A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture

Rafi Segal, Eyal Weizman

ISBN 10: 1859845495 / ISBN 13: 9781859845493

Published by Verso, 2003

About this Item

A Civilian Occupation offers a powerful critique of the Israeli architectural community's role in the rapid colonization of the Occupied Territories. Through a combination of essays, aerial photographs, maps, and master plans, the book reveals how Israeli settlements serve as tools for government control of the West Bank.

A crisp, clean copy (with dust jacket) in excellent condition.

Seller Inventory # S27

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture
• Publisher: Verso
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1859845495
• ISBN 13: 9781859845493
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Dimensions: 6.25W x 8.5H x 0.75D inches 6.25 inches width by 8.5 inches height by 0.75 inches depth
• Weight: 17.8 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

Bringing together essays and photographs by leading Israeli practitioners, and complemented by maps, plans and statistical data, A Civilian Occupation explores the processes and repercussions of Israeli planning and its underlying ideology. It demonstrates how, over the last century, planning and architecture have been transformed from everyday professional practices into strategic weapons in the service of the state, which has sought to secure national and geopolitical objectives through the organization of space and in the redistribution of its population. In fact, as the book shows, Israeli architecture has consistently provided the concrete means for the pursuit of the Zionist project of building a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. As such, it is the first study to supplement the more familiar political, military and historical analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict with a detailed description of the physical environments in which it is played out.

The banning of the first edition of this book by its original publisher was proof, if any were needed, that architecture in Israel, indeed architecture anywhere, can no longer be considered a politically naive activity: the politics of Israeli architecture is the politics of any architecture.

About the Author

Eyal Weizman is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he directs the Centre for Research Architecture and the European Research Council funded project Forensic Architecture. He is also a founder member of the collective Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR) in Bethlehem, Palestine. He is the author of Hollow Land, The Least of All Possible Evils, and co-editor of A Civilian Occupation. He lives in London.

Described by Le Monde as a “thorn in Israel’s flank”, Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist. For over twenty years he has covered the Israel–Palestine conflict, in particular the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in his column “Twilight Zone.”