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fortmis OP wrote

The dissenting Israeli architect Eyal Weizman has pointed out in a courageous study that this total terrestrial domination begins in the drawings of district planners and architects (see www.opendemocracy.net). On such drawings not a speck of ‘our dust’ is to be seen. The violence begins long before the arrival of the tanks and jeeps. He talks of a ‘politics of verticality’, whereby the defeated even when ‘at home’ are being overseen and undermined. The effect of this on daily life is relentless. As soon as somebody one morning says to himself, ‘I’ll go and see ...’ he has to stop short and check how many barrier-crossings the ‘outing’ is likely to involve. The simplest everyday decision is hobbled, its foreleg tethered to its hind leg.

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fortmis OP wrote

I rejoin Baha and the others who are a kilometre away. They are talking to a man, who is the boy’s uncle, and who is likewise watering plants which have been recently bedded out. The sun is going down and the light is changing. The brownish yellow earth, which is darker where it has been watered, is now the primary colour of the whole landscape. He is using the last of the water in the bottom of a 500-litre dark blue plastic barrel. On the surface of the blue barrel 11 patches – like those used for mending punctures but larger – have been carefully stuck. The man explains that this is how he repaired the barrel after a gang from the settlement of Halamish, the settlement with red roofs, came one night, when they knew the water containers were full of spring rain, and slashed them with knives. Another barrel, lying on the terrace below, was irreparable. Further off on the same terrace stands the gnarled stump of an olive tree, which, to judge by its girth, must have been several hundred, perhaps a thousand, years old. A few nights ago, the uncle says, they cut it down with a chainsaw.

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