The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is an Orwellian world. While there are numerous statistics that expose Israeli discrimination, only bearing witness to the patchwork of illegal settlements, walls, and checkpoints can convey the true extent of Israeli apartheid. German photographer Wolfgang Strassl’s Homeland (Kerber Verlag) is a photographic sojourn into the heart of the occupation. In one photograph after another, Strassl documents how the occupation engulfs the Palestinians’ daily lives: Israeli settlements and barriers do not just surround them at a distance but often confront Palestinians right outside their homes. In one illustrative photograph, a Palestinian boy plays with his three-wheeler bike in the village of Beit Ijza “surrounded by the Giv’on Hahadasha settlement and caged-in by a fence and security gate, which can be closed to disconnect it from the rest of the village.” Strassl dramatizes the apartheid exemplified in the more affluent settlers’ houses that dwarf modest Palestinian homes. They are a stone’s throw away from each other but operate under completely different legal regimes controlled by Israel that couldn’t be further apart. Homeland’s photographs each tell a story, including an Israeli industrial zone that employs captive Palestinian labor and resembles something out of Oliver Twist. This is what settler colonialism and occupation looks like and it needs to be seen to be believed.
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