Neo-settler colonialism and the re-formation of territory: Privatization and nationalization in Israel

TL;DR: In this article, the authors critically analyse the production of Israeli territory vis a vis the ongoing transformation of land and planning policies from ones based on pure nationalism to those purporting to be neutral.

Abstract: In this article we critically analyse the production of Israeli territory vis a vis the ongoing transformation of land and planning policies from ones based on pure nationalism to those purporting ...

Summary

Introduction

• The authors will shed light on the ways in which the ongoing transformation of land and planning policies helped maintain Israel's settler colonialism.
• Neo-settler colonialism, the authors argue, is a new form of regime, one that advances colonial projects while using the neo-liberal toolbox of concepts and policies (i.e., privatization, decentralization, deregulation, free market) as a mask that conceals the continued presence of old colonial logic.
• The authors contribution to this growing literature is in their development of the concept of neo-settler colonialism and the analysis of the accumulation and allocation of spatial rights in Israel's urban planning and land regime since the early 1990s, when neoliberal ideas gained prominence in Israel's administration and politics (Galnoor, 2011) .
• The authors will enhance understanding as to the ways in which said accumulation and allocation of spatial rights correspond to ethno-national hierarchies typical of settlercolonial societies and promote settler-colonial goals.

Spatial Policy in the Settler Colonial Context: From primitive capitalism to neoliberalism

• Settler colonialism was (and is) a process by which immigrants with the express purposes of territorial occupation and the formation of a new political community seize indigenous land, as well as wealth and opportunities, for their own political and material benefit (for a wider discussion, see Robinson, 2013; Veracini, 2011; Yiftachel, 2006; Porter, 2010; Shafir and Peled, 1998) .
• NPM, as noted by Vigoda (2003:1) , "employs knowledge and experiences acquired in business management… to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and general performance of public services in modern bureaucracies.".
• And with great relevance to this article, privatization is "in the mainstream of the New Public Management" (Savas, 2000 (Savas, :1736)) .
• Against the ideas of "the end of frontier" and "post-frontier," the authors argued elsewhere (Tzfadia and Yacobi, 2011 ) that frontier has no end and that settler colonialism is an ongoing practice.
• The authors build the exploration and analysis of Israeli spatial policy, privatization and settler-colonialism upon three bodies of knowledge that (a) challenge the "color blindness" of neo-liberalism; (b) attribute to NPM the failure to expand rights to indigenous communities in settler-colonies; and (c) analyze democratization and multiculturalism in settler-colonies.

Spatial Policy in Israel

• Though spatial policy covers a wide range of interpretations and meanings of land and planning regimes, here the authors apply a narrow focus that refers to the allocation and coordination of spatial rights between the "public" and "private" sectors.
• In the Israeli legal system, like in most countries, the ultimate true "owner" of all the country's land is the sovereigneither directly or via local government entities.
• The sovereign may legislate laws that bestow spatial rights on individuals, business organizations or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), an act referred to as the "privatization of space.".
• There are two kinds of spatial rights: (a) planning and development rights ("planning rights" hereinafter) and (b) property rights.
• Frequently, private individuals hold aggregates comprising a portion of those rights, with the sovereign possessing the rest.

Israeli Spatial Policy up to the 1990s

• In the first three decades following independence, Israel's spatial policy focused on achieving ethno-national goals of territorial and demographic control, reflecting a settlercolonial logic (Yiftachel, 2006; Tzfadia and Yacobi, 2011) .
• This selective privatization was part and parcel of a wider national perspective that viewed the selective privatization of rights as a means with which to strengthen the state's control of spaceprovided that substantial spatial rights were given exclusively to social elites of the dominant nationality upon joining frontier settlements (Tzfadia, 2009; Trachtenberg et al., 2016) .
• The above paints a complex picture of Israel's spatial policy in the first three decades of its independence -and up to the present day in the occupied territories.
• The authors claim that both avenues were affected by ideas affiliated with neoliberalism and NPM, as well as by conflicts between interest groups −.
• The new policies, reforms and proposals were debated in the media, courts and Parliament assemblies and committees, as well as new media and in interactions between organizations.

Reforming property rights

• In the early 1990s, the Israel Land Authority and ILC designed a policy aimed at encouraging fast completion of residential construction projects as a means of dealing with the Jewish immigration wave from the former Soviet Union and solving the economic crisis in the agricultural sector.
• The new 1990s policy permitted farmers to rezone agricultural land as commercial or residential and, thereby, to benefit from the property's rise in value.
• This privatization step was, therefore, meant to aid economic development.
• These special benefits stirred public outrage, which found expression in various objections and demands, as can be gathered from two sources: (a) digitized data of primary and secondary sources concerning ILC decisions and petitions against the Council; and (b) protocols of Israeli Parliament assemblies and committees.
• The authors socially and organizationally mapped and thematically analyzed all this data:.

But

• In response to this outcry, in 2004, the Israeli government set up a public committee (the Gadish Committee) tasked with assessing the various demands and concerns and making recommendations for Israel Land Authority reform (Gadish, 2005) .
• This was the committee's way of stopping Palestinian discrimination, a consequence of the Jewish National Fund's refusal to lease its lands to non-Jews (for more details on this issue, see Tzfadia, 2008) .
• For the first time in modern Israeli history, a government called to privatize National Land, which goes against the letter of Israel's first basic law 1 , Land of Israel (1960) , which in its first paragraph states: "The ownership of Israel lands… shall not be transferred, whether by sale or in any other manner.".
• It started with a refusal by the Parliament to approve a paragraph that attempted to privatize undeveloped lands, due partly to pressures exerted by an ad-hoc coalition of human rights, social and environmental NGOs and Jewish nationalist organizations.
• The land reform was presented as morally significant and as an enabler of free market development by way of privatization and de-bureaucratization.

Reforming Planning Rights

• Israel's planning system is built hierarchicallyfrom the national through the district down to the local committeeswith each level formulating its own outline plans, subject to those devised higher up.
• National Outline Plans 31 (1993) and 35 (2005) marked a fundamental change in the balance between privatization and nationalization of planning rights.
• National Outline Plans 35 stated that new settlements go against the economic, social and environmental interests of Israel.
• So, local committees are receiving powers and responsibilities, but these powers will be taken away in cases where they cannot handle them‫״‬ (Tomer, 2010) .
• Thus, "strong" local authorities changed zonings from industrial or housing to commercial, thereby increasing their municipal tax income.

Conclusions

• The authors critically analyze the changes that have taken place over the years in the interplay between nationalization and selective privatization of space in Israel.
• Another layer of understanding of the dynamics of settler colonialism comes from the insight that rather than present the reforms as a result of top-down commands, they are masked by their presentation as deliberate processes that take place in a variety of public spheres.
• As the authors have shown, although neoliberalism de-contextualizes contemporary social gaps from socially constructed hierarchies, it also reinforces these gapswhich are rooted in its settler-colonial structure.
• Arab localities, generally portrayed as unsuccessful and inefficient bureaucracies, are prevented from reaping these benefits while being deceived that said policy has nothing to do with the colonial ideal of who has power over the use and development of land.
• The Israeli planning reform decentralized power and authority to local level politics due to the belief that this scale is appropriate for democratization, recognition and deliberation.

Full text

1
Neo-Settler Colonialism and the Re-Formation of Territory:
Privatization and Nationalization in Israel
Introduction
In this article, we will shed light on the ways in which the ongoing transformation
of land and planning policies helped maintain Israel’s settler colonialism. Specifically,
we explain how, since the early 1990s, Israeli Government spatial policies associated
with neoliberalism, New Public Management (NPM) and privatization have advanced the
settler-colonial logic. We argue that the growing dominance of neoliberalism reproduces
the settler-colonial logic rather than replace or dismantle it, as too often has been
suggested in the literature.
Based on our critical analysis, we suggest using the term neo-settler colonialism
as a concept that expresses the new regime of control, appropriation and colonization
stemming from neoliberalism, privatization and NPM. Neo-settler colonialism, we argue,
is a new form of regime, one that advances colonial projects while using the neo-liberal
toolbox of concepts and policies (i.e., privatization, decentralization, deregulation, free
market) as a mask that conceals the continued presence of old colonial logic. Our
argument joins a new vein of scholarship that highlights the interrelationships between
settler colonialism and neoliberalism, in general, and in Israel/Palestine, in particular. In
this context, both Robinson (2013) and Clarno (2017) raised our awareness to the
political-economic aspects of settler colonial regimes that combine ethnic exclusion,
racial capitalism and territorial control that stem from a neoliberal agenda. Robinson,
who focuses on Israel within the Green Line, highlights the paradoxical status of Israel as

2
a liberal state given its Arab citizens, who are subjects of a colonial regime, are trapped
between formal equality and de-facto exclusion; as we illustrate here, this is still the case.
Clarno’s notion of "Neoliberal Apartheid" expands this discussion to the 1967 Israeli-
occupied territories ("occupied territories" hereinafter), pointing to the growing
inequality, racialized poverty, and advanced strategies for securing the powerful and
policing the racialized poor.
Our contribution to this growing literature is in our development of the concept of
neo-settler colonialism and the analysis of the accumulation and allocation of spatial
rights in Israel’s urban planning and land regime since the early 1990s, when neoliberal
ideas gained prominence in Israel’s administration and politics (Galnoor, 2011). In this
article, we will enhance understanding as to the ways in which said accumulation and
allocation of spatial rights correspond to ethno-national hierarchies typical of settler-
colonial societies and promote settler-colonial goals. We focus on spatial rights in the
land regime because it is probably the most important material, cultural and symbolic
resource that shapes relations and politics in settler colonial society (Lloyd and Wolfe,
2016).
In the first section, we review the key article themes, namely, settler colonialism,
NPM and spatial policy, while in the next section we discuss spatial policy,
nationalization and selective privatization in Israel. In the core sections, we critically
analyze Israeli property rights and planning reforms, pointing to the symbiotic
relationships between neoliberal policies and settler colonialism. In the concluding
section, we elaborate on the concept of neo-settler colonialism as representing a distinct
spatio-political regime.

3
Spatial Policy in the Settler Colonial Context: From primitive capitalism to
neoliberalism
Settler colonialism was (and is) a process by which immigrants with the express
purposes of territorial occupation and the formation of a new political community seize
indigenous land, as well as wealth and opportunities, for their own political and material
benefit (for a wider discussion, see Robinson, 2013; Veracini, 2011; Yiftachel, 2006;
Porter, 2010; Shafir and Peled, 1998). The empirical manifestations of settler colonialism
refer to the nexus of state (or empire) power and territorial control, mainly in "alien"
areas within or outside the boundaries of the state, over which the dominant nation
attempts to increase its monopoly control (Yiftachel, 2006; Porter, 2010; Shafir and
Peled, 1998). In these "alien" areas, known as frontier or internal frontier regions,
"primitive capitalism" served to eliminate native communities, accumulate their land and
allocate it to settlers. Prior to leaving their homeland, the majority of these settlers were
typically the surplus poor of industrial society (Lloyd and Wolfe, 2016).
But recent decades have loosened the nexus between capitalism and settler-
colonialism and brought new ideas to "the end of frontier" and "post-frontier." These
ideas have been explored by scholars of de-colonial Australia and New Zealand, who
emphasize "dialogue across multicultural, indigenous and settler space in Australia"
(Anderson, 2000) or "ongoing, dialogue amongst equals" in post-settler Canadian society
(Abu-Laban, 2001). This trend is described as a transition from "geopolitical"

4
calculations to "geoeconomic" ones (Moisio and Paasi, 2013), in which the logic of
capitalism and neoliberalism is practiced trough NPM and privatization.
NPM represents a trend in public administration that flourished in the 1990s and
early 2000s and, eventually, left significant footprints in contemporary administrations
and public policy. NPM, as noted by Vigoda (2003:1), "employs knowledge and
experiences acquired in business management… to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and
general performance of public services in modern bureaucracies." For that reason, it is
often linked to doctrines of economic rationalism (Hood, 1994) and viewed as a
governmental act that realizes neoliberalism (Mel et al., 2015; Brenner and Theodore,
2002). Consequently, and with great relevance to this article, privatization is "in the
mainstream of the New Public Management" (Savas, 2000:1736). Importantly,
privatization includes outsourcing public resources, functions and executive duties
("rowing") to private organizations, as it is perceived that such tasks are better performed
by businesses operating in competitive markets (Osborne and Gaebler, 1993);
decentralization of public responsibilities and executive duties; the creation of
performance-based public organizations; and the promotion of an enterprise culture
(Galnoor et al., 2015).
Against the ideas of "the end of frontier" and "post-frontier," we argued elsewhere
(Tzfadia and Yacobi, 2011) that frontier has no end and that settler colonialism is an
ongoing practice. In Israel/Palestine, settler colonialism reinvents itself in new frontiers
and new scales: urban, region, state. Here, we suggest that there are symbiotic
relationships between settler colonialism and the privatization of space and planning that
stem from a neo-liberal agenda.

5
We build the exploration and analysis of Israeli spatial policy, privatization and
settler-colonialism upon three bodies of knowledge that (a) challenge the "color
blindness" of neo-liberalism; (b) attribute to NPM the failure to expand rights to
indigenous communities in settler-colonies; and (c) analyze democratization and
multiculturalism in settler-colonies. Before the analysis section, an overview of Israeli
spatial policy is provided.
Spatial Policy in Israel
Though spatial policy covers a wide range of interpretations and meanings of land
and planning regimes, here we apply a narrow focus that refers to the allocation and
coordination of spatial rights between the "public" and "private" sectors. In the Israeli
legal system, like in most countries, the ultimate true "owner" of all the country's land is
the sovereign – either directly or via local government entities. The sovereign may
legislate laws that bestow spatial rights on individuals, business organizations or non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), an act referred to as the "privatization of space."
There are two kinds of spatial rights: (a) planning and development rights
("planning rights" hereinafter) and (b) property rights. Planning rights concern the
regulation of land use ("zoning") and development timing, as well as the allocation of
betterment profits. Property rights describe the owner's right to convey, devise, gift, or
mortgage spatial rights (including planning rights). Ownership – whether private or
public – is defined as the aggregation of all these rights. A privatized space is a space
where aggregates of these rights, relating both to property and to planning, reside in the

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the future works in this paper?

Abu-Laban, Y. ( 2001 ) The Future and the Legacy: Globalization and the Canadian Settler-State, Journal of Canadian Studies, 35 ( 4 ), pp. 262-276. 

Q2. What are the contributions in this paper?

In this article, the authors will shed light on the ways in which the ongoing transformation of land and planning policies helped maintain Israel ’ s settler colonialism. Specifically, the authors explain how, since the early 1990s, Israeli Government spatial policies associated with neoliberalism, New Public Management ( NPM ) and privatization have advanced the settler-colonial logic. The authors argue that the growing dominance of neoliberalism reproduces the settler-colonial logic rather than replace or dismantle it, as too often has been suggested in the literature. 

Q3. What is the effect of the amendments on the local authority's coffers?

The betterment tax, which can amount to one half of the total increase in land value, also goes into the local authority's coffers. 

Q4. What is the second body of knowledge the authors discuss?

The second body of knowledge the authors discuss is NPM in settler-colonial societies,which refers to neoliberal governmental frameworks that maintain hierarchical and power relation structures (Mel et al., 2015; Brenner and Theodore, 2002). 

Q5. What is the definition of neo-settler colonialism?

Neo-settler colonialism, the authors argue, is a new form of regime, one that advances colonial projects while using the neo-liberal toolbox of concepts and policies (i.e., privatization, decentralization, deregulation, free market) as a mask that conceals the continued presence of old colonial logic. 

Q6. What did the Israelis see as a means to strengthen the state's control of space?

that viewed the selective privatization of rights as a means with which to strengthen the state's control of space – provided that substantial spatial rights were given exclusively to social elites of the dominant (Jewish) nationality upon joining frontier settlements (Tzfadia, 2009; Trachtenberg et al., 2016). 

Q7. What was the main focus of the first three decades of Israel's spatial policy?

In the first three decades following independence, Israel’s spatial policy focused on achieving ethno-national goals of territorial and demographic control, reflecting a settlercolonial logic (Yiftachel, 2006; Tzfadia and Yacobi, 2011). 

Q8. What was the impact of ashrinking welfare state on Israel's housing and farming subsidies?

With neoliberalism taking root in Israel (Ram, 2013), the 1980s were marked by ashrinking welfare state, which greatly affected the level of government fund allocation to public housing and farming subsidies. 

Q9. What was the main argument for the land reform?

The land reform was presented as morally significant and as an enabler of freemarket development by way of privatization and de-bureaucratization. 

Q10. What was the main reason the Israeli Land Authority refused to implement the land reform?

It started with a refusal by the Parliament to approve a paragraph that attempted to privatize undeveloped lands, due partly to pressures exerted by an ad-hoc coalition of human rights, social and environmental NGOs and Jewish nationalist organizations. 

Q11. What was the main argument of the Palestinian activists against the land reform?

But a counterargument, put forward by Palestinian activists, was that the reform largely preserves the achievements of nationalization: ownership of public lands (most of which, as abovementioned, were expropriated from absentees or declared public property) and Israel Land Authority lands (previously owned by absentees) was only transferred to urban leaseholders, most of whom were middle- and upper-class Jews. 

Q12. What was the main reason why the land reform was rejected by the Israeli Land Authority?

The reform, thus, created a new model of privatization of land rights – but remained deeply rooted in nationalist-territorial values (for more on this issue, see Tzfadia and Yacobi, 2011). 

Q13. What is the definition of a "privatization of space?

The sovereign may legislate laws that bestow spatial rights on individuals, business organizations or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), an act referred to as the "privatization of space. 

Q14. What are the challenges to the perceived notion that these acts are truly democratic and multicultural?

But there are several challenges to the perceived notion that these acts are truly democratic and multicultural, as evidenced by the analytical distinction between the two modes of politics: recognition and redistribution (Fraser and Honneth 2003). 

Q15. What is the struggle surrounding the bill?

The struggle surrounding the bill concerns values shared by some Parliament members, as well as environmental NGOs cooperating for this purpose under the Roof Organization for Responsible Planning.