Abstract

Landscape and national modernism in Israeli Highway 90: the case of the northwest Dead Sea segment, 1967–1971 efrat hildesheim border play a significant role in the ideological formation of culture and Introduction society in Israel. Israeli Highway 90 spans the whole country, running parallel to the Israel– To convey the juxtaposition and the affinities between the border and Jordan border to its east. The longest road in Israel (478 km), it serves as the road parallel to it, I refer to Highway 90 as a borderoad, implying that Israel’s backbone, extending from the 19th-century pioneering village of the road and the border constitute a unified liminal space and landscape. Metula on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, to the popular tourist city The hybrid notion of the borderoad forms the border as a present-absent of Eilat on its southern border with Egypt. The 35 km-long northwest Dead while the road performs as a civil-military international boundary. The Sea segment, which is the subject of this article, is located on a part of the road road then, just like the border, operates as a national emblem, and so does within the occupied territories of the West Bank. its landscape. Moreover, being