- 02 Oct 2012
A NEW POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY FOR ISRAEL/PALESTINE? FROM COLONIAL CONTROL TO CONFEDERATION
ABSTRACT:
In recent years, with ongoing Jewish settlement and deepening ethnocratic control on both sides of the Green Line, and with the rising popularity of Palestinian/Islamic rejectionism, the feasibility of the “two-state solution” appears to be evaporating. As a response, ideas of a “one-state solution” have resurfaced, driven by the quest for historical justice and human rights or as an attempt to Arabize the contested land. Yet, these ideas have largely remained apolitical that the transformation of the unsustainable ethnocracy of Israel/Palestine requires the imagination of a new political geography, situated between the unviable one- and two-states solutions. One possibility would entail a confederational setting as a basis for protecting both Jewish and Palestinian rights of self-determination, while building joint bi-national institutions to govern the country’s economic, environmental, land, infrastructural, immigration, and developmental future. Confederation may be the only viable path to a legitimate postcolonial political structure in the interest of Jews, Palestinians, and world peace.
About the Speakers
Professor Yiftachel teaches urban studies and political geography at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba. He has published over 100 articles and ten authored and co-edited books, including Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Palestine/Israel (2006), Planning as Control: Policy and Resistance in Divided Societies(1995), and Indigenous (in)Justice (co-author, forthcoming 2012). Yiftachel serves on the editorial boards of such journals as Urban Studies and the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. He has taught at a range of universities, including the University of Melbourne, Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Cape Town. He is also chair of B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO that monitors human rights violations in the Palestinian Territories.
