Oren Yiftachel

Yiftachel was born in Haifa and grew up on 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. In 1990, he received a Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Geography at the University of Western Australia, in cooperation with the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. where he was also a post-doctoral fellow. == Career ==

Yiftachel served as a Planning Assistant for the Perth firm "Planning Collaborative", and later worked as a Planning Officer for the Perth City Council until 1984-1987. In Israel during the 1990s Yiftachel worked with the Technion and Mazor-First Planners firm as coordinator of the "Israel 2020" project; as consultant to the Kibbutz Planning Office; and later as social consultant to the Beersheba Metropolitan Plan . Later, he has worked on an Israeli-Palestinian plan for a bi-national Jerusalem, and for a decade became the planner of the RCUV - Regional Council of Unrecognized Bedouins Villages, producing in 2013 a major alternative regional plan for recognition and development of all localities. Yiftachel's teaching career began at the Curtin University from 1987 to 1993. Since 1993, he has been a professor for the Department of Geography at Ben-Gurion University, earning tenure in 1996. During this time, Yiftachel has served as a visiting fellow and a visiting professor for brief periods of time at a variety of institutions, including the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the US Institute of Peace, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Queens, Belfast, Columbia University New York, Upenn, Philadephia, the University of Venice. Politecnico Milan and Capte Town University. Yiftachel was also a Leverhulme professor at University College London (Geography and the Bartlett), and as a research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Yiftachel was a board member of the Israeli Planning Association and the Association of Geographers for several periods. Yiftachel has supervised dozens of graduate students in M.A., PhD and Postdoctorat studied, 15 of whom have gone to become lecturers and professors in Israeli and international academic institutions. Yiftachel was the founding editor of the journal Hagar: International Social Science Research, and was its editor-in-chief from 1999 to 2004. He has served on the editorial board of various other journals, including City (collective editorial), Urban Studies, Planning Theory, Environment and Planning, Space and Polity, Cities; Middle East Report, Journal of Planning Literature, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Israel Studies Forum. == Activism and Advocacy ==

Yiftachel is renowned activist in several notable organizations, including Faculty for Israel-Palestine Peace (FFIPP), Palestinian-Israeli Academics (PALISAD), The Negev Coexistence Forum, the Adva Center's Center for Social Equity (foundation board member),'''' Habitat International Coalition. Yiftachel served as board member and later Co-Chair of B'Tselem (the information center for Palestinian human rights) from 2006 to 2017, and as B'tselem reports committee member until 2022. Yiftachel has advocated for Bedouin land and planning rights since the 1990s, in planning committees, government offices and expert witness in legal land claims' He was an active member in the protest for social justice during 2011-12, and has worked since with public housing, asylum seekers and marginalized group for planning and urban rights. In 2012, he co-founded the joint Israeli-Palestinian peace movement "A Land for All -- Two States, One Homeland", where he is an assembly member and chief researcher.' He is an occasional op-ed contributor to leading Israeli newspapers, including Haaretz, ''Ynet, Ma'ariv, Bukra, +972 and Local Call''. Yiftachel is a member of Academia for Equality, and Academic for Peace. ==Scholarship==

Yiftachel's 2026 curriculum vitae (Yiftachel CV 2026a.pdf) shows he has been "ranked first among Israeli" scholars according to the Stanford-Elsevier "Top 2% Scientists Index" (https://topresearcherslist.com/) in the fields of geography, planning, and urban studies since 2020.'' ==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) https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/EPC/current ==References==