the politics of verticality - eyal weizman

8/8/2019 The Politics of Verticality - Eyal Weizman

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1. Introduction to The Politics of Verticality

Weizman introduces the experience of territory in the West Bank, which explodes simple politica

boundaries and “crashes three-dimensional space into six dimensions– three Jewish and three

Arab”.

Since the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza strip, a colossal project of strategic, territorial and architectural planning has lain at the heart of the Israeli- Palestinian

conflict.

The landscape and the built environment became the arena of conflict. Jewish settlements – state

sponsored islands of ‘territorial and personal democracy’, manifestations of the Zionist pioneering

ethos – were placed on hilltops overlooking the dense and rapidly changing fabric of the Palestinia

cities and villages. ‘First’ and ‘Third’ Worlds spread out in a fragmented patchwork: a territorial

ecosystem of externally alienated, internally homogenised enclaves located next to, within, above below each other.

A new understanding of territory had to be developed to govern the West Bank. The Occupied

Territories were no longer seen as a two-dimensional surface, but as a large threedimensional

volume, layered with strategic, religious and political strata.

New and intricate frontiers were invented, like the temporary borders later drawn up in the Oslo

Interim Accord, under which the Palestinian Authority was given control over isolated territorial‘islands’, but Israel retained control over the airspace above them and the sub-terrain beneath.

This process might be described as the ‘politics of verticality’. It began as a set of ideas, policies,

projects and regulations proposed by Israeli state-technocrats, generals, archaeologists, planners

and road engineers since the occupation of the West Bank, severing the territory into different,

discontinuous layers.

The writer Meron Benvenisti described the process as crashing “three-dimensional space into sixdimensions – three Jewish and three Arab”. Former US president Bill Clinton sincerely believed in

a vertical solution to the problem of partitioning the Temple Mount. Settlement Masterplanners

like Matityahu Drobless aimed to generate control from high points.

Ron Pundak, the architect of the Oslo Accords, described solutions for partitioning the West Bank

with a three-dimensional matrix of roads and tunnels, still on the drawing board, as the only


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practical way to divide an undividable territory. And Gilead Sher, Israeli chief negotiator at Camp

David (and a divorce lawyer) explained it to me as a way of enlarging the ‘cake’ before partitioning

it.

Over a week, openDemocracy posted Eyal Weizman’s extraordinary series of articles and photo-

essays, which fills out this picture of three-dimensional conflict in devastating detail. These ideas

are extracted from a book he is writing. They offer us a fresh way of understanding the West Bank

in words and pictures.

In the course of the articles, Weizman takes us on a journey which starts with the hills and valleys

the West Bank landscape. Reflecting on the significance mountains and valleys have historically fo

the Jewish people, he focuses on the recent mountaintop settlements.

Next he takes us underground to examine the politics of water and sewage in this contested

territory, and the way archaeology is being pressed into the service of the present (episodes 5 and

6). He then lays out the special case of Jerusalem and the ongoing battle for its past, above and

below ground (episode 9), before going on to explore the astonishing infrastructure of bypass road

that weave above and below each other and attempt to separate the two communities (episode 10)

In his chilling final episode he turns our attention to the way the Israelis have established control

over individual Palestinian lives, by militarising the airspace over the West Bank.

The series will climax in May with Weizman’s definitive new map of the West Bank patchwork,

showing how Israeli and Palestinian settlements encircle one another. Prepared for the human

rights organization B’tselem, and updating American intelligence maps, it will be an indispensable

aid to understanding the intimacy of this conflict.

Index to the Politics of verticality

1. Introduction

2. Maps

3. Hills and valleys of the West Bank

4. West Bank settlements

5. Optical urbanism

6. The paradox of double vision

7. From water to shit

8. Excavating sacredness

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9. Jerusalem

10. Roads — over and under

11. Control in the air

Mountains play a special part in Zionist holiness. The settlers’ surge into the folded terrain of the

West Bank and up to its summits combines imperatives of politics and spirituality. The Israeli-

Palestinian conflict is a territorial one, though fought out in three dimensions. More then anythin

else, it is defined by where and how one builds. The terrain dictates the nature, intensity and focal

points of confrontation. On the other hand, the conflict manifests itself most clearly in the

adaptation, construction and obliteration of landscape and built environment. Planning decisions

are often made not according to criteria of economical sustainability, ecology or efficiency of

services, but to serve strategic and national agendas.

The West Bank is a landscape of extreme topographical variation, ranging from four hundred and

forty metres below sea level at the shores of the Dead Sea, to about one thousand metres in the higsummits of Samaria. The conflict is played out in the mountainous region – and this has influence

its forms.

From the plains to the hills (and back again)

The settlement project in the West Bank is a culmination of Zionism’s journey from the plains to

the hills. That journey attempted to resolve the paradox of early Zionist spatiality – that, while

seeking the return to the ‘Promised Land’, reversed the settlement geography of Biblical times.

Braudel’s observation that “the mountains are as a rule a world apart from civilisations, which are

urban and lowland achievement” suited the ancient geography of Israel well. The mountains of

Judea became the breeding ground for an isolated form of monotheism; meanwhile the plains,

inhabited by the Phoenician Philistines, the “invaders from the seas”, gave birth to an integrated

and progressive culture, set apart from the isolation of the mountain, close to the international roa

system and the seaports.

Migrating into Israel in the twentieth century, the Zionist movement, now itself an “invader from

the seas”, and dominated by a modern, pragmatic socialism, settled mainly along the coastal plain

and fertile northern valleys, which suited its ideology of agricultural cultivation well. This spatial

pattern would dominate the Israeli landscape until the political reversal of 1977, in which the

hawkish Likud party replaced Labour in power for the first time.

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The “civilian occupation” of the West Bank was a process that began in the deep, arid Jordan valle

during its first ten years of Israeli rule under Labour governments (1967-1977). Fifteen agricultura

villages were constructed under the Allon Plan, that emphasized “maximum security and maximu

territory for Israel with a minimum number of Arabs”.

As the political climate in Israel changed, the reconstruction of Zionist identity began. The

settlements started a long and steady climb to the mountains, where isolated dormitory

communities were scattered on barren hilltops; without agricultural hinterlands, they cultivated

nothing but “holiness” on their land.

The settlements of the mountain strip, built during the late 1970s and early 1980s, shifted the

expansion stimulus from agricultural pioneering to mysticism and transcendentalism. These

settlements were promoted mainly by Gush Emunim (The Block of Faith), a national-religious

organisation that was fusing “Biblical” messianism, a belief in the “Land of Israel”, with a political

thinking that allowed for no territorial concessions.

The climb from the plains to the hills coincided with the development of a feeling of acting

according to a divine plan. It promised the “regeneration of the soul” and the achievement of

“personal and national renewal”, imbued in a mystic quality of the heights. Ephi Eitam, the retired

general who is now the popular leader of the National Religious party, recently opposed any

dismantling of these mountain settlements in these terms: “Whoever proposes that we return to th

plains, to our basest part, to the sands, the secular, and that we leave in foreign hands the sacred

summits, proposes a senseless thing”.

Beyond the hard core of extremists inhabiting the mountain ridge of the West Bank, the majority o

settlers built their home in the western slopes near the 1967 border. They went in search of a bette

quality of life, settling in green suburbs that belong to the greater metropolitan regions of Tel Aviv

and Jerusalem.

What drew them there was the rhetoric of “living standards”, “quality of life”, “fresh air” and “open

view”. “All you can dream of” for a very affordable price – this pitch has a special appeal to first-

time buyers. Settlers benefit from substantial government subsidies; for the price of a small flat in

Tel Aviv, they can buy their own red-roofed houses and gardens.

Vertical Planning

Matityahu Drobless was appointed head of the Jewish Agency’s Land Settlement Division in 1978


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Shortly after, he issued The Master Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and

Samaria. In this masterplan he urges the government to

… conduct a race against time… now [when peace with Egypt seemed immanent] is the most

suitable time to start with wide and encompassing rush of settlements, mainly on the mountain

ranges of Judea and Samaria…The thing must be done first and foremost by creating facts on the

ground, therefore state land and uncultivated land must be taken immediately in order to settle th

areas between the concentration of [Palestinian] population and around it... being cut apart by

Jewish settlements, the minority [sic] population will find it hard to create unification and

territorial continuity.

The Drobless masterplan outlined possible locations for scores of new settlements. It aimed to

achieve its political objectives through the reorganisation of space. Relying heavily on the

topography, Drobless proposed new highvolume traffic arteries to connect the Israeli heartland to

the West Bank and beyond. These roads would be stretched along the large westdraining valleys;for their security, new settlement blocks should be placed on the hilltops along the route. He also

proposed settlements on the summits surrounding the large Palestinian cities, and around the

roads connecting them to each other.

This strategic territorial arrangement has been brought into use recently during the Israeli Army’s

invasion of Palestinian cities and villages. Some of the settlements assisted the IDF in different

tasks, mainly as places for the army to organise, refuel and redeploy.

The hilltops lent themselves easily to state seizure. In the absence of an ordered land registry in

time of Jordanian rule, Israel was able legally to capture whatever land was not cultivated.

Palestinian cultivated lands are found mainly in the valleys, where the agriculturally suitable

alluvial soil erodes down from the limestone slopes of the West Bank highlands. The barren

summits were left empty.

The Israeli government launched a large-scale project of topographical and land use mapping. The

terrain was charted and mathematised, slope gradients were calculated, the extent of un-cultivate

land marked. The result, summed up in dry numbers, left about 38% of the West Bank in under

Israeli control, isolated in discontinuous islands around summits. That land was then made

available for settlement.

(The settlements research presented here forms the basis for a collaboration between Eyal and his

partner architect Rafi Segal for the forthcoming exhibition in the International Union of Architect


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(UIA) congress in Berlin, July 2002).

PHOTOESSAY : PANORAMA AT NILI

This 270 degree panorama shows the Israeli settlement on a hill overlooking the Palestinian

village in the valley (a large-scale version is available onsite)


1. Introduction

2. Maps



5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem



Many different types of settlements perch atop the hills of the West Bank, providing islands of biblical identity that are also strategic vantage points. The “Community Settlement” is a new type

settlement developed in the early 1980s for the West Bank. It is in effect a closed members’ club,

with a long admission process and a monitoring mechanism that regulates everything from

religious observance to ideological rigour, even the form and outdoor use of homes.

Settlements function as dormitory suburbs for small groups of Israelis who travel to work in the

large Israeli cities. The hilltop environment, isolated, with wide views, and hard to reach, lent itsel

to the development of this newly conceived utopia.

In the formal processes, which base mountain settlements on topographical conditions, the laws o

erosion had been absorbed into the practice of urban design. The mountain settlement is typified

a principle of concentric arrangement, with roads laid out in rings following the topographical line

around the summit.

The ‘ideal’ arrangement for a small settlement is a circle. But in reality the particular layout of eac

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depends on site morphology and the extent of available state land. Each is divided into equal,

repetitive lots for small private redroofed homes. The public functions are generally located within

the innermost ring, on the higher ground.

The community settlements create cul-de-sac envelopes, closed off to their surroundings,

promoting a mythic communal coherence in a shared formal identity. It is a claustrophobic layout

expressing a social vision that facilitates the intimate management of the lives of the inhabitants.

PHOTO ESSAY TO COME

SETTLEMENTS FROM THE AIR

These masterplans describe different settlement typologies. The light grey area describes the lim

of the settlements, the darker grey their built fabric. Settlement masterplanning is typically

influenced both by financial, political and ideological criteria, and by the constraints of

topography and availability of “state land”.

The private single family house is most common in settlements. It is attractive to buyers, suits th

low prices of land, and can draw in the kind of population that seeks a better quality of life. It als

takes up more territory per person.

Four main types of settlements can be differentiated in the West Bank.

1. Community Settlement (e.g. Eli)

In the Community Settlement, although some aspects of communal living still remain,

employment is found in nearby cities: the settlement operates more or less as a remote dormitor

suburb.

The settlement layout, arranged in a garden-suburb fashion, aims to limit motor circulation

within, and allows easy access to all essential services within a walking distance of no more than

250 meters.

These settlements are built in one or two construction stages, and ‘spring’ off the drawing board

They are typified by repetitive “developer-designed” single- or joint-family housing types. The

parceling-out of land is equal and homogenous, with each plot being between a third and a half

a dunum.

2. “Urban” Settlement (e.g. Giv’at Ze’ev)


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Urban settlements are regional centres for settlement blocs. They are higher density than smalle

settlements because of the construction of apartment blocks, although each contains private,

single-family homes as well.

They have a very large core of services, including economic service and employment centres for

themselves as well as for the settlements around them.

3. Private Settlement (e.g. Zofim)

The growth of the metropolitan region of Gush Dan created demand that was supplied

successfully in private settlements not far from the 1967 border. The private settlements are

located mainly in western Samaria, near Tel Aviv and around Jerusalem. Suburban settlements

constructed on private initiative, they are composed of single-family homes or villas, on land tha

is mainly but not always privately sold.

The size of lots tends to be relatively large, between half a dunum and a dunum, and privately

designed and constructed homes are invited.

It is hard to secure land in these areas of high demand, which makes the form of Zofim and othe

settlements of its type fragmented and bizarre, as they try to ‘squeeze into’ the limits of the

available land.

4. Agricultural Settlement (e.g. Pazael)

The orthogonal geometry of this settlement makes it non-site-specific, typical for the agricultura

settlements of lower plains of the Jordan valley.

Small agricultural lots are connected to each home, divided equally and repetitively within

Alfei Menashe

Alfei Menashe is a rather large settlement (we see only a part of it here) on the western slopes of

the mountains of Samaria. In the center of the image you can see a field not built on. Often

Palestinian land is 'trapped' inside settlements. Construction on these islands is not allowed – th

still legally belong to the Palestinian owner, who however most often has no access to it. Also no

how, on the right and top right of the settlement, pine forest meets an olive grove. Planting has

become an intensely political act. Palestinians are continuously planting olive groves to secure

ownership of land not built on; Israel does the same, but with fastergrowing pine trees. These


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kinds of trees became undeclared symbols of the two national groups' ownership claims. In both

cases planting is replaced by construction when the time allows for it.

Mitzpe Yehuda

Mitzpe Yehuda is a small settlement located in the eastern slopes of the Judean desert, close

enough to Jerusalem for its residents to commute daily to work there.

Har Homa

Har Homa is a neighborhood of Jerusalem, built in the southern occupied part of it, near

Bethlehem. As you can see, its layout traces the shape of the mountain topography and creates a

fortress-like arrangement that controls the areas and roads around it.

Har Adar

Har Adar is a settlement in high demand from well-to-do Jerusalem professionals. It was built i

two phases and is still in demand, a fact that explains the continuous construction there.

Har Adar—new plots

Many settlements are made up of relatively uniform prefabricated units. But Har Adar is a

“private settlement”, its homes constructed on the “bnebet'ha” (build your own home) system:

residents design and construct their own villa on relatively large plots of land.

Har Adar—developed plots

Note how the olive orchards (planted by Palestinians) on the top right of the image closely

demarcate the settlement border, and how a pine forest (planted by Israelis) in the bottom of the

first image on this page demarcates it from the other direction. The politics of olive groves and

pine trees is explained above, in the caption to Alfei Menashe.

Eli

Eli is a community settlement built in the vicinity of Ramallah. Its layouts form a bra-like

arrangement typical for the morphology of two close mountain summits. See the masterplan for

Eli above.

Eli—closeup


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Note how the central functions of the settlement (kindergarten, synagogue, assembly hall) are

arranged within its formal core protected within the circular arrangement. On the top right is th

shopping center; on the bottom left, the new extension to the settlement, made up of temporary

homes (caravans). Here, too, the Palestinians have planted olive orchards all the way to the

settlement’s edge in an effort to limit its expansion. (Cultivated land cannot be expropriated on t

West Bank.)

Ma’ale Edumim

Ma’ale Edumim is the biggest settlement in the West Bank, located on the Jerusalem-Jericho roa

Planned by the “acclaimed” office of Thomas Leitersdorf in the late 1970s, it recently won the pri

for “best-designed city in Israel”. Its population is just over 20,000. Measured by the extent of

land within its boundaries, Ma’ale Edumim is the largest city in Israel, larger then Tel Aviv or

Jerusalem. This extensity captures as much land as possible, in order to fortify Jerusalem from

the east.

Matan-Yarhiv-Habla

These images show Jewish and Palestinian settlements in close proximity. The fence between

Matan-Yarhiv and Habla in the centre of the image above is the Green Line - the 1967 border.

Paradoxically, Habla, the Palestinian settlement on the left, is within pre-1967 Israel; Matan-

Yarhiv is to the east of the Green Line. The differences are immediately apparent between the

organic spread of the Arab village and the planned layout of the Jewish settlement.

Psagot

Psagot is located on a hill overlooking the city of Ramallah. From it, the Israeli army shot anti-

tank missiles at the vehicle of Palestinian activists traveling along the main road leading to

Ramallah (to the left of the first image).

Note how the Palestinian settlement is located at the foot of the hill and along the roads, while

Jewish settlements are always laid out in a cul-de sac arrangement.


1. Introduction

2. Maps


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5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem



optical urbanism- photoessays to come

High ground offers three strategic assets: greater tactical strength, self-protection, and a wider

view. This principle is as long as military history itself. The Crusaders’ castles, some built not far

from the location of today’s settlements, operated through “the reinforcement of strength already

provided by nature”. These series of mountaintop fortresses were military instruments for theterritorial domination of the Latin kingdom.

The Jewish settlements in the West Bank are not very different. Not only places of residence, they

create a large-scale network of “civilian fortification” which is part of the army’s regional plan of

defence, generating tactical territorial surveillance. A simple act of domesticity, a single family

home shrouded in the cosmetic facade of red tiles and green lawns, conforms to the aims of

territorial control.

But unlike the fortresses and military camps of previous periods, the settlements are sometimes

without fortifications. Up until recently, only a few settlements agreed to be surrounded by walls o

fences. They argued that they must form a continuity with the holy landscape; that it is the

Palestinians who need to be fenced in.

During the recent days of Intifadah, many settlements were attacked and debate returned over the

effect of fences. Extremist settlers claimed that protection could be exercised solely through the

power of vision, rendering the material protection of a fortified wall redundant and even

obstructive.

Indeed, the form of the mountain settlements is constructed according to a geometric system that

unites the effectiveness of sight with spatial order, producing “panoptic fortresses”, generating

gazes to many different ends. Control – in the overlooking of Arab town and villages; strategy – in

the overlooking of main traffic arteries; self-defence – in the overlooking of the immediate

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surroundings and approach roads. Settlements could be seen as urban optical devices for

surveillance and the exercise of power.

In 1984 the Ministry of Housing published guidance for new construction in the mountain region,

advising: “Turning openings in the direction of the view is usually identical with turning them in t

direction of the slope … [the optimal view depends on] the positioning of the buildings and on the

distances between them, on the density, the gradient of the slope and the vegetation”.

That principle applies most easily to the outer ring of homes. The inner rings are positioned in fro

of the gaps between the homes of the first ring. This arrangement of the homes around summits,

outward-looking, imposes on the dwellers axial visibility (and lateral invisibility), oriented in two

directions: inward and outward.

Discussing the interior of each building, the guidance recommends the orientation of the sleeping

rooms towards the inner public spaces and the living rooms towards the distant view. The inward-

oriented gaze protects the soft cores of the settlements, the outward- oriented one surveys the

landscape below. Vision dictated the discipline and mode of design on every level, even down to th

precise positioning of windows: as if, following Paul Virilio, “the function of arms and the function

of the eye were indefinitely identified as one and the same”.

Seeking safety in vision, Jewish settlements are intensely illuminated. At night, from a distance th

are visible as brilliant white streaks of light. From within them, the artificial light shines so brightl

as to confuse diurnal rhythms. This is in stark contrast to Palestinian cities: seeking their safety ininvisibility, they employ blackouts as a routine of protection from aerial attacks.

In his verdict in support of the “legality” of settlement, Israeli High Court Justice Vitkon argued,

“One does not have to be an expert in military and security affairs to understand that terrorist

elements operate more easily in an area populated only by an indifferent population or one that

supports the enemy, as opposed to an area in which there are persons who are likely to observe

them and inform the authorities about any suspicious movement. Among them no refuge,

assistance, or equipment will be provided to terrorists. The matter is simple, and details are

unnecessary.”

The settlers come to the high places for the “regeneration of the soul”. But in placing them across

the landscape, the Israeli government is drafting its civilian population alongside the agencies of

state power, to inspect and control the Palestinians. Knowingly or not, settlers’ eyes, seeking a

completely different view, are being ‘hijacked’ for strategic and geopolitical aims.


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1. Introduction

2. Maps



5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem



Photoessay on settlement brochures to come

The journey into the mountains, seeking to reestablish the relation between terrain and sacred tex

was a work of tracing the location of “biblical” sites, and constructing settlements adjacent to them

Settlers turned “topography” into “sceneography”, forming an exegetical landscape with a mesh of

scriptural signification that must be “read”, not just “viewed”.

For example, a settlement located near the Palestinian city of Nablus advertises itself thus:

Shilo spreads up the hills overlooking Tel Shilo, where over three thousand years ago the children

Israel gathered to erect the Tabernacle and to divide by lot the Land of Israel into tribal portions…

this ancient spiritual centre has retained its power as the focus of modern day Shilo.

Rather than being a resource for agricultural or industrial cultivation, the landscape establishes th

link with religious-national myths. The view of the landscape does not evoke solemn

contemplations, but becomes an active staring, part of an ecstatic ritual: “it causes me excitement

that I cannot even talk about in modesty,” says Menora Katzover, wife of a prominent settlers’

leader, about the view of the Shomron mountains.

Another sales brochure, published for member recruitment in Brooklyn and advertising the ultra

orthodox settlement of Emanuel, evokes the pastoral: “The city of Emanuel, situated 440 metres

above sea level, has a magnificent view of the coastal plain and the Judean Mountains. The hilly

landscape is dotted by green olive orchards and enjoys a pastoral calm.”



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There is a paradox in this description. The very thing that renders the landscape ‘biblical’ –

traditional inhabitation, cultivation in terraces, olive orchards and stone buildings – is made by th

Arabs whom the settlers come to replace. The people who cultivate the “green olive orchards” and

render the landscape biblical are themselves excluded from the panorama.

It is only when it comes to the roads that the brochure mentions Arabs, and that only by way of

exclusion. “A motored system is being developed that will make it possible to travel quickly and

safely to the Tel Aviv area and to Jerusalem on modern throughways, bypassing Arab towns”

(emphasis in the original). The gaze that can see a “pastoral, biblical landscape” will not register

what it doesn’t want to see – the Palestinians.

State strategy established vision as a mean of control, and uses the eyes of settlers for this purpose

The settlers celebrate the panorama as a sublime resource, but one that can be edited. The sight-

lines from the settlements serve two contradictory agendas simultaneously.

The Emanuel brochure continues, “Indeed new Jewish life flourishes in these hills of the Shomron

and the nights are illuminated by lights of Jewish settlements on all sides. In the centre of all this

wonderful bustling activity, Emanuel, a Torah city, is coming into existence.”

From a hilltop at night, a settler can lift his eyes to see only the blaze of other settlements, perched

at a similar height atop the summits around. At night, settlers could avoid the sight of Arab towns

and villages, and feel that they have truly arrived “as the people without land – to the land withou

people”. (This famous slogan is attributed to Israel Zangwill, one of the early Zionists who arrivedto Palestine before the British mandate, and described the land to which Eastern European Zionis

was headed as desolate and forsaken.) Latitude thus becomes more than merely relative position o

the folded surface of the terrain. It functions to establish literally parallel geographies of ‘First’ and

‘Third’ Worlds, inhabiting two distinct planes, in the startling and unprecedented proximity that

only the vertical dimension of the mountains could provide.

Rather than the conclusive division between two nations across a boundary line, the organisation

the West Bank’s particular terrain has created multiple separations, provisional boundaries, which

relate to each other through surveillance and control. This intensification of power could be

achieved in this form only because of the particularity of the terrain.

The mountain settlements are the last gesture in the urbanisation of enclaves. They perfect the

politics of separation, seclusion and control, placing them as the end-condition of contemporary

urban and architectural formations such as ‘New Urbanism’, suburban enclave neighbourhoods or


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gated communities. The most ubiquitous of architectural typologies is exposed as terrifying within

the topography of the West Bank.


1. Introduction

2. Maps3. Hills and valleys of the West Bank


5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem



The aquifers deep below the West Bank are a battleground, just as much as the rivers of sewage

split through its valleys by both Israeli and Palestinian settlements. The subterranean spaces of th

West Bank are inhabited by underground aquifers, archaeological sites, and infrastructure system

as well as sacredness hidden from view. The underground has been transformed into a conflict

zone, whose undercurrents affect the patterns of inhabitation of the terrain above.

Deep water

One of the most crucial issues in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict takes place below the surface:

about eighty per cent of the Mountain Aquifer, the region’s largest reservoir, is located under the

West Bank. Yet this massive resource supplies approximately forty per cent of Israel’s agricultural

waters and almost fifty per cent of its drinking waters. Indeed, it is the main source for its large

coastal urban centre. Indeed, it is the main source for its large coastal urban centre.

During the Oslo and Camp David negotiations, Israel insisted on keeping control of the

underground resources in any permanent resolution. A new form of subterranean sovereignty,

which erodes the basics of national sovereignty, is first mentioned in the Oslo Interim Accord.

The 1995 Accord transferred responsibility for the water sector from Israel’s civil administration t

the Palestinian Authority. But in practice, the scope of Israeli control of this sector did not change



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A Joint Water Committee (JWC) was set up to oversee and approve every new water and sewage

project in the West Bank. The Committee is comprised, in equal number, of representatives of

Israel and of the Palestinian Authority. All its decisions are made by consensus. No mechanism is

established to settle disputes where a consensus cannot be attained.

This might seem a sensible compromise. But through the Committee, Israel can veto any request b

the Palestinian representatives to drill a new well, or to obtain the additions stipulated in the wate

agreement.

However, the Israeli settlements in the West Bank have access to pumping wells which do not nee

JWC permission. They represent approximately ten per cent of the West Bank population, and use

some thirty-seven per cent of this West Bank water, leaving the remaining sixty-three per cent for

the 1.9 million Palestinians.

The politics of shit

There has been a recent and deliberate breaking loose of sewage systems across the West Bank. Th

strong topography allows Israeli settlements and Palestinian cities to spill their sewage through th

valleys toward each other.

The Palestinian municipality of Hebron was awarded a sewage-recycling farm from the German

government. But its operation was halted. According to agreements, the project was still regulated

by the Joint Water Committee. It needed Israel’s permission, and Israel might demand a quota of

the water. Since then, to put pressure on Israel to concede the waters, the municipality of Hebron

has been spilling its residential and industrial sewage into the Hebron River that f lows , via three

settlements , to the outskirts of Beer Sheva in Israel proper.

Non – existent or disintegrating underground pipes allow sewage to flow overground the length o

some Palestinian refugee camps. This visible shit testifies to day-visiting official guests of the

Palestinian Authority of an inhumane permanent neglect, the everlasting problem of the refugees,

consequence of the yet unresolved conflict.

Efforts by different NGOs and UN departments to repair this system of infrastructure with

permanent underground plumbing have often been rejected by the Palestinian Authority. They ca

allow no real improvement or investment in infrastructure until the refugee camps are considered

permanent settlements.

Sewage is a political weapon when dislocated from the bowels of the earth to the overground. Whe


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shit is invisible underground, it is merely sewage, running through a technically complex system o

public plumbing. But let it only break loose over the surface, and sewage becomes shit again.

The latitudinal co-ordinates affirm the nature of the substance. When sewage overflows and priva

shit, from under the ground, invades the public realm of the street, it becomes simultaneously a

private hazard and a public asset – to be used as a tool by the authorities.


Introduction

Maps

Hills and valleys of the West Bank

West Bank settlements

Optical urbanism

The paradox of double vision

From water to shit

Excavating sacredness

Jerusalem

Roads — over and under

Control in the air

In a quest for biblical archaeology, Israel has attempted to resurrect the subterreanean fragments

ancient civilization to testify for its present-day rights above ground.When the Zionists first arrivein Palestine late in the nineteenth century, the land they found was strangely unfamiliar, different

from the one they longed for. Reaching the map coordinates of the site of their yearnings was not

enough. The search had to continue: above, in a metaphysical sense, below the crust of earth in

archaeological excavations.

That the ground was further inhabited by the Arabs and marked with the traces of their lives,

complicated things even further. So the existing terrain was transformed in the Zionists’ minds int

a protective wrap, under which the historical longed-for landscape was hidden.

Archaeology attempted to peel this visible layer and expose the historical landscape concealed

underneath. Only a few metres below the surface, a palimpsest made of five thousand year-old

debris, traces of cultures, narratives of wars and destruction, is arranged chronologically in layers

compressed with stone and by soil.



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Biblical archaeology

The quest for ‘Biblical Archaeology’ attempts to match traces of Bronze Age ruins with Biblical

narratives. Modern Israel tried to fashion itself as the successor of ancient Israel, and to construct

new national identity rooted in the depths of the ground. These material traces took on immense

importance, as an alibi for the Jewish return.

If the land to be ‘inherited’ was indeed located under the surface, then the whole subterranean

volume was a national monument. From this source, the ancient civilisation could be politically

resurrected to testify for the right of the present-day Israel.

At the centre of this activity, quickly its very symbol, was Yig’al Yadin, the former military chief of

staff turned archaeologist. Seeking to supply Israeli society with historical parallels to the struggle

of Zionism, he focused his digging on the ancient occupation and settlement of Israelites in Canaa

on Biblical wars and on monumental building and fortification works carried out by the kings of

Israel.

The visible landscape and the buried one were describing two different maps that slip over each

other. There was a continuous effort to anchor new claims to ancient ones, as a series of settlemen

were constructed adjacent to or over sites suspected of having a Hebrew past.

Making the historical context explicit allowed for the re-organisation of the surface, creating an

apparent continuum of Jewish inhabitation. Settlements recycle history by adopting the names of

Biblical sites, making public claim to genealogical roots.

Perhaps the most dramatic example occurred in the city of Hebron. The settlement of Tel Rumeid

was built in the middle of a Palestinian neighbourhood there. It was built on stilts, on top of a

recently excavated Bronze Age site.

As the sub-terrain erupted onto the surface, the Israeli minister of defence, Benjamin Ben- Eliezer

seized the Palestinian land, declaring it an archaeological site. Soon after, he allowed a group of

settlers to build an elevated cement roof over the heart of the archaeological site and put up a

settlement composed of seven mobile homes on it, perching over the newly-revealed history.

Recently, after several shooting attacks on settlers in the vicinity of their homes, Ben- Eliezer

authorised the walling off of the site and the replacement of the mobile homes with new bullet-

proof structures.


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What is antiquity – and therefore worthy of of nationalistic sentiment connected with the discover

of abundant archaeological sites, especially in and around East Jerusalem. Previous state -sponso

red housing developments were built according to the white-block model of European Modernism

and reflected a socialist ethos.

But new neighbourhoods now boasted arches and domes, colonnades and courtyards, and were

clad with a veneer of slated stone. This was the Israeli version of architectural postmodernism: a

style of building based on the brutal modernism of raw concrete, but wrapped in features

embodying the new national-religious identity.

Against the tendency of Biblical Archaeologists to short-circuit history and celebrate a

phantasmagoria of great Biblical events and destructions, a newly emergent Archaeology,

advocated in both Palestinian and Israeli universities, has started digging the more recent, upper

historical layers of the Arab and Ottoman periods. These archaeologists have worked to uncover th

evolution of the daily life of the “people without history” as long-term processes, featuring gradualcultural and social changes.

PHOTO ESSAY TO COME

Tel Hebron (Rumeida)

Tel Hebron - Home of Abraham and King David - Right: an Ancient Hebron Wall and Olive Tree

Left: The work begins - Right: The families moved into new, double- decker caravans


1. Introduction

2. Maps


4. West Bank settlements5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem


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From the struggles over Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount) to the historic stone with which all

Greater Jerusalem is now clad, Jerusalem is an intense case study of the politics of verticality.On 2

September 1996, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the opening of a subterranean

archaeological tunnel running along the foundation of the Western Wall, underneath the Haram a

Sharif/Temple Mount compound. Thus the Government demonstrated its control of all parts of

Jerusalem, above and below ground.

Subterranean Jerusalem is at least as complex as its terrain. Nowhere is this more true than of the

Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.

The Haram al-Sharif compound is built over a filled-in, flattened-out summit. On it are built

mosques and Muslim holy sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque (the third holiest Muslim site in th

world), and the Dome of the Rock. It is supported by retaining walls, one of which is the Western

Wall, whose southern edge is known as the Wailing Wall. The Western Wall is part of the outermo

wall of what used to be the Second Temple compound. Jewish faith has it that the Haram al-Shari

stands precisely above the ruins of the ancient Temple.

Since East Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, the Muslim religious authority (the Wakf) has charged

that Israel is trying to undermine the compound foundations in order to topple the al-Aqsa Mosqu

and the Dome of the Rock, and to clear the way for the establishment of the Third Jewish Temple.

The opening of the ‘Western Wall Tunnel’ was wrongly perceived as an attempt at subterraneansabotage, fuelled by memories of a similar event: in December 1991 another tunnel recently

excavated below the Haram collapsed, opening a big hole in the floor of the Mosque of Atman ben

Afan.

The ascent of the present Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in 2000 and the

bloodshed during the Intifadah that followed that visit were not unique. The Temple Mount/

Haram al-Sharif has often been the focal point of the conflict.

Israel’s chief negotiator Gilead Sher has told how, during the failed Camp David summit on 17 Jul

2000 in the Dogwood hut balcony, in the presence of the whole Israeli delegation, Barak declared

“We shall stand united in front of the whole world, if it becomes apparent that an agreement

wasn’t reached over the issue of our sovereignty over the First and Second Temples. It is the

Archemedic point of our universe, the anchor of the Zionist effort… we are at the moment of

http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/810


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truth.”

The two delegations laid claim to the same plot of land. Neither side was willing to give up their

claim of sovereignty. In attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable, intense spatial contortions took

place at Camp David.

Most archaeologists believe that the Wailing Wall was a retaining wall supporting the earth on

which the Second Temple stood at the very same latitude as today’s mosques. But the Israeli

delegation argued that the Wailing Wall was built originally as a free-standing wall, behind which

stood the Second Temple; and therefore that the remains of the Temple are to be found undernea

the mosques.

The most original bridging proposal at Camp David came from former US president Bill Clinton.

After the inevitable crisis, Clinton dictated his proposal to the negotiating parties. It was a daring

and radical manifestation of the region’s vertical schizophrenia.

The border between Arab East and Jewish West Jerusalem would, at the most contested point on

earth, flip from the horizontal to the vertical – giving the Palestinians sovereignty on top of the

Mount while maintaining Israeli sovereignty below the surface, over the Wailing Wall and the

airspace above the Mount. The horizontal border would have passed underneath the paving of the

Haram al-Sharif. A few centimetres under the worshippers in the Mosque of al-Aqsa and the Dom

of the Rock, the Israeli underground could be dug up for remnants of the ancient Temple, believed

to be “in the depth of the mount”.

Barak accepted the proposal in principle. To allow free access to the Muslim compound, now

isolated in a three-dimensional sovereign wrap by Israel, he suggested “a bridge or a tunnel ,

through which whoever wants to pray in al-Aqsa could access the compound” . But the Palestinian

long suspicious of Israel’s presence under their mosques, rejected the plan flatly. They claimed,

partly bemused, that “‘Haram al-Sharif … must be handed over to the Palestinians – over, under

and to the sides, geographically and topographically.”

Charles Warren, a captain in the Royal Engineers, was in 1876 one of the first archaeologists to

excavate the tunnels and subterranean chambers under the Temple Mount. He recorded no

conclusive ruins of the Temple, but a substance of completely different nature:

“The passage is four feet wide, with smooth sides, and the sewage was from five to six feet deep,

that if we had fallen in there was no chance of our escaping with our lives. I, however, determine


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to trace out this passage, and for this purpose got a few old planks and made a perilous voyage

the sewage to a distance of 12 feet… Finding the excessive danger of the planks, I procured three

old doors… The sewage was not water, and not was not mud; it was just in such a state that a

door would not float, but yet if left for a minute or two would not sink very deep… we laid the fir

door on the sewage, then one in front of it, taking care to keep ourselves each on a door; then

taking up the hinder of the three it was passed to the front, and so we moved on. The sewage in

some places was more liquid than in others, but in every case it sucked in the doors so that we ha

much difficulty in getting the hinder ones up…”

If that Indiana Jones-type description was correct, what Clinton and the negotiating teams hadn’t

realised was that the Temple Mount sat atop a network of ancient ducts and cisterns filled with

generations of Jerusalem’s sewage.

PHOTO ESSAY TO COME

AL-HARAM AL-SHARIF/TEMPLE MOUNT

East of the Temple Mount lies the Mount of Olives, on whose western slopes lies one of the oldest

and most sacred Jewish graveyards. It is believed that from there the Messiah will arrive at the

gates of Jerusalem; that therefore, people buried there would be the first to be resurrected.

Since Israel would not concede sovereignty over the Olive Mount (in the occupied part of

Jerusalem), and since it lies between Al-Aqsa and the bulk of Arab neighborhoods, it wasproposed at Camp David to build a pedestrian viaduct over it, which would be within Palestinia

jurisdiction. This idea was flatly rejected by the Palestinians. The image above illustrates what

such proposal might look like, were it to be realized. It is yet another example of the politics of

verticality.

Storrs’s stare of Medusa: the Jerusalem stone by-law The first British military governor o

Jerusalem, Sir Ronald Storrs, enacted a bylaw in 1918. It required square, dressed natural stone

(termed Jerusalem stone) to be used for the external walls of all new buildings constructed in the

city.

Giving Jerusalem a single architectural uniform, Storrs created the conditions for its expansion.

The stone coating does more than just fulfil an aesthetic agenda by maintaining a continuity of

appearance. It visually defines the geographic limits of Jerusalem, and marks by association the

extent of its holiness.


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According to Judaic tradition, a special holy status is reserved for the ground. Its relocation as sto

from the horizontal (the earth) to the vertical (walls), from the quarries onto the façades of

buildings, transferred this holiness further.

Israel resurrected this British-era by-law for its own purposes, requiring its application in all parts

of the municipality. Storrs had meant it to apply only around the holy basin surrounding the old

city. As Jerusalem’s paving of stone climbs up to wrap its façades, a new ‘ground’ topography of

holiness is extended.

When the city itself is holy, and its boundaries are being constantly redefined, holiness becomes a

planning issue. New territories annexed to the city throughout the area of Israeli rule, east and

west, traditionally and historically far from the historical city, were required to be dressed in stone

They became ‘Jerusalem’, physically imbued with the city’s holy status.

This skin of holiness put every newly built suburb well within the boundaries of “the eternally

unified capital of the Jewish people”, hence not negotiable in any final status deal.

Curiously enough, since in Israel environmental regulations severely limit the use of open quarrie

the ‘Jerusalem stone’ that produces this sacred identity is excavated in the West Bank, mainly

around the cities of Ramallah and Hebron.


1. Introduction

2. Maps



5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem



A bewildering network of bypass roads weave over and under one another, attempting to separate

the Israeli and Palestinian communities. And the future could be wilder – a 48-kilometre viaduct



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between Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank are dormitory suburbs

reliant on roads connecting them with the urban centres of Israel proper. So-called ‘bypass’ roads

were a feature of the Oslo accord. The Israeli government was allowed (with specially allocated

American money) to construct a network of fast, wide security roads that bypass Arab towns and

connect the settlements to Israel.

The bypass roads, some still in the process of paving, would become a massive system of twenty-

nine highways spanning four hundred and fifty kilometres. They allow four hundred thousand Jew

living in land occupied in 1967 to have freedom of movement. About three million Palestinians are

left locked into isolated enclaves.

These roads make any attempt to detach the West Bank from Israel proper almost impossible. The

demonstrate the alienation of the settlers from the surrounding landscape. But if the settlements

themselves are hard to attack, Palestinian militants have identified the roads as the soft point whe

settlers can be hurt. Attacking civilian vehicles and military patrols travelling along the roads, theyattempt to cut these slim economic lifelines.

The bypass roads attempt to separate Israeli traffic networks from Palestinian ones, preferably

without allowing them ever to cross. They emphasise the overlapping of two separate geographies

that inhabit the same landscape. At points where the networks do cross, a makeshift separation is

created. Most often, small dust roads are dug out to allow Palestinians to cross under the fast, wid

highways on which Israeli vans and military vehicles rush between settlements.

Some more grandiose Israeli projects have proposed highways to bypass Palestinian towns in thre

dimensions. The Tunnel Road, for example, connects Jerusalem with the southern settlements of

Gush Etzion and further, to the Jewish neighbourhoods of Hebron. To accomplish this, it has to

perform a double contortion: stretched up as a bridge spanning over a Palestinian cultivated valle

it then dives into a tunnel under the Palestinian Bethlehem suburb of Bet Jallah.

Meron Benvenisti writes: “And indeed the person travelling on the longest bridge in the country

and penetrating the earth in the longest tunnel may ignore the fact that over his head there is a

whole Palestinian town and that on his way from the housing projects [of the Jerusalem

neighbourhood] of Gilo to the housing projects of the city of Efrat and Etzion (settlement) block h

does not come across any Arab, save for some drivers that dare go on the Jewish road.”

Both the valley the road spans over, and the city it dives under, are areas handed over to limited

Palestinian sovereignty under the Oslo accord. The physical separation is mirrored in a political


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one. As with the Temple Mount proposals, the ‘border’ stretches along a horizontal line. The city

above is under Palestinian limited sovereignty; the road below it is within Israeli jurisdiction.

In the West Bank, bridges are no longer just devices engineered to overcome a natural boundary o

connect impossible points. Rather, they become the boundary itself, separating the two national

groups across the vertical dimension.

Benvenisti continues: “…The bridge and tunnels are not the real engineering wonder: the road

managed to crash the three dimensional space into six dimensions – three Jewish and three Arabs

– and the points of frictions between the world of the Jews to the world of the Arab continue to

bring up sparks of fire”.

This type of boundary was first proposed in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. At two locations within th

plan – the “kissing points” – the territories of Israel and Palestine were to cross. The two-

dimensional boundary – a line – was to become a one-dimensional point. A bridge-over-tunnel

design was proposed to keep the territories connected; where the border was reduced from two

dimensions into one, the solution had to resort to three dimensions.

The situation today is even more complex. The Camp David proposals for the partition of Jerusale

necessitate several of these “kissing points” between separate Israeli and Palestinian

neighbourhoods. Existing or new bridges and tunnels will perform these local separations. But it

requires intense effort from government legal experts, as there are almost no precedents for

property and bilateral law in three dimensions.

The connection of Gaza and the West Bank – the two remotely estranged territories that according

to the Oslo accord are to form a single political unit – poses a similar problem on a larger scale. Th

distance between them is forty-seven kilometres as the crow flies. The so called “safe passage”, stil

on the drawing board, will be a Palestinian route including six motor lanes, two railway lines, high

voltage electricity cables and an oil pipe that will connect the two enclaves across Israeli territory.

Israeli and Palestinian engineers proposed a bewildering variety of possible solutions. A tunnel, aditch, a land road cut off from the landscape with dykes on either side, a viaduct… The political

debate turned very quickly to the question of ‘who’s on top’. Avoiding the integrative solution of a

land road, Israel asked for the Palestinian sovereign road to run through a seven-metre deep ditch

The Palestinians naturally preferred a bridge: they would hold sovereignty over the road, Israel’s

sovereignty would extend to the under-part of the viaduct and its columns. Below, some of this


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extraordinary proposal for the volumetric carving of sovereign space (thoroughly documented in

plans, construction drawings, and meeting protocols) is reconstructed.


1. Introduction

2. Maps3. Hills and valleys of the West Bank


5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem



Now and in the final settlement proposals, Israel holds control of the airspace over the West Bank

It uses its domination of the airspace and electromagnetic spectrum to drop a net of surveillance

and pinpoint executions over the territory.

Airspace is a discrete dimension absent from political maps. But it is a space of utmost importanc

– cluttered with civilian and military airways, allowing a vantage observational point on the terrai

under it, denying that position to others.

Complete control over the West Bank’s airspace is currently exercised by the Israeli Defence Force

(IDF). In Camp David, Israel agreed to the concept of a Palestinian state, but demanded sovereign

over the airspace above it in the context of a final resolution.

The height to which the sovereign space of a country extends has been debated extensively in

different UN committees. It was finally set as the maximum height a jet-powered plane reached –

as defined in Garry Powers’ famous U2 reconnaissance flight at about sixty thousand feet over the

Soviet Union, the altitude at which he was downed by an SA-2 heat guided missile near Sverdlovsk

on 1 May 1960.

That latitudinal datum became thereafter the sovereign ceiling above which “free space” begins. T

“Positive Control led Airspace” (the band in which most commercial airliners travel) ranges from



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eighteen thousand to sixty thousand feet, and is regulated by a series of national ground air traffic

control systems.

The first appearance of ‘flying machines’ late in the nineteenth century caught the attention of

Futurist writers. They imagined air traffic to inaugurate a new era of worldwide transportation, a

world of “total mobilisation” and of universal character. They proposed the “freedom of the air”,

analogous to Grotius’s “freedom of the seas” centuries before, according to which aircraft should b

as free to fly the “international skies” as ships cruise the high seas.

But the analogy with freedom of the high seas was rejected for airspace following the 1919 Versaill

Peace Conference, where the potential devastation of air power was first realised. That potential

was dramatised further for Americans by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. The

vulnerability of the sky prompted them to further protect this new geopolitical soft belly.

Article 1 of the 1944 Chicago Convention led to the confirmation of national control of airspace,

reaffirming the sovereignty of each country above its territory, and turning international airspace

into hundreds of “no entry” zones. It was only after the first space launches in 1959 that the conce

of “open skies” was finally accepted for outer space.

So, international law affirms the continuity between the ground and the sky. To bypass this

continuity, a new definition of boundaries in airspace had to be invented for the Israeli- Palestinia

situation. It was proposed that the sovereign ceiling of the emerging Palestinian state be

significantly lowered, to include only architectural construction and low-flying helicopters. Theupper layers were to remain in Israeli control.

The Israeli claim for sovereignty over Palestinian airspace started with the Oslo Accord. In the

clauses concerning the electromagnetic sphere and airspace, the Accord states that “All aviation

activity or usage of the airspace… shall require prior approval of Israel”.

During the permanent status negotiations in Camp David, Israel demanded the “use of the airspac

and electromagnetic space and their supervision”. With control of the electromagnetic spectrum,Israel could continue to regulate radio frequencies and other communications in both states. With

its control of the skies it could use the airspace over Palestine as training grounds for its Air Force

In return, the Palestinians were offered a special aerial corridor through Israeli airspace between

Gaza and the West Bank.

The storm


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The outbreak of hostilities in the recent Intifadah introduced the airspace for the first time as the

site of war with the Palestinians. “Do we want to transfer the war to the sky? To rockets [fired on

Israeli cities] and anti-aircraft missiles?” asked Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, when questioned

Israel should fortify unilaterally behind a protected border on land. But it was too late. The war of

the skies has already broken out. Besides the latest invasion of Israel into Palestinian areas on lan

the actual day-to-day policing of the Occupied Territories is done primarily from the air.

Occupation of the skies gives Israel a presence across the whole spectrum of the electromagnetic

field, and enables total observation. The airspace became primarily a place to ‘see’ from, offering

the Israeli Air Force an observational vantage point for policing airwaves alive with electromagnet

signals – from the visible to the radio and radar frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The West Bank must currently be the most intensively observed and photographed terrain in the

world. In a ‘vacuum-cleaner’ approach to intelligence gathering, sensors aboard unmanned air

vehicles (UAVs), aerial reconnaissance jets, early warning Hawkeye planes, and even an Earth-Observation Image Satellite, snatch most signals out of the air. Every floor in every house, every

car, every telephone call or radio transmission, even the smallest event that occurs on the terrain,

can thus be monitored, policed or destroyed from the air.

Since the beginning of the recent hostilities, the Israeli Air Force has put in thousands of flight

hours, gathered piles of information through its complex network of different airborne

reconnaissance platforms, and put it at the disposal of different intelligence agencies.

These eyes in the sky, completing the network of observation that is woven throughout the ground

finally iron out the folded surface and flatten the terrain. From the air, everything can be watched

if you have the right kind of access.

Amongst the techniques of aerial interpretation is a process of ‘hologrammatisation’. Two

simultaneous images are captured from a double lens camera onto two plates. Then, when the

prints are viewed through special spectacles, the different shades and colour on the images turn

into higher and lower buildings, to hills, mountains and valleys. The specialised scrutinising gaze

the analyst transforms the two-dimensional prints into a three-dimensional simulation, allowing

him carefully to identify targets or precisely assess the impact of previous raids.

This precise intelligence, a near absolute knowledge of the terrain and of movement of persons in

coupled with the ability to deliver precise destructive force, has empowered Israel to wage a new

kind of warfare: ‘surgical’ killings administered from above.


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During 2001 Israeli Air Force conducted 5,130 sorties over the West Bank and Gaza in the context

of the conflict. This included six hundred flight hours in assault helicopters, which fired five

hundred missiles at Palestinian targets, with about a third of the missiles achieving the forty-five

aerial “targeted killings,” in which Palestinian militants were liquidated.

Most missions are built up in the air, where satellite, reconnaissance plane and helicopter gunship

complete each other’s task. As the attack helicopter is on its way to the suspected area, live

intelligence about the target’s location, intentions and destructive potential is transferred as radio

and image data.

The Apache gunship, equipped with a sophisticated electro-optical array of precise target

acquisition technology, travelling fast and low, detects, identifies and acquires the target, then fire

a Hellfire missile into most often a Palestinian’s vehicle. At other times, ultra-violet paint splashed

by collaborators on the roof of a car marks the target for the pilot to destroy.

The aerial policing and execution of Palestinians within their cities was made possible by the

integration of these technological advances. And the act of their liquidation is now subject only to

will.

If the horrific potential of iron bombing already exhausted the imagination, in this next step of

warfare, armies could target individuals within a battlefield or civilians in an urban warfare.

Summary executions can be carried out after short meetings between army generals and politician

working their way down ‘wanted’ men lists. This kind of aerial warfare is so personal as to set a nehorizon for the horror of war.


1. Introduction

2. Maps


4. West Bank settlements5. Optical urbanism




9. Jerusalem


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http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/810

the politics of verticality - eyal weizman

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