Haredi Settlers: The Non-Zionist Jewish Settlers of the West Bank

This page discusses Diana Rubin, 'Haredi Settlers: The Non-Zionist Jewish Settlers of the West Bank' in Engin Isin (ed) Citizenship after Orientalism Transforming Political Theory, Palgrave, 2015.

Abstract

The project to create a modern Jewish nation on Palestinian land provoked fierce opposition not only from Palestinians but also from Jewish groups that rejected or did not ‘ft’ into it — in particular the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. The latter’s opposition is less debated in contemporary literature; yet, this history underlines the impossibility of forming a homogenous state as envisaged by the Zionist movement. One paradoxical aspect of the transforming Israeli colonizing project is that since the end of the 1980s, Haredi groups have been establishing their own settler-cities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and are the fastest-growing settler group today, despite being theologically and culturally opposed to the Zionist project. The very groups that destabilize the project of a modern Jewish state from within are now at the heart of the most disputed political issue today — the West Bank settlements. Definitions of a single people, sovereignty, and territory remain unstable in Israel.

Introduction

When approaching the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank or more broadly the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a commonly held image in the UK, and elsewhere, of two homogenous, ethno-national people, the Arabs and Jews, fighting each other. This image fails to take into account the existence of Jewish groups living within Israel whose attitude to the Zionist political project exposes its inherent contradictions. The definition of Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state belies the contradiction in the notion of a modern citizenship that tries to establish a link between an ethnic group, territory, and sovereignty, and still claim universalism. As is well known, this attempt to create a modern Jewish nation-state on Palestinian land provoked fierce opposition from Palestinians. What is less known or debated is that there are different Jewish groups that also reject or simply fail to ‘fit’ into this project – in particular ultra-Orthodox Jews. The impossibility of forming a homogenous modern Jewish nation-state, therefore, further complicates the accepted narrative on Israel/Palestine.

Let us begin with a quote from a text posted on the official website of Beitar Ilit, a West Bank Haredi-exclusive settler city:

Beitar Ilit was planned according to local outline plan 426, which was approved in 1988. The plan includes state lands on three parallel hills: A, B, C. According to these plans, 17,500 housing units are expected to be built on a 4,300 dunam area, most of them in saturated construction. […] In recent years, several private building lots have been allocated to people who wish to build their own homes. Throughout the years, additional lots were approved for construction and added to the local outline plan, with all of them officially being recognized as state lands. […] Each hill features commercial areas, public facilities and multipurpose areas. Beitar Ilit is the first city to be established specifically for the Haredi population, and was acknowledged as one of the most optimal solutions for the severe housing problem of the Haredi community, within the framework of modern, secular surroundings. The city founders believe that territorial separation is the most appropriate approach to maintaining an independent lifestyle.

This opens up some intriguing questions regarding different Jewish positions within Israel and the Zionist settlement project. The history of the establishment of this West Bank settlement (surrounded by Palestinian villages that are not mentioned in the text) describes the mechanism of colonizing lands that are ‘officially being recognized as state lands’. Another element is added, however, to this well-known narrative of settlement planning and land colonization: a housing solution for Haredim in the form of a territorial separation from the rest of Israeli society – a separation in order to maintain a Haredi lifestyle that is independent from that of a secular, modern Israel. It is not only the paradoxical position of the Haredim within the Zionist political and colonial project that makes their settlements an important political issue today; it is also the fact that the population of Haredi settlers in the West Bank has increased more than 18-fold over the last two decades, making them the fastest-growing group within the West Bank settler population. They now represent one-third of the Jewish settler population in the West Bank.2 The Haredi settlers live in the largest settler cities in the West Bank today, both of which are exclusively Haredi: Modi’in Ilit and Beitar Ilit.3 Other Haredi West Bank settlements include Tel Zion, Emanuel, Matityahu, Ma’ale Amos, and Asfar, and there are also Haredi settlements that are considered as ‘neighbourhoods’ of Jerusalem. This significant change in the demographics of the West Bank settlements, and accordingly in the politics of this area, call for an examination of the Haredi settlement in particular and a more comprehensive examination of the place of Haredim within Israel and Zionism in general.

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Non-Zionist?

The histories of Haredim and Zionism or Haredim and Israel are long and complex, but I want to highlight here the longstanding tensions and contradictions. Different imaginaries, at times contradictory, were poured into the proposals for a Jewish colony. The ethos of settlement on the frontier as a means of breaking away from the existing social and political order has characterized many settler societies.32 In the Zionist case, breaking away from Europe meant leaving behind not only the place allocated for Jews within European societies but also Jewish traditional-religious society. Jewish intellectuals who were driven by a keen awareness of what they understood to be the cul-de-sac of assimilation wished to establish a semi-European modern state for Jews outside of Europe as revealed in the words of the founder of ‘cultural Zionism’, Ahad Ha’Am: ‘What Hertzel understood is that only by leaving Germany and settling in the Jewish state could the Jew finally become a real German’.33 For some, it was also a search for a new life for Jews by leaving Jewish tradition behind: ‘Zionism was an invention of intellectuals and assimilated Jews […] who turned their back on the rabbis and aspired to modernity, seeking desperately for a remedy for their existential anxiety’.34

At the heart of this colonial imagination stood the question regarding the possible place of European Jewry in modernity.35 Zygmunt Bauman describes how the Jew, departing from the ghetto in time of modern nationalism, was ‘cut from his origin but not yet admitted to any other home’.36 Zionist scholar Shlomo Avineri reinforces the myth of Zionism’s success in reviving the Jewish public sphere by replacing the religious community and its institutions and finally ‘placing the Jews in modernity’ where they are no longer subjected to historical passivity.37 Nevertheless, Zionism evolved under the rapidly changing circumstances of Jewish life and was developed into a wide diversity of ideologies, which were then rejected or adopted by different segments of Jewish religious groups. While some religious groups saw Zionism at times as a political solution for Jews and others also incorporated Zionism into religious ideas such as salvation or halacha sovereignty, the majority of orthodox-religious Jews viewed Zionism as an anti-Jewish movement.

The religious-orthodox (now named Haredi) response to Zionism comprised two essential elements. Firstly, Zionism poses the threat of the modernization and secularization of Jews. Secondly, it has brought the threat of a false messiah. Zionism sought to modernize Jews as a collective during a time in which European assimilation sought to modernize Jews as individuals. The logic of European liberal assimilation, as pointed out by Hannah Arendt, was directed at individuals, which meant the intolerance of Jews as a collectivity.38 This is where Zionism offered a collective secular Jewish identity as an alternative to religious Jewish identity and an alternative to individual assimilation. 39 The second orthodox- religious response to Zionism was based on the ‘messianic question’. The dialectics between the Jewish duty of Galut (diaspora) and the desire to change it shaped Jewish communities and discourses before and during modernity.40 Zionism was to be rejected utterly because it stood in the way of the Jewish messianic belief that human interference in the process of redemption will prevent the long-awaited divine redemption. According to this logic, diaspora and its burdens must be accepted before the redemption will take place. The Zionist political project of establishing a Jewish state in the Holy Land sought to break the dichotomous logic in Jewish religious thought between absolute diaspora on the one hand and absolute redemption on the other. The notion of redemption and the return to the Holy Land played a central role in the Zionist movement by making a claim for a right over a land and constructing a national narrative and indeed a nation.41 Zionism’s Jewish religious opponents considered its attempt to ‘change Jewish history’ through the Zionist political project as a ‘false redemption’.42 Henceforth, Zionism could only lead to religious ‘conversion’. These views are held by most Haredim and as such represent the Haredi position to this day.

Nevertheless, since the beginning of the twentieth century, Haredi leaders and organizations have had a dynamic relationship with Zionist organizations and later the Israeli state institutions that have evolved around sites of strain as they try to secure the conditions and a degree of autonomy for Haredi groups. This is manifested, for example, in the varying positions of some of the yishuv institutions during the pre-state period over issues of migration permits on the one hand and education and the separation of institutions on the other. The poles of this dynamic relationship oscillate between Haredi negotiations with Arab leaders (for example, Jacob Israël de Haan in the 1920s or more recently the Jerusalemite Haredi collaborating with Iran), to attempts by a segment of the Haredi Agudat Yisrael (Poalei Agudat Yisrael) to build Haredi kibbutzim.43 Hence, Haredi attitudes towards the Zionist pre-state movement and institutions have subsequently evolved into complex, varying attitudes towards the Israeli State today. Either willingly or unwillingly, they comprise part of the Jewish population of Israel. Some Haredi groups such as Edah Haredit and Neturei Karta vehemently refuse to cooperate with the state. Most of the other Haredi groups identify as non- Zionist or anti-Zionist and approach Israel not as a Jewish state but as the state in which they live, in other words, a ‘hosting society’. This is manifest in an independent education system; parliamentary participation and legislation that relates directly to Haredim (which has increased since 1977); extra-parliamentary protest regarding issues such as military service; and religious institutions (such as the Rabbanut).44 However, this has led to a permanent tension over the possibility of a stable settlement between the Israeli state and the Haredim and regarding the place of this group within Israeli society, given that they do not identify with Zionist ideology, or with Israeli state institutions, or with the idea of a modern nation-state altogether.

Aziza Khazzoom argues that a modern Jewish state in Palestine has been threatened by two elements that were to be ‘managed’ in order to assure its success.45 The first was the non-modern Middle East and its Palestinian population, and later the Mizrahim (Jews from Muslim countries) as well. The second was the Jewish religion that was in itself a threat to the project of Westernization and modernization while also representing the diaspora.46

However, this was a contradictory process since the definition of the state as a Jewish one seemingly keeps Israel from the ‘accomplishment’ of the project of modernization. Yet, it constantly requires the (re)definition of ‘Jewishness’ as a category in order to justify its existence as a Jewish state. This goes back to the settler-colonial distinction of the native and settler as well as to the project of the non-assimilative, modern Jewish nation-state. Israel, as a Jewish state but also as a settler-colonial project, defines the place of religion and also accordingly its Jewish subject in opposition to the non- Jewish Palestinian. Religion is thus where the distinction between the Jewish and Palestinian subject is maintained. Therefore, the debate over the role of religion in Israel and the definition of a Jewish state echoes this genealogy of European orientalism and the logic of assimilation, as well as the settlercolonial structure, which is formed around the settler-native distinction.

Consequently, the Jewish religion and hence religious Jewish groups become at the same time both the problem and the justification for the Jewish state. As argued, Haredim are constructed as a threat to modern Western society in the Israeli political debate. The next section follows recent examples of this discourse. It is revealing that in 2011, the former director of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, declared that internal ‘growing haredi radicalization poses a bigger risk’ to the state of Israel than Iran and its then president Ahmadinejad. He complained that ‘ultra-Orthodox extremism has darkened our lives’.47 Yaron London, a prominent Israeli journalist, has written of the high birthrate within Haredi communities as the ‘Haredi bomb’, elaborating that”

only a fool would avoid the reasonable assumption that in the next generation the Zionist share of the population would be a minority. If the Haredi community’s spirit and lifestyle don’t change, it would be doubtful whether Israel would be a political entity that is different than surrounding states: a theocratic county, poor in economic and spiritual terms, and incredibly crowded.48

The Haredim are the subject of many demographic studies in Israel as they are seen as threatening Zionist Israeli Jewish society. The Chaikin Chair in Geostrategy at the University of Haifa published a report in 2012 entitled ‘Israel: Demography 2012-2030 On the Way to a Religious State’. Highlighting the growth in Palestinian and Haredi populations, the report warns that [t]he state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state can continue to exist only if it has a clear Jewish majority, which supports modernity, lives in territory whose dimensions and borders permit actualization of the state’s sovereignty and defense, and if it enjoys a quality of life that befits a Western society. Attainment of these essential conditions of supporting democratic and liberal values is not self-evident; demographic processes […] threaten the capacity to realize them.49

Moreover, such discourse on Haredim and Israel has often questioned the latter’s authenticity as Judaism. For example, in July 2012 an article in the Ha’aretz newspaper argued that ‘Haredi Judaism isn’t our forefathers’ religion, but a radical and dangerous new cult’.50 The article continues, ‘This is among the most strongly held and unfounded myths in Israel society’ and warns that ‘a large portion of the Haredi public continues to go to further extremes until it resembles nothing as much as a Taliban-like cult’.51

The two ‘projects’, of ‘guarding’ the tradition of Haredim and ‘securing’ a Jewish identity through the modern national and colonial political project of Zionism, contradict one another. These tensions are reflected at every stage of the relationship between Haredim, Zionism, and the state of Israel. The constructions of Haredim as premodern, as similar to ‘primitive’ neighbouring societies and of course the Palestinians, as a growing threat to Zionism and the ‘Jewish and democratic’ state, and as a dangerous cult illustrate their extremely ambivalent position in Israel. But, if Israel were to occlude itsJewish definition, it would sacrifice the defining signifier that distinguishes between settler and native, and it also runs the risk of increasing the autonomy of Haredi groups. The Haredi settlement represents yet another configuration of a colonization, whose historical traces I have presented here. While keeping and deepening the settler-native distinction, the tensions between the Haredi settlement and the Israeli state were reworked through the liberalization of the 1967 frontier, as I articulate in the next section.

Non-ideological?

As argued earlier, hityashvut was underlined by the strategic expansion of colonization, maintaining the settler-native distinction and the shaping of divisions among Jewish ‘ethno-classes’ through different positioning of groups on the frontier. Nevertheless, over time, economic and political objectives formed different discourses of hityashvut. This section looks at the transformation of hityashvut in the West Bank in order to elucidate the emergence of the Haredi settlements as part of a wider phenomenon labelled ‘non-ideological’ settlements within Israeli political debate. From the 1970s, the hityashvut has moved away from former rural and agricultural forms of settling to the formation of suburban communities. This has been accompanied by the liberalization of settlement activities, which were now opened to private investors and developers. This section discusses neoliberalism – while not being able to engage expansively with its many aspects – in order to articulate the recent changes in hityashvut and the emergence of the term ‘non-ideological’ settlements.

Without doing an injustice to the extensive scholarship on neoliberalism, its many definitions could be mapped in two main directions. The first is the economic logic of late capitalism that advances corporatization and state reform towards privatization and economization. The second, which largely follows the work of Michel Foucault, views neoliberalism as a social formation.

This refers to the ways in which people govern themselves and others that are implicated in what we can call ‘market values’. The latter approach also emphasizes the local and hybrid configurations of neoliberalism rather than viewing it as a ‘wave’ spreading on a global scale replicating the same model. I argue that the transformation of hityashvut in the West Bank since the 1970s cannot merely be viewed as a project of privatization and economization, as suggested by the first school of thought. The West Bank hityashvut has involved the extensive role of state settlement plans and ‘housing programs’ for Israeli-Jews in the West Bank as well as legislative and military actions. At the same time, it involved changes that can certainly be thought of as the economization of settlement activity, which feeds into a discourse of individual and ‘privately undertaken colonization’.52 The two main processes that shall be observed here are, first, the creation of settlement forms that enable extensive segregated homogenous communities, and second, a discourse of settlement that casts settlement activity seemingly away from the state and away from the realm of the ‘political/ideological’.

Principally, until the 1970s, hityashvut was based on a division between urban and rural settlements. Rural settlements were regarded as the flagship of the Zionist settlement venture, important for their ability to occupy land on a large scale, and as argued earlier, for their transformative role in the construction of the settler as a new ‘Hebrew Man’.53 Both early Zionist settlement activity in Palestine and that conducted after the establishment of the state were largely centralized. Hence, only limited forms of settlements were approved, granted institutional support, and allocated land. These settlements were then established by the settlement division of the Jewish Agency, the settling bodies (gufim meyashvim), and after the establishment of the state also the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Housing. Thus, settlement that fitted the criteria introduced by the World Zionist Organization was approved and received land and support.54

In the late 1970s, suggestions were made to the World Zionist Organization regarding new forms of settlements such as the private and the community settlement (yishuv kehilati) that did not fit into the previous urban and rural categories. These forms were recognized by the organization in 1977 and became eligible for funding.55 The new settlements’ characteristics were described by Aharon Kellerman as: ‘homogeneously structured, along one or more political, religious or professional lines […] characterised by individual rather than collective decision making […] and economic freedom. […]’.56 The title community settlement is misleading, as the idea was, unlike the former kibbutz and moshav, to loosen the economic ties between settlement residents. The ‘communal’ aspect lay in the creation of a homogenous community maintained by exclusive selection committees, which controlled who could join. Uzi Gdor, a leading planner of the new settlement forms, recalled in an interview that he realized the only way to sustain the Zionist project of settlement was to create a new form of community and accordingly a new form of settlement that would offer people life among ‘people like them’ without the ‘burden’ of a shared economic system, whilst advancing the hityashvut goals.57 The new form of community settlement was first adopted in the establishment of Gush Emunim settlements.58 It later became a model for the establishment of many settlements close to the Green Line to which other groups of Israeli-Jews now relocated.59 In only five years, about 60 of the community settlements were established around the West Bank, and by 1992, 118 community settlements were already established, ten of which were funded entirely through private initiative and investments.60

The new forms of settlement were part of a wider transformation in the process of settlement planning and construction. One of the main changes came in 1980, when land purchased by individual Israelis was made available in the West Bank.61 One year later, the 1981 plan of Mattityahu Drobless, then head of a new settlement division in the Jewish Agency, was initiated.

Shafir and Peled describe it in these words: ‘To encourage this process, Drobless, with the active support of Ariel Sharon as chair of the ministerial settlement committee, turned settlement, for the first time in Zionist history, into a capitalist venture, encouraging the employment of private funds and private initiative in the construction of settlements.’62 The new settlement forms were also expanded into larger settler-urban suburbs close to the Green Line and attracted private developers who were offered land at almost no cost and assumed many of the roles of the former settling bodies. Additionally, settlers were offered tempting benefits and loans in the new settlements.

Nonetheless, settlement activity was not simply ‘handed’ to private developers but was bound to housing policies, settlement plans, programs to increase the population, and regulations and policies that accompanied the private initiatives.63 The ‘capitalist venture’ was an intersection of governing activities – or settling activities that were recast as market ventures – that alter and blur the roles of the state versus private developers. Market rationality contributed to casting the new settlements as ‘non-political’ and ‘non-ideological’. However, they can be thought of not as the absence of the state or ‘politics’ but as a reconfiguration of the role of the state, of private developers, and of settlers.

Shafir and Peled have called the new forms of hityashvut ‘privately undertaken colonization’.64 They maintain that ‘whereas pioneering was hailed as dedication to the common good that overrode individual interests, the new settlement drive was undertaken by individuals for their own benefit’.65 Again, this is an example of understanding the new settlements through the market logic of individuality that ‘pushes away’ the role of the state, returning to the role of hityashvut in the geographical ‘distribution’ of different ‘Jewish ethno-classes’ and to the reproduction of the division between settler and native (by the dispossession of the latter). Gutwein sees the new settlers as part of a wider structure that is strongly related to the privatization process in Israel and to economic inequalities in Israeli-Jewish society. He calls the settlements ‘compensation’ for the inequalities that were widened even further by the process of the privatization of the Israeli welfare state. Gutwein’s understanding of the wider political and economic framework of the new West Bank settlements echoes Shenhav’s analysis of the 1967 settlements as another phase of reshaping Israeli society and hegemony. Hence, in this process, non-hegemonic groups such as Mizrahim and newcomers from the former Soviet Union (and later the Haredim) relocated to settlement-suburbs such as Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel, two of the largest four West Bank settlements (after the Haredi settlements) and to many smaller community settlements close to the Green Line.

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==Haredi Settlement== I now want to examine the Haredi settlements as an intersection of four major themes discussed above: firstly, the position of Haredim within Israeli society; secondly, the transformation in hityashvut in the West Bank; thirdly, the role of the settlements in keeping the native-settler distinction; and fourthly, the reshaping of Jewish ethno-classes. Furthermore, I have argued that the construction of Haredim as ‘non-Zionist’ and of settlements as ‘nonideological,’

since the 1980s, is implicated in market rationality. The ‘non- Zionist’ and the ‘non-ideological’ conjoin in the creation of the new Haredi settlement spaces that enable a seemingly ‘non-political’ (Haredi) Jewish lifestyle within the framework of Zionist settler-colonialism.

While each Haredi settlement in the West Bank has a different story behind its establishment, together they constitute a process. This process grew out of a ‘failed’ endeavour to construct private Haredi-settler towns, through a large-scale, planned project by the Ministry of Housing, as a result of which failure the largest settler-city in the West Bank was built using private capital. Each of the settlements operates within a similar dynamic: new settlers relocate to them and establish the kind of homogenous community and lifestyle that they were set up to create and maintain. The location of the two largest Haredi settlements – in terms of their proximity to the Green Line (and therefore to centres such as Jerusalem and Bnei Brak) – plays a major role in their growth. This is also true of the other, later-phase West Bank settlements discussed in the previous section. Haredi settlements, like many other settlements in the West Bank, are built mainly by Palestinian labour sourced from the surrounding cities and villages. Like these other settlements, they form part of the continuous process of land colonization that is executed through a variety of judicial mechanisms.69

The Haredi settlements, in ways similar to the private and community forms of settlement that were developed at the end of the 1970s and continued throughout the 1980s, guarantee their homogenous Haredi-only population through selection committees (also known as populating committees). Unlike the smaller-scale community and private settlements, the Haredi settlement of Beitar Ilit and Modi’in Ilit have populations of 42,500 and 55,500 respectively. New settlers who wish to move to these cities do so principally by one of the two following ways. Firstly, they can engage the services of property agencies that refer them to selection committees for approval before they can move to the city or buy property. Those who wish to receive this approval have to provide information regarding their affiliation to a certain Haredi community, place of prayer, information about their families, and, in some cases, their consent to the separation of women and men on public transport. The second way that new settlers are recruited and Haredi homogeneity is maintained is through voluntary associations (amuta) that organize groups of potential buyer-settlers and negotiate with the private developers on their behalf. As part of the agreement, the association maintains a right of veto over the people who will live in the development (for example, a block of flats or a neighbourhood). The role of these Haredi associations is significant. One study revealed that over half of Haredi housing purchases are organized through these associations or some form of organization.70 In addition, developers who wish to attract Haredi buyers will avoid selling property to non-Haredim. Another aspect is the influence of religious leaders on the choice of residency by individuals and families, as expressed by one of my interviewees: ‘How does the Haredi population move to another place? Whenever a Rabbi is asked advice on where to live he recommends Beitar Ilit or Modi’in Ilit. Instantly hundreds would move, whoever gets married comes to live there.’ Furthermore, some Haredim relocate as a group – as is the case with the Boyan Hasidic dynasty in Beitar Ilit – and establish their own yeshivas and synagogues.

The three largest Haredi settlements are Emanuel, a town built by private developers; Beitar Ilit, which was the first state planned Haredi-only city project of the Ministry of Housing; and Modi’in Ilit, which was built by private developers following the success of Beitar Ilit. Nevertheless, the West Bank Haredi cities are situated in the lowest cluster (poorest) of Israel’s socioeconomic ranking.

Income is a major factor in the relocation of many Haredi settlers. In Emanuel, the first Haredi town, the average income constitutes half of Israel’s national average income.71 An average price for a new three-bedroom apartment in 2013 in Bnei Brak (which is not in the West Bank but is a city close to Tel Aviv with a large Haredi population) was 1,105,000 NIS. In comparison, the same property in Beitar Ilit cost 639,000 NIS, and in Emanuel a threebedroom apartment could be bought for only 234,000 NIS. Lower property prices and the relative lower socioeconomic position of many Haredim influence their decision to relocate, as suggested by one of my interviewees: ‘If a Haredi city were established within the Green Line and it was ten shekels [less than £2] cheaper – they would go.’

The first Haredi town, Emanuel, was established in the West Bank in 1983 by three private developers from Samaria Star Limited who designed a town to accommodate the Haredi lifestyle. As a result, Emanuel was designed with a higher number of Haredi educational and religious institutions than other Israeli towns. The process of establishing the Haredi settler-town Emanuel is described in an interview with the architect and town-planner, Thomas Leitersdorf:

A group of ultra-Orthodox developers came to me with a map, with six points marked on it […] and they told me that they wanted to build a town. […] I took their map and said, ‘What you have shown me is not a town’. Then they asked, ‘What do you need for a town?’ So with a 6B pencil I drew on the map what the size of the town should be, and they told me, ‘It’s yours, start planning.’72

Emanuel was considered a ‘failure’ due to the choice of location, which is far from the Green Line, and the financial mismanagement of the company responsible for establishing the settlement. This resulted in the settlement attracting only a small and relatively poor population and the eventual bankruptcy of Samaria Star Limited. However, a new public housing policy in the 1980s designated the Haredim as a separate, non-integrative group for the first time.73 This meant that Haredi housing was now addressed for the first time as a public problem, which was solved, in part, through the construction of housing in Haredim-only cities and neighbourhoods.

In 1988, the second Haredi city, Beitar Ilit, was established as the first largescale project built to address the ‘Haredi housing problem’. Beitar Ilit began as an initiative of Yosef Rosenberg, a private investor who sought religious nationalist settlers, and was later adopted as a project of the Ministry of Housing for Haredim and executed by Ashdar Limited.74 In order to ensure its success, Beitar Ilit was located in close proximity to the Green Line as a settler-suburb of Jerusalem and granted extensive subsidies by the government. In addition to the land allocation and subsidies provided by the Ministry of Housing, the government’s priority ‘developing areas’ have received a new designation as ‘National Priority Areas’ since 1993.75 Under this government policy of population distribution, areas such as Beitar Ilit receive benefits such as loans and tax exemptions that are distributed according to what are considered to be the national priorities of the time.76

Haredi Modi’in Ilit, now the largest settlement in the West Bank, was established in 1990 (and recognized as a city by Israel in 2008). The city was built with no official planning but rather as an initiative of private entrepreneurs under the umbrella of Kiryat Sefer Limited as a way of ‘putting facts on the ground’. It only submitted guidance plans to the governmental committees at a later stage in its development. Gadi Algazi (2010) describes the influential private developers who stood behind the construction of the city and the industrial area built in it including the businessman Lev Leviev, who is the owner of one of the biggest construction companies in Israel, Africa Israel Investments Ltd. Algazi shows how the dynamics of land colonization were influenced and pushed by the private investors. Furthermore, even the route of the separation wall’s construction around Modi’in Ilit was decided in accordance with the private investors’ wishes.

Following on from the previous section that described how the ‘nonideological’ settlements and settlers are positioned as merely a ‘capitalist venture’ – wherein the roles of the state, the private developers, and the settlers are reconfigured and contribute to a process that makes the settler colonial structure invisible – Haredi cites, including Modi’in Ilit and Beitar Ilit, became a major part of this new discourse. Thus, in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in September 2009, an article cites a series of public personalities arguing that the West Bank Modi’in Ilit is not a settlement. Ehud Barak, the former Minister of Defence argues that ‘Modi’in Ilit is not a settlement, it is a city’. Modi’in Ilit’s mayor, Ya’akov Guterman, states that ‘we are part of the consensus, therefore we are not a settlement’. In addition, even the secretary general of the Peace Now movement, Yariv Openheimer, is cited as saying that unlike the other settlements, ‘the grounds for the establishment of Modi’in Ilit is not ideology but real estate’. Here, the discourse of a capitalist venture makes real estate free of (colonial) ideology and reflects the way that Haredi settlements are represented in Israel and how these settlements represent themselves. In a later interview, Ya’akov Guterman says, ‘If I thought this was a settlement, I would never have come here […]. We are not here for political reasons. […] Ninety percent of the people are here for the affordability, not for ideology.’77 One of my interviewees, a resident of Modi’in Ilit, explains what the line is between ‘ideological’ and ‘non-ideological’ settlers in his opinion: Nobody lives here and sees it as a redemption of the Land of Israel or a defense of the borders. […] Most of the inhabitants of Modi’in Ilit don’t know where the Green Line runs. I take a bit more interest, but they don’t know and aren’t interested. It isn’t a question that comes up before they move here.

The idea that Haredi West Bank settlements are ‘non-ideological’ is articulated not only through the motivation for moving to the settlements (i.e., affordability or the desire to live in a Haredi-only environment) but also in relation to the Haredim’s position in Israel. This reasoning is conveyed by the words of Yitzhak Zeev Pindrus, Beitar Ilit’s former mayor, in an interview to Ynet in 2005:

No one moves here because they want to ‘cross’ the green line. People are looking for quality of life and that’s what they get here. The Haredim never truly felt part of the state. They were never part of its leading elite, even when we were represented in the coalition government. We’re not involved in the state’s management, we are not part of it, and therefore we don’t deal with these questions [policy questions relating to the settlements].78

The mayor’s statement that the Haredim are not part of the Israeli state is put in even stronger terms by MK Yisrael Eichler, from the United Torah Judaism Party, who – responding to the removal of Beitar Ilit from the list of National Priority Areas (meaning that the city would lose benefits offered under this policy) in August 2013, as well as to other changes in government policies touching on Haredi communities – presented the Haredim as ‘subjects’ colonized by the ‘secular government’: The secular government treats the Haredim with brutality; they are like helpless subjects colonised by it. […] The evil government has police forces and weapons, and prisons to impose its rule on its subjects. But we [the Haredim] have the answer that David gave to Goliath: Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a javelin: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied… that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.79

This discursive division of ‘non-ideological’ settlers or even ‘non-settlers’ is also evident in the way the Haredi settlements position themselves in relation to the religious-nationalist settler movement (or the ‘ideological’ settlers). Yitzhak Ravitz, a Haredi settler-resident of Beitar Ilit, articulates this position in an interview in Ha’aretz: ‘We don’t identify with the settlers. You won’t see us demonstrating alongside them. We’ve nothing in common with the “hilltop youth” […] They may have drawn closer to us, but not vice versa.’80 However, the leaders of the nationalist-religious settlers reject any distinction. In the same article, Pinhas Wallerstein, former head of the West Bank settler body Binyamin Regional Council, is quoted as saying in September 2003: ‘It is my ideal […] to see every Jew living in the territories. I expect nothing from the Haredi settlers. But even if they didn’t come here for ideological reasons, they won’t give up their homes so easily.’81 Conversely, when a group of religious-nationalists wanted to settle in Beitar Ilit, the selection committees prevented them from doing so.

Since the 1980s, the liberalization of the West Bank settlements has shaped the positions of non-hegemonic groups in relation to the liberalization of Israel’s economy, leading to the segregation of Jews and Palestinians and between Jewish ethno-classes, and creating a space of non-hegemonic ‘third Israel’ that is positioned ‘outside’ of ‘moral Israel’.82 On the Haredi website Kicker Ha Shabat, Yossi Elituv, a Haredi journalist, published a column in 2009 that argues it is not by chance that Haredi settlements are at the centre of an international dispute over the freeze of West Bank settlement construction as the Haredi settler-cities are almost the only available housing solution for the Haredi population. He blames the Israeli government for pushing the Haredi housing solution ‘outside’ the Green Line by ‘navigating’ and exploiting the high birth rate of Haredim as cannon fodder in the settlement enterprise. Elituv continues,

Now this business has to stop. The Haredi representatives must insist upon it. Not Harish, not Katzir and not Kasif. Don’t send us to the territories, not to the Arad region and not to Wadi Ara. […] we are not chunk[s] of meat […] like putty in the hand of the Israeli government to settle any area that occurs to them.83

An article that was published in the Haredi daily newspaper Yated Ne’eman on July 1991 (soon after the establishment of the two major West Bank Haredi settler-cities) had gone further in arguing that the construction of Haredi settlements was not only part of the government’s settlement policy but also a plan of ‘thinning out’ Haredim in Jerusalem.84 ‘Thinning out’ Haredim from Jerusalem feeds into the discourse that constructs Haredim as a threat to the Israeli state and society.

However, segregation (from the rest of Israeli society and from the Palestinians) is also a motivating force for some Haredim to move to the settlements. As I have demonstrated, financial considerations play an important role in the decision of settlers to move to a Haredi settlement. But, an additional consideration for settlers is the desire to maintain a homogenous cultural space. An interviewee expressed his and his wife’s considerations before moving to the Haredi settlement: ‘First of all we looked for a Haredi city so our children’s education would be clean and pure and the second problem was financial. Jerusalem wasn’t an option, very high prices. Modi’in [Ilit] was a good option.’ As this quote suggests, Haredi-only cities offer Haredim segregation from the secular environment. The interviewee continues, ‘Modi’in Ilit is entirely Haredi, it is actually the most Haredi city in the world. There are no “knitted kipot” [commonly meaning Zionist orthodox] and certainly no secular people.’

The liberalization of West Bank settlements, Israel’s settlement policy, and its policy regarding the Haredim together made possible the large-scale homogenous spaces of Haredim on Palestinian lands, segregated from the rest of Israeli society. These settlements are an assemblage of extensive planning on behalf of governments (such as Beitar Ilit), or of providing a space for private developers to ‘put facts on the ground’. An important element in the creation of these settlements is the designation of Haredi housing as a public problem. The creation of controlled homogenous communities maintains segregation from Palestinians, and from most Israelis, and therefore makes these cities attractive for those who seek a ‘pure’ environment. The desire to live a ‘non-political’ Jewish (Haredi) lifestyle is another articulation of a discourse of ‘non-ideology’, which intersects with the fact the Haredim do not identify with Zionist ideology or with Israel. It is made possible by ideas of freedom or ‘privately undertaken colonialism’, enabling many Haredi settlers to purchase relatively cheap housing and to segregate themselves from the ‘secular society’ or ‘secular state’.

Conclusion

Several factors enable the extensive presence of the Haredim in the West Bank. First, while Israel has classified the Haredi housing problem as a distinct one requiring a solution, private developers and entrepreneurs have seen the demand for cheap Haredi housing as a good investment opportunity. This has made the idea of Haredi settlements in the West Bank attractive to both private investors and state authorities. Second, the Haredi aspiration of autonomous living in spaces ostensibly separated from secular and modern Israeli society has been compatible with a popular view in Israeli society that the Haredi lifestyle poses a threat to its image as secular and modern. These two main factors cannot exist outside of the broader historical context of ongoing tensions between Zionism and Haredim. Similarly, they cannot be understood outside the context of economic and political changes in the hityashvut, the settlement activity, as a whole, or in other words, the move towards homogenous settler communities that are part of a discourse of individualism and economic freedom.

Haredim are the fastest-growing settler population, and will soon become the largest settler group in the West Bank, and should therefore no longer be neglected in analyses of West Bank settlements. As I have shown, this neglect can be explained by the fact that they are cast in Israeli internal discourse as ‘non-ideological’ (which follows a market rationality of individualism and is opposed to the religious-nationalist ideology) and ‘non-Zionist’. In addition, international political discourse and academic scholarship tend to see the settlement enterprise as a unified entity, which again omits Haredim from discussion of the settlements despite their growing demographic and political significance. Bringing political factors to bear upon the economic and social circumstances enables us to analyse the emergence of these settlement spaces and to develop a deeper understanding of the contemporary West Bank colonization and settlement project as a whole.

When looking at how Zionism was formed as a way of breaking away from both Jewish traditional-religious communities and European assimilation through the creation of a modern Jewish nation-state in the colony, we may be tempted to view the 1967 frontier as a way for different Jewish groups to further ‘break away’ from modernized Jewish society. This is also where we encounter the desire to live a ‘non-political’ Jewish lifestyle in the colony. The idea of a ‘non-political’ Haredi Jewish lifestyle was constructed, as I have argued, through the articulation of the notion of ‘non-Zionist’ and ‘non-ideological’ settlements. This chapter began with a view that presented the Haredi settler-city as ‘one of the most optimal solutions for the severe housing problem of the Haredi community, within the framework of modern, secular surroundings. The city founders believe that territorial separation is the most appropriate approach to maintaining an independent lifestyle’.85 Haredi settlements may therefore be understood, firstly, as an expansion of colonial space and, secondly, as an agreement regarding the semi-independent place of Haredi-settlements within Israel, which, I argue, challenges the people, sovereignty, and territory principle of the modern Israeli state.