Frontieriphery: Urban Citizenship and Mizrahi Identity in Development Towns

By Erez Tzfadia

Reconsidering Mizrahi communities on the Israel/Palestine border in settler-colonial history.

On October 7, 2023, Israel's border towns made world news. Drawing on more than two decades of research, this book asks how they came to be and what their history reveals. Israel's "development towns" were built in the 1950s along its borders with Lebanon, Jordan, and the Gaza Strip and settled largely by Mizrahim--Jews from the Middle East and North Africa--who were sent to hold the frontier while kept far from the centers of power. Erez Tzfadia names this double condition frontieriphery: frontier and periphery in one place. Against prevailing accounts, he offers a Southeastern, Mizrahi perspective on settler colonialism and on Israeli society, centering the urban citizenship Mizrahim built in these towns--a citizenship forged between exclusion and inclusion. That tension runs throughout the history of the region, as the Mizrahi right to the towns is challenged by state planning, by waves of new neighbors, and finally by the October 2023 attacks.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814351212
• ISBN13: 9780814351215
• Release Date: April 2027
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.