Researching for the role of politics within architecture, and the role of architecture within politics, in Israeli plans and designs of the colonies settlements, on the west bank in the Palestinian territories. Urban planning and architecture have been transformed from everyday professional practices into strategic weapons in the service of the state, where the strategic and political aims of the state of Israel, of enforcing control and surveillance on the local Palestinian population.Thus, beyond the mere presence of Israeli settlements on occupied land it is the way they were designed, their size, form and distribution across the terrain, where that both destruction and construction are used to enhance and escalate a territorial conflict.
While the picture that the state is presenting, beyond ideology, these settlementsincluded a subsidized, high level of services and amenities, a cheaper life close to nature- and of course, great views.
Thus this creates a gap between these settlements and the surrounding landscape, and between luxury and simplicity, the spontaneous and designed. Where anyone can easily recognize some of the distinctive qualities of Jewish and Arab architecture, contained within the previous description, especially within those areas where newly built settlements sit like fortresses on hilltops overlooking the sprawling built space of village.
Even the building of these settlements has created “anon-contiguous archipelago of thousands of separate islands” that is interconnected through a network of roads which are controlled by "checkpoints", that’s how it was created (The matrix of control).
