Israel's Occupation

"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

Publishers Weekly

Applying the work of Michel Foucault to the contemporary Middle East, this highly theoretical book examines the "means of control used to manage" the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Gordon, a professor of politics at Ben-Gurion University, begins by exploring the diffuse mechanisms of power-in the political, civilian, geographical and economic arenas-used to normalize the occupation in its first years, making the ostensibly temporary occupation permanent. Later chapters take a more specific historical approach, examining a series of events that radically transformed these power structures: the first intifada, the Oslo Accords and the second intifada, which, the author argues, required a reorganization of Israeli power in the Occupied Territories, leading to the disregard of the Palestinians inhabiting those territories. Gordon focuses on the treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and writes for a decidedly scholarly audience; as a result, the book's usefulness beyond academics will likely be limited. (Nov.)

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.