Benjamin Netanyahu's Land Reform Provokes Student Protest

Amid the backdrop of Mahmoud Abbas' application for Palestinian statehood, Jesse Fox critiques the Israeli premier for his antiquated plan to fast track sprawling suburban developments into Israel's rapidly diminishing open spaces.

1 minute read

September 28, 2011, 8:00 AM PDT

By George Haugh


Sustainable Cities attacks Benjamin Netanyahu's persistence with free market economics, privatization of public land, and desire for affordable single use, suburban sprawl. Israeli students responded to Netanyahu's privatization based planning reforms in July with mass protests and the construction of a "tent city," in the center of Tel Aviv. There they called for "social justice," and "revolution to end privatization."

Jesse Fox claims that Netanyahu has presided over an increasingly "kleptocratic," government that has slowed social change by keeping the focus on external boogeymen, whose ranks have been reduced by the Arab Spring. He writes that "Bibi's grand vision will drag us backward, accelerating massive, uncontrolled (sub)urbanization while degrading the country's standard of living."

"As for the claim that flooding the market with tens of thousands of units will lower prices, most serious economists and planning experts are not buying it."

Thursday, July 21, 2011 in Sustainable City blog

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