מהתנחלות בשטחים להתנחלות בלבבות: אתנו־ג‘נטריפיקציה בעיר המעורבת

In 2007, the Urban Religious Settlements project in Jaffa was established. Against the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, which was experienced as a deep crisis in the national-religious settlement movement, we point to new sites of political, social and spatial action. The paradigm change from settling in the Occupied Territories to “Settling in the Hearts” seeks to expand the Judaization project to mixed cities in the heart of the country. This article is based on a series of interviews and observations conducted in the winter of 2020, about five months before the outbreak of the violence events of May 2021. The analysis details the sociological and geographical context in which the Garin Torani operates in Jaffa and shows that these active actors represent a new social type, distinguished from both the liberal gentrifiers and the settler movement beyond the Green Line.The Garin Torani members adopt from the repertoire of urban renewal the neo-liberal vision that sees the marginalized city as a space of opportunity for social engagement and self-fulfillment but fill it with the illiberal content of exclusionary Jewish sovereignty. This sociological hybrid configuration reflects both processes of privatization and commodification of space as well as trends of nationalist radicalization prevalent in the Jewish society in Israel.