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Chris Spannos's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/chrisspannos
Bio: Chris Spannos has had over a decade of experience in self-managed media collectives and also as an activist, organizer, and anti-capitalist. From 1998-2006 he participated in the Redeye collective,... (More)

All Spannos Blogs

The Architecture of Israel's Brutal Occupation & its "Matrix of Control"

By Chris Spannos at Feb 13, 2006


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There’s been some recent press highlighting Israel’s built environment and the apartheid system it imposes upon Palestinians. Jeff Halper, co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), and author of “The Matrix of Control”, has been nominated by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker humanitarian service organization, for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. (1) The Matrix of Control is a framework in which Halper identifies Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; the framework created by strategic settlements, settler-only highways and the Separation Wall. (2) Also this week, the London Independent reports that a group including some of Britain's most prominent architects is considering an economic boycott of Israel's construction industry. (3) Like Halper, they protest the building of Israeli settlements and the separation barrier in the Occupied Territories. And yet one more piece of news, Electronic Intifada reports that the “Church of England's most senior decision-making body, the General Synod, voted to disinvest from "companies profiting from the illegal occupation [of Palestine]". (4) Caterpillar manufactures D9 bulldozers used by the Israeli armed forces for house demolitions. All this indicates a vigorous and necessary opposition to Israel’s Apartheid built environment which is arguably today’s most prominent example of how architecture, city planning and geography can be used for oppression, occupation and colonization.

 

Halper likens (5) Israel’s Matrix of Control, which he has mapped in great detail (6), to that of the East Asian board game “Go”, “East Asians have a game called “Go”.  Unlike the Western game of chess, where two opponents try to “defeat” each other by taking off pieces, the aim of “Go” is completely different.  You “win” not by defeating but by immobilizing your opponent by controlling key points on the matrix.”  

 

As Halper outlines, Israel’s Matrix of Control has three layers:

 

1)      “[T]he actual physical control of key links and nodes that create the matrix of control,  settlements and their extended “master plans”; a massive system of highways and by-pass roads (including wide “sanitary” margins); army bases and industrial parks at key locations;  closed military areas;  “nature preserves”; control of aquifers and other natural resources;  internal checkpoints and control of all border crossings;  areas “A”, “B, “C”, “D”, “H-1”, “H-2”; Israeli-controlled holy places in key locations; and much more. These define the matrix of constricted Palestinian enclaves and effectively divide them from one another. They also give Israel control of key “nodes”.”

 

2)      “The second layer of the matrix is bureaucratic and “legal”, all the planning, permits and policies that entangle the Palestinian population in a tight web of restrictions. These include political zoning of land as “agricultural” in order to freeze the natural development of towns and villages; a politically motivated system of building permits, enforced by house demolitions, designed to confine the population to its constricted enclaves; land expropriations for (solely Israeli) “public purposes”; restrictions of planting and the wholesale destruction of Palestinian crops; licensing and inspection of Palestinian businesses; closure; restrictions on movement and travel; and more. Although Israel is careful to present its policies as “legal”, in fact they are not.  The failure to guarantee Palestinians the basic human rights provided by the Geneva Convention and other international covenants, upon which Israel has signed, is patently illegal. The extensive use of the Israeli court system, which invariably rules against Palestinians, as a means of controlling the local population makes a mockery of the link between law and justice. All these confine Palestinians to isolated cantons, control their movement and maintain Israeli hegemony.”

 

3)      “The third layer of the matrix involves the use of violence to maintain control over the matrix, the military occupation itself, including massive imprisonment and torture; the extensive use of collaborators to control the local population; pressures exerted on families to sell their lands; the undemocratic, arbitrary and violent rule of the Military Commander of the West Bank and the Civil Administration. What Israelis know of this system they justify in terms of “security”.”

 

No wonder that the Architects in the Independent say that "Planning, architecture and other construction disciplines are being used to promote an apartheid system of environmental control." And the architects, planners and engineers working on Israeli projects in the occupied territories were "complicit in social, political and economic oppression", and "in violation of their professional code of ethics".

When discussing a boycott of Israel, the architects spoke specifically of targeting “Israeli-made construction materials”, “Israeli architects and construction companies” – and also the possibility of calling for the expulsion of Israeli architects from the International Union of Architects.
As the Independent reports, Eyal Weizman, the Israeli director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmith's College in London, said "A boycott would be totally legitimate”…“The wall and the settlements have been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice and we should boycott any company which does business, any architects that participate - anyone facilitating these human rights violations and war crimes."


Well said…

Foot notes:

1) http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4474.shtml

2) http://www.searchforjustice.org/articles/10.00.99.html

3) http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article344510.ece

4) http://electronicintifada.net/v2/printer4468.shtml

5) http://www.searchforjustice.org/articles/10.00.99.html

6) http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/maps/settle_matrix.html

Person

study xml

By Mcclain, Martin at Mar 29, 2007 07:40 AM

In college we start study xml language and teacher recommend us find themself information about it.Can you recommend me anything about it? Meanwhile i find only this site - xml for dummy. What do you think about it?

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Person

Ron Silliman's Libel

By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 24, 2006 23:14 PM

Off and On Topic/ Discrimination Against Muslims by Famous Persons in the Media

Mr. Spannos...I salute anyone who can say Church of England in a legitimate post (and quite good) regarding the nature of this oppression.

I am a practicing Shia muslim poet living in Beirut and have been libeled by Ron Silliman on his 'blogspot' as a racist.  I would truly like you to look into the details of that argument regarding a Filipina poet named Barbara Jane Reyes who participates in a wicked game of reverse discrimination against "balding, White, anglo pedophiles" and who took it upon herself to send a crazy pack of her supporters to Ron Silliman's blogspot where her rather pitiful poetry was being reviewed (well I think it is pitiful but others might disagree as it attacks the burden of the White Man using racist terminology against all parties (gook) including a population of impoverished Filipinos of which Ms. Reyes is not in contact with as she lives in San Francisco and has a Master's Degree). 

I went to great lengths to make Ms. Reyes 'supporters' understand my comments only to find myself libeled on the front page by Mr. Silliman a few days later. 

The details of my libel complaint regarding Mr. Silliman's HEINOUS abuse of language and rationale can be found (via posts and comments (the full transcripts are there) at:

http://stinkylink.blogspot.com/

or you can go directly to Mr. Ron Silliman's blogspot

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

  and review the entire mess regarding his review of Ms. Reyes work on March 06, 2006 and the subsequent charges Mr. Silliman lobbed against me on Wednesday March 15th which has been followed up with more harrassment including comments such as "When Google rules the world" and a movie review about a Lebanese "kitchen worker" having an affair with a wealthy White WASP in the movie "Yes".

It is well known by the posters and Mr. Silliman himself that I am an avid supporter of Hezbollah/Muqawama as I have lived under Israeli and Syrian oppression for a number of years.  Mr. Silliman is well aware of that and libeled me.

I hope you can also bring this to the attention of Mr. Chomsky as some of the posters felt that I had something in common with the late Edward Said (of whom I know little) and hoped to use that rationale to defend Silliman's charge which boils down to my using the word "exotic" when referring to Ms. Reyes looks as opposed to her poetry which I hoped NOT to comment on because it was of an inferior quality.

Thanks.

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/

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Person

most likely

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 23, 2006 12:10 PM

It is most likely that Israel would had been an egyptian province at the time of the passover..

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Person

passover..

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 23, 2006 11:53 AM

zubub, I dont think that god would had murdered kids to des-enslave another people or even; that God (is this a form of terrorism ?) made up the plagues against the egyptian population to favor another.

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Person

passover..

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 23, 2006 11:38 AM

lol zubub.. what an analogy, one of the plague given upon egypt was the death of the first born egyptian child ( an infanticide ) Death of the Firstborn 11:4 And Moses said, Thus saith the LORD, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt: 11:5 And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts. Nope zubub, I know for well that when the Hebrew Pass(ed)-over the Nile, they were still in Egypt..

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Person

apologists of infanticide

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 20, 2006 20:20 PM

I suppose Cyrano thinks I should accuse the Jews of making Passover ritual matsah from the blood of non-Jewish children; otherwise I become an "apologist of infanticides". Oh well, if that is how he sees the world, so be it.

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Person

Some Media Flak Supplied by US Gunboat UK's Rabbi Sacks

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 18, 2006 05:31 AM

Rabbi Sacks has attacked the Church of England Synod for deciding to disinvest in companies profiting from Israel's illegal occupation:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article345929.ece

This is the same man who has used every opportunity (denied most critics of Israel) to speak of a global Tsunami of Anti-Semiticism. Apparently, the Palestinians are to be stripped of their Semitic heritage once again.

The Rabbi's position can be characterised best in that he mentions the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip; but says nothing of the building of the separating wall, the further thieving of Palestinian land that entailed, and all the other crimes against Palestinian human rights cited on this blog.

Apparently religious institutions should restrict themselves to making distant calls for peace and unity and not look too closely at the moral implications of their investment portfolio.

 

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Person

matrix continued

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 17, 2006 10:44 AM

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Person

BBC link

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 14, 2006 14:13 PM

thanks for the BBC link Kelvin.. cyrano's quote of the day: For Abu Graibists, its ok to sent innocent people and women to jail..

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Person

yikes

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 14, 2006 12:54 PM

Mr Spannos, the matrix really sound like getting life in a penitentiary institution for a crime people didnt commit.. I think Israel and the US are still trying to chloroform the population about rights Israel say it has when it does not.. I dont think it has the right to do such things as building walls under any pretext or context.. * oops got to run away, I think I see Zubub , the blog's apologist of infanticides coming.. he is going to tell us its ok to RIASE kids in jail..

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Person

Establishment Divisions

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 14, 2006 11:22 AM

An excellent blog that succintly catergorises the multilayering of oppression inflicted on the Palestinian people.

It shouldn't suprise anybody that the UK's establishment Church of England should take a more progressive line on Israel/Palestine than its government - all establishements are heterogenous.

It shouldn't suprise the UK that the heir apparent to Blair's presidential premiership, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, is vying for most Republican-styled British labourite in British history:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4708444.stm

It seems that Brown's War on Terror rhetoric is destined to reinforce the alignment of the UK political elites with the US/Israel axis of state terror visited upon the Palestinian (as well as many other) peoples.

Brown is fully behind the once rejected identity cards for all British citizens because of terrorist use of multi-identities. Someone should point out to him that, living next door to the Prime Minister, he should know full well that multi-identities and terrorism do not always go hand in hand - as far as I know Blair only had one passport when he helped to manufacture and co-perpetrate the illegal invasion of Iraq; and the Defence Minister only has one passport when he signs contracts that permit the supply of British arms and military equipment to Israel, or to any number of dubious regimes. (Our arms industry is the only area of UK manufacturing that has been continuously protected from neo-liberal logic)

Brown's speech was made in the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies! - a truly Orwellian moment that, at a 'special relationship', UK tugboat with cannon attached, oft-passed-over Downing Street lieutenant in Washington's elite army level, does not bode well for the near-future destiny of the Palestinian people.

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