Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation [Paperback]

Kathleen Christison (Author), Bill Christison (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0745329292 | ISBN-13: 978-0745329291 | Publication Date: August 4, 2009

This book brings personal and pictorial perspectives to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Former CIA political analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give a comprehensive description of the occupation and the ways in which Israel dominates the Palestinians: Israeli settlements, the Separation Wall, roads restricted to cars with Israeli license plates, home demolitions on a massive scale, imprisonment, mass assassinations and wanton sniper and artillery fire. With more than 50 photographs vividly demonstrating the impact of the occupation on the Palestinian people, the authors argue that Israel's long-term intention is to so fragment the occupied territories that any sustainable presence in the land by Palestinians as a nation will be negated.

Editorial Reviews

Review

What is it that forges almost a fellowship of former CIA people ... who speak out with such insight and moral clarity? The answer is to be found in [authors'] outstanding book on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Their authority and humanity, together with their graphic gallery of injustice and courage, make it one of those works to be read should you read no other. -- John Pilger The Christisons provide an unbearably grim, authoritative, and persuasive account of Palestine under Israeli occupation. Palestine in Pieces is a miracle of truth-telling, enriched greatly by pictures, maps, and first-hand witnessing. It is must-read for anyone concerned with the dark realities of the Israel/Palestine conflict. -- Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University and Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories, UN Human Rights Council This book ... is a passionate, honest and articulate reading of Palestinian actuality -- providing most alarming prospects of the imminent future ... Palestine in Pieces is a brilliant testament and a valuable account, to their impressive, long term commitment to this subject, and of the many important findings they skillfully expose. -- Ramzy Baroud, Palestinian author and journalist.

About the Author

Kathleen and Bill Christison write on Palestinian issues and on U.S. foreign policy, and they travel regularly to Palestine.  They are former CIA political analysts.  Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA.  Kathleen Christison is the author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Policy and The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story.  They live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Pluto Press (August 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745329292
• ISBN-13: 978-0745329291
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #263,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > History > Middle East > Palestine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "More Jewish than the Jews", December 28, 2009

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R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Paperback)

A great writer who, before the Holocaust, exposed and protested the treatment of the Jews was Joseph Roth, himself an Ostjuden from Galicia. In the book "The Wandering Jews" (which I highly recommend to anyone and everyone), Roth wrote about the post-WWI Jewish refugees from eastern Europe, including those who had fled to the United States. In the U.S. (circa 1930), according to Roth, "they have people who are more Jewish than the Jews, which is to say the Negroes." Were he alive today and were he to write about Israel, I suspect that Roth might refer to people there who are more Jewish than the Jews, which is to say the Palestinians.

The sad, sad irony of course is that the oppressors are now Jewish, acting under the guise of Zionism. PALESTINE IN PIECES is a compelling and distressing picture, both verbal and photographic, of their handiwork. Reading the book incensed me as few others have done in recent years, regardless of subject. The authors (both CIA political analysts back in the 1970's) state that the purpose of the book is to "show clearly, through maps and photographs rarely seen by the US public, just how permanent th[e] system of Israeli control is intended to be and what the occupation means for the daily lives of Palestinians and for their prospects of ever achieving freedom and independence." Although the book is not without flaws (relatively minor, too minor for me to enumerate here), the authors achieve their objective.

The book is based primarily on the authors' visits to Israeli-occupied territory between 2003 and 2008. It focuses primarily on the West Bank, in part because the authors were not permitted into Gaza after their first visit in 2003. The principal theme of the book is the unrelenting Israeli campaign to "cantonize" the West Bank - in the short term, to render it non-viable as a Palestinian state, both politically and economically, and in the long term unliveable for all but Jews. "Cantonize" is the authors' word; "ghettoize" might be more appropriate, for there is no question that the West Bank Palestinians are being relegated to ghettos much as European Jews were for centuries (Gaza already is a ghetto).

The authors quote Jeff Halper, an Israeli activist and opponent of the West Bank settlement campaign, who uses the Hebrew word "nishul" (meaning "dispossession") to characterize the driving force that has dictated Israel's exclusively Jewish national claims and its extension of its "ethnocracy" over all of Palestine. After 1948, the methods of accomplishing nishul shifted from expulsion of Palestinians to their containment in ever smaller, more controllable enclaves. Ultimately, the Israelis determined that "a cantonized Palestinian state separated from a greater Israel yet posing no challenge to its control of the entire country [was] the most do-able form of nishul."

In the West Bank the chief vehicle for contemporary nishul is the "Segregation Wall" - longer by several times than the Berlin Wall and twice as high, with the potential to become even more infamous in history. The authors describe in some detail the malignant purpose and effects of the Wall, and its illegality under international law. (As the authors observe, Israelis habitually attempt to justify the Wall on grounds of security; numerous points render the claim specious, but the security issue begs the question of why there are Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank in the first place.) Augmenting the Wall and aggravating the ghettoization of the Palestinians are (a) the network of permanent terminals for access to and from the occupied territories (a network that went into operation in 2005 and 2006), (b) the web of Israeli-only roads that slices and dices the West Bank, and (c) the ongoing destruction of Palestinian homes and businesses and the expropriation of Palestinian land and water (water usage in the West Bank by settlers is already seven times per capita what it is for Palestinians). And mention should also be made of the practice of settlement towns dumping their raw, untreated sewage from their hilltop perches into Palestinian land below, some of it farmland.

As horrible as the situation is in the West Bank, it is worse in Gaza. If I were a young Palestinian in Gaza - the grandson, say, of people whose families had fled Acre in 1948 - it is almost inevitable that I would be a radicalized supporter of Hamas.

The treatment of Jewish people by European Christians was unspeakably abhorrent for centuries, culminating in the Holocaust. The Israelis seem to be repeating history, but this time as the exercisers of power and against a people who aren't European Christians (therefore rendering nugatory even some misguided notion of revenge).

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Accurate Picture, October 30, 2009

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FS Reader - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Paperback)

I served at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. This book reflects much of the brutality, death, assaults on dignity and theft of occupied land, witnessed and reported by Foreign Service Officers who serve in that that Mission.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What people should know about the Palestine, July 24, 2010

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Susan J. Romer "susan j. romero" (NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Paperback)

This book breaks your heart. I read it with prior knowledge about the atrocities going on in the Palestine. I think people should read the book and realize how horrible the occupation is and how very, very bad it is for the Palestinian people that are being oppressed by Israel. If this book doesnt bring tears to your eyes you have no heart at all.