Israel’s Occupation

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University of California Press, Oct 2, 2008 - History - 344 pages
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.

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About the author (2008)

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.

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