What do you think?
Rate this book
The West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Geography of Occupation and Disengagement
Written in a clear and easy-to-follow style, this revealing text examines the contemporary political geography of the West Bank and Gaza strip. Descriptive in nature, it documents the changes and developments since 1967 right up to the disengagement from Gaza. The book is supplemented by numerous maps and covers issues including demography, Jewish settlements, water and natural resources, transport infrastructure, planning, partition plans for Jerusalem, settlement policy and the Separation Fence. One of the first books to tackle this contentious subject from a geographical rather than a political or historical perspective, The West Bank and Gaza Strip will be of huge interest to both undergraduate and graduate students studying the Israel-Palestine question.
238 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2006
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 23, 2015
After reading Elisha Efrat's Geography of Israel, from roughly the 70's, and enjoying very much, specially the part about Judea and Samaria, I thought about giving this book a chance.
Being brief, this book is everything but apolitical or ahistorical, like it is advertised.
I was interested in reading about settlements like Ariel or Kiryat Arba, their economy or lack of it, judean aquifers, land elevation, hills, climate, architecture, transport network, demographics, religion and political aspirations. I didn't care if the depiction was positive or negative, I was hoping even for an individual analysis of the biggest settlements.
I was in for a disappointment: it seems the author never left his Tel-Aviv bubble and really visited the west bank or gaza himself.
The reader is thrown unsourced comment after unsourced comment about Sharon, Palestine, the necessity of peace, the strain settlements put on israeli society... At one point he even talks about the requiem of settlements, their eminent and immediate downfall, a very ironic affirmation considering that book was written a decade ago, right after the gaza disengagement, before all gaza wars. I expect this kind of peace pipedreams and political clairvoyance in blogs or reddit, not in academic books.
He talks about the negative impact of settlers in the west bank ecology, yet he nevers cite examples. I had to suffer through 1/3 of the book- and it is a dry, random prose- to hear about water control and aquifers, and in this part he contradicts all his former position: jewish control of the judean aquifer, he says, is essential for the quality of water inside Israel, and both gazans and palestinians have been pumping water destructively, damaging the geography.
He also never talks properly about palestinians. Who lives in Hebron, mostly christians or mostly muslims? What are their biggest industries? Does Hebron have snow during winter? How is the population pyramid there? Etc, etc, etc.
But no... Peace. Yawn.
Being brief, this book is everything but apolitical or ahistorical, like it is advertised.
I was interested in reading about settlements like Ariel or Kiryat Arba, their economy or lack of it, judean aquifers, land elevation, hills, climate, architecture, transport network, demographics, religion and political aspirations. I didn't care if the depiction was positive or negative, I was hoping even for an individual analysis of the biggest settlements.
I was in for a disappointment: it seems the author never left his Tel-Aviv bubble and really visited the west bank or gaza himself.
The reader is thrown unsourced comment after unsourced comment about Sharon, Palestine, the necessity of peace, the strain settlements put on israeli society... At one point he even talks about the requiem of settlements, their eminent and immediate downfall, a very ironic affirmation considering that book was written a decade ago, right after the gaza disengagement, before all gaza wars. I expect this kind of peace pipedreams and political clairvoyance in blogs or reddit, not in academic books.
He talks about the negative impact of settlers in the west bank ecology, yet he nevers cite examples. I had to suffer through 1/3 of the book- and it is a dry, random prose- to hear about water control and aquifers, and in this part he contradicts all his former position: jewish control of the judean aquifer, he says, is essential for the quality of water inside Israel, and both gazans and palestinians have been pumping water destructively, damaging the geography.
He also never talks properly about palestinians. Who lives in Hebron, mostly christians or mostly muslims? What are their biggest industries? Does Hebron have snow during winter? How is the population pyramid there? Etc, etc, etc.
But no... Peace. Yawn.
Displaying 1 of 1 review