Israel's Occupation
Neve Gordon
Abstract
This history of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip allows us to see beyond the smoke screen of politics in order to make sense of the dramatic changes that have developed on the ground. Looking at a wide range of topics, from control of water and electricity to health care and education, as well as surveillance and torture, it reveals a fundamental shift from a politics of life—when, for instance, Israel helped Palestinians plant more than six-hundred thousand trees in Gaza and provided farmers with improved varieties of seeds—to a macabre politics characterized by an incr ... More
This history of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip allows us to see beyond the smoke screen of politics in order to make sense of the dramatic changes that have developed on the ground. Looking at a wide range of topics, from control of water and electricity to health care and education, as well as surveillance and torture, it reveals a fundamental shift from a politics of life—when, for instance, Israel helped Palestinians plant more than six-hundred thousand trees in Gaza and provided farmers with improved varieties of seeds—to a macabre politics characterized by an increasing number of deaths. Drawing attention to the interactions, excesses, and contradictions created by the forms of control used in the Occupied Territories, the author argues that the occupation's very structure, rather than the policy choices of the Israeli government or the actions of various Palestinian political factions, has led to this radical shift.
Keywords:
West Bank,
Gaza Strip,
water,
electricity,
health care,
education,
surveillance,
torture,
occupation structure
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780520255302 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520255302.001.0001 |
