Through words and images, Eyal Weizman explores how the Israeli occupation has transformed the physical landscape of Gaza and the West Bank, and how the management of space has become a critical element in maintaining control over the people living there. ‘A remarkably original work’, writes Michael Sorkin, ‘that confirms Eyal Weizman’s indispensable role as a critic of the sinister and ubiquitous instrumentality of space in contemporary politics and life.’

Yonatan Mendel writes:

Focusing on the Occupied Territories, Weizman takes his readers on a tour of the visible and invisible ways in which Israel implements its control over Palestinians. This journey leads from the streets of Jenin to the view over Gaza from an Apache helicopter and on through the subterranean tunnels in Rafah. It is a landscape of many colours: from red roofed settlements, through the green pine trees surrounding them and up to the black one-way mirrors of the Allenby border crossing into Jordan, which allow Israeli security agents to monitor Palestinians in transit without themselves being seen. There are many methods of navigation: a bridge over a road over a tunnel-road, or a Jewish highway through an ocean of Palestinians. Architecture is not only everything and everywhere, but also everyone. The Israeli political leadership, settlers, judges, army officers, security-men – even architects – have a part in the shaping of houses, roads, windows, cladding and angles, to facilitate the complex mission of occupying the Palestinian territories.

(LRB 2 August 2007)

Verso Books | Paperback 336 pp. |ISBN: 9781844678686