Oren Yiftachel

Oren Yiftachel (; Arabic اورن يفتحئل) is a professor (em.) of political and legal geography, urban studies and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba where he holds the Lynn and Lloyd Hurst Family Chair in Urban Studies and co-heads the BGUrban lab. He is also a Professor (hon.) of the Geography and DPU Departments at University College, London.

Early life and education Yiftachel was born in Haifa and grew up on socialist kibbutz Matzuva in the Galilee. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Urban and Regional Studies at the Western Australian Institute of Technology in 1983. He completed graduate studies in Urban and Regional Planning at Curtin University, Perth in 1986.

Publications Yiftachel has published over 120 articles, 12 books and 6 edited special iisues. Among them:

Author (books)

Yiftachel, O. (1992). Planning a Mixed Region in Israel: The Political Geography of Arab-Jewish Relations in the Galilee, Avebury, Gower Publishing Limited, Aldershot, Hampshire, UK, 376pp, 44 maps and figures, 39 tables, 13 plates. . Yiftachel, O. (1995). Planning as Control: Policy and Resistance in Deeply Divided Societies, Progress in Planning Series, Vol. 44, Pergamon-Elsvier, Oxford, UK, 89 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables. Yiftachel, O. (1997). Guardians of the Vineyard: Majd al-Krum as Fable, The Institute for Israeli Arab Studies (The 'Seam-line Series'), Beit Berl; 126 pp., 7 maps and figures, 6 tables, (Hebrew). Yiftachel, O. (2006). Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 306 pp. 26 figures, 4 tables; translated to five languages). Kedar, S., Amara, A.' Yiftachel, O. (2018), Emptied Lands: Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Publish in Arabic by Madar Center, Ramallah, 2020; in Hebrew (updated two new chapters), 2025 with Pardes Publishers, Haifa.. Yiftachel, O, (2021), Land and Power: Israel/Palestine from Ethnocracy to Deepening Apartheid, Tel-Aviv, Resling (Hebrew).

Editor (books)

Hedgcock, D., & Yiftachel, O., eds. (1992). Urban and Regional Planning in Western Australia: Historical and Critical Perspectives, Paradigm Press, Perth, 306pp, 34 maps and figures, Yiftachel, O., & Meir, A., eds. (1998). Ethnic Frontiers in Israel: Landscapes of Development and Inequality in Israel, Boulder, Westview Press, 337 pages, 18 tables, 25 maps and figures. Yiftachel, O.; Alexander, I.; Hedgcock, D.; & Little, J., eds. (2001). The Power of Planning: Spaces of Control and Transformation, Kluwer Academic Publications, the Hague; ISBN, 214 pp.; 6 tables, 17 figures). . Kemp, A., Yiftachel, O., Newman, D., Ram, U., eds. (2004). Hegemonies and Resistance: Israelis in Conflict, (280 pp., 4 tables, 11 figures; Sussex Academic Press) . Amara, A., Yiftachel, O. & Abu-Saad, I. (eds), (2013). Indigenous (In)Justice? Human Rights among Bedouins in Southern Israel/Palestine, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. Yiftachel, O. and Mammon, N. (eds) 2023, TheoriSE: the Southeastern Turn in Urban Studies, African Centre for Cities, Cape Town.

Editor ( Journal special issues)

Yiftachel, O.; & Abu-Saad, I., eds. (2008). "Bedouin-Arabs Society in the Negev", Special theme issue of Hagar: Studies in Culture, Politics and Identity, Vol. 8. 257pp, 16 tables, 13 figures, 52 photographs). Ghanem, A. & Yiftachel, O., eds. (2010). "The Vision Documents: a New Order for Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel?", Special theme issue of State and Society, 165 pp, 3 figures, 4 table (Hebrew). Yiftachel, O. & Mandelbaum, R., eds. (2015). "Social Justice and Israel Planning", Special Issue of Planning – Journal of the Israeli Planning Association, Vol. 12, No. 1: 145-270. Yiftachel, O. & Porter, L., eds. (2019). "Settler Colonialism, Indigeneity and the City", special issue of Settler Colonial Studies, Vol. 8 Gawlewicz, A. and Yiftachel, O. (eds) 2022, 'Throwntogetherness' in Hostile Environment, City, Vol. 26: 2-3 Ansenberg, U., Tzfadia, E., Yiftachel, O. and Haas, O. 2025, "Displaceability’: Southeastern perspectives from Israel/Palestine on Urban Citizenship": Environment and Planning C: Vol. 43(8)