The final chapter discusses the main findings of the previous chapters. It draws a continuous line between the different phenomena presented in the book and explains how they constitute a gradual process of privatization. It summarizes the different national and private interests in the development of the area along the Trans-Israel Highway and explains how this influence was manifested in the local built environment and in residents’ everyday lives. Using the case studies presented in the book, the chapter concludes by presenting a new theoretical framework that explains the relations between the state, the market. and the individual, and how these shape the built environment and the everyday lives of those living in it.

This chapter provides a historical and theoretical background to the development of the settlements along the Trans-Israel Highway. It explains the geopolitical role of settlements in Israel/Palestine and how their production has transformed during the last century. It then presents key theories on the welfare nation-state and the global turn toward neoliberalism and the market economy, while explaining the Israeli version of the phenomenon. Illustrating the entangled relations between nationalism, territoriality, and privatization, the chapter presents the complexity of the subject and explains the entangled relations between nationalism, territoriality, and privatization. Offering a general view of the development of the different settlement phenomena along the Green Line and the Trans-Israel Highway, this chapter prepares the reader for those that follow, while explaining what makes this area a privately developed national project.

The suburbanization of the 1990s illustrates the further privatization of the settlement mechanism along the Green Line. During the 1990s, the Israeli government, together with the Israel Land Administration and the Ministry of Housing and Construction initiated nine new settlements in this area. Unlike earlier examples, where the construction of new settlements was a collaboration between national institutions, settling movements, and small-scale private initiatives, the state now put the process into the hands of large-scale private developers. Thus, while the earlier planning was done for, or by, the future settlers, taking in account their desires, needs, and abilities, the planners now had also to consider the investment and financial interests of the various entrepreneurs. Consequently, rentability became a crucial aspect in planning and executing new settlements, eventually shaping the built environment. This chapter focuses on the “Stars” settlements – nine new sites initiated by the state in the early 1990s that demonstrate the completion of the transition to a privatized national project. Analyzing the architectural and urban characteristics of these new settlements, as well as their development mechanism, location, and intended target population, the chapter provides additional insight into the changing relationship between the state of Israel and its privatizing market.

The Suburban Settlement phenomenon is an integral part of the economic and cultural changes that Israel underwent during the 1970s, including the formation of a local upper-middle class and significant modifications in popular culture. With the liberalization and privatization processes in the Israeli economy, the existing hegemonic cultural elite was able to use its political strength and connections to preserve its status and transform its cultural capital into financial capital, eventually becoming an economic upper-middle class. This process was accompanied by a transition toward a more individualistic and consumerist culture, referred to as the bourgeoisification of Israeli society. Suburban Settlements were larger and more homogeneously planned than Community Settlements. They were usually built by well-connected developers and designated for specific families who were affiliated with leading political parties or key national establishments like the military, defense-affiliated industries and other strategic institutions. This chapter focuses on Kochav Yair, Alfei Menashe, Oranit, and Reut. Analyzing the method of their construction, as well as their urban and architectural characteristics, the chapter illustrates how changes in the settlement development mechanism led to changes in living patterns and transformed the local built environment.

Community Settlements are small-scale nonagricultural villages consisting of a limited number of families and with a relatively homogenous character. They were first established by Israeli planning agencies during the 1970s as a tool to strengthen the state’s territorial and demographic control over predominantly Arab areas like the Galilee and the Green Line. Unlike earlier settlement methods that, as part of the nation-building years, relied on ideological values such as labor, agriculture, redemption, identity, and integration, Community Settlements promoted a more individual and neo-rural lifestyle. This chapter shows how Community Settlements became the new leading tool for a national agenda, corresponding with changing ideas in Israeli culture, which was moving from a quasi-socialist society to a market-driven neoliberal one, later turning the neo-rural phenomenon into a suburban one. The chapter examines six different settlements initiated along the Green-Line between 1977 and 1981 – Sal’it, Reihan, Hinanit, Shaked, Nirit, and Ya’arit. Analyzing the development of these six case studies, and how their built environment changed over the years, this chapter shows how the demand for better living standards in small communities situated away from city centres became the leading force behind the national mission of territorial control in the early 1980s.

Chapter 2 provides an in-depth exploration of the more open state opposition structure of the Hosni Mubarak regime – which groups were co-opted, which were included and allowed to participate, and which were excluded from formal political participation – and traces the impact of these different types of opportunity structures on the political and outreach activities that different groups undertook. We see that opposition groups that were excluded from the formal political system, such as Islamist groups and pro-reform umbrella groups, adjusted their strategies in response to exclusion and were alternately tolerated and repressed by the regime. During periods of toleration, these groups – especially Islamist groups – were able to establish an extensive grassroots presence through charities, community self-help organizations, private mosques, and individual religious outreach activities. These activities at the grassroots level, while not always directly confronting the state, constituted the construction of a “parallel society” that quietly contested the regime’s legitimacy. During periods of repression, members of these groups retreated underground and into informal networks until they found new venues through which to engage with their communities.

Chapter 4 begins with an in-depth process tracing of the decisions around political party formation in Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster. We revisit the puzzling variation in party formation across the Egyptian political opposition landscape, particularly examining the decision on the part of Egyptian organized labor and pro-reform activist groups not to form political parties, tracing the link between the structure of the opposition under the Mubarak regime to the strategic incentives and organizational constraints faced by groups at this juncture. We then conduct an in-depth within-case comparison of the mobilization prior to Egypt’s 2011 elections, utilizing granular data on political parties’ specific campaign strategies and methods to trace the link between the adaptations that various groups made during the Mubarak era to the relative organizational and persuasive resources political groups had, and the mobilization tactics and strategies they were then able to use. We also specifically examine compelling evidence for common alternatives or contributing explanations for the Muslim Brotherhood’s success, and show that while these explanations certainly fill in part of the picture, they are incomplete without an understanding of mechanisms linking authoritarian legacies to the 2011 elections.

The events in Egypt between 2011 and 2013 present a series of empirical puzzles unanswered in the comparative political scholarship: We see puzzling variation with respect to the particular processes of party formation, political mobilization, and opposition group survival or dissolution in the context of regime transitions. These puzzles are particularly evident in Egypt, where a repressed opposition group (the Muslim Brotherhood) won the 2011 founding elections only to be forced from office eighteen months later, while other opposition groups that were active in protesting the Egyptian regime did not even form a political party to run in the 2011 elections. Common explanations for events in Egypt focus on idiosyncratic features of the Egyptian political landscape and fail to explain similar events in other cases in Eastern Europe, Africa, and South America. An approach that takes into account the mechanisms linking the authoritarian past to the events surrounding founding elections offers not only an explanation for events in Egypt but also illuminates comparative cases of founding elections more generally. The book uses comparative process tracing to excavate the mechanisms at play in Egypt and then test them in five comparative cases, linking the authoritarian political ecosystem to the outcome of founding elections.