These are the last two pieces in...

The Politics of Verticality
by Eyal Weizman

episode 8: 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.

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 Jews living in land occupied in 1967 to have freedom of movement. About three million Palestinians are left locked into isolated enclaves.
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episode 9: 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.

Airspace is a discrete dimension absent from political maps. But it is a space of utmost importance – cluttered with civilian and military airways, allowing a vantage observational point on the terrain 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 sovereignty over the airspace above it in the context of a final resolution.
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Sharon's vision of a Palestinian "State" leaves Israel with complete control of the water under the Palestinians, the air over the Palestinians, and enough of the surface to split the Palestinians into Bantustans under Israeli control. Does anyone think the Palestinians will stand for that? Does anyone think the Israelis will stop until all the Palestinians are gone?

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WWIII is coming, 'I'm sure,' high-level Sharon aide says

The terror attacks on Sept. 11 and extreme turmoil in the Middle East point to one thing - World War III, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday during a visit to Tucson.

"We've been fighting a war for the past 18 months, which is the harbinger of World War III. The world is going to fight, whether they like it or not. I'm sure,'' Ra'anan Gissin, a senior adviser to Sharon, said in an interview Friday.
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thanks to This Modern World

They're fucking crazy.

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Richard Armey Supports Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians

Mathews went on to ask Armey if he supported the idea of a Palestinian State besides Israel. Armey's initial evasive response was that he was 'content' to have a Palestinian State 'near Israel.' So Mathews pressed the point and asked him bluntly "Where are you going to put the Palestinian State? in Norway?". Armey's response was that the Arab states have hundreds of thousands of acres of "land and soil and property" and went on to state that Israel should "occupy and hold the land it has at this moment." In affirmation of views earlier expressed by Rep. Delray, another Republican Texan power player, he allowed that he was "content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank." Sharon has deliberately sabotaged the Oslo accords to annex half the West Bank, but Armey has a more vicious design. Complete annexation and full expulsion. A 'final solution' for the Palestinians, courtesy of the House.
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thanks to al jensen at American Samizdat

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Background / Sharon faces a home-front war over Palestine card

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Israelis Held Hostage By Settlements

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Who's Anti-Semitic?

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Noam Chomsky: US-Israel-Palestine

thanks to Red Rock Eater Digest