Normalizing occupation the politics of everyday life in the West Bank settlements

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : normalizing the occupation : the making of the Jewish West Bank settlements / Marco Allegra, Ariel Handel and Erez Maggor -- Across the green line : suburbanization, privatization and the settlements -- The settlements and the relationship between privatization and the occupation / Daniel Gutwein -- Settlement as suburbanization : the banality of colonization / David Newman -- "Outside Jerusalem-yet so near": Ma'ale Adumim, Jerusalem, and the suburbanization of Israel's settlement policy / Marco Allegra -- Educating architecture (photo essay) / Miki Kratsman and Ruthie Ginsburg -- Between cities and outposts : the heterogeneity of the settlements and the settlers -- Embedded politics in a West Bank settlement / Hadas Weiss -- Informal outposts in the West Bank : normality in gray space / Erez Tzfadia -- From ghetto-politics to geo-politics : ultra-orthodox settlements in the West Bank / Lee Cahaner -- "A blessed deviation in Jewish history" : on contemporary forms of Messianism among religiously motivated settlers in the West Bank / Assaf Harel -- Forced co-existence : Palestinians and Jewish settlers -- From Kubniya to outpost : a genealogy of the Palestinian conceptualization of Jewish settlement in a shifting national context / Honaida Ghanem -- Integrated or segregated? Employment relations in the settlements / Amir Paz-Fuchs and Yael Ronen -- Jerusalem's colonial space as paradox : Palestinians living in the settlements / Wendy Pullan and Haim Yacobi.

Controversy surrounds Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the radical national and religious agendas at play there have come to define the area in the minds of many. This study, however, focuses instead on the process of "normalization" in the life of Jewish residents. The works collected consider the transformation of the landscape, the patterns of relationships shared by the residents, and the lasting effects of Israel's settlement policy. They stress, in particular, such factors as urban planning, rising inequality and the retreat of the welfare state, and the changing political economy of industry and employment. In doing so, the authors provide new insight into the suburbanized areas which they argue are an integral part of the broader historical trends shaping Israel/Palestine.