The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories

by Ilan Pappe Narrated by Paul Boehmer

Overview

From the author of the bestselling study of the 1948 War of Independence comes an incisive look at the Occupied Territories, picking up the story where The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine left off.



Publishing on the fiftieth anniversary of the Six-Day War that culminated in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Pappe offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the world's most prolonged and tragic conflicts. Using recently declassified archival material, Pappe analyses the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians-and the decision-making process itself-that laid the foundation of the occupation. From a survey of the legal and bureaucratic infrastructures that were put in place to control the population of over one million Palestinians, to the security mechanisms that vigorously enforced that control, Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world's largest "open prison".

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 06/26/2017
Israeli expat historian Pappe (The Idea of Israel), director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, boldly and persuasively argues for understanding the occupied territories as the world’s “largest ever mega-prison.” He begins by describing Israeli preparations made several years before 1967’s Six-Day War to control large portions of Palestine without formally annexing them and thereby granting civil rights to the Palestinians living there. Instead, with the imposition of Israeli rule, “the Palestinians living there were incarcerated for crimes they never committed and for offences that were never committed, confessed, or defined.” Pappe shows that the Israelis offered an “open-air prison” when the Palestinians were compliant and a “maximum security prison” when they offered any resistance. Both left them shorn of basic human rights but the latter also featured harsh punishments up to and including military attacks on civilians. Pappe cites numerous violations of international law as well as generally duplicitous behavior by Israeli leaders toward other nations and international bodies, particularly during the Oslo Accord negotiations. Moreover, according to a 2016 U.N. report, Israel’s actions toward the Gaza Strip will render life there “unsustainable” by 2020. Pappe’s conclusions won’t be welcome in all quarters but this detailed history is rigorously supported by primary sources. Maps. (Aug.)

John Pilger

‘Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.’

Irish Times

‘Will undoubtedly raise a lot of hackles in his home state.’

CHOICE reviews

‘Pappe's book is critical for understanding the present situation and looking forward to possible solutions.’

Electronic Intifada

‘What is new in The Biggest Prison on Earth is Pappe's detailed accounting of exactly what the Israeli planners were contemplating in 1963; namely, "the largest ever mega-prison for a million and a half people."’

From the Publisher

The U.S. may incarcerate more people than any other nation, but its ally Israel runs the world’s largest prison: the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where the Palestinian people lack basic human rights and are subject to the indignities of illegal collective punishment. Israeli historian Pappe lays out how this dire situation came to be, beginning with the plans formulated prior to 1967’s Six-Day War.Pappe's conclusions won't be welcome in all quarters, but this detailed history is rigorously supported by primary sources.”


— Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review


"Pappé’s book is critical for understanding the present situation and looking forward to possible solutions.Highly recommended."


—CHOICE


"What is new in The Biggest Prison on Earth is Pappe’s detailed accounting of exactly what the Israeli planners were contemplating in 1963; namely, “the largest ever mega-prison for a million and a half people – a number that would rise to four million – who are still today, in one way or another, incarcerated within the real or imaginary walls of this prison.”


—Electronic Intifada


"A hard-hitting look at the nuts and bolts of Israeli occupation.”


—Kirkus Reviews

"

The Times Literary Supplement

"Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine."

D. E. Jenison

Historian Pappé (Univ. of Exeter, UK) is one of the leading writers of Israel’s “New Historians,” a group that, by delving into Israeli archives, challenges readers to confront Israel’s past and upend the dominant “David and Goliath” narrative. Here, Pappé brings that critical eye to the structures created around the West Bank and Gaza following the 1967 June War. He describes the Israeli occupation as the imposition of a “mega prison” that assumes two forms: an “open air prison” that allows some semblance of “autonomous life under ... Israeli control,” and a “maximum security prison” that strips away even that limited autonomy and imposes harsh penalties. The author follows the ways in which both models have been deployed, as well as the reasons behind those decisions and the reactions to them. This is not a comprehensive history of the occupation, nor does it focus on the Palestinians, other than to explain movements in reaction to the prison policies (including the rise of the PLO and the two intifadas). However, Pappé’s book is critical for understanding the present situation and looking forward to possible solutions.

Kirkus Reviews

2017-06-06
A diagnostic survey of Israel's long-planned occupation of the Palestinians' land.In the political and legal realms, an "occupation" denotes "a temporary means of securing a territory following armed conflict or a war," writes historian Pappe (History and International Studies/Univ. of Exeter; Ten Myths About Israel, 2017) in this follow-up to The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006). Yet, 50 years later, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip shows no end in sight. The occupation was conceived as early as 1963 by the Israeli military—the Israeli elite was looking for "the right historical moment to occupy the West Bank" even at the time of independence in 1948—but was hindered by certain strategic decisions. The so-called Shacham Plan eerily copied Britain's occupation of Mandatory Palestine (which the early Zionists had condemned as "Nazi legislation"), entailing such dreaded regulations as permitting the governor to expel the population, summon any citizen to a police station, sanction administrative arrest, and resort to "preemptive measures." The Six Day War of June 1967 brought this design into being, thanks to the solid military alliance sealed by then with the United States. Pappe underscores the "myth of the preemptive strike" against Egypt and Syria as actually long-plotted ventures to "Judaize Palestine and de-Arabize it." Subsequently, such chief policymakers as Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon decided to exclude the West Bank and Gaza Strip from future peace negotiations. Annexation entailed dividing the territories into "Palestinian" and "Jewish" and expelling the Palestinians—or making life too harsh for them to stay—while encouraging Jewish settlement. The author focuses on many of the players in these early machinations and how in fact the Labour Party legacy of the first decade of occupation, 1968-1977, helped consolidate "a unilateral rule that incarcerated the people of the Occupied Territories as inmates for life"—despite its reputation as enlightened and peace-making. A grim, hard-hitting look at the nuts and bolts of Israeli occupation.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171103323
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/11/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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