Installment 5 of the excellent...

The Politics of Verticality
by Eyal Weizman

episode 5: 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.
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The Israelis claim they offered Arafat 95% of what he was asking for. Aside from the fact that all he was offered were isolated Bantustans, Israel kept control of the water underneath Palestine. Every other sovereign state has control of the water underneath it. What kind of soverign state doesn't control it's water? Not only have the settlements been stealing the Palestinians' land, all of Israel has been stealing the Palestinians' water.

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Apartheid in the Holy Land
by Desmond Tutu

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.

What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.
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Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or - I hope - to strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders.
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In on the tide, the guns and rockets that fuel this fight
As the methods of drugs smugglers are used to bring weapons to Gaza, mystery still surrounds the 'Karin A' arms shipment