Imagining Zion
Subtitle: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: May 11, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 368
ISBN-13: 9780300094831
Subjects: Asian / Middle Eastern history: c 1500 to c 1900; Asian / Middle Eastern history: from c 1900 -; Colonization & independence; Jewish studies; 20th century; c 1800 to c 1900; Religion; History - General History; Israel; Middle East - Israel; History / Israel; General; Agricultural colonies; Colonization; History; Jews; Palestine; Zionism
Description: "This book tells the story of how Zionist colonizers planned and established nearly 700 agricultural settlements, towns, and cities from the 1880s to the present. This extraordinary activity of planners, architects, social scientists, military personnel, politicians, and settlers is inextricably linked to multiple contexts: Jewish and Zionist history, the Arab/Jewish conflict, and the diffusion of European ideas to non-European worlds." "S. Ilan Troen demonstrates how professionals and settlers continually innovated plans for both rural and urban frontiers in response to the competing demands of social and political ideologies and the need to achieve productivity, economic independence, and security in a hostile environment. In the 1930s, security became the primary challenge, shaping and even distorting patterns of growth." "Not until the 1993 Oslo Accords, with prospects of compromise and accommodation, did planners again imagine Israel as a normal state, developing like other modern societies. Troen concludes that if Palestinian Arabs become reconciled to a Jewish state, Israel will reassign priority to the social and economic development of the country and region."--Jacket.