Aktuell
14.10.2025
IK-IfP (22.10.25) – From Separation to a Shared Homeland: Notes on Settler-Colonial Urbanism in Israel\Palestine
Speaker: Prof. Haim Yacobi, University College London
Wednesday, October 22nd 2025, 16:00 c.t. / Room 124, Institut für Politikwissenschaft or online via Zoom
About the lecture: In this presentation I aim to discuss settler colonial urbanism(s) in Palestine\Israel, while exploring the different spatial and political typologies developed during the last few decades. I will discuss how colonial planning has been used as a tool of social, demographic, and spatial control and how Palestinian claims for the right to the city are meaningful political forms of protest. The presentation will refer to Palestinian cities (such as Lydda) that were transformed into “Jewish-Arab mixed cities”, to new “Jewish cities” that are going through a process of “Arabisation”, to Jerusalem as a neo-apartheid city, and to the current spatiocide of Gaza. The argument to be articulated in this talk is that moving from the paradigm of separation into a shared homeland is the only sustainable approach which will lead to a shared future.
About Prof. Haim Yacobi
Haim Yacobi is a Professor of Development Planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL. The main issues that stand in the center of his research interest in relation to the urban space are social justice, the politics of identity, urban health, and colonial planning. In 1999 he formulated the idea of establishing "Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights" and NGO that deals with human rights and planning in Israel and was its co-founder. His latest books are “Rethinking Israeli Space: Periphery and Identity” (Routledge 2011 with Erez Tzfadia) and “Israel\Africa: a genealogy of moral geography” (Routledge 2016). Currently he holds an ESRC grant (with Prof Omar Dajani) “The Shared Homeland Paradigm - Reimagining Space, Rights and Partnership in Palestine-Israel”.
The lecture will be held in English