The City and War: The Case of Tel Aviv-Jaffa

Abstract

In wartime cities become prime objects for attack and sustain different levels of destruction. The increase since the 1990s in the number and scale of violent conflicts has resulted in growing awareness of the devastating aspect of war in urban areas, which now enjoys the coinage “urbicide”. It is by far and large the outcome of the shift from research focused on the history and spatiality of armed conflicts, to a moralist-oriented approach based on the political economies and socio-cultural geographies of militarism. Yet, as portrayed in the case of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, it limits the analysis of the variety of effects of war which vary widely due to location, intensity of fighting and prevailing social, cultural and economic realities.