Taking Space Seriously

Law, Space and Society in Contemporary Israel

This perceptive study investigates the different ways in which the state deals with various social groups through the mechanisms of space. By means of case studies involving three social groups within Israel's multicultural society - the Sephardim, the Bedouin-Arab minority and the ultra-Orthodox community of Jerusalem - the different roles played by political space in legal analysis are revealed and analyzed. Issachar Rosen-Zvi then unearths the unifying logic underlying the disparate legal treatment of political space, brought to light by the case studies. The law treats political space differently depending on the social group involved, an attitude that, the author argues, can be traced back to early Zionist thinking. He concludes that a reform of local government law is required, to correct the segregated system of political space and the separate and unequal distribution of political power and economic resources that accompany it.