Settlement myth and settlement activity: Interrelationships in the Zionist land of Israel

Settlement frontiers may bring about the production of political settlement myths leading future settlers to frontier settlements. Such myths may develop through three phases of geographical interpretation: (i) the realization or consumption of previous myths, (ii) ideological loading of the landscape and (iii) the emergence of mythical space. These phases, notably the latter, are expressed in various outlets of the collective memory and civil religion. Zionist political settlement myths may be interpreted as dealing with environmental struggles, social development and security. These myths are interrelated with several chains of local or regional settlement processes and events: produced myth comes to be consumed by later settlers. But the creation of such myths emanates from the urban cores of Jaffa, Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.