Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation
2008; Purdue University Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1534-5165
Autores Tópico(s)Middle East Politics and Society
ResumoHollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, by Eyal Weizman. London: Verso, 2007. 318 pp. $34.95. Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation examines how different forms of Israeli rule over the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 inscribed themselves in space (p. 5). To accomplish this purpose, Eyal Weizman uses the term architecture in two ways. In its first meaning, he describes in detail the planning, construction, physical, and political attributes of several of the built structures of the and the roles of the Israeli architects who designed them. The structures analyzed include the Jewish Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem, the settlements, the separation barrier, the checkpoint at Qalandia, the border crossing at the Allenby Bridge, and the Rafah Terminal. The separation barrier is arguably Israel's most egregious violation of international law in the course of over forty years of occupation, since an International Court of Justice ruling determined that it is illegal. Yet Israeli architects protested against being excluded from participating in the design process. Weizman also employs architecture a conceptual way of understanding political issues as constructed realities (p. 6). Each of the chapters examines a structure or related set of structures and the way they enforce Israel's domination of the Palestinians through the control of physical space. The chapters are self-contained essays; most of them contain fascinating detail that is little known outside Israel. Among the best is the chapter on Israel's targeted assassinations in the Gaza Strip beginning in 2003. It is an incisive, albeit depressing, discussion of the politics and technology of what Weizman terms airborne occupation and the extension of the along a vertical axis. Underscoring the relevance of this issue to current developments beyond Israel/Palestine, Weizman traces the use of aerial bombardment of rebellious natives to the tenure of Winston Churchill as Britain's Minister of War and Air in the 1920s. Churchill enthusiastically promoted aerially enforced in Somaliland and Iraq. The structure of Hollow Land does not permit Weizman to offer a comprehensive history of the occupation, and he acknowledges that this is not his objective. Surprisingly, there is still no fully satisfactory narrative of this kind. Gershom Gorenberg's, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006), while based on good historical research on the first decade of the settlement project, is ultimately flawed and problematic (for my review see When Doves Cry, The Nation, April 17, 2006). Weizman, although he is a more consistent critic of the Israeli than Gorenberg, adopts the same fundamental thesis: that there was no master plan guiding the settlement project in its early years. Rather, colonization of the mountain district of the West Bank . …
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