The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories Hardcover – November 8, 2016 by Ilan Pappe (Oneworld Publications)

The Biggest Prison on Earth A History of the Occupied Territories by Israel’s historian Ilan Pappe presents the reader with a harsh, in your face look at the nuts and bolts of Israeli occupation. For 50 years later, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip shows no end in sight. Pappe shows the reader that in his opinion the Oslo accords were never meant to result in Palestinian statehood but were merely to make legal the creation of small communities for the indiginous Palestinians with the the costs and responsibilities of the occupation being for the most part transferred to major international donors and organizations – notably the European Union – and the Palestinian Authority(PA). Ilan Pappe shows us how annexation of lands won in battle presents us the details of dividing the territories into areas of “Palestinian” and “Jewish” and where needed finding the legal reasons expelling the Palestinians—or making their daily lifes too horrific for them to stay—while encouraging Jewish settlement. The author focuses on many of the regional players in these early goings and on how for one the ruling Labour Party and its decade of occupation, 1968-1977, helped solidify its rule over the people of the Occupied Territories as inmates for life despite its public reputation as enlightened and peace-making. Pappe’s prison metaphor for some readers becomes most insightful for as the PA carries out its security responsibilities and Palethrusts itself on the stage again then however, Israel imposes the controls of a maximum-security prison.Thus, in the ensuing years, the West Bank became the minimum-security prison and Gaza – with Hamas leading the resistance – became the maximum-security prison. Palestinians, Pappe writes, “could either be inmates in the open prison of the West Bank or incarcerated in the maximum security one of the Gaza Strip.”Everything that followed the 1967 War, notes Pappe, follows the “logic of settler colonialism” and that logic in turn foresees the eventual elimination of the indigenous Palestinians. That outcome, however, is not inevitable. An alternative is possible, Pappe maintains, if Israel decolonizes and makes “way for the logic of human and civil rights.” If you are like me and try to no matter what your emotional opinion look at both sssides of any issues then please read this book.