Losing Ground: The Interaction between Demography, Land-Use Policy, Ethnic Conflict and Environment in Israel

Daniel E. Orenstein, Brown University
Steven P. Hamburg, Brown University

This research examines the role of ethnic conflict on the environment in Israel as it is mediated by demographics and land-use policies. We contextualize the impact of population growth on the environment – a relationship that is filtered through land-use policies. These policies, in turn, are influenced by ideological, political and security concerns – all of which have ethnic/demographic dimensions. As such, land-use policy is used explicitly as a tool for spatial control in which the Jewish population is encouraged, through various incentives, to live in particular locals in low-density communities. Simultaneously, limits are placed on non-Jewish mobility within the country and on the physical expansion of non-Jewish communities. A direct result of these policies is increased ethnic tension, which feeds back to policy formulation. By approaching the issue from an environmental perspective, we suggest that environmental quality is an unintended victim of this demographically driven "policy-ethnic tension" feedback loop.