The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories
Ilan Pappé
Pappé's archival history of how Israel's generals and politicians built the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — a 'mega-prison' by design.
Picking up where The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine left off, Ilan Pappé turns to the territories Israel occupied in June 1967 — the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip — and asks how their takeover was decided and how it has been sustained. Drawing on declassified Israeli government archives, he reconstructs the debates of 1967 and 1968, in which generals and politicians weighed annexation, partition, and prolonged control. What they built, he argues, was a prison model: maximum land with minimum Palestinians, run through a machinery of military orders, land seizure, settlement, permits, and closure. Later chapters carry the story through the Oslo years, which Pappé reads not as a peace process but as a refinement of the prison, and into the era of siege and periodic war on Gaza. The book was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards in 2017.
About the author
Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian and professor at the University of Exeter, where he directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies. His books include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Idea of Israel, and Ten Myths About Israel.
Details
- Published by Oneworld Publications, London, 2017
- ISBN 9781851685875
The edition
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