9781844678686 hollow land

Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation

Acclaimed exploration of the political space created by Israel's colonial occupation

From the tunnels of Gaza to the militarized airspace of the Occupied Territories, Eyal Weizman unravels Israel's mechanisms of control and its transformation of Palestinian towns, villages and roads into an artifice where all natural and built features serve military ends. Weizman traces the development of this strategy, from the influence of archaeology on urban planning, Ariel Sharon's reconceptualization of military defence during the 1973 war, through the planning and architecture of the settlements, to the contemporary Israeli discourse and practice of urban warfare and airborne targeted assassinations.

Hollow Land lays bare the political system at the heart of this complex and terrifying project of late-modern colonial occupation.

 

Paperback, 336 pages

ISBN: 9781844678686

August 2012

$24.95 / £14.99 / $31.00CAN

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Reviews

  • The most astonishing book on architecture that I have read in years.
  • A masterpiece of political analysis.
  • Eyal Weizman has taken Edward Said’s thesis to a new level, generating extraordinary, and at times surreally uncomfortable, conclusions…Weizman’s book is of salutary interest.
  • Weizman takes his readers on a tour of the visible and invisible ways in which Israel implements its control over Palestinians... Hollow Land is eloquent about the architectural chaos and confusion created by Israel in the Occupied Territories.
  • A passionate jeremiad.
  • Eyal Weizman brilliantly deconstructs Israel’s yoking of traditionally humanist disciplines and discourse to the service of its campaign against the Palestinians. This book is chilling but essential reading.
  • Hollow Land is a remarkably original work that confirms Eyal Weizman’s indispensable role as a critic of the sinister and ubiquitous instrumentality of space in contemporary politics and life.
  • Hollow Land is a remarkable achievement. Scholarly and poetic in its epic reach, and narrated with the clarity of vision and sensibility of an artist, Hollow Land is destined to become a classic.
  • A startling exercise in what it means to think through the axiomatics of occupation, capture and subjection... Weizman boldly attempts to create an entirely new method to conceptualize the relationship between surfaces, movement, and the tools of war.
  • A wrenching account of the multiple ways in which the land of Palestine has been hollowed out by Israeli occupation. Weizman's stunning combination of words and images is at once a brilliant critique of the politics of space and a searing indictment of colonial rule and dispossession.

Blog

64 years of occupation and resistance: a reading list

The Nakba, or "day of catastrophe," remains the central issue of struggle for the Palestinian people. Commemorated each May 15th, the Nakba began in May 1948 when the State of Israel was founded on Palestinian lands, leading to the forcible expulsion of 75% of the indigenous population. Today, over 5 million Palestinian refugees remain in refugee camps in countries around the world, unable to return to their land and homes. They are the oldest and largest refugee population in the world.

With the announcement, just one day before the Nakba, that Israel has settled with hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike, we reflect on 64 years of Israeli occupationand Palestinian resistancewith a survey of Verso's responses to this struggle.

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