This first complete 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 over the past forty years. Looking at a wide range of topics, from control of water and electricity to health care and education as well as surveillance and torture, Neve Gordon's panoramic account 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, Gordon 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.
Neve Gordon is Senior Lecturer in Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He is coeditor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics, and the Case of Israel, editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights, and a regular contributor to publications including The Nation, In These Times, and the National Catholic Reporter.
"Covering the four decades since the 1967 war rather than just the current situation, Israel's Occupation offers a unique perspective on the changing dynamics of the Israel-Palestine conflict."—Timothy Mitchell, author of Rule of Experts
"Interweaving a mountain of documents, reports, and firsthand testimonies, Neve Gordon, one of Israel's bravest intellectuals and activists, details and examines the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as no one ever has before. His book will no doubt change the perspective from which the history of the occupation is told."—Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land
“Neve Gordon's Israel's Occupation provides a powerful and convincing structural framework for explaining Israel's changing methods of rule in the Palestinian territories from 1967 and until today. The arguments, insights, and supporting evidence are impressive, and the prose is written with a golden pen. This book will change the debate on Israel and its occupation, and I will not be surprised if Gordon's conceptual framework is harnessed to analyze the workings of other occupations, past and present. It's social science at its best.”—Yinon Cohen, Columbia University
344 pp.6 x 9Illus: 6 maps, 4 graphs, 2 tables, 2 halftones
9780520255319$34.95|£30.00Paper
Oct 2008