Dwelling on the Green Line

Analysing the growth of the settlements along the border between Israel and the occupied West-Bank, the Green-Line, this book examines the lives lived around these lines, from the 1970s to the present day, attempting to understand the interface between the state's strategy of territorial expansion and individual, as well as corporate, interests.

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Concealed within the walls of settlements along the Green-Line, the border between Israel and the occupied West-Bank, is a complex history of territoriality, privatisation and multifaceted class dynamics. Since the late 1970s, the state aimed to expand the heavily populated coastal area eastwards into the occupied Palestinian territories, granting favoured groups of individuals, developers and entrepreneurs the ability to influence the formation of built space as a means to continuously develop and settle national frontiers. As these settlements developed, they became a physical manifestation of the relationship between the political interest to control space and the ability to form it. Telling a socio-political and economic story from an architectural and urban history perspective, Gabriel Schwake demonstrates how this production of space can be seen not only as a cultural phenomenon, but also as one that is deeply entangled with geopolitical agendas.