Walking through walls: Soldiers as architects in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Radical Philosophy

Volumn , Issue 136, 2006, Pages 8-22

  Weizman, Eyal ^a,b,c  

^a Academy of Fine Arts ^*

^b Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Wien   (Austria)

^c UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750209533     PISSN: 0300211X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. My recent work centres around the way militaries have started to think about cities. For this reason I have been attending military conferences dealing with cities and urban warfare and interviewing military personal in Israel, the UK and the USA. The interviews cited here were conducted in the context of Archilab, The Naked City, Orleans, 2004, for the contribution of Eyal Weizman, Anselm Franke and Nadav Harel. The questions were composed by Eyal Weizman and filming was undertaken by Nadav Harel and Zohar Kaniel. Interviews conducted in August and September 2004.
2. Chen Kotes-Bar, 'Starring Him' ('Bekikhuvo'), Ma'ariv, 22 April 2005. Originally in Hebrew; all translations author's own.
3. Cited in Hannan Greenberg, 'The Limited Conflict: This is How You Trick Terrorists', Yediot Aharonot, www.ynet.co.il, 23 March 2004.
4. Cited in Shimon Naveh, 'Between the Striated and the Smooth: Urban Enclaves and Fractal Manoeuvres', paper delivered at An Archipelago of Exception, conference at the CCCB in Barcelona, 11 November 2005, organized by Eyal Weizman, Anselm Franke and Thomas Keenan.
5. Amir Oren, 'The Big Fire Ahead', Ha'aretz, 25 March 2004.
6. At least eighty Palestinians were killed in Nablus, most of them civilians, between 29 March and 22 April 2002. Four Israeli soldiers were killed. See www.amnesty.org; accessed 12 February 2003.
7. In fact the idea for the manoeuvre is credited to a platoon commander and his sergeant in one of the units, both from kibbutz Giva'at Haiim. See Naveh, 'Between the Striated and the Smooth'.
8. Cited in Naveh, 'Between the Striated and the Smooth'.
9. Nurhan Abujidi, who conducted a survey in Nablus after the battle, found that 19.6 per cent of buildings affected by forced routes had only one opening, 16.5 per cent had two openings, 13.4 per cent had three openings, 4.1 per cent had four openings, 2.1 per cent had five openings, and 1.0 per cent (two buildings) had eight openings. See Nurhan Abujidi, 'Forced to Forget: Cultural Identity and Collective Memory/Urbicide: The Case of the Palestinian Territories, During Israeli Invasions to Nablus Historic Center 2002-2005', paper presented at Urbicide, the Killing of Cities? workshop at Durham University, November 2005.
10. Sune Segal, 'What Lies Beneath: Excerpts from an Invasion', November 2002, www.palestinemonitor.org/eyewitness/Westbank/ what_lies_beneath_by_sune_segal.htm; accessed 9 June 2005.
11. See also Abujidi, 'Forced to Forget'.
12. Shimon Naveh, in discussion after delivering the lecture 'Dicta Clausewitz: Fractal Manoeuvre, A Brief History of Future Warfare in Urban Environments', at States of Emergency: The Geography of Human Rights, a debate that formed part of Territories Live, Btzalel Gallery, Tel Aviv, 5 November 2004, organized by Eyal Weizman and Anselm Franke.
13. Simon Marvin, 'Military Urban Research Programmes: Normalising the Remote Control of Cities', paper delivered at conference Cities as Strategic Sites: Militarisation Anti-globalisation and Warfare, Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures, Manchester, November 2002;
14. Stephen Graham, 'From Sanctuaries to "Glass Prisons"? Global South Cities, Urban Warfare, and US Military Technoscience', Antipode (forthcoming).
15. When the exhibition Territories (curated by Anselm Franke and Eyal Weizman) arrived in Tel Aviv it was hosted and paid for by the B'tzalel Academy School of Architecture under the directorship of Zvi Efrat. The Israeli Ministry of Education, which indirectly financed this exhibition, sought to 'balance it out' by including Naveh in our list of speakers.
16. Shimon Naveh, 'Dicta Clausewitz'. Compare Naveh's titles to those used in, among others, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Continuum, New York and London, 2005
17. and Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995.
18. See also Shimon Naveh, Asymmetric Conflict: An Operational Reflection on Hegemonic Strategies, Eshed Group for Operational Knowledge, Tel Aviv, 2005, p. 9.
19. Telephone interview, 14 October 2005.
20. Walter Benjamin, 'A Berlin Chronicle', in One-Way Street and Other Writings, Verso, London and New York, 1979, p. 295.
21. See Greenberg, 'The Limited Conflict'.
22. See Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo, and Guy Theraulaz, Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999;
23. Sean J.A. Edwards, Swarming on the Battlefield: Past, Present and Future, RAND, Santa Monica CA, 2000;
24. John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, RAND, Santa Monica CA, 2001.
25. Naveh, 'Between the Striated and the Smooth'.
26. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Everyman's Library, London, 1993, pp. 119-21;
27. Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, Zone Books, New York, 1991, pp.78-9.
28. Michel Foucault's description of theory as a 'tool-box' was originally developed in conjunction with Deleuze in a 1972 discussion. See Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, 'Intellectuals and Power', in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1980, p. 206.
29. See Arquilla and Ronfeldt, eds, Networks and Netwars.
30. See also Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution of Operational Theory, Frank Cass, Portland CA, 1997.
31. See De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines.
32. Col. Eric M. Walters, 'Stalingrad, 1942: With Will, Weapon, and a Watch', in Col. John Antal and Maj. Bradley Gericke, eds, City Fights, Ballantine Books, New York, 2003, p. 59.
33. See B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, Plum Books, New York, 1991.
34. Sharon Rotbard, White City, Black City, Babel Press, Tel Aviv, 2005, p. 178.
35. Marshal Thomas Bugeaud, La Guerre des rues et des maisons, J.-P. Rocher, Paris, 1997. The manuscript was written in 1849 in Bugeaud's estate in the Dordogne after his failure quickly to suppress the events of 1848. Bugeaud did not manage to find a publisher for his book, but distributed a small edition among his colleagues. In the text Bugeaud suggested widening the Parisian roads and removing corner buildings at strategic crossroads in order to allow for a wider field of vision. These and other suggestions were implemented by Haussmann several years later. See Rotbard, White City, Black City.
36. See Rotbard, White City, Black City.
37. Auguste Blanqui, Instructions pour une Prise d'Armes, Société encyclopédique française, Paris, 1972. Available online at www.marxists.org/francais/blanqui/1866 /instructions.htm.
38. Interview with Gil Fishbein, Tel Aviv, 4 September 2002. Fishbein describes the first stages of the battle of Jenin before the bulldozers were called in.
39. Cited in Yagil Henkin, 'The Best Way into Baghdad', New York Times, 3 April 2003.
40. Naveh mentioned that he currently works with the Hebrew translation of Bernard Tschumi's Architecture and Disjunction. Originally Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1997.
41. 'Go inside, he ordered in hysterical broken English. Inside! I am already inside! It took me a few seconds to understand that this young soldier was redefining inside to mean anything that is not visible, to him at least. My being "outside" within the "inside" was bothering him. Not only is he imposing a curfew on me, he is also redefining what is outside and what is inside within my own private sphere.' Cited in Segal, 'What Lies Beneath'.
42. Georges Bataille, 'Architecture', in Encyclopaedia Acephalica. Available online at: http://website.lineonenet/~d.a.perkins/pGBARCHI.html.
43. Brian Hatton, 'The Problem of Our Walls', Journal of Architecture 4, Spring 1999, p. 71. Krzysztof Wodiczko, 'Public Address', Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, 1991, published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 11 October 1992-3 January 1993, and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 22 May-22 August 1993.
44. Zuri Dar and Oded Hermoni, 'Israeli Start-Up Develops Technology to See through Walls', Ha'aretz, 1 July 2004;
45. Amnon Brazilay, 'This Time They Do Not to Prepare to the Last War', Ha'aretz, 17 April 2004.
46. See also Amir Golan, 'The Components of the Ability to Fight in Urban Areas', Ma'arachot 384, July 2002, p. 97.
47. See Greenberg, 'The Limited Conflict'.
48. From September 2000 to the time of its evacuation, 1,719 Palestinians were killed in Gaza - two-thirds of them unarmed and uninvolved in any struggle; 379 of them children. See Amira Has, 'The other 99.5 percent', Ha'aretz, 24 August 2005.
49. This resonates with Naveh's attitude to American military action in Falluja: 'a disgusting operation, they flattened the entire city... if we would have done just that we would have saved ourselves many casualties'.
50. Some 1,500 other buildings were damaged and 4,000 people were left homeless. Fifty-two Palestinians were killed, more then half of them civilians. Some, including those who - elderly or disabled - couldn't leave on time, were buried alive under the rubble of their homes. See Amnesty International, Shielded from Scrutiny: IDF Violations in Jenin and Nablus, 4 November 2002;
51. and Stephen Graham, 'Constructing Urbicide by Bulldozer in the Occupied Territories', in Cities, War and Terrorism, Blackwell, Oxford, 2004.
52. A further $5 million from Saddam Hussein was divided between the families whose homes were destroyed, and those who lost relatives.
53. Between 10 and 15 per cent of the original ground area of the lots of destroyed buildings were later registered as public ground. In some cases, this area was seized only on the ground floor. UNRWA bought further land on the edge of the camp and relocated some of the households from the destroyed core. The project was dedicated to Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late president of the UAE.
54. A popular committee is an organizational form based on participatory democracy developed within the occupied villages, refugee camps and cities which emerged during the first intifada. In most places, political parties from the main factions in the PLO, as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, appointed representatives.
55. Gideon Levy, 'Tank Lanes Built between New Jenin Homes', Ha'aretz, 10 May 2004. This was engaged in the exhibition Walking through Walls, curated by Eyal Weizman, Anselm Franke and Nadav Harel.
56. The first project director, the British Iain Hook, was killed by IDF soldiers, who later claimed to have mistaken him for an armed Palestinian.
57. 'We got blamed for doing it this way but we made the roads wider for cars and ambulances - it would be silly not to. We just wanted to make a normal living area ... we see it from a technical aspect, not in terms of war; the Israelis will come in regardless.' See Justin McGuirk, 'Jenin', Icon Magazine 24, June 2005, www.icon-magazine.co.uk/issues/024/ jenin_text.htm.
58. See also Levy, 'Tank Lanes'.
59. See Graham, 'Constructing Urbicide'.
60. Tom Segev, Israel in 1967, Keter Books, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 566 (in Hebrew).
61. But this is not typical of the position of many other refugees delighted by their new homes. See Levy, 'Tank Lanes'.
62. Walter Benjamin, 'Critique of Violence', in Reflections, Schocken Books and Random House, New York, 1989, pp. 295-6.
63. In recent months, the practice has been reported in the areas around Ramallah. Prime Minister Netanyahu previously stated: 'Hot pursuit is a sub-issue. It's a specific instance of a generic issue, and the generic issue is the freedom of action of Israel to protect its citizens wherever they are. And against whatever threats emanate from anywhere.' Press conference with Prime Minister Netanyahu on the Hebron Accord, 13 January 1997; available online at mfa.gov.il.
64. Fredric Jameson, 'Is Space Political?, in Neil Leach, ed., Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, Routledge, London and New York, 1997, p. 261.
65. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1998, pp. 63-4.
66. Because walls function not only as physical barriers but as devices of information exclusion (of vision and sound), they have provided, since the eighteenth century, according to architectural historian Robin Evans, the physical infrastructure for the construction of privacy and modern subjectivity. See Robin Evans, 'The Rights of Retreat and the Rights of Exclusion', in Translation from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, Architectural Association Publications, London, 1997.
67. This is developed in Plato's Laws, Book 8, 843; cited in Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 30.
68. The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees individuals' rights against unreasonable search and seizure. It is required that the government gives notice before searching through or seizing an individual's belongings. Before the USA Patriot Act was passed in Congress on 24 October 2001, prior notice could be suspended only under a narrow set of circumstances. Section 213 of the Act expanded so-called 'sneak and peek' warrants. Under this section the government can delay notice of a search if it can show 'reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execution of the warrant may have an adverse result'. This means that government agents can enter a dwelling without notice if they have a reasonable suspicion that an announcement would inhibit the investigation of a crime, by, for example, enabling the destruction of evidence. This procedure replaced the old standard of 'knock and announce' by which, when executing a warrant, law enforcement officials must generally announce their presence. www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/loss/loss_ch2.htm.
69. Evans, 'The Rights of Retreat and the Rights of Exclusion', p. 38.
70. Hatton, 'The Problem of Our Walls', pp. 66-7.