Since the
establishment of Israel, its governments have been exercising the population
dispersal policy. By doing this, they have been exerting a decisive
influence on the infrastructure and distribution of the population of the
country.
However, since the beginning of the
1990s, Israel has been undergoing a process of changes in its national
planning.
The National Master Plan No. 31
and Israel 2020 still pay lip service to a population dispersal policy,
while, in fact, the focus is on the Tel Aviv metropolitan area alone (the
Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Core area).
The National Plan (Israel 2020) is
based on three main, false, assumptions. The first is that Israel in 1967 lines
will live in an environment of peace. The second, that the Israeli population
will not live in a desert area. And the third, that Israel, as a Western
Society, will live in a western-like environment.
These three assumptions are a result
of the planners’, - themselves living in the narrow strip along the Israeli
coast, referred to in this article as the “Fata-Morgana Region”.
In this region, the Israeli society
lives a western life, and doesn’t understand, or acknowledge, that a mere 10
kilometers to the east people live by Middle Eastern standards of life. These
differ from those of the Fata-Morgana Region in large economic, religious,
nationality, cultural and moral-code gaps. Copying the Western models over to
Israel can and will endanger the country. A good example is the new policy of
concentrating the Israeli Jewish Society in one big city – the Core area.
In the Middle East, the only way to
secure and ensure the Jewish territory, is to adopt the old-yet-new policy of
population dispersal. In the present period of “twilight”, this can be the next
Zionist challenge.
This paper was also published as
the ACPR's
Policy Paper No. 42, 1998