Radical Dissent in Israel: A Review of The Independent Left in Israel, 1967-1993

Radical Dissent in Israel: A Review of The Independent Left in Israel, 1967-1993

Radical Dissent in Israel: A Review of The Independent Left in Israel, 1967-1993

By : Ran Greenstein

The Independent Left in Israel, 1967-1993: Essays in memory of Noam Kaminer (November Books, 2020).

In a review published by Haaretz two months ago, liberal Zionist historian Adam Raz asked himself smugly: Why bother writing about an esoteric group of activists who have achieved so little? The book he discussed, The Independent Left in Israel, 1967-1993, deals with a small group of dissidents who were active in a range of Israeli left-wing movements in the post-1967 period, without managing to change the nature of Israeli society or effectively challenge the increasingly oppressive direction taken by the state. 

And yet, this group raised crucial questions of analytical and political value that served to examine core aspects of history, politics, and social relations in Israel/Palestine, and continue to do so today. Among these activists was Noam Kaminer, who was involved in various progressive political initiatives since the 1970s. He died of cancer in 2014, and the collection of essays reviewed here, edited by family members and colleagues, is dedicated to his memory.

Beyond personal tributes and reminiscences, the book offers an overview of campaigns, movements, and debates that have occupied the Israeli left over the last fifty years. It is a testimony to both the vibrancy of radical ideas and to political failure: that we debate basic issues that should have been settled long ago, and we do that from a position of marginality, means that the system the left hoped to undermine is still in place. However, things are not static, progress has been made on some fronts, and it is important to document that for historical reasons and for contemporary purposes, drawing on the lessons of the past.

To appreciate all this, we first need to take a step back and look at the historical context. As was the case in many countries, the radical left emerged in 1960s Israel as part of the revival of left-wing politics in the wake of disillusionment with Soviet-style socialism on the one hand, and the rise of global solidarity with anti-colonial movements on the other. In Israel however, unlike most other places, the left was not defined primarily in relation to positions regarding social and economic issues and the redistribution of resources. Rather, the left/right divide became associated with attitudes towards the Palestinian issue, especially in the aftermath of the 1967 war and the occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Leftists in Israel were those who opposed the occupation, called for Israeli military withdrawal from the territories, protested land confiscations, house demolitions, expulsions and arrests of activists, and supported Palestinian national self-determination. Within that framework, they differed among themselves on the possible and desirable relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, as individuals and as collectives, the meanings and implications of Zionism, colonialism, Arab nationalism, and their consequences for political activism.

Aside from the Israeli Communist Party (Maki), which split in 1965 between a Jewish faction that retained the Party’s name but quickly declined after moving to the Zionist mainstream, and a majority-Arab faction, which adopted the name Rakah (New Communist List), smaller groups emerged in the course of the decade to offer a left-wing perspective. These groups operated from a position of independence from both the Soviet Union and the Israeli state. Two such groups stood out: the Israeli Socialist Organization (known as Matzpen–Compass–its monthly publication), and the New Israeli Left (known by its acronym as Siah). Both groups criticized Israeli policies and practices and sought to align themselves with global progressive forces. Matzpen offered a more radical political and theoretical critique, which gained it much notoriety in the context of the post-1967 Jewish nationalist euphoria. Siah focused less on theory and more on direct extra-parliamentary action and protest on issues of practical and immediate concern.

To varying degrees, both were reviled by the right-wing, mainstream media, and the political establishment, led at the time by the Israeli Labour Party. Matzpen in particular was regarded as being beyond the pale, not only due to its radical position but also its willingness—indeed active efforts—to wash the dirty laundry of Israeli violations of rights in public, both at home and abroad.

The early 1970s brought tensions within these groups to the fore, leading to a series of splits. Differences of theory and organizational practice resulted in breaking Matzpen up into five different groups, two of which continued to use the original name. These differences seem minor in retrospect, and were incomprehensible to observers at the time. However, they did raise a range of issues reflecting debates shaping the global left: the relations between class and national liberation, capitalism and third world movements, mass and armed struggle, and the role of Zionist ideology and practices in relations of domination, and how to confront it effectively. 

Siah also underwent fragmentation, but on different grounds, centering on the feasibility of change from within the political establishment. From its inception, it aimed to offer a better mode of political dissent to that of Matzpen, seen as extreme and oriented towards the global scene, thus incapable of reaching Israeli-Jewish public opinion. The challenge for Siah was to find a language that was less offensive to the public yet without losing its critical edge. Forming alliances with more mainstream forces was seen by some members as a way to avoid being driven to the margins and becoming irrelevant. Many of them had come from the ranks of the labor movement, especially its left-wing Mapam (the United Workers Party), and were open to adopting an electoral strategy of working together with other dissidents on the fringes of, but still within, the Israeli consensus. Radical members opposed the turn to parliamentary politics. When the majority gave up on Siah’s independent existence in 1973, some refused to join and created a new organization by the name of Shasi (Israeli Socialist Left). Prominent among them was Reuven Kaminer, father of Noam and a veteran activist who was one of the founders of Siah.

An overview introductory article by two of the book’s editors, Joel Beinin and Matan Kaminer (Noam’s son), identifies key changes in the mode of operation of the left during the period covered in the book. Such changes were the transition from tightly knit organizations such as Matzpen, to open movements organized loosely around broad-based platforms, such as Siah, and then to fronts that unite people from diverse political backgrounds on the basis of a few core demands and goals. Together with this transition, the hard-core left program, traditionally centered on questions of class and nationalism or race, was expanded to include a more explicit focus on previously marginal concerns such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and the environment.

The vanguard party model of a small number of highly committed revolutionaries (better fewer, but better) did not appeal to the constituency targeted by Siah, who were mostly students—before and after compulsory military service—whose activism was in part a response to the disciplinary institutions they were forced to inhabit. However, there was a price to pay for such reluctance to engage in organization—a loss of analytical rigor. Matzpen was big on theory and organization but small on popular appeal. Siah had greater popular support and its structures allowed more participatory involvement—you did not need to be a “professional” activist to take part—but it was weak on critical theory. It is impossible to identify any analytical contributions the movement made, as it never developed a distinct perspective on Zionism, colonialism, Third World nationalism, class and race, and so on. It was flexible on doctrine, which was good for its action-oriented activism, but without leaving much of a trace on left-wing scholarship, theory, or analysis. 

Shasi, a hybrid entity, both ideologically and organizationally, operated in a decentralized and non-authoritarian manner, further enhanced by a shift in the way progressive forces organized in the country. A wave of extra-parliamentary protest began in the late 1970s with the Peace Now movement, which was formed to pressure the Begin government to reach a peace agreement with Egypt. The success of this protest opened the way for smaller-scale mobilization on related causes, such as the Committee in Solidarity with Bir Zeit University, the Committee against the War in Lebanon, Yesh Gvul (draft resisters), Mothers against Silence, Women in Black, and others. These movements were organized as single-issue, though related, campaigns, each with a focus on one or a few aspects of the overall condition of occupation, war, and political oppression.

Many activists in more structured organizations, including Shasi and Matzpen, joined such protests as individuals. They found the bigger and more diverse crowds attracted by the new movements a more personally rewarding environment, as well as more politically useful arenas than their own insular enclaves. Inevitably, shifting resources to movements led to the demise of radical left groupuscules. In the course of the 1980s, most of them ceased to operate as distinct entities, although the core thematic issues they addressed continued to shape the movement as a whole. 

Zionism was the core issue that served to define the left from its inception. The Palestinian Communist Party of the 1920, then composed mostly of immigrants, rejected Zionism as an ideology but adopted Yishuvism, which derived its name from the Palestine Jewish community. That approach regarded the issues of Jewish immigration, settlement on the land, and institutional build-up as legitimate, as long as they did not involve direct dispossession of Arab peasants and workers. From that perspective, the Zionist movement did engage in colonial practices, but those arriving in Palestine under its flag were not tainted as individuals. 

A similar formula, distinguishing ideology from practice, was used decades later by Moshe Sneh, a prominent Zionist leader, when he moved to the left and joined the Communist Party in the 1950s: “aliyah, settlement, security, independence—these are not Zionism.” Post-1948 Israel was different in a crucial respect from Palestine under British rule, however. Jewish immigration and settlement were no longer voluntary activities. They had become policies enforced by a state power that organized mass immigration and land confiscation to displace and replace the indigenous population. This state used military force to remove Palestinians, take away their land, and subject those left behind to social and political marginalization. Zionism as an ideology, in other words, became a legitimizing framework for practices that entrenched the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian refugees and exclusion of survivors as second-class citizens. The ideology and practices could no longer be separated, if they ever could.

The above statement does not have clear implications for political strategy. The rejection of Zionism as an ideology and a set of institutions and practices does not necessitate rejecting Zionists as potential partners in progressive causes. This is because some Zionists (a minority for sure) regard Jews as a national group with the right to self-determination in Israel—as a “Jewish Democratic State”—yet may oppose some Israeli practices as racist, such as the expropriation of land, “targeted assassinations,” suppression of dissent, and the siege on Gaza. Should the focus be on adherence to an abstract ideology or support for concrete practices? How important is the ideological dimension in practical politics? Finally, what is the relationship between Zionism as a movement and its greatest achievement, the State of Israel, its existence and its policies? Could we perhaps bypass the question of Zionism altogether by using concepts such as post-Zionism or a-Zionism?

During the period covered in the book, Israeli anti-Zionists were in no position to be selective about potential partners. They welcomed opportunities to cooperate with people opposed to oppressive state practices, regardless of their stated ideology. Opposition to such cooperation always came from the other side, as pointed out by the veteran Matzpen member, Ehud Ein-Gil.[1] It may be difficult to appreciate this point today, when “Zionist” is used to refer to supporters of Israeli war crimes and violation of rights. In the context of Israeli protest movements however, an explicit rejection of the Zionist label was, and still largely is, a liability. Negotiating the issue was not easy.   

The option chosen by Shasi, as discussed by member Ephraim Davidi,[2] was to recognize certain colonial aspects of the Zionist settlement project, historically, and particularly after 1967, without challenging Israel’s existence as a legitimate political entity. Despite its tainted historical origins, the argument went, Israel became a state like all others, and the Jewish majority of its population was a group entitled to national self-determination. Withdrawing from its post-1967 territories, together with granting equality to its Palestinian citizens, and forming a Palestinian state alongside it, would allow Israel to overcome the colonial burden. This position, which became known as the two-state solution (“two states for two peoples”), was then considered radical. It formed the basis for Shasi joining Rakah and civil society forces in 1977, in a new political alliance, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash). It was an initiative undertaken by Palestinian citizens in the wake of a new wave of land expropriations by the state, resulting in the Day of the Land uprising of March 1976 and in enhanced Arab political mobilization. The background for these developments is discussed in Odeh Bisharat’s article in the book.[3] 

In contrast to Hadash, radical anti-Zionists saw the two-state solution as deeply flawed. It failed to address the rights of Palestinian refugees, victims of the 1948 Nakba, and it retained Israel as a Jewish-Zionist state in which land, jobs, and social policies were structurally biased in favor of Jews, not only those already living in the country but potential immigrants as well, at the expense of Palestinians. In other words, removing one aspect of the problem (the 1967 occupation) was a necessary but insufficient condition for a solution. It was not a territorial conflict between states which could be resolved by shifting borders, but a colonial condition that could only be resolved by dismantling Zionist structures and policies such as the Law of Return, the Jewish National Fund, the Jewish Agency, settlement agencies, and the Histadrut, formed as an exclusionary union to guarantee employment to Jewish immigrants.

Hadash opened its doors to Jews who opposed the occupation and supported equality for all citizens but regarded an explicit rejection of Zionism as a step too far. In particular, it wanted to recruit Mizrahim, socially- and culturally-marginalized Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, as partners in a class alliance that would overcome ethno-national divisions. The Black Panthers, a Mizrahi protest movement of the early 1970s, was guaranteed a place on Hadash’s electoral list even though they brought no support from Jewish constituencies. The bulk of the front’s support, perhaps ninety-five percent of it, came from Palestinian citizens and this remained the case for decades, up to and including the formation of the Joint List in 2015, in which Hadash plays an important role.

For leftist Jews, joining Hadash provided an opportunity to work together with Palestinian activists. Alliances of students of different backgrounds in campus-based campaigns were not uncommon, as discussed by sociologist Lev Grinberg and others,[4] but they did not dismantle the boundaries between them. Palestinians usually organized in Arab Student Committees, cooperating with progressive Jews but keeping their separate structures. The key debates among them set supporters of Rakah (later Hadash) apart from more radical activists, some of whom were affiliated with the Abnaa al-Balad nationalist movement. Cooperation in such alliances meant that the Jewish left effectively gave up on the option of recruiting Arab members directly, and it remained essentially Jewish in composition and perspective. 

In addition, the movement was largely restricted to one segment of the Jewish population; relatively well-off Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern European origins, born in Israel or immigrants of similar ethnic origins from the United States of America, France, Argentina and other places. This intra-Jewish dimension was a constant source of critique both from within the left and in opposition to it. Despite a consistent record of support for progressive social policies, the left never managed to attract support from Mizrahim, with the exception of a few Iraqi-Jewish activists and intellectuals who had been affiliated with radical circles before moving en masse to Israel in 1950.

It is in the field of ideas though that the left has made its real mark. Its analysis was never popular, but many of its elements, Zionism as a colonial project, the Nakba as an ethnic cleansing process, the exclusion of Arabs and Mizrahim as foundational to Israeli society, were rediscovered and widely disseminated.

Several articles in the book discuss this issue. Veteran Black Panther Reuven Abergel offers an interesting perspective on the left’s failure to address the socio-economic concerns of marginalized Jews without alienating them culturally and politically.[5] Activists appreciated the help given by Ashkenazi leftists but frequently felt patronized by them and treated as foot soldiers and potential recruits, not as fully-fledged political agents in their own right. Assimilating race and ethnicity into a class discourse is an almost-universal strategy of the left and it never works.

In any event, why should radical Mizrahim have waited for the left to offer them a place at the table instead of charting their own course of action? Some did that of course. Meir Amor tells the story of independent contacts between Mizrahi activists and Palestine Liberation Organization officials in the 1980s, bypassing the usual mediation of Ashkenazi leftists.[6] They found much in common, but the Palestinian side did not understand the thrust of the Mizrahi issue, and regarded it a problem internal to Israeli society, not of concern to outsiders. Interestingly, that initiative involved Palestinians in the diaspora, not in Israel and the Occupied Territories. It was not followed up by the formation of a viable Mizrahi Left alternative that could overcome Ashkenazi limitations in addressing Mizrahi constituencies and establishing links between them and Palestinians. At the intellectual level some such efforts were indeed undertaken, but with no sustained organizational presence. How to break the long-lasting alliance between Mizrahim and the religious-nationalist Jewish right-wing remains the biggest challenge facing the left today.

Perhaps the most interesting section of the book, by way of conclusion, is an interview with the well-known progressive journalist Amira Hass, who was involved in her youth with some of the groups mentioned above.[7] For her, the anti-Zionist left was correct in its analysis of the colonial character of Israeli society, but it missed out on a crucial Jewish point. Many settlers were refugees of persecution and the Holocaust (her own family, for example) who found themselves in an impossible situation, with their own survival dependent on the oppression of others. Other sections of the left (such as Shasi who dismissed Zionism as a thing of the past, not a current concern) ignored the Nakba’s centrality to the Palestinian experience. They supported the position of two states for two peoples, which was radical for its time but failed to offer an overall answer to the Palestinian question. The anti-Zionists did offer such an answer and gained the respect of Palestinians, but marginalized themselves at the same time among Jews, and thus remained unable to influence events. 

Indeed, from a historical perspective, the influence of the independent left was not quite so marginal after all. Its consistent support for the two-state solution did play a role in shaping public opinion favorably, eventually leading to the Oslo agreements of 1993 (the end point of the book). It is clear now that Oslo was not the breakthrough that was anticipated at the time, and it led, instead, to intensified oppression. The extent to which this could have been seen in advance, not just in retrospect, is a matter for a separate discussion. 

On the internal Israeli front, ironically, it is the liberal-left Zionism celebrated by Adam Raz that has become increasingly irrelevant, dropping to its lowest level of support ever, with five percent of the votes in the March 2020 elections. Meanwhile, the Joint List, which most activists and contributors to the book support as a continuation and expansion of their efforts, has surged ahead to become the most powerful voice of the left in the country. Crucially, it is a force led by Palestinians, not by progressive Jews; an important transformation that will shape political mobilization in years to come.   

It is in the field of ideas though that the Left has made its real mark. Its analysis was never popular, but many of its elements, Zionism as a colonial project, the Nakba as an ethnic cleansing process, the exclusion of Arabs and Mizrahim as foundational to Israeli society, were rediscovered and widely disseminated. Such issues frequently arose without acknowledgment of their intellectual-activist origins, with the rise of the New Historians of the 1980s and 1990s, and other critical approaches since. The academic and cultural discourses on Palestine in Israeli society have changed, even if the political practices applied towards it have not. The main challenge, of course, is to translate radical analysis into practical politics and to mobilize around that. This is a task the book does not provide ready-made answers for, but the reflections it offers raise the necessary questions for further thought and action.

____________________________

[1] Matan Kaminer, Joel Beinin, Odeh Bisharat, Arieh Dayan, Anat Matar, Smadar Nehab-Kaminer, Meir Amor, and Carmel Kaminer, The Independent Left in Israel, 1967-1993: Essays in memory of Noam Kaminer (Tel Aviv: November Books, 2020), 191-201.

[2] Ibid, 63-75.

[3] Ibid, 57-61. 

[4] Ibid, 89-108.

[5] Ibid, 77-87.

[6] Ibid, 165-189.

[7] Ibid, 203-219.

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Jun 21, 2014 Lebanon

Popular Neighborhoods and the Arab Spring: Elements for a Renewed Approach

Pierre-Arnaud Barthel and Sylvy Jaglin, editors, Quartiers informels d’un monde arabe en transition. Réflexions et perspectives pour l’action urbaine [Informal Settlements in an Arab World in Transition. Reflections and Perspectives for Urban Action]. Paris: Agence Française pour le Développement, Conférences et Séminaires 7, 2013. Available online.

Housing in most of the Arab world cities is an informal affair. After having founded a family, or to remain near employment opportunities, most people trying to find a place to live in end up building their houses themselves, or participating in construction projects managed either by families or by modest real-estate developers. Due to the government’s inability to provide or support affordable housing on a large scale, people have to cope on their own to access shelter and neighborhoods. Despite the importance of the issue, very few studies have been conducted in the domain, and it remains relatively unnoticed. In fact, after the 2000s, the interest in the subject has even begun to dwindle. Urban studies were more focusing on megaprojects, which renew and extend the urban landscape in a much more spectacular manner, such as the making of new towns, luxury housing, malls, historical downtowns, new business districts, and coastal resorts.

This edited volume by Pierre-Arnaud Barthel and Sylvy Jaglin updates knowledge of the common urban landscape of the Arab world, informs about the initiatives to improve popular housing, and to generate more inclusive cities. Most of the authors included in this volume have to their credit key publications on popular housing, and informal settlements in the Arab world. They have been studying the subject over a decade, and are thus capable of offering a thoroughly documented, precise, and pertinent perspective on the changes, and interventions in non-regulated built neighborhoods, viewed through the prism of recent grassroots movements. Can we talk about an “Arab spring of urban policies,” asks Pierre-Arnaud Barthel in his introduction? The shared aim of the contributions is examining the current status of working-class neighborhoods, either by reviewing the interventions, and the mobilization in these neighborhoods since the 1990s, in the light of the 2011 and 2012 events, or by examining the changes brought about by the shockwaves of the revolution, leading to the overthrow of dictatorial regime (Egypt), or to the acceleration of reforms (Morocco after the protests of 20 April 2011). These national movements seem to be often spearheaded by people from those neighborhoods. They may thus indicate the shortcomings of a clientelistic approach, as well as the duality of interventions vis-à-vis the consolidation and expansion of informal settlements, which oscillate between tolerance, minimum redistribution and denial, and containment, relocation, and brutal eviction.

The six chapters in the book do not claim to cover all the issues, and all the urban environments of the region. Three articles explore more deeply the situation of Cairo dwellers. David Sims gives an account of post-revolution dynamics in the housing sector. Agnès Deboulet reflects upon conditions where it would be possible to take into account the competences of the residents in construction projects, in order to make housing for the working classes, and the masses more secure. Jimmy Markoum and Eric Verdeil look into Cairo’s gas distribution network, highlighting its segregation effects when it penetrates informal neighborhoods. 

Two chapters are complementary in their analysis of the Moroccan situation: Lamia Zaki points out to the links between reforms at the national level, contributing to the stability of the regime in the shaky environment of the Arab Spring, and the intensification of slums’ mobilization. Oliver Toutain re-examines the mega-project, "Villes sans Bidonvilles" (PSVB), or Slum-Free City launched in eighty-five Moroccan towns in 2005. He concludes that the integration of the inhabitants is limited. Many households are excluded from the process of rehabilitation, or enter into a spiral of poverty when they are relocated in distant peripheries.

Valérie Clerc writes about the changes in urban policies concerning informal settlements in Syria during the 2000s. There was an attempt to implement an approach to integrate illegal settlements, and to re-launch the production of social housing, in order to counter balance the effects of liberalization. However, the “social market economy” collapsed after the uprisings of 2011, which began in informal neighborhoods. They have since then been reduced into heaps of rubble by recurrent bombings.

The evolution of urban policies can be explored further in three recently edited volumes coordinated by Lamia Zaki: L’action urbaine au Maghreb [Urban Policies in North Africa] (2011), Expérimenter la ville durable au sud de la Méditerranée [Experiments of Sustainable City in the Southern Mediterranean] (2011)—the latter has been co-edited with Pierre-Arnaud Barthel. They deal with the Tunisian and Algerian contexts not represented in this reviewed volume. Morched Chabbi’s article “Tunisia: Revolution in Spite of the Rehabilitation of Working Class Neighborhoods,” throws light on the Tunisian revolution, and the limitations of urban policies, even when in-situ rehabilitations were done using a very inclusive approach. One can also refer to the edited volume by Myriam Ababsa, Baudouin Dupret, and Eric Denis, Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East (2012), and its review by Mona Fawaz.

Sylvy Jaglin points out, early on in the preface, that it would be naive to think there is any kind of synchronicity between political transitions during the period following a revolution, and the implementation of new urban interventions in informal neighborhoods, or even more generally in the city at large. Comparing this to other ruptures of the democratic or governance process, she observes that the teachings in countries south of the Sahara also advocate caution, and tend to demonstrate that the periods following political turmoil are not opportune for innovations, and the gestation of new ideas in urban planning. The inertia of the old policy framework is a serious hindrance. It seems impossible to sidestep, or waive away urban planning professionals whose ideas, and tools remain unchallenged. Replacing them would necessitate the emergence of new schools, or a complete restructuring of the existing engineering curricula, which continue to regard citizens’ capabilities to build their houses and settlements, as backward. Thus, the institutional incapacity to take into account latent demands, and the inhabitants’ competences revealed through self-emancipatory collective actions to organize and take control of the future of their neighborhood, is reinforced. And, no possibility of reform appears. The institutions which are supposedly proficient in this domain, are still concerned with containing, limiting, and controlling or even servicing the existing settlements, but never with foreseeing, anticipating, and accompanying an expansion, which is nevertheless unavoidable.

“For a new approach to see the light of day, informal settlements should be viewed from a different perspective,” confirms Pierre-Arnaud Barthel in the introduction. Instead of regarding them as a threat, it would be in the interest of the new policy makers to reflect upon their potential and advantages in order to rethink tomorrow’s city: compactness of the urban network (i.e. real estate economy), multi-functionality, strong social links, emphasis on pedestrian mobility between work and home, cross-neighborhood transportation system (motorized tricycles—tuk tuk, microbus), etc. David Sims points out that, in an informal neighborhood in the periphery of the town center in Cairo, half of the active population work on site.

Diversity of Implemented Policies and Political Instability

The authors have examined in detail the modalities of prior interventions.  Their study reveals that it is possible to compare them, and to identify solutions which converge, or which are specific to a country, as of the 1990s. Everywhere, the transition to liberal economies during the 1990s and 2000s has modified policies vis-à-vis illegal neighborhoods. The collapse of public and subsidized housing did not provide alternatives to citizens who had to secure the building of their own houses. Temporalities as well as scales of intervention may vary a great deal. Lots of changes can take place between the scope, and the type of initiatives envisaged, and their implementation. Very few projects achieved their initial aim. In Syria, after the 2005 shift, and the announcement of the “social market economy,” the national scale projects shifted into innumerable local ones, with conflicting intentions, swinging between dwellers’ interests and investors’ interests in developing deregulated real estate (Clerc). International cooperation and development agencies seem to play here a major role by multiplying isolated experiments, which can even compete with each other. In Syria, Japanese, French, and German agencies as well as the European Union, the World Bank, and the Cities Alliance (UN-Habitat, Cities without Slums) intervened altogether. Each one was trying to latch onto, or influence, national or local projects.

Cairo has been subjected to the same experiments and intervention recipes that are never coordinated. Such projects insist on public-private partnerships promoting in-situ rehabilitation with densification, land titling or infrastructure development. They juxtapose to each other and are openly in competition. They have been unable to transform urban policies, nor even to launch new large-scale programs (on this issue, see the excellent work Villes et ‘best practices’).

Alongside these isolated experiments, other more routine modes of government action are implemented, and adapted to realities on the ground. In an Arab world where decentralization, and local governments are so to say absent, it is astonishing to observe that, according to a national survey on illegal areas to be “addressed” (Morocco, Syria, Egypt), the projects are implemented at the local level using negotiated mechanisms. In certain cities and neighborhoods, they will never be launched, or will be partially transformed into eviction. In many cases, significant delays have been observed (cf. Zaki on Morocco, and Cities Without Slums). The in-depth report of Cities Without Slums project in Morocco (Toutain)—the only national level program, which was implemented on a very large scale—shows how much the results vary according to cities, neighborhoods, and inhabitants. While some cities have indeed been declared to be without slums, the social outcomes are mitigated. One cannot but compare this with the eradication of slums project implemented in France in the 1960s. There too, large housing projects grouping one hundred thousand inhabitants sprung out of nowhere, especially in Agadir. With the implementation of The Cities Without Slums Action Plan, the poor who used to live in makeshift houses were relocated in modern residences. There was certainly an improvement in their living conditions, but their social and professional links were weakened, and the access to resources was made harder, leading to a loss of income. Zaki and Toutain both agree however that Cities Without Slums was one of the flagship programs, which curbed the rising revolts in Morocco, in relation to the Arab Spring. But, the Moroccan solution obviously cannot be exported on such a scale. In Egypt for example, ninety percent of informal neighborhoods consist of multiple-storey apartment buildings with concrete pillars, beams, and brick walls. Their destruction is inconceivable. In-situ rehabilitation with the residents, by the residents, as says Agnès Deboulet, remains the best approach.

The attempt to handle this issue, and it does not seem to have evolved much, generates contradictory effects: some neighborhoods, or some inhabitants are given legal recognition, or allotted lodging in the context of rehousing programs, while others are left out, or struck-off from the list of people entitled to housing, because they showed-up after the cut-off-date, as in Syria after 2008 (Clerc). In Egypt, there was an unsuccessful attempt to implement a similar approach in keeping with a military decree (no.1-1996). Confinement is considered to be a solution in Cairo (Sims), especially with the idea in 2006 of developing residential areas all around informal neighborhoods, and thus avoid further expansion. Previously, it was the ring road that was supposed to do the job. Built towards the end of the 1990s, it did indeed cut off and isolate informal neighborhoods, but it did not slow down their growth. Authors obliquely stress upon the fact that urban planning, zoning, and master plans do not serve to foresee, or control population dynamics. Popular settlements are built from below, on the fringes of plannings, by subverting the plan. By hiding behind the power of the plan, authorities in charge exclude themselves from the urban fabric which is obviously negotiated locally. 

Risks and Liberalization

One of the main justifications in the treatment of sub-standard, and irregular neighborhoods is the danger of unrest or terrorism. New policies have come into being, especially in Egypt, since the 1990s with the growing awareness of the threat of potential terrorists, and extremists in neighborhoods where government authorities were absent, and social work was left in the hands of organizations with Islamic leanings (Denis 1994). Efforts were made to upgrade the infrastructure, and strengthen the presence of the State as well the police surveillance capacity. Toutain points out that in Morocco, following the 2003 attacks in Casablanca, strict government regulations were reinforced, and hitherto unprecedented measures implemented. The Cities Without Slums program launched in 2005 was one of the main tools. During the 2000s, the danger became prevalent, and besides the security risk that the squatter settlements represented, the environmental conditions of these zones also became a source of worry. Agnès Deboulet emphasizes the fact that, since 2010, as in Cairo with the creation of the Informal Settlements Development Facility (ISDF), districts are revisited, classified, and mapped in terms of vulnerability. Public authorities thus use the argument of natural risk to justify interventions, which, until then, were difficult to envisage, except in the context of major infrastructure projects (Deboulet). Thus, thirty-five zones qualified as “life threatening areas” were targeted, and sixteen amongst them were in Cairo (presentation of the ISDF in Global Risk Forum in Davos in June, 2010).

However, because of the revolution, and the fear of mass mobilization, the temptation to transfer people by force seems to be currently averted. But, the ISDF has neither disappeared, nor significantly changed its orientation. In 2013, irregular settlements remain on top of the government’s agenda. In March 2013, an agreement of cooperation was signed with the governors of Giza and Cairo, and with the German aid, the European Union and the UN Habitat, for setting up the Participatory Development Programme in Urban Areas, under the aegis of ISDF. In spite of participatory label, there is every reason to believe that the currently implemented formula is the same as before. Thus, in January 2014 the armed forces made a formal commitment to the ISDF to sustain the redevelopment of popular neighborhoods in Giza and Cairo for a year, by setting up themselves projects, as these “require a high degree of expertise,” as per the press release! In Morocco, on the other hand, the Cities Without Slums’ action plan has changed considerably, especially in relation to the funding of constructions using “third party” (Zaki).

The natural disasters approach is not exclusively reserved to precarious housing in Egypt. Karen Coelho and Nithya Rama (2013) have shown that in Chennai, India, the reasons given for forced evictions were fire, floods, and the need to reclaim humid zones for beautification. In many respects, the Indian method of treating illegal neighborhoods and slums shows that democracy, and strong government guidelines do not suffice to ensure good local governance, and to countermand the interests of real estate firms. Decentralization pits local governments against each other, and severe budgetary constraints impose priorities concerning local development, which are not in favor of participatory planning, and integration of illegal neighborhoods. In India, evictions, and relocation to the periphery is the norm. The rapid development of real estate has become the priority. In situ upgrading is rare and marginal (Banda and Sheikh, 2014). In Morocco, Toutain and Zaki point out that the Cities Without Slums Action Plan’s initial aims were rapidly abandoned.

The case of networked urban services sharply reveals how the removal of subsidies continues to deepen socio-spatial inequalities. Higher rates, and other attempts to improve the cost recovery mechanism are often unsuccessful, as in the case of drinking water, or garbage collection in Cairo. Jimmy Markoum and Eric Verdeil examine the extension of the natural gas distribution network launched in 2008 with the support of the World Bank. This program had a social purpose, even a universal aim, and was supposed to rectify the lack of connections in informal neighborhoods. It ended up with major contradictions. During the 1990s-2000s, the connection was set up at no cost to residents, though the irregular settlements in the periphery were left out. Today, however, individual connections have to be paid for, and are thus inaccessible to people with modest means. Moreover, the most densely populated, and illegal neighborhoods could not be connected to the network because the security-price ratio was extremely unfavorable. The socio-spatial injustice has therefore steadily increased. For many families, getting gas bottles remain a difficult daily chore. And, since the revolution, the shortage in gas bottles has worsened, just like the prices. The network thus reinforces the marginalization of urban areas, which become subjected to dual discrimination—socioeconomic and physical. Indeed, these spaces become penalized socially, economically but also in terms of living conditions (Markoum and Verdeil). The authors do not see any alternative to subsidized connections, which would then include disadvantaged populations.

Prospects for Urban Planning from Below

In their thorough review of urban policies before and after the Arab Spring, the book’s authors demonstrate that the issue of supporting people’s capacities is at the heart of the need for a strategic upheaval. The approach relying on projects has shown its limits, given the magnitude of the task, and it is the totality of the urban model that policy makers in different countries, in consultation with citizens, have to redesign. However, hardly any thinking has gone into redefining spaces and their values, remarks Barthel. These neighborhoods that have remarkable urban characteristics are the product of people`s skills. Therefore it is from below, with the participation of residents seeking recognition, and according to the logic of an urbanisme de réparation [urbanism of repair], as coined by Agnès Deboulet, that a concerted, flexible and dense urban development could be positively integrated, assisted, and accompanied.

Will the strong demand for recognition that emanates from popular neighborhoods be placated by technical “recipes,” imported models, rudimentary categorization, and the perpetuation of offsite relocation policies, which have proven their ability to increase poverty? Is the current desire for democracy in the Middle East not an opportunity to test a full-fledged urbanism of repair? (Deboulet)


The authors point to this in all the examined contexts: all have a high percentage of irregular settlements. They house forty percent of the population of Damascus, and some sixty-six percent of those in Cairo. It is also noteworthy that these areas absorb eighty percent of the urban demographic growth. They are thus constantly expanding, and getting more crowded. The Arab world is still characterized by a rapidly growing urbanization, which contributes to the creation of those popular neighborhoods. Let us not forget that the urban growth rate in Egypt was 3.4 percent in 2010, while the growth rate of the total population was less than two percent. In Morocco, it was two percent for 1.2 percent. It is a question of millions of poorly integrated city dwellers.

With the disappearance of local authorities, and the de-legitimization of public authorities during the Arab Spring, illegal neighbourhoods have spread out, and have gotten denser everywhere. Sims says that, in Cairo, "the pace of construction is frenzied," while Toutain and Clerc highlight the acceleration of illegal construction in Morocco and Syria between 2011 and 2012. There is no other alternative to integrating these neighbourhoods, because of the density of the urban population they house at present, and will shelter in the future. They are impossible to contain, move, or even reconfigure according to the standard schemes of property, and city planning laws. And, is it even necessary? Upgrading their infrastructure is not a major problem even at the scale of an entire city, as the costs do not even compare to the expenditures involved in any social housing program (Sims).

Without any doubt, the revolutionary movements also gave birth to many organizations across neighborhoods: lijan sha‘biyya [popular committees], but also larger federative structures, such as the Federation of Informal Settlements’ People`s Committees, founded in Cairo in February 2011 (Sims), or the National Coordination of Slums, established in 2010 in Morocco (Zaki). The strength and the achievements of people’s movements in the Arab world shed light on collective action skills, and self-emancipation of people, at all scales, in the street and the country, the neighborhood and the city. It is clear that academic expertise had not anticipated the Arab Spring, as it had previously ignored the skills of the residents that went into building cities—to the exception of some noteworthy authors such as the one gathered in this volume.

Therefore, a revolution in urban policies and urban action seems necessary, in order to give voice to these competent residents. It would place residents, and the collective spaces they create in the place and position of the city planner. This edited volume is a solidly anchored appeal for urban interventions that support, and sustain actions initiated by residents in neighborhoods.

[This book review appeared earlier on Jadaliyya in French. Arunima Choudhury and the author translated it into English.]

References:
Myriam Ababsa, Baudouin Dupret and Eric Denis (eds.), Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East, (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012).

Pierre-Arnaud Barthel and  Lamia Zaki (dir.), Expérimenter la ville durable au Sud de la Méditerranée, (La Tour d’Aigues: éditions de l’Aube, 2011).

Karen Coelho and Nithya Raman, “From the Frying Pan to the Floodplain: Negotiating Land, Water and Fire in Chennai’s Development” in Ecologies of Urbanism in India: Metropolitan Civility and Sustainability, edited by A. Rademacher and K. Sivaramakrishnan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013): 145-168.

David Sims, Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control (Cairo, New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2010).

Lamia Zaki (ed.) L’action urbaine au Maghreb. Enjeux professionnels et politiques (Paris: Karthala, 2010).