Israeli Planning System Overlooked Palestinian National Aspirations, Expert Claims
A critical analysis by "The Jewish Voice" highlights how Israel's planning and construction systems have drifted away from fostering Jewish settlement and control over the land, while Palestinian planning has embraced national aspirations. The report focuses on Professor Rasem Hamaisi, a prominent figure in Israeli planning who also holds views aligned with the Palestinian national struggle.
According to the article, while the Israeli public is aware of power centers in law, security, academia, and media, the planning and construction sectors have largely escaped scrutiny. The author argues that since the 1990s, alongside post-Zionist discourse, a new narrative entered Israeli architecture, planning, and geography. Concepts like power, hegemony, exclusion, and "civil occupation" replaced terms related to building and holding onto the land, with Jewish construction itself becoming a subject of criticism.
In contrast, Palestinian planning thought during the same period actively linked planning tools to national goals of land, population, and development. Hamaisi's writings from that era reportedly discussed shifting from restrictive to enabling planning in Arab communities within Israel, the use of Israeli planning to control Palestinians in the West Bank, and urban strategies for Palestinian national development. This divergence is seen as ironic: Palestinian thought reinforced the connection between profession, nationalism, and land, while parts of the Israeli professional discourse grew hesitant about this very link.
Hamaisi's influence is noted through his participation in "Israel 2020," a strategic planning initiative that shaped Israel's national outline plan (TAMA 35), and his current involvement in "Israel 100," a project for Israel's strategic planning towards 2048. He has also received accolades from the Planners Association. The article contends that academic institutions training architects and planners have become the source of professionals who shape the country, often without adequately addressing the history of Jewish settlement or the concept of building in one's ancestral homeland.
The piece concludes by emphasizing that planning and architecture are professions of sovereignty, shaping the physical reality of the nation. It calls for a thorough review of planning education in Israel to reintroduce concepts of building, settling, and holding onto the land, asserting that a Jewish state should not apologize for planning as a Jewish state, and Jews building in Israel should not view their actions as a cause for guilt.
