ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have outlined major processes shaping Israel’s industrial geography during the last two decades. An analysis integrating these processes within alternative scenarios of continued economic stagnation or renewed growth could have served as a solid basis for forecasting future trends and formulating industrialisation plans for the 1990s. However, changing external conditions strongly hint that the 1990s may in some respects present a break from past trends. First, relations between Israel and her neighbouring Arab countries, which have been in a constant turmoil for the last century, are again high on the agenda. Are there any chances for the establishment of political and economic ties between Israel and its neighbours? Will the status of the occupied territories change? Second, a new wave of mass-migration coming from the former USSR (about 350,000 persons in the years 1990 and 1991 alone) has shaken up economic and spatial processes, as well as the perceptions of economic and physical planners.
