SETTLER SUBURBIA IN THE NEGEV/NAQAB: THE START-UP PIONEER IN THE DESERT

ABSTRACT

Within the recognized borders of Israel, in the shadow of the West Bank settlement enterprise, a new frontier is in the making. Central planning has designated the space as a burgeoning metropolitan region, and, in a parallel process, a network of Jewish-only settlements has been established. This study asks how the settlement push is narrated to the Israeli public, and thereby adds the Naqab to previous studies exploring the link between colonial settlement and suburbia, and more specifically with the community-settlement model. It analyzes audiovisual material produced by two Zionist organizations and finds that the new frontier is narrated as a space for reenactment of the mythic pioneer trope, and that this ideal is mediated in relation to the new neoliberal ethos of Israel as the “start-up nation.” The study moreover expands on the interplay of geographic scales, thus adding an important contribution to scholarly understanding of contemporary settler-colonialism.

Keywords::

• frontier
• Negev/Naqab
• settler-colonialism
• suburbia
• Zionism

[T]he mission and the vision of populating the Land of Israel are the driving force in the heart of those involved in the creation and development of this land. Today, right now, the need for further populating efforts in the Negev and Galilee is greater than ever before. This is what we need you for. You are the Montefiore and Rothschilds of the 21st century.—

From the YouTube video A New Community Changing the Face of Israel, published by the Or movement, 2013¹

In settler-colonial societies, settling the “peripheries” is a well-established strategy for territorial control, both before and after a formal state has been formed (Kimmerling 1983; Yiftachel 1996; Teschner et al. 2010). This process involves turning a geographic space into a frontier—that is, to a space of rupture and contestation (Pullan 2014). Interesting geographic scholarship has begun exploring the link between the frontier and suburbia (Peck 2011; Veracini 2012). In the Israeli context, these studies have tended to focus on the phenomenon of the “community settlement” (yishuv kehilati), as this type of dwelling has been used to advance the West Bank settlements (Newman 1984; Allegra 2013, 2017b; Berger 2019; Schwake 2021). Previous studies have also included community settlements in the Galilee in the settlement project (Falah 1989).

This study adds a comparatively unexplored region to the field, namely the Negev/Naqab in the south of Israel. It shows that the settlements are being marketed to the public as a secluded suburbia, and the Naqab as a place for fulfilling the classical pioneer ethos.² It, moreover, shows that this cultural trope has been updated to fit a neoliberal world and a nation that has since long left its old values behind, and now favors a new type of ideal citizen, epitomized in the rebranding of Israel as the neoliberal, entrepreneurial “start-up nation” (Getzoff 2020a). The expression has gained ground as a metonym for the exceptional economic and innovative success of the Israeli high-tech sector, but also represents a new national ideal (Maggor and Frenkel 2022). However, it also argues that what is striking in the Naqab is the conspicuous continuity with the classic pioneer trope. Instead of focusing one-eyed on the new, mediated trope, attention to the unchanged will point to a more pressing question—namely, how the narrative is constructed to keep up the taken-for-granted idea of the frontier. Indeed, in Gershon Shafir’s words, already the prestate Yishuv (the Jewish society in Palestine before 1948) was a “belated settler society” (Shafir 2018).

The paper is structured as follows: after a brief geographical and conceptual context, I will begin by presenting suburbia as a cultural trope and territorial strategy, and sketch a historical background to suburbia in Israel. I will then present and discuss findings and their theoretical implications for the broader understanding of contemporary settler-colonial practices structured over three themes: the updated pioneer, the suburban seclusion, and the self-indigenization of the settler made possible in a space narrated as “undisputed.”

Geographic Context

While the main Israeli settler movement focuses its work on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, related processes work to strengthen Jewish presence in areas within the Green Line (Israel within the pre-1967 borders). The areas of interest are those were most of the Palestinian citizens of Israel are located, that is, parts of Galilee and the Naqab (Nasasra 2012). In the settler narrative, these are seen as territories under the looming threat of returning to Arab ownership, by individuals if not by a Palestinian state (Shafir 2018, 5). Before 1948, the Naqab was mainly inhabited by Bedouin tribes, controlled by seven major tribal confederations. After 1948, the military had expelled, and in other ways forcefully removed, most Bedouins and their land had been appropriated by the state. This displacement has resulted in an ongoing legal dispute between Bedouin landowners and the state, who on their part dismisses most Bedouin land claims. One major consequence of this conflict is planned (sometimes forced) relocation of Bedouin families from existing villages to new locations and the simultaneous establishment of new Jewish villages (Nasasra 2017a; Kedar et al. 2018). Largely, in Zionist discourse, Bedouins are constructed as intruders whose proliferation must be curbed by Jewish territorial control (Abu-Saad 2008, 3; Nasasra 2012).

In this internally directed movement, the “mythical” character of the pioneer is invoked to narrate the settlement endeavor. The pioneer is a main protagonist in most settler-colonial stories of origin and an embodiment of the frontier. Pioneer myths tend to be built around a notion of moral rebirth through individual hardship in breaking virgin soil and salvaging both man and land from deprivation. After the formation of the Israeli state, however, and even more so after consecutive wars and a changed national identity and ideal, the identity of the Jewish pioneer has neither been particularity fashionable nor univocal (Roniger and Feige 1992). However, in the current southward settlement, the pioneer again plays a central role, only this time updated to fit a new national narrative, mediated by expansionist and neoliberal politics (Getzoff 2020).

The territorial and colonial dimension of suburbanization has received attention in the Israeli context since the 1970s—in particular, the community settlement (yishuv kehilati) (Newman 1984; Allegra 2013, 2017b; Berger 2019; Schwake 2021). These rural but nonagricultural villages developed on the post-1967 occupied West Bank, where they offered a seemingly apolitical alternative to the overtly political settlements (Newman 1984). In the Naqab, the settlement endeavor has never been particularly successful, despite numerous state policies. Oren Yiftachel has referred to it as a “frontiphery”—that is, a region which the state turned into a frontier but never quite settled (Yiftachel 2006). However, the past governments have hoped to change this trend. This is evident in economic support for relocation, but most of all in national plans that promote Beersheva (the main Naqab city) as a new metropolitan center (including extension of the railway and highway) and high-tech hub (Malchi 2021).

Suburbanization and Settler-colonialism

Settler-colonial studies gradually developed as a distinct scholarly field around the year 2000. The field takes its cues in large part from Patrick Wolfe’s (2006) radical conclusion that settler societies aim at replacing the Indigenous population, ultimately altogether eliminating the Indigenous. Settlers strive to transform “we came here” to “this land made us” by the establishment of a new geography; the replacement or appropriation of place-based narratives, language, administrative structure, and population, also referred to as Indigenization (Veracini 2010). In settler narratives, it is the frontier experience that becomes a transferal of Indigenous authenticity from the Indigenous to the settler (Deloria 1998; Perugini 2019). About ten years ago, urban geographers began writing about suburbanization as a settle-colonial practice, a new “frontier movement” made in tandem with neoliberal market processes (Brenner et al. 2010; Peck 2011; Clarsen and Veracini 2012). Suburbanization, they argued, was producing ethnically separated spaces, detached from other spheres of society, mimicking settlement. Drawing on another key scholar within the field, Lorenzo Veracini, I will go on to argue that the secluded, individualized suburbia can be an extension of this new identity derived from the land, and suburbia a helpful concept to capture the everyday aspects of settler colonialism (Veracini 2012).

The Suburban Frontier

Scholarship of suburbia regularly make use of the frontier metaphor, a central word in settler-colonial studies, indicating a movement toward that which lies beyond “civilization,” populated by the protagonist of the pioneer (Vicino 2008). The word frontier indicates a certain genealogy, which often starts with the 1892 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” by Fredrick Jackson Turner. In it, Turner describes a line of civilization rolling across the American landscape, from east to west with newly arrived pioneers, and how the American national identity was generated in this frontier. In 1965, influential New York City planner Charles Abrams (in The City Is the Frontier) used the term on problems arising in declining city centers, later Kenneth T. Jackson (Crabgrass Frontier from 1987) used it to describe expanding suburbia and Neil Smith (“New Urban Frontier” from 1996) in referral to the mechanisms of gentrification through revanchism; that is, conservative upper and middle class “taking back” the city from disturbing elements (Abrams 1965; Jackson 1987; Smith 2005 [1996], 38). More recently, scholars have highlighted the relational, dynamic, and inherently contested nature of the frontier. Eyal Weizman (2006, 86) saw it as a deep, fragmented, and elastic space that cannot be defined or mapped, but is the antithesis to a defined line or barrier, and Wendy Pullan (2014) as a zone in which the spatial dynamics of separation makes it a space of default contestation (unlike, for instance, a borderland). Similarly, Ariel Handel (2011, 161) conceptualized it as a space that erupts through conflict and tension between different ethnic or other groups, sometimes characterized by one group considering the space to be misused, empty, or unregulated and therefore in need of control. This definition sees the frontier as a space of conflict that does not end with physical settlement, but rather remains a contested space indefinitely. The frontier is conceived of as an “open” space and the struggle over it as a struggle to “close” it through social or cultural domination. The “closing” of a frontier is therefore a struggle over narrative, history, and meaning. As such, I contend that this latter definition of frontier is a useful heuristic to suburban establishment in a context characterized by settler-colonial structures, as these are, by definition, unfinished. Moreover, the “closing” of the frontier encompasses that aspect of the settler-colonial process that engages with the right to “empty” land, whether this emptiness is constituted by a lack of formal ownership, absence of civilization or absence of maximal utilization of the land potential. Thus, the frontier metaphor invokes deeply rooted colonial and imperial practices aimed toward Indigenous populations (Wyly 2020).

While the everyday use of the term suburb generally refers to an area within the commuting zone of a nearby urban space, neither the term suburb, the process of suburbanization nor the lifestyle of suburbanity has a univocal definition (Forsyth 2012; Podmore and Bain 2021). Clearly, the postwar Fordist Anglo-American suburb has been replaced by a great variety of urban-textured fringe areas, each with place-specific characteristics. In morphological terms, the concept of exurb is sometimes more fitting. This concept refers to a residential area located in a rural area, at a further distance from the urban centers than the suburb (Schwake 2020). The connected phenomenon of (auto)mobility and its potential transformation of spaces also changes with historical context (Clarsen and Veracini 2012). Also, digital mobility transforms space, distance, and perceived proximity to the urban centers, for instance represented by the notion of digital nomads (McElroy 2019). This phenomenon has been well explored in scholarship on lifestyle migration and counterurbanisation, and fairly recently, new scholarship have begun merging these phenomena with settler-colonialism in relation to digital communication (Higgins 2018).

From the 1970s and onwards, feminist scholars have been excavating the gendered dimension of suburbia, questioning the gender-blind suburban dweller: suburbia as a feminized dichotomy to the masculine city, a space for reproduction, removing women from urban and public space, placing them in the homes as wives and mothers (Saegert 1980; England 1993; Frank 2008). With this critique of the concept in mind, the suburban dweller does not work in the city and the suburb remains a highly gendered commuter zone. More recently, queer and gender analysis has further deepened the understanding of the way sexuality and gender organize settler-colonial rule through suburbia, for instance Maile Arvin and others’ (2013) notion of suburbia as the very embodiment of normalization of heteropatriarchy. Broadly, this scholarly field has provided insights into the gendered nature of settler-colonial structure. Ann Stoler (2006), for instance, shows how the organization of sexual and other forms of intimate relationships has been integrated in the instrument of rule in European colonies, and, to this, Scott (2012) has argued for bringing to the front-gendered and sexualized spaces and expression as arenas of settler-colonial rule and in particular the queering of the “native” subject and the subsequent straightening through modern sexuality in the Foucauldian sense. However, this particular phenomenon, derived from the North American context, does not readily compare to the Middle Eastern context, where the Orientalist gaze surely has been sexualizing, but where the discourse structuring the colonial enterprise rather has departed from representing the Indigenous man as archaic and patriarchal and subsequently the women as in need of saving.

In turn, Marxist scholars have highlighted suburbia as a result of an overarching context of neoliberal politics, that is, by capitalist desires to create spaces for capital-surplus absorption (Peck 2011; Smith 2005 [1996]; Harvey 2017). This suburbia represents a sustained participation in urban life and its privatized landscapes is “decentralized-centralized” landscape of single-family houses, lawns, and cul-de-sacs, resting on the distinct separation of work and leisure, depending on automobile access, made possible through ever-expanding networks of roads and highways (Vicino 2008; Berger 2019, 3). Thus, while suburbia borrows emotional and pictorial elements from a certain, green (but modern) rural life, and while it can in some cases be an expression of postindustrial rural migration, it is largely distinguished from trends of counterurbanization and lifestyle migration as these processes are expressions of a desire to abandon the city in favor of a rural idyll (Schwake 2021).

This notwithstanding, in terms of social symbolism, these are secluded spaces, perceived as an alternative to urban problems: suburbia as a haven from a degenerated or otherwise “bad” alternative. In an expanded sense, suburbia is also a cultural trope, developed and sustained through massive amounts of movies, commercials, and television shows. Gershon Shafir (2018) has, however, argued that suburbs in the context of Israel/Palestine differs from the American template, as this suburbia has been strategically mobilized as a tool for securing territory for Jewish Israelis at the Palestinian expense and therefore is an explicit form of settler colonialism. In fact, Lorenzo Veracini maintains that the politics of settler colonialism is constitutive also of suburbia: a cessation from the urban metropole or the old country and the subsequent establishment of a, to some degree, greater self-determination (Veracini 2012).

Suburbanization and Suburban Pioneers in Israel

Let us now take a closer look at the role of suburbia in Israel. A number of studies from geographers and political scientists suggests seeing the emerging system of suburban gated communities in Israel and Palestine as an instrument for territorial control that has become de-politized in public discourse (Newman 1984; Allegra 2013; Allegra et al. 2017; Schwake 2021). This process has largely been performed through the model of community settlements (yishuv kehilati), which is a form of rural living that does not require agriculture. Until the 1970s, rural communities in Israel had ideally been agricultural, organized as kibbutzim or moshavim (a collective to semiprivate form of cooperative agricultural community). The community-settlement model developed on the West Bank in the 1970s, following the new settlement policies after the 1967 war and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank (Applebaum et al. 1989). It was later reintroduced in Israel as a means of acquiring territorial control in Galilee (and later still, in the Naqab) (Newman 2017b). Famously, during the 1970s and 1980s, such settlements were constructed on the hilltops in the Galilee in a move to establish territorial control, as this area was largely inhabited by Palestinians in Israel. These settlements were called the Galilee “mitzpim” or “lookout” settlements (Handel 2014). The suburban model of the community settlement thus became an extension of the West Bank settlement enterprise into areas within the Green Line.

In many ways, the Naqab and Galilee differ significantly from one another, as the Galilee is closer to the big cities and the settlements have more often followed a linear trajectory from idealized places of rurality to commodification and finally financialization. This is also true for many of the West Bank settlements, which are illegal but have become so integrated into the suburban spaces of cities that they are commonly perceived as neutral commuter areas (Schwake 2021). As a form of property, many of these settlements have also gradually been transformed by processes of financialization (Schwake 2020b). Gabrielle Schwake (2021) has referred to this process as the “suburban turn,” and David Newman (2017b) has referred to it as a process of turning the language of ideology to “the language of housing prices and mortgages.” According to Zeev Greenberg et al. (2016), the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s meant an erosion of the society as it had been envisioned by the Labor Zionists, leading to ideological and social fractioning, and resulting in groups seeking to establish homogenous, smaller communities as a substitute for a declining sense of society. The community settlement was not organized through joint labor, but rather through neoliberal values. Thus, while the settlements initially represented a form of counterurbanization or neorurality (the settler movement of the time latched on to a general trend of suburbanization in Israel and elsewhere), this changed with privatizations of the coming decades (Schwake 2021). Moreover, the settlements have always been subsidized and the cost of living is lower than within the Green Line, which also plays into their appeal (Newman 1985). The narrative of West Bank suburbanization as representing an apolitical trend was recently been called into question by Allegra and Maggor (2022), who argue that the process should be understood as an example of metropolitanization—that is, the settlements are drawn into the market-driven logic of the big cities and their surroundings (see also Schwake 2022). Curiously, as noted by David Newman already in 1984, the community settlements that came to represent a type of careless suburbia were in fact developed by people within the settler movement, driven by strong ideological convictions (Newman 1984).

One important reason why community settlement is an effective tool to secure space for the Jewish settlers also within the Green Line is that they are constructed in a way that makes it possible to exclude unwanted residents. Community settlements are generally constructed on land owned by the Jewish National Fund. The organizational statutes state that JNF can only lease land to Jewish lessees, which has resulted in a strategy of land swaps between the state and the JNF, for example when building community settlements. After the passing of a controversial law—the Admittance Committees Law from March 2011—they are moreover allowed to vet potential residents, and for instance, the villages may distinguish themselves as secular, modern, ultraorthodox, mixed, and so forth (Charney and Palgi 2013). But vetting is also done in a less formal fashion, on the basis of compatibility with the social norms of the community, effectively creating a powerful, normative spatial tool. This practice is the focus of ongoing legal and ideological debates. After being tried in court 2011, this type of vetting is allowed in communities in the Naqab and Galilee with fewer than 400 households (Shafir 2018). The phenomenon of “expansion neighborhoods” in reformed (“renewed”) kibbutzim are organized in a similar way (Greenberg et al. 2016). Expansion neighborhoods are areas within a kibbutz where people who are not members of the kibbutz can buy lease contacts. These are a result of the economic crisis and subsequent privatization, starting the 1980s when parcels of land within or adjacent to existing kibbutzim or moshavim were detached from the community and developed for suburban dwellers. Today, the majority of all kibbutzim are organized in this way. Igal Charney and Michal Palgi (2013) have argued that the model of the renewed kibbutz is an ideological turn and an expression of a neoliberal logic that allowed the kibbutz movement to maintain their secludedness as gated communities. Similarly, Schwake has argued that the suburbanization of the community settlements—that is, the turn toward private property and individualism—remains a territorial strategy of privatized gated communities (Schwake 2021). Both forms of living have been marketed to the public as rural or suburban lifestyles (Lehavi 2016).

Finally, a word is needed about the pioneer. The mythological character of the pioneer is a human representation of the frontier and central in settler nations’ myths of origin. It is a gendered protagonist that holds both violence and nurture. Jemima Mowbray defined the Australian mythic pioneer woman as a representation of the settler’s struggle with the natural elements, rather than the Indigenous subject: “The mythic Pioneer Woman is courageous and capable, perhaps a little wearied, but nurturing and always maternal. She is not a woman who carries a gun. Her task is that of ‘civilizing,’ the work of the heart and mind. When her struggle manifests itself physically, which it does not often do, it is with nature, not with any person who could be faced with a gun” (Mowbray 2006, 3). According to Mowbray, this quality makes the mythic pioneer woman an appealing figure to invoke in contemporary settler narratives, as this myth glosses over racist and violent histories, even in contexts where these aspects has been brought to the surface in the national story. Further, while the symbol is largely the same, it tends to represent different political ideals. In the North American context, the pioneer is ultimately a self-sufficient character (a myth, according to Neil Smith (2005 [1996], 19), instead foregrounding the role of “banks, railroads, the state and other collective sources of capital” over the “rugged individual”—a cultural trope nonetheless), while the pioneer in the Israeli context is a collectivist, closely associated with Labor Zionism (Assi 2018; Getzoff 2020a). The early figure of the Israeli pioneer was central to the prestate rhetoric: an embodiment of the frontier, pushing back the “wilderness” symbolically and physically with collective agricultural settlements. It was a symbol of the “new man” or the “new Jew,” and thus, a symbol derived from the decision to break with Europe. This was a core idea within Zionism, centered on the notion of turning away from urbanity and toward the soil. Thus, as much as the pioneer was a colonial-territorial symbol of settling the new land, it was also a symbol referring back to major questions on religion, language, and European crisis, suggesting the centrality of the concept (Ohana 2012). Israeli sociologist Uri Ram has argued that the pioneer was the national icon until the state was formed 1948 and the state itself became the locus of the nation (Ram 1999). This changed, Ram argues, in 1974 when the neo-Zionist expansionist religious-nationalist settler movement Gush Emunim (replaced today by the successors of the Yesha Council and Amana) reinvented the pioneer as a nationalist, religious character. Neo-Zionism is a form of Zionism, which, according to Ilan Pappé, places nationalistic-territorial ideal above all, while centering around neoliberal values (Ram 2013; Pappé 2014; Dayan 2019).

Who the pioneer is today remains an open question. However, we can note that already in 1989, Baruch Kipnis described the “modern pioneers” in Israel as something different from the prestate (“Yishuv”) pioneers (Kipnis 1989). The modern pioneer did indeed perform territorial acts (Kipnis refers to the mitzpim settlements in Galilee), but they were not driven by “pioneer feelings.” Rather, the modern Israeli pioneers were more akin to the American “pioneers of suburbia.” Kipnis quotes American urban scholar John Friedmann, saying that “The early pioneers of America set out to start a new life that they would make themselves. The modern pioneers of suburbia do not wish for a new life, they wish to reestablish an order of life that recalls the simplicities of an earlier day. They wish to protect their personal space” (Friedmann 1978).

Settlements and Suburbia in the Naqab

Rural settlements in the Naqab have tended to be left-leaning, perceived as a benevolent type of Zionism, distinctly separated from the expansionist West Bank settlers (Feige 2009; Dromi and Shani 2020). Settlements were built along the borders and across rural spaces, often established as illegal military camps and gradually legalized. Over the last two decades, a network of these has been built, expanded or “civilized” by organizations representing the Zionist movement, in collaboration with various state authorities (Figure 1). Among the organizations are the powerful Jewish National Fund and a small grassroot settlement organization called the Or movement. Or was established in 2002 to facilitate Jewish settlement in the south. Often not more than a collection of mobile houses for a handful of families, these settlements have territorial importance in their role of filling the territory of the Jewish nation (Yiftachel 1996).

Fig 1. Map of settlements in the northern Naqab. Gouache on paper. By Johanna Adolfsson 2022.

Current spatial plans for the Naqab visualize the development of a metropolitan region centered around the district capital of Beersheva and its surroundings. These include the current statutory “National Outline Plan for Building and Construction”/“NOP35,” the national strategic outline plan “Israel 2020,” the regional statutory and strategic outline plans “DOP14/23,” “Strategic-National Plan for Developing the Negev”—“Negev 2015” (hereinafter “Negev 2015”) and the, currently under development, “Beersheva Metropolitan 2030” plan. The Israeli planning structure is hierarchical, however, and the statutory plans regulating building and construction on national, regional, and local level are informed and complemented by visions formulated in strategic plans. These have developed as part of the planning process in Israel—articulate visions rather than regulations of development (Teschner et al. 2010).

The city (originally established by the Ottomans on land bought by the Bedouin ‘Azazme tribe) has grown horizontally through urban sprawl and secluded suburbs, largely with the help of state subsidies, while the extended region has been shaped by a Zionist settler-colonial planning ideal of establishing dispersed rural or urban centers as a territorial strategy. In current plans, expansion of infrastructure, education centers, and the big hospital are paired with relocation of IDF military staff. An expected influx of affluent new residents, preferably young families, is conceived of as future drivers of the region.³ The idea of creating a “strong” population center in the south is not new: a national plan from 1970 aims for an increase of one million Jews to the south, and recent strategic plans simply sustains this original vision.⁴

Finally, as we shall see, while neither spatial plans nor visions directly deal with the conflict, the Bedouin presence is the named or unnamed Other of the Zionist enterprise.

Method and Results

This study has been informed by critical discourse analysis (Jäger and Maier 2009). Initial themes were developed by reviewing the selected material in relation to themes from other studies with settler-colonial contexts—for instance, looking for statements on the relationship between the Bedouin and the Jewish groups, or explicit statements on the meaning of settling the Naqab. More themes were then developed in an abductive process of moving between literature and analysis, allowing new insights, iteratively pointing back to other or new studies. The analysis has, moreover, been informed by observations, interviews, and informal conversations taking place during frequent visits to the Naqab as part of a wider research project, between the years 2017–2021. The time frame of this study is limited to materials produced between the years 2000–2020. The accelerated settlement vision for the Naqab began during the late 1990s, at the same time as the future community settlements were being civilized by the Or movement (many started as military outposts, but have gradually become “regular” villages). The Or movement is a settlement organization, that was founded in 2002, as noted. This frame also roughly corresponds to the preparation and publication of a number of formal statutory and strategic plans.

Audiovisual and Textual Sources

The core material for analysis has been 23 videos, addressing the construction of new settlements in the Naqab, published on the YouTube channel of the Or movement (either in English language or subtitled). The videos are on average short, under five minutes, with views-per-video varying from a few hundred to a couple of thousand. Thus, the videos are not chosen for their impact, but as a representation of an ongoing narrative. In addition, videos from the YouTube channels “KKL-JNF World Wide” and “JNF-USA” were included when they dealt either specifically with the visions or with the new settlements of the Naqab. Videos are oftentimes cross-published on the three channels, supporting an impression of three organizations with overlapping and partly fuzzy boundaries. The analysis was expanded to include material covering “development visions” from the JNF-KKL (“Israel 2040”), the JNF-USA (“Blueprint Negev”), and the Or Movement (“Israel 2048”) and contextualized by the above statutory and strategic spatial plans. The source material was retrieved online: for “Israel 2040” vision it was the KKL-JNF English version website and a 2019 KKL-JNF summary report on “Israel 2040” (English), for “Blueprint Negev” it was the JNF-USA website.⁵

“Israel 2040” is a national program launched in 2019 in which 120,000 Israelis are to be relocated from the central areas to the Naqab, over the course of time, resulting in a population growth of 1.5 million people. The core strategy is to create a growth-engine region by attracting residents of high socioeconomic status, trained in the tech-industry.⁶ It moreover calls for state subsidies for residents wishing to relocate—a political reform that was recently realized when the Israeli government proposed a plan of subsidies directed toward potential homebuyers in the Naqab (Malchi 2021). According KKL-JNF, the “Israel 2040” vision is a “reality-changing work of putting ‘contemporary Zionism’ into practice.” JNF-USA’s “Blueprint Negev” and its Galilean counterpart “Go North” are similarly organized around the idea of southern and northern growth engines, through the immigration of 500,000 new residents. Specific programs focus on the Bedouin group. These aim to achieve economic growth through higher education and subsequent “modernization” and integration of the Bedouin into the labor market.⁷ When presented in 2005, the “Blueprint Negev” included the revitalization of Beersheva and a vision of the establishment of 25 new settlements in the Naqab. These visions thus harmonize with formal plans, in particular the “Negev 2015” and the recent “Beersheva Metropolitan 2030” plan.

The Seven Settlements

Or began as an organization that established communities on the ground, without legal permits. Over the years, they have shifted tactics from on-the-ground constructions to policy work and the illegal settlements have simultaneously, step-by-step, been legalized and formalized into legal community settlements (Manski 2010). Or has created eight settlements, out of which seven are located in the Naqab: Sansana, Merhav Am, Be’er Milka, Givot Bar, Carmit, Eliav, and Chiran (still under construction) (Israel 2048 website n.d.). Sansana (Figure 2) is built partly on the West Bank and formally belongs to the Har Hevron Regional Council, which is organizing West Bank settlements in the Hebron hills. The Or settlements have been established or initiated in collaboration with JNF and other state or semistate agencies, also involved in the establishment of Sheizaf, a combined secular-and-religious community village under construction, established by government decision in 2013 and planned to house 400 families, and the expansion or renewal of Har Amasa, a kibbutz-turned-moshav in the Yatir forest and Retamim, a depopulated kibbutz 40 km south of Beersheva. Notably, as a rule, the settlements have been built as illegal outposts, guarded by dedicated seed groups, waiting to be formalized by the joint force of various major Zionist institutions and governmental bodies. The Or movement is not formally affiliated with the West Bank settler movement, however the village Merhav Am was constructed in collaboration with Amana, the settler movements operational branch. This information is not to be found on the Or website, indicating that Or wishes to be kept at a discursive distance. Or has, moreover, been assisting settlers who were forced to move from Gaza, when the Israeli state withdrew all settlements in 2005.

Fig 2. The community settlement Sansana is built partly on the West Bank. It belongs to the Har Hevron Regional Council, which is organizing West Bank settlements in the Hebron hills. Next to the synagogue is a bomb shelter. Photo: Johanna Adolfsson 2021.

Overview of Results

In brief, the analysis shows that Jewish families are encouraged to relocate to the rural peripheries by a variety of narratives, speaking to both necessity and benefits from settling in the peripheries, from security of the nation, to romanticized notions of “quality of life.” These encouragements are further enforced by allusions to a close-to-mythological pioneering past, referencing the achievement of the early Zionists, whilst redressed as an updated, high-tech Zionism “for the next generation.” The narratives are built around a number of themes, crisscrossing across the narratives and adjusted to different audiences: notions of family values, getting out of the “rat race,” pioneer spirit, religious conviction, territorial strategy, and individual action are the most poignant. A distinct narrative centered on the promise of community runs through all themes. This is signaled by invitations to becoming part of something, the promise of a meaningful life and the opportunity to make history. Spatially, these fulfillments are realized in secluded villages, generally organized as community settlements.⁸ In the following section, I will discuss these themes and narratives over three main themes: the updated pioneer, the secluded suburbia, and self-indigenization in the “undisputed” space.

The analysis also shows that discourses of the organizations are constructed differently: the KKL-JNF’s “Israel 2040” draws heavily on a new cultural trope of Israel as the “start-up nation” (the new national virtue, embodying the neoliberal ethos of “the entrepreneur” and, in particular, the entrepreneur in the high-tech sector), while the general narrative of the Or movement is closer to a “boots on the ground” attitude. Their self-narrative is spun around a specific pioneer spirit: the founding narrative is that of a group of friends trekking the peripheries with “the mission to determine what Zionism meant for the next generation.”⁹ The visions, however, come together in the joint discourse in which “settling the Negev” is both a fulfillment of pioneer ideals and an economic strategy of establishing a new region of high-tech development.

Settling the Negev With Old and New Pioneers

In a 2019 JNF-USA video, Russell Robinson, JNF-USA CEO, is placed in front of an office wall, decorated with a framed poster from circa 1940. The poster depicts a blond, muscular, young man with rolled-up sleeves and a hatchet (Figure 3). The text reads, “A nation reborn on its ancestral soil.”¹⁰ The classic pioneer aesthetic is used as an invitation to join the movement and help build Israel. In a video from 2014, viewers are told about their place in history:

[…] 70 years ago, the Karen Keyemet LeIsrael-JNF declares its plan to revive the Negev desert and starts establishing new communities in the south to prevent the separation of the Negev from the Jewish state to be established in 1948, a process to continue for years to come. The mission and the vision of populating the Land of Israel are the driving force in the heart of those involved in the creation and development of this land. Today, right now, the need for further populating efforts in the Negev and Galilee is greater than ever before. This is what we need you for. You are the Montefiore [sir Moses Montefiore] and Rothschilds of the 21^st century.¹¹

Fig 3. “A nation reborn on its ancestral soil,” designed by Otte Wallish, New York ca. 1940.

In a video published in 2013 by JNF-USA, Roni Flamer, CEO and co-founder of the Or movement, refers to the construction of Carmit as “facing the next face in the establishment of Israel.” Carmit (Figure 4) was built with the American diaspora in mind:

The American community is playing a very large, very great role in this big operation. We are now facing the next phase of the establishment of Israel. It’s a huge operation. You need as much people, as much energy, as much resources as you can get.¹²

Fig 4. Part of the new Jewish community settlement Carmit. Photo: Johanna Adolfsson 2021.

Similarly, the community settlement Merhav Am was built in collaboration with various governmental bodies. In a video from 2016, the residents are described as “the first dreamers,” who decided to “realize Ben Gurion’s dream of settling the Negev.”¹³ The inauguration ceremony of this village was attended by the Prime Minister.¹⁴ Moreover, in another video from 2016, famous U.S. television-host Larry King advocates for the Or Movement. He introduces the organization as “the pioneers of our time:”

Israel was built by local leaders that have come to the inhabited area of the desert or the swamp of the nascent State of Israel back when there was nothing but a dream of vision. The people of the Or movement are the pioneers of our time and they’re working on a long-lasting process, setting goals to 2048, the 100^th anniversary of Israel.¹⁵

Or is described as social entrepreneurs working to build bridges in a fragile social structure, based on a model of cooperation and community involvement. These statements, in which settlement expansion and development is a continuation of early Zionist pioneer spirit, is indicative of the dominant narrative of settlement organizations, namely that settling in the Naqab is a new Zionist mission.

However, the settlements are built in collaboration between the Or movement and the KKL-JNF. Therefore, the modern pioneer and the Or movement must be understood in conjunction with the KKL-JNF discourse of start-up entrepreneur spirit. The new pioneers of the Naqab are not the pioneers of Ben Gurion. Instead, this pioneering spirit is a rebranded, high-tech, “start-up-Zionism.” This is most evident in the KKL-JNF discourse of “Israel 2040.” A quote on the KKL-JNF website introducing the program establishes high-tech as modern Zionism:

Israel 2040 is the 21^st century version of KKL-JNF’s initial mandate to redeem and develop the land. In fact, the organization’s new challenge is to forge a connection throughout the country between the land, society and technology” and moreover, the ambition of the “Israel 2040” as ”expanding the borders of “Startup Nation” to the Galilee and Negev.¹⁶

Similar wording is found in a public infographic document from JNF-USA on a fundraising campaign called the “Billion Dollar Roadmap”¹⁷: the historic establishment of the JNF along with the current project is, in the same breath, described both as a “start-up” and as continuation on the legacy of Theodore Herzl.

Another peculiar aspect is the repeated referral to “Silicon Valley,” as in a 2019 video from KKL-JNF about the “Israel 2040” and the relocation to the Galilee and Naqab:

The relocation of one and half million Israelis to the Negev and the Galilee, how will we do that? We’ll turn the peripheral regions into hubs for high-tech and technology.¹⁸

Silicon Valley is a well-known hub of the transnational, “digital nomads” of the global tech industry. Thus, the future Naqab is narrated as a place of global, tech-based mobility. While drawing on the collective symbolism created through generations, the pioneer of the new settlements is upgraded to represent something new: high-tech, transnational mobility. Implicitly, as illustrated by the endeavor to “expand the borders of the Start-up Nation” as quoted on the KKL-JNF website, these are the characteristics of modern Israel. Here, the “next generation Zionism,” or “start-up Zionism,” merges with the “neo-Zionism” of the West Bank settlers. Interestingly, and put in relation to Ram’s analysis of the new pioneer invented by Gush Emunim, the dominant discourse of the Or movement and JNF-KKL is that of the new(er) pioneer and the suburban Naqab as a contemporary space for this historic frontier mission. The emphasis on high-tech is moreover interesting as it makes spatial distance and seclusion of suburbia possible while remaining transnational. To some degree, high-tech lessens the importance of geographic location. Curiously, it is this precise “flattening” of space that therefore enables the settler-colonial territorialization of the “next generation”-Zionism materialized in the Naqab community settlements. This combination narrates the colonization as an apolitical endeavor through the making of a mission that is at once national-territorial and inherently (digitally) “spaceless.” Finally, this paper does not claim to provide an economic analysis. It is worthwhile to note that in spite of the intention to secure regional development via the high-tech sector, most of these jobs are still located in the central regions, and the investment in the sector might actually have caused an increased uneven development between the center and the periphery (Maggor and Frenkel 2022).

Quality-of-life Colonialism: Gated Communities of Suburban Seclusion

While some settlements are specifically religious (for instance Merhav Am), religion is largely toned down in the external communication of the settlements. Instead, potential newcomers are encouraged by promises of a romanticized experience and an increased “quality of life.” This specific quality is made up of family values and in particular through a combination of family values and pioneer spirit. These values are recurrently constructed with symbols representing the pioneering spirit or the American “Wild West.” They seem to aim to invoke a “doer mentality,” tying in to romantic, frontier imaginations and, importantly, to imaginations of the nuclear family as its embodiment. The most explicit example of this is a KKL-JNF video edited into the style of an old-fashioned newsreel, showing horses pulling a plow through dry soil. This video is directed to the Jewish diaspora of Australia, as the JNF-West Australia has donated money to the settlement Merhav Am. The narrator turns to a woman named Alison, a mother of five and senior resident of Merhav Am:

Let’s take a short journey in time, back to the beginning. It all began in 2001 when six young families decided to realize Ben Gurion’s vision to settle the Negev. They chose one of the most challenging locations, in the heart of the desert. […] All truly great things started with a dream. Remember the dreams of the people of Merhav Am? The Or movement dreamt of bringing 2 million people to the Negev within 30 years, the Regional Council head dreamt of establishing additional communities in the Negev, and Allison, well, her dream was a bit more modest: “It’s a small dream relatively speaking, it is to have a place for my kids to play, a little bit of green, maybe some trees, some shade, we are after all in the desert, beautiful playgrounds and noise of children and a place for them to play.¹⁹

What emerges is a stereotyped gendered dualism of female care and masculine conquest. Through these tropes, the Naqab is construed as a space of reproduction: families are often represented by mothers with children, young couples and couples in general, weddings, happiness and access to playgrounds, green grass and parks. A 2017 video summarizes the success of a seed group in Mitzpe Ramon with “32 residents, 8 couples, 2 weddings, 3 young families and 2 on the way.”²⁰ Yet another video wishes a happy New Year from families across the settlement in the Naqab and Galilee:

Wishes for a Sweet New Year from families who moved to the Negev & Galilee. A year of love, success, blooming. A year of freedom, dreams come true, happiness. A year of family, bliss, new experiences. A year of home, prosperity” and an invitation from the OR movement founder, Roni Flamer to join the cause: “Friends, partners and visionaries, we are welcoming you and inviting you to come and live with us in the Negev and the Galilee. We are wishing you the best, happiest and healthiest year.²¹

Videos addressed at urban dwellers emphasize the chance to escape the busy city life. The videos present an alternative for a diverse audience, by a diverse selection of interviewees: single women, rabbis, students, newlyweds, and mothers. Moving to the Naqab is presented as a chance to get out of the rat race and to be part of a community while maintaining the diversity of urbanity. Occasionally, interview subjects speak about a relocation to Beer Sheva, not to the rural community settlements. However, the multiple overlaps between the settlement organizations and the crisscrossing of themes across the analyzed material suggests that it is reasonable to talk about an overarching discourse addressing the full enterprise of “settling the Negev.” This enterprise aims at establishing a settler identity connected to the land. For this purpose, the Naqab as a desert is foregrounded by use of collective imagined geographies of what the desert represents. In 2013, Or movement founder Ofir Fisher was interviewed on the news channel i24:

[…] when we started in ‘99 and we established the first town in the Negev 20 years after no new communities [had been] established there and it was literally a desert not only by the climate but also a desert of people, desert of bodies and entities that are looking into this area and trying to create a difference. And we came and we started to rebrand this area to establish new towns, to bring some new life to this area […].²²

In several videos, the desolated, barren nature is portrayed as a challenge, as expressed by a man describing the construction of his settlement as taking place in “literally a desert” and repeated referrals to the “challenges of the desert” or “the heat of the desert” in several videos expressing the success of previous “pioneers.”²³ These masculine hardships are contrasted by female romanticism, for instance the young woman framing her decision to relocate as “love story.”

“I have a love story with the Negev. I came from Chicago to Beer Sheva and I found many friends, a great nightlife and a supportive community.”²⁴

Thus, while the formal strategic and statutory plans establish the urban development of the expanded Beersheva region as a national aim, it is not an urban life that is dominating the discourse expressed to the potential newcomer. Instead, the promised future is largely a suburban life, characterized by a close-knit community and family values. It is reasonable to assume that the English-speaking or subtitled material is addressed to a North American audience as at least one of the Naqab settlements (Carmit) is constructed with this particular group of immigrants in mind. It is quite possible that the allusion to North American suburbia exercises a certain attraction for non-American diasporans as well, as the quintessential American suburb is a well-known cultural trope, a collective symbol representing family, security, greenery, and individualism with community. It is this precise promise that critical scholarship respectively suggests naturalizes ethnic separation in the settler-colonial project (see for example Veracini 2012; Peck 2011; Allegra 2013; Newman 2017b for the Israeli context).

With one exception, the new settlements are constructed as community settlements. While being an object of legal and political debate, these are practicing vetting of who is allowed to live in the community, making it possible to construct Jewish-only spaces. Broadly, these forms of vetting, which are also practiced in acceptance to kibbutzim and moshavim, create not only a Jewish space, but a certain form of normative Jewish space, discriminating against subjects not fulfilling normative standards of living and health, including mental health (Charney and Palgi 2013). The welcomed characteristics are signaled in discourse by statements of increased quality of life achieved through community and nuclear family, leaving little doubt that these suburban spaces are bastions of heterosexual family reproduction.

The previous quote also well illustrates the settler need to fill the space of the formal state territory with bodies of the settler nation.

The Naqab as Undisputed Territory

The discourse is spun around yet another theme, namely the repeated insurance that the Naqab is undisputed.²⁵ In a 2016 video, Ofir Fisher explain to the viewers that settling in the Naqab is “a mission within the consensus, something indisputable which everyone can unite around.”²⁶ Thus, the Naqab is narrated both as an area in need of defense and a haven from political conflict where the secluded suburban community settlements become safe areas in a turbulent region—to wit, because the Naqab is it not at all undisputed! In fact, the conflict is a key driver in the settlement movement. According to a city planner involved in the development of the “Beersheva Metropolitan 2030” plan, the overarching aim of establishing a metropolitan area in the northern Naqab has been, and remains, a will to hold back Bedouin expansion.²⁷

There are two aspects to this notion. First, the Naqab is represented as an alternative to the occupied Palestinian Territories. Settling in the Naqab is understood as a less politically sensitive move, suiting the international reputation of the Or movement and the JNF (although, as recent events have shown, the JNF in Israel has made a strong political turn and are now explicit in their purchases of Palestinian lands on the West Bank).²⁸ This discourse is partly shaped in relation to the events in Gaza 2005, after Israel formally withdrew from the strip and dismantled 21 Israeli settlements. Many of the Gaza settlers then moved to settlements on the West Bank and some to newly constructed settlements or towns in the Naqab (Manski 2010). In this light, the Naqab offers a space for fulfilling the pioneer imperative without exposing oneself to the uncertainties and potential traumas of settling in Palestinian areas. The undisputed Naqab offers a temporary haven from the violence interwoven in the settler-colonial structure, the “settler trauma,” a rupture with the safety implied as a promise in the new settlement colony (Veracini 2010). Thus, although much of the discourse is spun around the Naqab as a desert landscape and as such, as an empty place of unrealized potential, in this discourse, this is not empty land but undisputed land. The referral to the Naqab as undisputed is not as much a claim that the space is empty as it is a claim that the space is fair and free of conflict. The statement of undisputed necessitates an opposite situation, which is likely the unnamed occupation of the Palestinian territories. Curiously, in the visual material (YouTube videos and illustrations in printed material and websites), the occupied Palestinian Territories are invisible. With very few exceptions, illustrations simply depict the state of Israel as covering the full area. The occupation is nonetheless present as that to which the Naqab serves as an undisputed alternative (see Figure 1).

Secondly, in an apparent contradiction, potential donors and philanthropists are addressed with a discourse spun around the narrative of national security, constructed around words such as “borders,” “strategy,” and “necessity.” In a video labeled “The Or movement Main Movie” from 2011, viewers are informed about the mission:

“We [the Or movement] have taken on a major endeavor to change the paradigm within Israel to ensure the integrity of its borders. Our goal is to enlist hundreds of thousands of Israelis to build their lives and futures in the Negev and Galilee. We are working to strengthen existing communities in these areas and to create new towns in strategic locations.”²⁹

Militarism and alarmism color this discourse. Thus, the Naqab is simultaneously referred to as both “undisputed” and as a “frontier,” implied also in the frequent use of the symbol of the pioneer. This suggests an ambivalence in terms of the character of this frontier. The pioneer is prompted to lead the way into the unknown, but are at the same time ensured of the legitimacy of the mission, as the frontier is within the formal territory of the state. The pioneer is constituted both in relation to an external enemy (Palestine) and an internal (Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab).

We can understand this contradiction as an expression of self-indigenization, where the undisputed nature of the space flips the narrative from settlers taking over land to settlers being the natives who has to protect their rightful space. Nicola Perugini noticed this phenomenon in the discourse of the 2005 Gaza disengagement, and Michael Feige noticed similar tendencies among the residents moving to Merhav Am (he specifically noticed how they narrated their settlement as an act of “returning”). Yet another aspect of contrasting the Bedouins (many of whom self-identify as Palestinians, see for example Tatour 2019) with the West Bank Palestinians is that the Bedouins, drawing on centuries of racist constructions of Indigenous people as almost part of (the conquered) nature, can become a representation of desert authenticity in the settler narrative, a form of indigeneity that can be transferred to the settler community (Feige 2009; Perugini 2019).

Conclusion

The Naqab is patched with gated communities: kibbutzim, moshavim, and community settlements, outlined in central planning as a new metropolitan region and territorialized in a number of ways as Jewish-only, normative suburban enclosures (Lehavi 2016). These spaces are part of a strategy aimed at creating ethnically separated enclaves, but largely veiled as a neutral, apolitical choice. In the narrative of the “undisputed” land, the JNF and Or movement settlements become safe havens and places of refuge, reminding us about Veracini’s notion of the fundamental similarities between the settler-colonial enterprise and suburbia (Veracini 2012). However, compared with the West Bank and Galilee, the development of a suburban space across the Naqab is not (yet) primarily driven by market forces, but remains driven by ideological concerns of settling this space. These tiny communities, often little more than a collection of temporary houses, moreover, have little in common with the Fordist American suburban tropes. This notwithstanding, they are branded as such and their fundamental appeal is generated from this Americanized narrative. In these spaces, a self-indigenized identity to the land can be generated, which is a key aspect to settler colonialism.

The frontier narrative is constructed with the classical trope of the highly gendered pioneer; the female pioneer as close to nature, but absent of the Other and of the violence that in contrast is found in the male pioneer, if only as a looming threat in the background. The desert with all its deep biblical symbolism and its reinterpreted Zionist mythology becomes a space for reproduction of the heteronormative family. Thus, besides representing an even more “belated settler society” than the prestate Yishuv (Shafir 2018), the discourse on settling the Naqab is conspicuously similar to classic frontier tropes. At the same time, the narrative is constructed in relation to time- and place-specific features: the historical roots of the Jewish people surface in the discourse through the use of the idiom of “return,” as in the Gaza disengagement of 2005 and in the making of Merhav Am. Moreover, the narrative is updated in relation to the new national ethos of Israel as the “start-up Nation,” which encompasses both a narrative of entrepreneurial, high-tech spirit and financial investments from the state into the tech sector. Finally, the narrative is constructed in relation to another frontier, which enables the Naqab narrative to offer a less overtly politized frontier alternative. This scalar interplay, arguably, is one of the more powerful features of the settlement project. Future research would benefit from investigating this aspect more closely in other geographical contexts.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Mekonnen Tesfahuney, Joseph Getzoff and Patricia Lorenzoni for comments, as well as the editor and the three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ “A new community changing the face of Israel,” YouTube video, 4: 31, Or Movement, 4 July 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_J7aJFEZyk&t=219s.

² The word settlement is translated in Hebrew to either hityashvut or hitnahalut, where the first normally refers to settlements inside the Green Line and the second to settlements on the West Bank. According to Liron Shani (2018), the latter signals a self-image as bearer of Zionist legacy while the former is normally located on the left side of the political spectrum.

³ Negev 2015 and DOP 4/14/23 share a vision in which the new Beersheba metropolitan area is connected to the central core with networks of infrastructure. Interview with city planner from the private sector (March 2021). This information if also found in the Beer Sheva Metropolitan Plan 2030 and in the Israel 2040 vision.

⁴ “National Industrial Zone in the Negev” (1972) in Teschner et al. (2010).

⁵ The summary was retrieved from the KKL 2040 website found at https://hanof.kkl.org.il/utilities/2040_Take%20part%20in%20creating%20Israel’s%20future_Marketing_joint.html.

⁶ Since the 1980s, the idea of growth hubs as opposed to equally distributed development has dominated Israeli planning policy. Tech developments in the “peripheries” are supported by the state (Maggor and Frenkel 2022).

⁷ A flagship project within this sphere is the agricultural integration development project “Wadi Attir.” This is an experimental farm constructed as an education platform aimed at exploring integration between traditional Bedouin practices and agriculture, for example sheep and goat herding on afforested lands. The project is initiated by the Sustainability Lab, a U.S.- based nonprofit organization and representatives of the municipality of the Bedouin town Hura. It is mainly funded by the State of Israel through a variety of ministries and by the Jewish National Fund. It is also funded by private, mainly United States, donors.

⁸ Part of the work done by KKL-JNF and Or movement are directed to rebuilding and “strengthening” neighborhoods in development towns. This type of work, however, is not functioning as a representation of the imagined geography produced in the community villages.

⁹ Or movement website. n.d. “Our Mission: Building the Future of Israel.” https://or1.org.il/english/our-mission/.

¹⁰ What’s Your why?” YouTube video, 1:04, Jewish National Fund, 2 December 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMQHZMSdOfQ&list=PLdngcZZmFOwtWq292Ens5zTZaueAtPV5I&index=13.

¹¹ “A new community changing the face of Israel,” YouTube video, 4:31, Or Movement, 4 July 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_J7aJFEZyk&t=219s.

¹² “Carmit Blueprint Negev,” YouTube video, 2:22, JNF-USA, 14 May 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSWXUV-FLPQ.

¹³ “Meet the Determined Pioneers of Merchav Am in the Negev,” YouTube video, 5:11, KKL JNF Worldwide, 22 September 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUiCLBkzvlA.

¹⁴ Or movement website, n.d. “About Merchav Am,” https://or1.org.il/english_settlements/merchav-am/. See also Government of Israel, “PM Sharon’s Address at the Event at Adiel-Ashelim Village,” 21 November 2004, https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/speach22111.

¹⁵ “Larry King about Or Movement’s 2048 Vision,” YouTube video, 1:10, Or movement, 27 October 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaGY96PHdBk&list=PLdngcZZmFOwsm5zyul0jcadSs3E98lc2x&index=2&t=70s.

¹⁶ KKL-JNF website, “Israel 2040—The JNF is building the land of tomorrow,” n.d. https://www.kkl-jnf.org/people-and-environment/community-development/israel-2040/.

¹⁷ Jewish National Fund, “The Future is Beautiful. One-billion-dollar roadmap for the next generation.” https://usa.jnf.org/assets/pdf/thebilliondollarroadmap_digital_v-1.pdf.

¹⁸ “Israel 2040: Turning the Negev and Galilee into Hi-Tech Hubs—an Animation,” YouTube video, 1:08, KKL-JNF Worldwide. 8 December 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olc3bMcU1Ro&t=8s.

¹⁹ “Meet the Determined Pioneers of Merchav Am in the Negev,” YouTube video, 5:11, KKL JNF Worldwide, 22 September 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUiCLBkzvlA.

²⁰ “Karnei Ramon 2017 Accomplishments,” YouTube video, 1:32, Or Movement, 1 January 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Jnfgy1CjM.

²¹ “Happy New year from the Or Movement,” YouTube video, 1:59, Or movement, 10 September 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_mCqtCqnng&list=PLdngcZZmFOwsm5zyul0jcadSs3E98lc2x&index=5.

²² “The Or movement—Ofir Fisher i24 Interview,” YouTube video, 7:24, Or movement, 13 November 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvlZ5zzb9m8&list=PLdngcZZmFOwsm5zyul0jcadSs3E98lc2x&index=6.

²³ See, for example, the above video and “Meet the Determined Pioneers of Merchav Am in the Negev,” YouTube video, 5:11, KKL JNF Worldwide, 22 September 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUiCLBkzvlA.

²⁴ The Or movement Main Movie,” YouTube video, 5:22, Or movement, 12 September 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMiCBgRLjuU&t=7s.

²⁵ “The Or movement Main Movie,” YouTube video, 5:22, Or movement, 12 September 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMiCBgRLjuU&t=7s.

²⁶ “Larry King about Or Movement’s 2048 Vision,” YouTube video, 1:10, Or movement, 27 October 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaGY96PHdBk&list=PLdngcZZmFOwsm5zyul0jcadSs3E98lc2x&index=2&t=70s.

²⁷ Interview with planner from the private sector (2021).

²⁸ Peace Now, “KKL-JNF and its role in settlement expansion,” report, April 2020, https://peacenow.org.il/en/settler-national-fund-keren-kayemeth-leisraels-acquisition-of-west-bank-land.

²⁹ The Or movement Main Movie,” YouTube video, 5:22, Or movement, 12 September 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMiCBgRLjuU&t=7s.