Thanks to reader Jim Harb for alerting us to this interesting imaginary map. It is one way of showing the fragmentation of the West under Israeli occupation – an archipelago of disconnected islands. It's from the website Strange Maps, which also has some background from Julien Bousac, the artist who created the map:
“Maybe posting the full map would help to take it for what it is, i.e. an illustration of the West Bank’s ongoing fragmentation based on the (originally temporary) A/B/C zoning which came out of the Oslo process, still valid until now. To make things clear, areas ‘under water’ strictly reflect C zones, plus the East Jerusalem area, i.e. areas that have officially remained under full Israeli control and occupation following the Agreements. These include all Israeli settlements and outposts as well as Palestinian populated areas.”
Mr Boussac took advantage of the resulting archipelago effect “to use typical tourist maps codes (mainly icons) to sharpen the contrast between the fantasies raised by seemingly paradise-like islands and the Palestinian Territories grim reality.” The map does have a strong vacationy vibe to it – but whether that is because of the archipelago-shaped subject matter, or due to the cheerful colour scheme is a matter for debate.
Those colours, incidentally, denote urban areas (orange), nature reserves (shaded), zones of partial autonomy (dark green) and of total autonomy (light green). Totally fanciful are of course the dotted lines symbolising shipping links, the palm trees signifying protected beachland, and the purple symbols representing various aspects of seaside pleasure. The blue icon, labelled Zone sous surveillance (‘Zone under surveillance’) has some bearing on reality, as the locations of the warships match those of permanent Israeli checkpoints.
Some of the paradisiacally named islands include Ile au Miel (Honey Island), Ile aux Oliviers (Isle of the Olive Trees), Ile Sainte (Holy Island) and Ile aux Moutons (Sheep Island), although the naming of Ile sous le Mur (Island beneath the Wall) constitutes a relapse into the grimness of the area’s reality.
For more on the fragmentation of the West Bank, check out this resource page from the American Friends Service Committee. As you'll see in a video on the AFSC page, the map above is what some consider a "viable" Palestinian state in a two-state solution.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385×291028
phil giraldi has a write up on antiwar on your favorite humanists; the jewish people….and its defenders. i wanted to make sure i covered the entirety of judeozionists.
after all whatelse can a jew do other than to stand up for that shitty little country in the middle east…the israeli national socialists who have elections made up of only the people they want to represent the jews.
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/03/30/stop-arming-israel/
Israel has long enjoyed a special status, committing war crimes as a matter of policy and, uniquely, still being able to buy weapons on the international market. Stopping the sale of weapons to Israel is a proportionate response, because Israel is not militarily threatened by any or even all of its neighbors acting together. A ban on weapons sales would send a strong message while not detracting from Israel’s ability to defend itself
To be sure, many countries have engaged in war crimes in the past 50 years, but Israel has done so repeatedly as a policy of intimidation, using American weapons and political cover to carry out the crimes. Israel’s war crimes have damaged America’s reputation all around the world. When Israel acts badly, the rest of the world sees Washington behind it, sometimes obscenely so, as when then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice described the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" after Israel devastated Lebanon in July 2006. It is the Muslim world’s perception that Israel can do anything to Arabs and never be rebuked by the U.S.
Israel has been engaging in war crimes since the country’s founding, when it deliberately terrorized Palestinian civilians to make them flee their homes. In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty in international waters, killing 34 American sailors and Marines, apparently because it believed that the Liberty had intercepted orders by the Israeli government to execute thousands of Egyptian prisoners captured in Sinai. In 1982, Israel used cluster weapons on Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and its army officers stood by while its Phalangist allies killed thousands of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
Most recently, in January’s fighting in Gaza, the tally of Israeli war crimes seems almost too incredible to believe. The violations have been carefully documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights, and the International Red Cross. The UN rapporteur for Gaza, Richard Falk, called the Israeli offensive, in which nearly 300 children and 121 women died, "a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law." The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) used phosphorus artillery shells against a United Nations compound where more than 700 people were sheltering, killing 42. The UN had called the Israelis repeatedly to tell them there were hundreds of civilians seeking shelter in the building. A UN school sheltering 1,600 civilians was hit two days later. The spent phosphorus shell casings left in Gaza revealed that they had been made by Thiokol Aerospace and the Pine Bluff Arsenal in the United States.
All such actions are violations of the Geneva Conventions. Israel also used drones to target and kill civilians and shot down women and children advancing under cover of a white flag. A tank fired into an apartment building, killing the three daughters of a Palestinian physician, with an IDF board of inquiry subsequently finding the deaths "reasonable."
Col. Pat Lang, who served as the U.S. Army liaison to the IDF while in uniform and later in a similar capacity with the Defense Intelligence Agency as a civilian, observed Israeli soldiers using a tank’s machine gun to shoot at Palestinian Christian women who were hanging up their laundry, "just for the fun of it." He once was caught up in an Arab street demonstration and was told by an Israeli officer afterward that he would have been shot dead but for the fact that he did not look Palestinian and to kill a foreigner would have caused trouble. Israeli snipers finishing their training courses order T-shirts with distinctive artwork. One recent shirt featured a pregnant Arab woman with a bull’s-eye centered on her and the English slogan "1 shot, 2 kills" underneath.
Actually, Eastern Palestine is what is now called "The Kingdom of Jordan". If they are going to call "Eastern Palestine" the area of Judea/Samaria which is shown on the map, then "Western Palestine" is pre-67 Israel, which they obviously consider to be under occupation as well. So much for their "2-state" solution.
Err, Eastern Palestine is the West Bank and Western Palestine is the Gaza Strip.
It is a very effective map.
bar_kocha132 still insists on Jordan as being part of Eretz Israel and yet those who support that idea want Arabs to accept pragmatism vis-a-vis Israel's existence without accepting the idea that Jordan is not part of the territory being split regarding a Palestinian state. Hypocrisy or just selective thinking here?
I remember what Jeff Halper said and it stuck with me:
"Israel will be the only country with TWO Eastern borders."
That boggles my mind.
The reality is worse than the map though, as there is transit within an archipelago (boats).