Travelogues and promotional documents portray contemporary Tel Aviv as a sparkling oasis in a sand-encrusted region of the world, filled with history, culture, and visionary promise. From its modernist architecture to its origin as host to one of the world’s most culturally vibrant and politically significant diasporas, Tel Aviv has much to commend. According to a city-authorized website, it was founded by

a group of people with an extraordinary dream … [whose] vision transformed an area made of sand dunes into the first Hebrew city. They carried out their city plan without formalities, in an innovative sytle that differentiated it...

At this point the radio continued broadcasting from the site of this event. Words of war such asviolence, aggression, hostility, nationalism, bloodshed, anddestructionwere voiced in concert with words of heartache such aspain, fear, memory, scars, wounds, anddeath. Broadcasters, eyewitnesses, government administrators, and police were all searching for the right words to describe the event and explain its meaning. But how can we begin to understand arenas of violence? Where do we start—with the personal scarred body¹ or with an unveiling of the ideology of the national body, the generator and political manipulator of violent...

What is the influence of the violent act on the place in which it occurs? How does violence influence perceptions of place? What changes, if any, does it generate? Is violence always an evil that must be eradicated? Addressing these questions will help us understand how violent political acts influence spatial production. Our hypothesis is that violence influences the production of space, but, unlike the Marxist approach that sees a sequence of struggles in a particular regime as a rite of passage to another form of regime, the following discussion illuminates how violent acts generate processes of revision in order...

Malchei Israel Square was constructed in the 1960s as a void surrounded and defined by six-story buildings. The dimensions of the Square are approximately 260 meters north to south, and about 160 meters east to west (see Figures 2.1, 2.2). On the northern edge of the Square stands City Hall, twelve stories high. Constructed on the former Portalis orchard in the Arab village of Summeil, the Square was initially demarcated in Geddes’s plan (approved in 1927), which called for the construction of a city hospital, but the site was used instead as a public garden and a zoo until the...

Jewish demands for autonomy in the early 1920s contributed to the British Mandate’s decision to separate Tel Aviv from Jaffa.¹ This decision, officially recognizing Tel Aviv as a separate entity, demarcated the Menshiyeh Quarter between Jaffa and Tel Aviv as a buffer zone with the Hassan Beq Mosque in the center (Map 3.1).² The establishment of this mosque in 1916 grew out of the decision of the military governor, Hassan Beq, to further develop Jaffa. At the beginning, the Arab community in Jaffa boycotted the mosque because of the forced labor and annexation of property that accounted for its construction....

One Sunday afternoon, at 6:30 p.m., two suicide bombers blew themselves up, one after the other, on two parallel streets by the Central Bus Station. The first exploded in the pedestrian precinct of Neve Shaanan at the corner of Rosh Pina Street. The second exploded on Gedud Haʾivri Street, parallel to the pedestrian street. Both bombers carried powerful explosive devices packed with metal screws and other items, killing twenty-three people and injuring another hundred in this double attack.¹ Significant damage was also done to property in the area. The violent acts and their spatial location in the southern part of...

The countless violent acts in Tel Aviv have become almost routine, followed by revisioning moments enacted by the government, media, municipalities, police, and citizens that have themselves become habitual practices touching all levels of society.

In this book, we have looked at Tel Aviv through an analysis of violent acts in three key sites. By looking at Rabin Square, the city’s distinctive socio-spatial historical constructions are illuminated; examining particular moments in the history of Rabin Square tells us about the political history of the Jewish community. Analysis suggests that the form of public assembly and the physical space in which...