubious proposition.

Author's Note: The findings presented here are the result of field work undertaken from January 1999 to May 2002 in the city of Lod.

[1]Peter Marcuse, "Not Chaos, but Walls: Postmodernism and the Partitioned City," in S. Watson and K. Gibson, eds. Postmodern Cities and Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

[2] M. I. Young, "Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship," in Gershon Shafir, ed., The Citizenship Debate: A Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 264.

[3] Nira Yuval-Davis, "Multi-Layered Citizenship and the Boundaries of the 'Nation-State'," Hagar 1 (2000), p. 125.

[4] Young, p. 265.

[5] L. Sandercock, Toward Cosmopolis (New York: Wiley, 1998).

[6] H. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities (London: Blackwell, 1996).

[7] D. Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (London: Routledge, 1995).

[8] See Oren Yiftachel, "Ethnocracy: The Politics of Judaizing Israel-Palestine," Constellations 6/3 (1999) and Yiftachel and S. Kedar, "Landed Power: The Making of the Israeli Land Regime," Theory and Criticisms 16 (2000). [Hebrew]

[9] Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, "The Dynamics of Citizenship in Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process," in Shafir, op cit., p. 265.

[10] Yiftachel, "Ethnocracy: The Politics of Judaizing Israel-Palestine."

[11] Clifford Holliday, "Town Planning In Palestine," Journal of the Town Planning Institute (1938); Holliday, "The New Towns," Journal of The Town Planning Institute (1950).

[12] IDF Archive, Military Administration Report, October 10, 1948, 1860\50-31.

[13] Originally, the panopticon had been developed in 1787 by Jeremy Bentham, and was used as an architectural model for buildings whose essence was social control such as hospitals, prisons, factories and the like. From an architectural point of view the panopticon is composed of two concentric cylinders: the outer is a six floors high and faces a central space, in which the smaller cylinder is located; an individual in the central cylinder supervises and visually commands the outer cylinder. The spatial relations between both cylinders and the light setting expose the faces of the supervised and hide the presence of the supervisor. By so doing, one cannot know whether there is a supervisor in the central tower, but it creates the illusion that he is always there.

[14]16 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (London: Penguin, 1977), trans. Alan Sheridan. p. 362.

[15] Ibid., p. 364.

[16] Nadim Rouhana and As'ad Ghanem, "The Democratization of a Traditional Minority in an Ethnic Democracy," in Ilan Pappe, ed. The Israel-Palestine Question (London: Routledge, 1999).

[17] Ben-Gurion Archive, 9837-27\8\48; IDF Archive, Military Administration Report, Oct. 10-Nov. 15, 1948, 1860\50-31.

[18] IDF Archive, 1860\50-31, 1860\50-32.

[19] Uzi Benziman and A. Mansour, Subtenants (Jerusalem: Keter, 1992). [Hebrew]

[20] See J. McGarry, "Demographic Engineering: The State-Directed Movement of Ethnic Groups as a Technique of Conflict Regulation," Ethnic and Racial Studies 21/4 (1998), pp. 64-65.

[21] IDF Archive, Military Administration Report, October 10, 1948, 1860\50-31.

[23] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2000), p. 263. [Hebrew]

[24] Brukdeil's Census of the Arab Families in Lod (1997). [Hebrew, unpublished]

[25] E. Fernandes and A. Varley, "Law, the City and Citizenship in Developing Countries: An Introduction," in Fernandes and Varley, eds. Illegal Cities: Law and Urban Change in Developing Countries (London: Zed Books, 1998).

[26] Lod Municipality Report (2000). [Hebrew]

[27] Interviews, November 4, 2000. See also Haaretz, July 17, 2000.

[28] Ian Lustick, "Israel as a Non-Arab State: The Political Implications of Mass Immigration of Non-Jews," Middle East Journal 53/3 (1999).

[29] Interview with E., a Palestinian resident, April 5, 2001.

[30] Lod Municipality Report (2000). [Hebrew]

[31] Interview with person in charge of evacuations, April 1, 2001.

[32]Pardes means orchard in Hebrew.

[33] Gan(ey) is Hebrew for garden(s), and Aviv means spring.

[34] Interview with K., Palestinian resident, August 25, 2000.