ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the 'struggle over place' as expressed by the Bedouin Arabs of the Naqab/Negev. It explains the land conflict in Israel as a manifestation of the struggle over 'contested spaces', with all that suggests regarding the planning and organization of the space. The chapter analyses the spatiality of Zionist ideology in the Negev and the Bedouin Arabs' exclusion from it through a description of the Israeli institutional legal and planning mechanisms for 'Judaizing'. The process of 'Judaization' upon which the settlement of the State of Israel is based, is driven by the worldview that sees the Israeli/Palestinian space as 'belonging' to the Jewish communities around the world, and the purpose of the state as to concentrate all of these communities in the one territory. The spatial conflict in the Israeli/Palestinian context reflects the ways in which conflicting memories and narratives define borders, presence and belonging.