‘Unfinished business’: the unrealized development path of Israeli occupation, the Palestinian refugee issue, and 1948 nation-building

This article explores two unrealized, largely unknown Israeli plans for mass Palestinian resettlement and modernization in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 War. Each aimed at cementing Israeli control over the whole of Mandatory Palestine while simultaneously ‘resolving’ the Palestinian refugee issue. However, the strategies advocated by their respective architects–both leading spatial experts with direct experience of the post-1948 Jewish mass settlement campaigns–differed significantly. Eliezer Brutzkus envisioned a Palestinian industrial–urban society while Ra’anan Weitz espoused massive agricultural development centring on a TVA-inspired irrigation infrastructure, with Jewish settlement strips serving as buffer zones. This article analyses how each utilized post-war development theories, devised for a decolonizing world as part of Cold War rivalry, to promote Israel’s particular ideological–territorial ends. By doing so, it traces previously unexplored links between the 1967 Israeli occupation and 1948 nation-building, underscoring the importance of drawing attention to these ‘roads not taken’ at a crucial moment of regional restructuring.