Vertical apartheid | openDemocracy
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/eyal-weizman/vertical-apartheid
In the context of a recent, mildly critical interview about the political deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians, a former Israeli general, until recently the chief commander of the West Bank, claimed that the Israeli military had become ‘world champions in occupation’ and has managed to turn its control of millions of Palestinians into ‘an art form’, as if this two generation long degrading and lethal regime is some sort of a sport or managerial challenge.[1]
Such bragging is not necessarily an exaggeration. This text charts the way Israel’s system of control, which evolved in fits and starts throughout the occupation’s first four decades, has, during its fifth decade, hardened into an exceptionally efficient and brutal form of territorial apartheid, in which verticality is the operative principle.