Environmental policies and spatial control: the case of the Arab localities development in Israel.

INTRODUCTION

SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE 1990S, public and institutional awareness of the environmental problems in Israel have influenced the public agenda, spatial planning and zoning policies. The statutory planning system on all three levels-local, district and national--became more environmentally sensitive. In an attempt to limit urban sprawl, the planning system placed additional restrictions on the conversion of agriculture, forest and open spaces for development. The governmental system tried to assign universal spatial planning policies. In some cases, the implementation of the law differs depending on national and ethnic affiliation. The Arab minority in Israel, which constitutes about eighteen percent of the Israeli population, suffers more from the limitations of environmental spatial control policies than the Jewish majority. Essentially, this policy confines the spatial expansion of the Arab minority, however, it is officially justified by regressing to the excuse, that restrictions are necessary for the protection of the environment.

Consequently, the way in which the Arabs in Israel frame the control and regulative spatial planning policies, is rooted in the national territorial conflict. The Arabs in Israel claim that this spatial environmental planning policy is part of a policy of spatial control. Such a policy aims to limit their territory, confiscate their land, impose an urbanization process and disrupt their connection to the land.

This essay describes the mechanisms of territorial control. It studies the spatial statutory planning policies in Israel, according to national planning, as well as how the Arabs understand, perceive and explain these policies as part of their narratives. The paper will concentrate on explaining the role of the national plan for forests (National Plan number 22) in limiting urban development among the Arab representatives (heads of local authorities, land owners, planners and developers).

The essay consists of five parts. The first part presents a general theoretical framework for understanding the narratives according to national affiliation and public policy, which includes spatial planning. The second part provides a short presentation about the Arabs in Israel and their main problems with planning and environmental policies. The third part gives a description and analysis into the territorial mechanisms for spatial control. This includes policies, as well as how these policies deal with the Arabs in Israel. The fourth part of this paper presents a discussion that concentrates on the national forest plan and its environmental role. This is in addition to other national, district and local plans, which aim to crystallize environmental spatial policy and how Arabs relate to this policy. The paper concludes with a general discussion, which ultimately focuses upon the Arab perception of Israeli planning policies in general and environmental policies in particular. In addition, the author of this paper is a member of the planning staff, which prepares different plans on various levels. Some of the conclusions and explanations are derived from these experiences. In addition, selected data has been collected from plans and websites of governmental departments such as the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Interior and the Israeli Land Authority. In the preparation of this paper, interviews with representatives of Arab localities were conducted in order to understand the perceptions and attitudes towards the environmental policies, which applied in proximity to Arab Localities.

SPATIAL CONTROL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATION IN DIVIDED COMMUNITIES

Today, the awareness of environmental issues has spread throughout states and communities in both developed and developing countries. These countries discovered that overpopulated areas, extensive development, geopolitical and national conflicts are potential sources of environmental problems. Spatial control is one of the instruments and tools to reduce these problems. It is implemented by statutory, restrictive and conservation planning, closing areas and confiscating private land. Consequently, spatial control has been used as a strategy and a policy in order to protect areas from environmental problems. In various states (regardless of level of democratization), there are ethnic, national, socio-economic, get-political and spatial conflicts. Conflicts are often a product of socio-cultural and get-political growth arising between the minority and the majority. The majority, which has the power to practice spatial control in order to reach spatial domination, uses different strategies and public policies to secure and strengthen their existence. This spatial conflict is very active in states which have national conflicts or which consist of divided communities along national or religious affiliations. The national group majority, which governs public institutions and organizations, uses those public policies to guide spatial policies.

The majority and the minority have different, and sometimes opposite, explanations and understandings of the causes of environmental problems. The majority feels that they have the legitimacy and the right to demand public policies and spatial control strategies. While the minority suffers from these policies and strategies, and feel no civic attachment to these polices. The majority does what they can to confine the development of the minority, and to secure the dependency of the minority upon the majority. Every community tries to present their attitude and narrative to convince other groups' members and other groups of its dominant right. In divided communities who suffer a conflict, every group has its reality and explanations based upon their understanding, myth, history and culture.

In Israel, there is a rooted national and geo-political conflict between Arabs and Jews. The two communities are living in deeply segregated and divided spaces. Each community has its own narrative, which includes radically different interpretations of history, reality and of the future. The Jewish majority places a huge effort on implementing territorial control and securing Jewish hegemony and domination. Ever since the establishment of the Israeli State, and during the British mandate period, the Jewish majority used the agriculture, forest plantation and open spaces as mechanisms to control the space, which existed around Arab localities. In the areas where the Arabs were surrounded by open space and forest territory, they felt like prisoners. In many cases, the government representatives explained the allocation of "green areas" (agricultural land, forest plantation and open space) as a necessary environmental consideration. This will be discussed in more detail below.

CHANGE--THE ARAB AS A MINORITY IN THE NEW ISRAELI STATE

The relationship between the environmental and spatial control and planning amongst the Arabs in Israel was primarily affected by their situation in Israel. Their attitudes and behaviors toward the spatial and environmental planning was part of their socio-political status, and the threat that they felt these policies presented to their future development.

The Arabs in Israel are indigenous and native people. After 1948 they became enforced citizens of the new Israeli state. In the new Israeli state the Arab population was transformed from a majority into a minority. Most Arabs lived in small villages, which were mainly dependent upon agricultural, and which were located in the periphery of the new state, close to its boundaries. The Arab communities behaved according to traditional patterns (Khamaisi 2000), while the demographic construction of the pre-1948 Arab cities was gradually transformed into Jewish cities. On the other hand, the populations within the villages continued to experience a natural increase. This was separate from any immigration movements to the Arab villages. The absence of Arab only cities meant the absence of an upper and middle class tier of Arabs, which under natural development would have emerged from a normal urbanization process.

Alternatively, the new situation led to a truncated urbanization process among the Arabs in Israel (Gonen and Khamaisi 1992). Excluding Nazareth, all the Arab localities remained small villages. After the 1948 war, the core of the Arabs was absent (see Table number 1). The rest of the indigenous Arab population, which had fought against the establishment of the Israeli state, was later transformed into citizens of this state. However, the new Israeli government imposed military governors over Arab citizens, in order to limit and control their movements, between 1948 and 1966. The new situation created a geopolitical conflict between the new state and its citizens. The new state began to confiscate land from Arabs. The Jewish majority controlled the resources of land, whilst retaining political authority, thus determining resource allocation, enforcing mobility limitations upon Arabs and confining their spatial enlargements.

Geo-political and socio-cultural conflicts characterized the relationships between the Arabs, the central government and Jewish communities in the new state. This had a direct impact on the behavior of the Arab communities, and in particular upon their psychological health and self-perception. Ultimately, these feelings were directed towards preserving their traditional structures and planning policies within their own communities. The sense of collective "belonging" of the Arabs to the new state and central government was limited. The absence of belonging to the central Israeli government encouraged the continuation of the local traditional social structure, which was based on relative affiliation and kinship belonging. This was called the "Hamola." The Hamola formed the social structure, which characterized the new situation for Arab villagers within traditional communities. In the situation of the absence of national belonging (which is typically influenced by the central government and state), and in order to manage their every day life, the Arabs developed and strengthened "local patriotism" of the Hamola and the village as a traditional structure. This had a direct impact and particular consequences upon spatial planning and development, including crystallizing different private and collective environmental narratives.

The Arabs in Israel are citizens of the state of Israel, yet they belong to the Palestinian collective, which is working to establish its own state. In these circumstances, the Arabs in Israel have an identity--or "belonging"--dilemma. The strengthening of this dilemma becomes clearer due to the growth in the number of Arabs in Israel, which currently constitutes approximately eighteen percent of the population. The Arabs in Israel continue to suffer from a scarcity of resources, domination and unequal opportunities in comparison to the Israeli state's Jewish citizens. Additionally, the dilemma of identity and belonging increases as the State of Israel continues to define its law and legislation as a "Jewish state." This ethnic definition (and the outcome it produces) leads to a situation of restricted accessibility to resources and power, Arab dependency, and political, economic and social domination by the Jews. In this light, the continuation of the State of Israel as a Jewish state endangers Israel as a democratic and civil society. Meanwhile, this situation forces the Arabs inside Israel to protect themselves through political reorganization.

The domination and spatial control of the Arabs has reduced and blocked many opportunities for development and mobility. Their location within the geographical periphery has affected planning and development policy that aimed to prohibit any future possibility of separation of the Arabs from the Israeli state. This location in the geographical periphery has forced the Arabs in Israel to the economic and political margins. Therefore, the political and policy discrimination and confiscation of resources, especially land, has reinforced older structures of repression and control of the 1950s and 1960s. This status situation prohibits the development of a feeling of "belonging" to the Israeli Jewish state. On the other hand, the existing situation of economic underdevelopment, lack of prosperity, political weakness and the democratic political system, meant that the small mass of Arabs in Israel were unable to transfer their feeling of dislocation, to shape a political agenda for territorial separation.

One of the indicators of the dual sense of belonging for the Arabs in Israel originates with their title. For example, there is no agreement of terminology; various titles includes "Arabs in Israel", "Israeli Arabs", "Arabs inside the Green Line", "Palestinians in Israel", "Palestinian inside the Green Line" or even, "internal Arabs." These multiple titles (up to as many as fourteen) of the Arab population within Israel are symptomatic of the problematic situation of belonging and identity. There is almost no native minority in the world that still suffers from such a lack of acceptance by the dominant majority as the Arab population in the state of Israel. If one were to discuss the chronological development of the various names of the Arabs in Israel, one would find that, until mid-1980, the Palestinian population did not adopt the name "Arabs in Israel." Meanwhile the Arab world and the Palestinians within the diaspora referred to them as "internal Arabs".

The above description is an indication of how Arabs in Israel suffer from four main problems:

1. The transition from a majority population to becoming the minority after 1948; this weak minority no longer has access to any resources or political power. They suffer from discrimination, disqualification and delegitimization.

2. Most of the Arabs who live in the geographical periphery of the new state, do not share its visions, priorities and narratives.

3. The structural problem is a result of living in small villages, which create a physical limitation and reduce opportunities for developments.

4. The main characteristic of the Arabs are traditional communities.

These four main problems which face the Arab minority in Israel affect their situation, identity, belonging and narratives. In addition to these problems, Arabs in Israel have been exposed to a selective urbanization process. This selective urbanization process has forced Arabs to adapt to material and instrumental factors and components, while they continue to reserve normative and social values. However, immigration from villages to other localities has not accompanied this urbanization process. The population growth occurs primarily by natural increase. This population growth had been absorbed within the same village or localities. Therefore, the urbanization process has not created a large middle class. This continuity of the traditional community has affected the identity and sense of dislocation of the Arabs in Israel.

Since becoming a minority, the Arabs in Israel have experienced four periods, which have affected their sense of identity and belonging. These include:

1. The transformation from a minority to an enforced citizenship, after the loss of the war of 1948.

2. The waiting period between 1948 and 1957 where their future was both unclear and unstable.

3. A period of "accommodation" between 1957 and 1988.

4. Their selective participation in the Israeli state and society, through their integration into the Israeli system beginning in 1988 and continuing to date.

The Israeli authority continues to direct the situation by defining spatial control policies. These policies limit the residential dispersal of Arabs, which the Israeli authority then justifies by invoking environmental and "anti-sprawl" arguments.

INSTRUMENTS TO CONTROL THE LAND AND SPATIAL JUDAIZATION IN ISRAEL

The conflict over the control of land constitutes one of the main components of contention between the Jewish state and Arab Palestinians in Israel. The Israeli authority has used various tools and instruments for securing domination. These include the spatial control and transfer of Arab lands to Jewish people. The process of transferring Arab land to Jewish hands first began in the beginning of the twentieth century and continues to this day. This process is part of a colonial practice to Judaize the country. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, the focus of the Jewish organizations in Palestine was to invest in buying land from the Arabs. Since the establishment of the Jewish state--Israel--there has been a determined effort of past Israeli governments and Jewish settlements to further decrease the territory under Arab control, with the ultimate aim of transferring most of these lands to the Israeli state.

The Israeli state has used three centralized instruments for limiting the land ownership by Israeli Arabs. These include land management, land confiscation, and regulative and statutory spatial planning. Spatial planning uses allocation of land to agricultural and forest use as a means of limiting urban and rural sprawl. Below is a short discussion of these three instruments that outline the spatial control policies around the Arab localities.

Shrinking the Arab Territory in Israel

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Arabs have suffered from a shrinking of their private and collective spaces. The main mechanism for reducing and shrinking of the Arab space was land confiscation. Military occupation imposed on the Arab population between 1948 and 1966 was an effective mechanism in the hands of the Israeli central government to close territory and to prohibit Arab Palestinian refugees from returning to their lands, villages and towns. It also led to Arab land confiscation according to new Israeli laws and regulations (Juries 1966). After the 1948 war, Israel controlled about 77 percent of Mandate Palestine. All the public and state land that served the Arab population was consequently transferred to Israeli institutions. The Mawat, Matrok, Amire (according the Ottoman Land Law 1858) was converted to state land under Israeli-Jewish control.

This Judaization process led to about 93 percent of the Israeli territory being brought under public ownership (under various categories). About 34 laws and regulations were issued by Israel, with the aim of confiscating land and therefore directly effecting the Arab population. Land purchases did not cease after the establishment of the State of Israel, but continued through the Israeli Land Authority (ILA) and the Jewish Agency. For instance, in 1987 the ILA transferred about 9,247 dunams; in 1988, about 15,127 dunams; in 1990 about 1,374 dunams, and in 1991 about 843 dunams (ILA annual report number 28, 1989; and report number 31, 1992). The Israeli government defined (and continues to define) the Arab Bedouin land in the Negev as "state land," and has begun to concentrate its inhabitants into urbanized localities.

This transfer of land ownership from Arabs to Jewish Israelis has resulted in a drop of land ownership among indigenous Arabs to less than 3.5 percent of the State of Israel despite the fact that Arabs in Israel represent 18 percent of the total Israeli population. The State of Israel had placed the land in the hands of a central authority by a law issued in 1960, called the "Law of ILA." This authority continues to purchase or confiscate private lands. Theft ultimate aim is to have all the land in Israel brought under complete Israeli-Jewish ownership or direct control.

In 2002 the Arab citizens of the State of Israel owned about 713,000 dunams (about 3.5 percent of the state area). Inside the Arab localities jurisdiction they own about 508, 000 dunams (about 2.5 percent of the state area). The planned area and lands zoned for development are about 160,000 dunams (about 0.7 percent of the state area).

Demarcation of Municipal Jurisdiction as an Instrument of Spatial Control

Another aspect of land and spatial management policies relates to jurisdiction. A common issue regarding land demarcation is a civil act within the jurisdiction of Jewish localities. This topic is considered to have national and ethnic dimensions when these issues arise within the Arab communities in Israel. The jurisdiction boundary demarcation of local government is a centralized act under the Minister of Interior, who retains full decision-making sovereignty. This demarcation of jurisdiction boundaries of the Arab localities was an outcome of a spatial management strategy and consists of three components (Kipnis 1987):

1. The reduction or decrease of the jurisdiction of the area of the Arab localities.

2. The prohibition of territorial continuity between Arab localities so as not to create a situation that might justify any kind of autonomy, particularly territorial autonomy.

3. The prohibition of the creation of an Arab demographic majority in any region of the State of Israel, particularly in the periphery regions, such as the Galilee and the Negev.

These three components guide the spatial policies, which were (and still) are an important dimension of national security (Shachar 1993). A demarcation jurisdiction boundary of the Arab localities is not a neutral or professional activity. It is influenced by security, military and political considerations (Falah 1992; Razin and Hasson 1994). Today about 2.5 percent of the Israeli state includes the jurisdiction of 82 Arab localities, managed by the local government. Meanwhile, 83 percent of the state area is under the control and management of Jewish regional councils. The map of jurisdiction areas was crystallized in the 1950s. This map caused the fragmentation of the Arab localities and decreased the area under direct local government management and control. The map created the current situation of land shortages for Arab developments while strengthening the feeling of siege and blockade of the Arab population. The remaining small area under Arab jurisdiction reduced the opportunity for development and revenue for local government. In many cases, such as Kaffer Kana and Araba, the jurisdiction of Arab localities included just a third of the traditional village land. Most of the state and public land was not included in the jurisdiction area. In Kaffer Kana (which had a population of 17,000 in 2002) about 19,450 dunams actually belonged to the village. However, the actual area under their jurisdiction is now only about 10,266 dunams, while the area for development (according to the outline plan) is not more 3,600 dunams. In Araba (with a population of 14,000), the land belonging to the village is about 30,800 dunams. The jurisdiction area is about 8,850 dunams, and the planned area is about 3,100 dunams. The reduction of Arab jurisdiction area led to a feeling of restriction among residents and prompted them to request expanded jurisdiction to include most of the village land within the jurisdiction areas.

The centralized territorial management and Judaization of space led to a situation whereby the Arabs feel and behave differently within the jurisdiction area as opposed to outside the boundary. The area controlled by the local Arab jurisdiction is perceived as belonging to the residents. However, the public areas are controlled by the government (albeit for the Arab residents use and benefit), and are therefore perceived to belong to others.

The Mechanism of Statutory Spatial Planning

Spatial planning is an effective mechanism to control and promote the Judaization of Israeli space. Spatial planning is an integral part of the concept of national security (Shachar 1993). Israeli institutions that wish to confine and limit Arab development and territorial expansion make optimum use of this mechanism. The Israeli planning system was based upon the British mandate system and is part of the British legacy (Khamaisi 1997). This planning system is still characterized by a centralized and hierarchal structure with the higher tier obligating the lower one (Hill 1980; Alexander, Alterman and Law Yone 1993).

Spatial planning in Israel is twofold: The first is an initiative and development planning and the second is regulatory and statutory planning (Gertel and Law Yone 1991; Yiftachel 1992, Khamaisi 1990, 1993). While the Jewish citizens experience both types of planning, the Arab citizens primarily experience regulatory and statutory planning. The ideology of the political regime and land rule determines and guides both the process and substance of the planning system. The central regime defines the public and national interests. According to Israeli regulative planning, the public interests take precedence over private interests. The central regime defines the goals and tools of the planning system. It also determines its activities, designates the land uses and allocates resources. The different tiers of planning committees at the national, district and local levels authorize these plans and work to crystallize goals.

The system works to strengthen the political and social ideology of the regime. This ideology is different from the Arab narrative, ideology and needs, and in many cases actually works in opposition. For instance, the main goal of the national plan number 35, was to "develop Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state". This concept leads to the adoption of the following tools used in statutory spatial planning in order to control the Arabs and promote the Judaization of space:

1. Absence of Arab participation in decision-making and as members in the planning system and planning staff that prepared the plan. Khamaisi was the only Arab member of the planning staff (Khamaisi 1990). Limited participation led to the disregard of Arab needs, including the provision of land use plans and the allocation of resources to support Arab needs. The Arab representatives requested participation in planning committees, but to date this is still very limited. The rhetoric and statements regarding the integration of Arabs into the decision-making mechanisms remained little more than lip service. Given that there are a limited number of Arabs on the planning staff, the plans designed for the Arab communities often do not reflect the interests of that community.

2. Besides the general comprehensive national plans, there are some sartorial plans such as the national plan for roads (number 3); and the national plan for forests (number 22), which serve national Jewish needs, but do not serve those of the Arab citizens. In many cases, these plans limit the development of the Arab localities and freeze land development. The National and District plans serve as instruments to confine the expansion of localities. In some cases, such as the Northern District plan for the Galilee, approved in 1983, and the Negev (Southern District) approved in 1986, the plans ignore the existence of some of the small Arab villages and the allocation of their land for agricultural use. This policy created a phenomenon referred to as "unrecognized Arab villages." There are approximately fifty such villages, which are populated by about seventy thousand people.

3. The concept of centralization and urbanization has imposed urbanization upon the Arab Bedouin population. This has resulted in a minimum quantity of land allocated for development. The policy has been to prohibit expanding built up areas. The tools for implementing this policy include higher density (usually vertical) building. This is culturally foreign for the villagers, whose traditional communities are based upon horizontal development. The Arabs see these planning tools as further ways to confiscate their land and to prohibit their control over it.

4. The status of some Arab localities has changed from local council to that of a municipality (usually an autonomous body, independent of regional councils). Despite this, their planning status continues to remain part of regional councils, which are primarily managed by Jews (members and employees). The responsibility and the authority to change the planning status is in hands of the Interior Minister who does not want to give more power and independence to the Arab municipalities, and chooses instead to remind them of their dependency upon Jewish planners, policy makers and politicians in planning and managing space.

5. Central planning domination and control ignores the needs of the Arabs. Today about twenty two thousand buildings are constructed without building permits. Fifty percent of these illegal houses are in the Jewish sector while the other fifty percent are in the Arab sector. Governmental planning policy considers this phenomenon a national, political and security problem. In the Arab sector, such construction is regarded as an illegal construction without a permit, while among the Jews, it is regarded as a civil problem. The limitations of land allocated for housing development contribute to the creation of the problem of illegal, non-permit housing among the Arabs. Changing the land use plans could immediately alleviate this problem.

Since the establishment of the Israeli state various national plans have been prepared. These plans consist of two kinds: Sectorial plans (function specific, such as for roads, airports, landfills etc.) and general comprehensive plans, (guiding the spatial distribution of population and informing land use policies). The comprehensive plans reorganize settlement structures, settlement distribution, population dispersal and land allocation for infrastructure. They also protect land from development and conserve agricultural and forest land.

In addition, the national comprehensive plan guides, by law, the district, regional and local master plans. By its nature, statutory planning is restricted and dependent on the policies and strategies of the government which determines whether it will confine or allow for development. While the statutory plans limit the expansion of Jewish localities, they also enable the Jewish population to move to other localities. This creates a situation where Arabs feel and react very negatively to spatial planning, particularly to the allocation of land for agricultural, open space and forest use, as they regard it as a tool implemented in order to limit their development.

Governmental policy, which is utilized in order to promote urbanization, is best illustrated by physical plans. The first physical plan was the Sharon Plan of 1951. This was envisioned during two processes occurring among the Arabs of Israel. The first process was a reduction of natural population growth. The second was a shift in the economic base from agricultural to nonagricultural activities (Sharon 1951). Another national plan anticipated mass migration from Arab villages and the periphery towards urban centers and the central coastal area (Khamaisi 1990). The national and regional plans prepared from the top-down by Jewish planners, presumed that the migration patterns among the Arabs in Israel would match those in other countries (including Arab countries). In addition, the plans aimed to reduce the number of Arabs living in the periphery, and to weaken their attachment to the land, by promoting migration to towns and by increasing their dependency on non-agricultural and service activities. These aims continue to guide planning and policy toward the Arabs. The two most recent national plans, number 31 and number 35, assume accelerated urbanization among Arab localities and suggest urban centers for implementing a policy of selective urbanization. These national spatial policies guide district-level policies and thereby impose this policy of urbanization.

Local, highly restrictive planning policy implements national and regional planning policy. In order to limit the development and expansion of Arab villages, a local outline plan has been prepared for every recognized village. In effect, this has led to their rapid urbanization. By copying and using modern, western, urban planning, and imposing it on traditional, eastern, village communities, the explicit goal of local plans was to improve the standard of living among Arabs. However, the implicit goal, was to reduce the territory of Arab localities. Urbanization has been utilized as a means to take land from its owners while purporting to help them. Furthermore, in urban localities, the government can concentrate people, reduce its expenditure on the development and maintenance of infrastructure, and increase housing density. Finally, urbanization limits population increase, and moves localities closer to the national goal of a Jewish demographic majority.

In 1957, the military government and the Ministry of Interior initiated a project called "Building Area" and began preparing outline plans to restrict the expansion of Arab villages. On the national and regional levels, the government demarcated planning and development policies in order to disperse the Jewish population to the peripheral regions of the Negev, the Galilee and Jerusalem. The population dispersal policy promoted "ethnic occupation" of the periphery where most Arabs were living. The government set up public committees with the aim of examining what it termed "illegal housing." These committees recommended preparing outline plans for Arab localities, in order to limit housing expansion, increase housing densities ("fill in" housing areas), and increase urbanization.

A cursory examination of the subsequent outline plans reveals key similarities: all of them pursue a "fill in" policy that increased the density, rather than expanding the area of residential zones. Most of the land in each plan was allocated for housing. Buildings could be up to 400 meters squared in area, four floors high, and were allowed about 144-164 percent of building rights. The road network was oriented in one direction only, and the percentage of land allocated for public use was very small. The majority of the planned area was privately-owned land. The plans appear to have been prepared by a single planner, and copied from village to village with little localization or adaptation.

The current reality of community development in Arab villages is far removed from the official plans prepared and approved by the planning institution. The predicted migration, which was to take place from villages in the periphery to cities in the central coastline, did not happen. The government spent little of the allocated resources for improvement of roads and sewage infrastructure. Villages that were growing into towns suffered from an absence of public facilities due to an absence of land for public purposes. Housing was provided through self-housing, meaning that each family built their own house on private land plots. In general, families did not use the full right of building given to them under the official plans. Some landowners built houses without permits, because their lands were excluded from the officially planned area and therefore were not eligible for building permits. Some landowners built housing on areas planned as roads, as a form of resistance against the planned roads after the planning institution refused their appeals. In many cases, only primitive and basic infrastructure was constructed.

These realities were a direct result of planning policy and cumulated in a severe housing shortage within Arab localities. Area planned for development was limited, infrastructure was weak, many homes were demolished after their owners were refused building permits from planning institutions, and entire villages were left "unrecognized" by planners. Unrecognized villages, such as those in the Negev and the Galilee, were ignored by national and regional plans, and official policy sought to concentrate their residents in urban centers. In mixed cities (like Lydd and occupied cities (such as East Jerusalem), land use plans were used to achieve national, ethnic demographic goals, by allocating insufficient private or public land for development. A second strategy was to reduce the building rights on private lands, thereby making it impossible to obtain a housing permit, and therefore encouraging either a reduction in population or an increase in emigration.

In the last ten years, the Israeli government has proposed to address this housing shortage by allocating state land for housing. However, the high-density building permits on this land only increase urbanization, and contradict the current socio-cultural norms regarding housing in Arab communities. The self-building approach will be rendered impossible. Affected areas include villages in the north (such as the recently "recognized" Kamane, Hosines and Ein Hode villages) and areas in the Negev, where the Bedouin population is largely traditional. The government representative has justified this policy of urbanization--directed exclusively at Arab localities--in terms of sustainability: Israel suffers from a land shortage. However, most Jewish localities are villages (see Table 3). The number of Jewish localities increased from 771 in 1961 to 941 in 2002. Arab localities increased from 109 to 116 in the same period, and this was primarily because some villages gained recognition in the 1990s. In fact, no new villages were built. Meanwhile, about 50 Arab villages remain unrecognized.

Thus, the policy of urbanization has two sides, depending on national ethnic affiliation. Planning institutions and relevant government ministries ask local and national representatives to shrink the allocated land for development available for Arab localities. They are also encouraged to promote high-rise building, and to place various obstacles in the path of development and expansion. Although national and district level plans suggest slight differences in building densities between small and large Arab localities, nevertheless local outline plans apply the same building densities, which effectively convert the villages into urban localities.

Urban planning policy suggests a transfer from agricultural activities to industry and services. This economic policy is echoed in local outline plans and creates a dependency of the Arab population upon the state government, which is controlled by a Jewish majority.

Today, Arab localities resemble one another in the structure of their built environment, labor force, primary economic activities, and their social and community interactions. The strength of these similarities and lack of diversity is evidence that the policy of forced urbanization has deeply affected the structure and appearance of Arab localities.

In summary, in Israel, ideological and geopolitical goals lie behind spatial planning and urbanization policies (Kipnis 1987; Gertel and Law Yone 1991). These policies have developed and crystallized amid a situation of national conflict between Arabs and Jews, which has territorial, geographic, demographic, cultural and political dimensions and implications. The vision of the Zionist movement and Israeli government to transform the demography, geography and culture of the country continues to meet with Arab resistance. The allocation of land and resources is part of this larger conflict (Zureik 1978; Yiftachel 1992; Falah 1989; Yiftachel 1997; Khamaisi and Shmueli 2001).

A clear example is the contrast between Arab and Jewish settlement structure and distribution, which is a direct result of official spatial planning and development policy. While official policy enhances and expands the number and distribution of Jewish settlements--including agriculture-based settlements--it reduces the number of Arab localities and urbanizes their villages.

AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST LAND ZONING AS AN INSTRUMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL

The above-mentioned tools are part of the Israeli spatial control system. Land use designation is another instrument manipulated to control the land. Further illustration follows:

1. Defining all the country lands as agricultural, except land that is authorized by the Committee of Protection of Agricultural Land "CPAL". The Planning and Building Law (1965) established this committee. This committee has changed its name recently (1996) from CPAL, adding to it "and Open Spaces" becoming CPALOS. Today this committee plays a very effective role in preventing sprawl in urban and rural development within Israel. This committee functions according to the law. It has an ideological agenda, which guides its strategies and polices. In Israel today, about 3,391,000 dunams is agricultural land (see Table 4). However, according to the PBL, all the area where there is no official plan authorized by the CPALOS, is still technically agricultural land.

2. In addition to this committee, the Ministry of Environment (established in 1980) also held a role of spatial control, which it exercised through environmental considerations. The Ministry of Environment preserves the open spaces as part of a sustainable approach.

3. The National Jewish Fund (KKL) aims to protect the land by planting forests. They use planting as part of their ideology (Kliot 1992). The British mandate initiated the planting of forests, manipulating it for political and ideological means. The KKL, alongside the Ministry of Interior, initiated a preparation plan for forest and forest plantation in 1995. This national plan (number 22) allocates land for forest and plantation (see Table 5). This plan, as well as the protection of open spaces, was an instrument in the hands of the central government and Jewish government institutions, which was used to control space and to develop it according to their needs and narratives. Today there is roughly 940 thousand dunams of forest (see Table 5). Plan number 22 aims to double this area (see Table 6). The conflict over open space, forest plantation and olive tree plantation is a historical conflict of narratives connected to the land. These historical narratives represent deep conflicts, which often find a voice through the choice of trees, conflict over open spaces and forest plantings.

4. The Authority of Nature Reserves functions as another institution, which worked to protect the nature reserves. The government defines these according to their narratives, goals and policies. This institution has a national plan number 8 for natural reserves.

The national statutory plans include a large territory for undeveloped uses. During the preparation of the national master plan of Israel 2020, the planning staff discovered the problem of the diminution of agricultural and open land to urban and rural development (Mazor 1993). Such land 'gnawing' (sprawl at the expense of agricultural, open space and forest lands) is a result of three processes: 1.) the national spatial planning policies and strategies aimed at the dispersal of the Jewish population from the center of the state to the periphery, for geopolitical, demographic and territorial considerations, 2.) the creation and development of new settlements enabled this dispersal, 3.) population growth and development of economic activities triggered urban and rural sprawl.

The staff of the national comprehensive master plan 2020 warned of the threat to future agricultural and open land, and created an awareness among both decision makers and the public. Consequently, spatial planning policies were adopted with the aim of protecting open and agricultural lands by adapting new approaches for sustainable planning. Such aims included filling in urban areas, preferential development for metropolitan areas, concentration of development (higher densities) and more restrictions on land use changes, in particular from open and agricultural land to urban and development uses. Spatial national plan number 31 (and later number 35), allocated the majority of the state territory for agricultural uses, open space and natural recourses. The aim was that official public planning system should preserve such territory and thus reject any developments. Today, only about six percent of the state area is urban and rural (Kaplan 2001). These instruments are applicable to all of the territories of the state and officially include all the cities. However, in practice it functions differently and is dependent upon the area's national affiliations.

CONCLUSION

The long geopolitical conflict between the Israelis and the Arab Palestinians has different narratives. Every nation has its narrative of belonging to the country that guides its activities and policies. The narrative has a direct impact over environmental considerations. In addition to the direct spatial policies toward them, the Arabs in Israel are part of the spatial behavior of the state of Israel and are affected by the general spatial policies and strategies. The Israeli government controls Arab development through their policies of spatial control. This spatial control includes the reduction of space belonging to (and to the function of) the Arabs. It also includes the transfer of ownership through land confiscation and the reduction of Arab territory via spatial planning and urban management mechanisms. Until 1980, control was based upon environmental considerations. Today, the development and expansion of Arab territories (residential area and jurisdiction), faces large spatial environmental barriers. In many cases, these environmental spatial barriers are general and universal. However, the reality is that the conflict between the majority, minority and divided communities has different meanings to the two national groups in Israel. The minority believes that such planning is still aimed against them. They feel threatened and fear environmental considerations and land allocation for non-development.

In many cases the minority accepts these environmental considerations. However, the limited feeling of belonging to the state guides them to resist environmental conservation activities and its limitations on development. They perceive that these environmental considerations are implemented selectively according to ethno-national belonging. The Arab minority in Israel suffers from spatial control policy and feels that every environmental idea or activity may become an additional source of their suffering and the reduction of their resources.

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Rassem Khamaisi is a town planner and urban geographer, a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environment Studies at the University of Haifa, a researcher at the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies in Jerusalem, and a senior researcher and planner at IPCC, East Jerusalem. This essay is based on a lecture given at the "Palestinian and Israeli Environmental Narratives", York University, Toronto. 5-8 December 2004.

Table 1: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE ARABS IN ISRAEL:
SIZE OF LOCALITIES * BY POPULATION IN 2002.

Population in the   No. of localities   Percentage of the Arab
localities                              localities *

                      1962    2002      1962     2002

50,000-99,999         --         1        --      0.9
20,000-49,999          1         7       1.1      6.0
10,000-19,999          1        22       1.1     19.0
2,000-9,999           29        53      26.6     45.6
Fewer than 1,999      78        33      71.2     28.5
        Total        109 **    116     100.0    100.0

* The numbers do not include mixed (Arabs and Jewish) localities,
such as Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Jerusalem and unrecognized Arab villages.

** Between 1961 and 2002, the government recognized some Arab
localities, including the localities for the Arab "Bedouin" in
the Negev.

(Source: Central Bureau of Statistics 2003: 2-44.)

Table No. 2: THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND SPATIAL
STATUARY PLANNING CONTROL OF THE LAND IN ISRAEL:
FROM ARAB TO JEWISH-ISRAELI CONTROL

                                             Percentage    Dunams

Total Mandate Palestine Area                 100           26,323,000

According UN Partition Plan 1947,
resolution no. 181

Jewish State                                 57.99         15,261,648

Arab State                                   41.35         10,885,848

Jerusalem (special unit)                     0.66          175,504

Israel Area 1948                             77            20,325,000

The Rest of Palestinian territory            23            5,998,000
(West Bank and Gaza strip

Land owned b Jewish pre-1948                 6.4           1,681,586

From them Owned by Jewish National Fund      --            1,449,958

Mosha (purchased by Jewish citizens)         --            56,628

British Ownership right                                    175,000

Land belonging to the rest of Arab           --            1,465,414
citizens of the Israeli State (not
including the land under ownership
conflict or dispute).

Land for refugees and Islamic Waqf           --            5,178,000

Mawat Land and those in conflict between     --            12,000,000
the State and Bedouin Arabs

Land purchases by Jewish before 1948         --            1,681,586

Total Area of the State of Israel            --            20,325,000

According to the official ILA annual report

State land and Development Authority         74.8          15,205,000

Jewish National Fund (KKL *)                 18.4          3,570,000

Private land (Arabs and Jewish)              6.8           1,480,000

According to the ILA's annual report from 1997, the land under ILA is
about 19,028,000 dunams. This is more than it was in 1962, when the
area was 18,775,000 dunams.

* KKL owned about 936,000 dunams pre-948. Ben Gurion sold
1,101,742 dunam in January 1949, and about 1,271,734 dunams in October
1950.

Table 3: DISTRIBUTION OF LOCALITIES IN ISRAEL BY TYPE AND NATIONAL
AFFILIATION AT THE END OF 2002.

National            Israeli state        Jews          Arabs *
Affiliation

Total                1057 (100%)     941 (89%)        116 (11%)

Number of urban      200 (18.9%)     111 (11.8%)      89 (76.7%)
  Localities
Number of rural      857 (81.1%)     830 (88.2%)      27 (23.3%) **
  Localities

* Arab localities here exclude mixed cities.

** This excludes an estimated fifty unrecognized villages.

(Source: Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (2003) Statistical
Abstract of Israel, number 54. Table 2.9:2-28.)

Table 4: AGRICULTURAL LAND FOR CROPS IN ISRAEL ACCORDING TO
INDUSTRY, 2000.

Crops Industry                Thousand dunams   Percentage

Field crops--un-irrigated         1,356             40.0
Field crops-irrigated               607             17.9
Vegetables, potatoes & melons       515             15.2
Citrus                              234              6.9
Flowers & garden plants              54              1.6
Others plantation                   625             18.4
Totals                            3,391            100.0

Statistical Abstract of Israel, No. 53, 2002, pp. 19-5.

Table 5: GROWTH OF FOREST * AREA IN ISRAEL
BETWEEN 1960-2001, THOUSAND DUNAM.

Year               1960    1970    1980    1990    2000    2001

Thousand Dunams     301     536     678     836     920     939

** does not include natural forest

** Statistical Abstract of Israel, number 53, 2002: 1-20.

Table 6: LAND ALLOCATION ACCORDING TO
THE NATIONAL FOREST PLAN, NUMBER 22
PROPOSED BY ISRAELI NATIONAL FUND (KKL), 1995.

Kind of Forest                        Area (dunams)      Percentage

Existing forest planted                    558,630            34
Suggested forest planted                   153,760            10
Existing forest Park                        80,710             5
Suggested forest Park                      154,250            10
Forest for development                     186,300            12
Protected forest                           390,000            23
Forest park alongside seashore              48,150             3
Plantation alongside valley banks           41,840             3
Total                                    1,613,640         100.0

(Source: Israel State, Israeli National Fund, Internal Ministry,
Israeli Land Authority, National Outline Plan for Forest and
Plantation. Number 22, Jerusalem. Presented to the National Planning
Council.)