Yael Zerubavel

Desert in the Promised Land (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

At once an ecological phenomenon and a cultural construction, the desert has varied associations within Zionist and Israeli culture. In the Judaic textual tradition, it evokes exile and punishment, yet is also a site for origin myths, the divine presence, and sanctity. Secular Zionism developed its own spin on the duality of the desert as the romantic site of Jews' biblical roots that inspired the Hebrew culture, and as the barren land outside the Jewish settlements in Palestine, featuring them as an oasis of order and technological progress within a symbolic desert.

Yael Zerubavel tells the story of the desert from the early twentieth century to the present, shedding light on romantic-mythical associations, settlement and security concerns, environmental sympathies, and the commodifying tourist gaze. Drawing on literary narratives, educational texts, newspaper articles, tourist materials, films, popular songs, posters, photographs, and cartoons, Zerubavel reveals the complexities and contradictions that mark Israeli society's semiotics of space in relation to the Middle East, and the central role of the "besieged island" trope in Israeli culture and politics.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 368
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. Dezember 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781503607606
• Artikelnr.: 56886893

Autorenporträt

Yael Zerubavel is Professor of Jewish Studies & History and the founding director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She is the author of Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (1995).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction:
chapter abstract
The introduction sets the stage for exploring the divergent meanings of the
desert as a symbolic landscape within the "spatial code" that Hebrew, and
later Israeli, culture developed. Hebrew culture foregrounded the
settlement as the key to Jewish national revival and relegated the desert
to the background. This study reverses this relation, placing the desert at
the center and setting out to examine the ambiguities underlying
desert-settlement relations. The introduction presents the historical and
thematic framework of the book. The first part addresses the duality of the
symbolic desert in the Hebrew culture of late Ottoman and Mandatory
Palestine. The second part focuses on post-1948 Israel and the concrete
Negev desert that is now included in its territory, examining the
construction of the desert within the discourses and practices of
settlement, environmentalism, and tourism, thus revealing the diverse
visions of the desert in Israeli culture.
1Desert as Historical Metaphor
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the dual meaning of the desert as a chronotope that
links space and memory. The desert plays a critical role in the biblical
exodus, as the "nonplace" set between Egypt, the land of exile, on the one
hand, and the Promised Land, on the other, and the desert is hence the site
of divine revelations and profound transitions that shaped the Israelites'
collective identity. Jewish memory views the desert as representing the
period of Jewish exile that led to the destruction of the homeland. Jewish
tradition interprets exile as a divine punishment and Zionism constructed
it as a regressive period within its decline narrative. References to the
landscape outside Jewish settlements as a desolate "desert" and a
"wasteland" underscored the redemptive mission of the Zionist settlement.
The discussion addresses the tension between these interpretations and the
use of the desert as a symbolic category.
2The Desert Mystique
chapter abstract
This chapter focuses on European Jewish immigrants' fascination with the
desert mystique. The desert appealed to European Zionist Jews as the
mythical site of origins that preserved their ancient heritage. Orientalist
images of the desert as resistant to modernity and change further
reinforced the mythical view of the desert and its Bedouin inhabitants, but
also Yemenite Jews, as inspiration for the construction of a modern Hebrew
culture and identity. A nostalgic longing for the ancient past led some
Zionist settlers and Hebrew youth to selectively adapt cultural idioms from
Palestinian Arabs and generated the hybrid "Hebrew Bedouin" identity and a
Hebrew desert lore. Other Zionist immigrants warned against the impact of
the East on the Hebrew culture. The competing attitudes to the East reveal
the Zionist Jewish settlers' ambivalence, as exiles returning to their
homeland with conflicting ideas of separateness and belonging to the Middle
East.
3Desert as the Counter-Place
chapter abstract
This chapter explores settlement discourse and its competing interpretation
of the desert as the counter-place. Early Zionist settlement narratives
allude to wide-ranging terrains such as sands, swamps, barren mountains,
and arid land as aspects of a hostile and chaotic "desert" while presenting
the Jewish settlement as an "oasis" or "island" of order, modernity, and
progress. The gendering of landscapes, the veneration of technology, and
the use of war rhetoric enhance the achievements of the Jewish settlement
in transforming its environment, and these ideas have been articulated in
literature, songs, and art. The discussion addresses the influence of
prevalent Western colonialist and modernist ideas and land-reclamation
practices on the discourse and practices of Zionist settlement. As the
national conflict in Palestine flared up in the 1930s, the discourses of
settlement and security became intertwined and played a more prominent
rolein shaping the view of the desert-settlement relations.
4The Negev Frontier
chapter abstract
After the 1948 war, the new state of Israel included the large and arid
Negev region, and the discussion shifts from the symbolic desert outside
the Jewish settlement to a concrete desert that has become an internal
Jewish frontier. Although Prime Minister Ben-Gurion championed the goal of
"making the desert bloom" and the state transferred water to the Negev, the
limited response by established Israeli Jews led to the forced settlement
of new immigrants in the desert in the 1950s and 1960s. These rural
settlements and development towns faced major hardships, and the post-1967
Jewish drive to settle the occupied territories further blurred the Negev's
status as a frontier and a periphery. Even with large areas of the Negev
designated as national parks, nature reserves, and military bases, the call
for new Jewish settlements continued, leading to experimental forms that
diversified the Negev's Jewish population.
5The Negev Bedouins
chapter abstract
The Negev's Bedouin population, greatly diminished after 1948, is the focus
of this chapter. The state relocated most Negev Bedouins to the enclosed
Siyag area, where they remained under military administration until 1966.
Since then it has pursued an urbanization plan for the fast-growing Bedouin
population in designated "Bedouin towns," yet a significant number of
Bedouins refuse to settle their land claims, preferring to remain in their
unrecognized rural villages. The government regards the so-called "Bedouin
dispersion" as the embodiment of a chaotic and subversive counter-place
while it promotes Jewish settlements in the Negev. Residents of the
unrecognized villages live in the gray zone of a semi-permanent temporary
state. The Bedouins' growing alienation, the rise of crime in the Negev,
and harsh measures by law enforcement contribute to the perception of the
Negev as the Wild South.
6Unsettled Landscapes
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the environmental discourse and its revisionist view
of desert-settlement relations. The environmental lobby acknowledges the
desert-settlement opposition but reinterprets its meaning: the desert
represents nature and the open space that must be protected from an overly
aggressive settlement drive and development projects, and from its
perception as a "national dump" for undesired, discredited, and dangerous
human and material elements. Most of the desert is designated for nature
reserves, national parks, and military bases. The environmentalists employ
salvage rhetoric and the legal recourse to defend the desert environment
from settlement development and industrial projects, while some proponents
of the settlement agenda attack their position as anti-Zionist. The
discussion highlights the contested visions of the desert and the fluidity
of the coalitions formed between the state, local authorities, the army,
the industry, tourism, and the environmental lobby in different cases.
7The Desert and the Tourist Gaze
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the discourse and practices of tourism, which offer
multiple visions of the desert that highlight its contrast with life at the
urban center and ignore the tensions between them. Sinai desert tourism
offered a popular alternative to Israeli desert tourism in the post-1967
period, yet today Eilat and the Dead Sea area are major tourist
attractions, and Negev tourism is developing. Tourist publicity highlights
the unspoiled landscape, yet offers tours of archeological sites that are
World Cultural Heritage sites, as well as a diversity of modern rural
settlements in the Negev. Tourism highlights the simple life in nature in
the open space and its spiritual dimension, but also offers a rough terrain
for adventure seekers and upscale lodgings with "pampering amenities."
Jewish desert sites perform "Bedouin hospitality" for tourists, but visits
to Bedouin towns and villages reveal rapidly changing and diverse
lifestyles in different settings.
Epilogue
chapter abstract
In the post-1967 era, the emergence of two divergent visions of Israel
reveals continuity with earlier themes and metaphors surrounding
desert-settlement relations. One advocates a return to pre-1967 borders in
exchange for peace, which led to the peace treaty with Egypt and the Oslo
agreement and advances transnational cooperation around common interests.
The second vision promotes the Jewish settlement and security agenda in the
occupied territories, embracing the view of an inherently conflictual
relation between Israel and its neighbors. The epilogue examines the
entrenchment of Israel settlement and security discourse and the growing
impact of the "besieged island" template. Israel has surrounded itself with
walls to prevent illegal entry and terrorist attacks, recreating a modern
Jewish ghetto while imposing territorial divisions and besieged islands
within the Palestinian territory. Israeli culture may also provide
alternative solutions for the negotiation of a different future in the
Middle East.