The author of this study, Rabbi Bezalel Cohen is a graduate of the Lithuanian yeshiva world. From an insider’s perspective and through his involvement in advancing employment in ultra-orthodox society, he offers an analysis of the inherent economic deficiency and its root causes, chief among which is the issue of employment. The analysis raises a series of conceptual and inherent barriers in ultra-orthodox society, which  impede the transition of Haredi men, hitherto engaged in Torah study, into the labor market.

This study highlights the characteristics of decision-making in the disengagement process on issues concerning the evacuation of settlements, uprooting settlers and its outcome, recompensing evacuees and resettling them. In order to examine the decision-making process more comprehensively, the author compares between the process of evacuating the Sinai settlers in 1982 with those of Gaza in 2005. The study analyses similarities and differences between these two processes and highlights lessons that were drawn as well as those that were overlooked. 

The study was written until July 2005 and its contribution is mainly in drawing conclusions that are likely to guide decision-makers in Israel in any future evacuation of settlements in Judea and Samaria.

• This essay details the urban consequences of the Al Aqsa Intifadah and the separation barrier project on Jerusalem. In West Jerusalem, the onset of terror, and specifically a wave of suicide bombings, hastened the city’s decentralization. Rapid decline of the economy and the disappearance of tourism further battered the city’s vitality. Israel’s  increased barriering of the city, culminating in the separation barrier project, was a major low for the city’s Arab inhabitants, and the urban fabric of East Jerusalem. Neighborhoods inside and outside the barrier were divided, with massive effects on daily life, work opportunities, property values, and relocation patterns. The paper argues that without a strategic package of urban recovery measures, Jerusalem is in danger of becoming locked in a spiral of decline.