ABSTRACT
This chapter interprets as a mechanism by which some of the social and cultural qualities of those urban settlements are being transformed. Israel has not been the scene of a "gold rush," nor of the discovery of any important oil fields or mineral deposits which propelled governments to formulate planning policies for frontier areas. The cultural tools by which the holy sites were consecrated in Israel's development towns are part of the indigenous Moroccan traditions of maraboutism and hagiolatry. The folk veneration of saints and establishment of their sanctuaries have provided many Middle Eastern Jews in Israel with a set of cultural means to deal with their situation. Essentially around the workings of local activism and local government, this mechanism has been described variously as interest articulation, making demands. The initial mechanism for the construction of development towns, then, was that of formal decision making: a process which involved the formal proceedings and decrees of a highly centralized government machinery.
