the politics of verticality

Eyal Weizman’s extraordinary map of Israeli control over the West Bank forces us to see the Israel-Palestine conflict in a new way.
Tuesday 6th August

'Clean territory': urbicide in the West Bank

The Israel–Palestine war is not simply a struggle over territory between two national entities. It is driven by Israel’s systematic denial of modern urban life to the Palestinians. One of the lessons of the battle of Jenin is that the bulldozer that demolishes houses is also a weapon in the wider strategy to prevent the Palestinians from creating a modern, normal, urban society.
Tuesday 16th July

Professionals in Israel

A major Berlin exhibition on the architectural politics of Israel’s West Bank settlements has just been abruptly cancelled by the Israeli Association of United Architects. Paul Hilder tells a story of political censorship, intellectual complicity with power – and the ethical responsibility of true professionals.
Tuesday 9th July

From separation to interpenetration: a response to Eyal Weizman

Eyal Weizman’s analysis of Israel’s three-dimensional control of the West Bank is a striking example of how all national mythologies require an intimate connection between identity and place. But what happens when, as in Israel–Palestine, different histories collide in the same territory? Does the logic of national sovereignty override the ethical imperative of a single-state solution?
Wednesday 1st May

11. Control in the air

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.
Tuesday 30th April

10. Roads --; over and under

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 between Gaza and the West Bank.
Monday 29th April

9. Jerusalem

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.
Sunday 28th April

8. Excavating sacredness

In a quest for biblical archaeology, Israel has attempted to resurrect the subterreanean fragments of ancient civilization to testify for its present-day rights above ground.
Saturday 27th April

7. From water to shit

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.
Friday 26th April

5. Optical urbanism

optical urbanism- photoessays to come

6. The paradox of double vision

Photoessay on settlement brochures to come
Thursday 25th April

4. West Bank settlements

Many different types of settlements perch atop the hills of the West Bank, providing islands of biblical identity that are also strategic vantage points.
Wednesday 24th April

2. Maps of Israeli Settlements

Two-dimensional maps, fundamental to the understanding of political borders, have been drawn again and again for the West Bank. Each time they have failed to capture its vertical divisions.

3. Hills and valleys of the West Bank

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.
Tuesday 23rd April

1. Introduction to The Politics of Verticality

None of us have a coherent mental map of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Architect Eyal Weizman explains why. We’re missing verticality. In this series of articles and photo-essays, he paints the extraordinary, three-dimensional battle over the West Bank: from settlements to sewage, archaeology to Apaches.
Syndicate content