Art visual np2

picture: Ma'ale Adummim (East Jerusalem's region) ـJewish settlements within the West Bank are violating the article 49 of the Geneva Convention (see previous article ). However, thinking that they simply occupy a land they do not own would be observing them in a very superficial way. In fact, they constitute a very important weapon in the Israeli strategy of oppression towards the Palestinian. All the scales and categories of building engineering are involved in this strategy; nothing is left to chance by Israeli planners, engineers and militaries. The geographical dimension, to begin with, is studied to disturb as much as possible Palestinian life. In fact, several settlements by their location and their occupation are splitting villages from their fields or blocking exchange between the villages. The topographical aspect of settlements are probably the most essential dimension: They occupy the top of the hills in order to maintain a constant supervision of their surroundings...

Thanks to Romaric, my friend who works at French publisher Galaade, I had the chance to meet Raja Shehadeh for an interview he kindly accepted. Raja is a lawyer in Ramallah since the end of the 70's and has dedicated his carrier to cases of expropriation of Palestinian lands by the Israeli. He wrote several books, including Occupier's Law and Palestinian walks . Ramallah. 21st July 2010 Leopold Lambert: The particularity of your actions is that you are a lawyer. Despite the fact that law is violated every day by the State of Israel, what may be some naivety from me makes me think that it is the one domain that can save Palestinians from oppression. Would your expertise agree with that? Raja Shehadeh: When I started as a lawyer, I had an exaggerated view of the importance of law. I took very seriously that law was a weapon. I still consider seriously that law is a way of preserving civilization. I have great respect for and belief in International Law, because it came as a ...

"When an architect’s design premeditatedly aims to cause material damage - as part of a largescale policy of organized aggression - a war crime may have been committed. " This article written by Eyal Weizman for Rem Koolhaas' Content is not so new anymore (2003) but unfortunately nothing has changed since then ... In this short essay entitled The Evil Architects Do , Weizman establishes that " architecture and planning intersects with the strategies of contemporary conflicts in ways that the semantics of international law are still ill-equiped to describe. " In fact, architecture has a fundamental role to play in the current warfare -which does not consist anymore in two symmetrical armies fighting in the middle of a field- and the international laws, that once again (see the previous articles ) have been made supposedly to be respected by every nations, seem to be not precised enough to really describe the current ways it is now used -as construction or destr...

Apparently the American Press does not want you to know too much. Watching CNN speaking but not saying anything was not too surprising. However, reading the New York Times that relays pretty well the Israeli State's declarations, hides the obvious and even writes deliberate errors is just outrageous. If we analyze today's article about the recent act of Piracy from the Israeli army, it seems impossible not to observe the incredible positioning of what is consider as a progressive American newspaper: First: The Israeli State's declaration: Apparently the flotilla's boat could have bring “ missiles, mortars and Iranians who will help them arm and train .” Pronounce the word Al Qaeda or Iran and the USA will let you do whatever you want. Seriously the thread is a bit too obvious here. Should we really recall that those boats were transporting aid to the Gaza strips that suffers from the Israeli blockade for a decade now. (the official blockade started in 2007 but it actu...

In a country at war, the army has the ability to make the law thanks to the state of exception (read previous article ) by purposing every measures for the sake of "national security". The hyper power gathered by a minority make this people interested in the continuous status of war. That is how the State of Israel, since its creation is paradoxically a state of exception that even extract itself from the International Laws (read previous post about the Geneva Convention ). In this regard, Tzahal just pass a decry that can potentially deports almost every Palestinian AND Foreigner living in the West Bank. Not only Israel still support the illegal Zionist settlements in the West Bank but they now want to potentially define almost any Palestinian as an infiltrator. This measure reinforce the control of the Israeli Army in the West Bank and the humiliation for Palestinians to be considered as illegal and evictable on their own land. The decry also concerns foreigners and states...

The Article 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention (1949) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, describe the state of Israel's support to colonization as a violation of International War Law: Art. 49. Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased. The Occupying Power undertaking suc...

picture extracted from the 2006 film The Road to Guantanamo by Mat Whitecross It's been one year and half that Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States, and although one of his very first proposition was to close Guantanamo, it seems that nobody is too much in a hurry to find a way to deal with people whose majority has not been proven to be guilty of anything. Anyway, Guantanamo as a materialization of what Giorgio Agamben calls the state of exception is compelling for the importance of architecture to that matter. In the excellent book Territories. Islands, camps and other states of utopia , the German group An Architektur (see previous post ) writes a very interesting article about Agamben and the notion of camp: The number of people detained at Camp Delta now runs to 650. Their status is neither that of prisoners of war nor that of civilians. The US has skirted the Geneva Convention and international law by arbitrarily designating the prisoners as "...

map coming from bbc.co.uk At the time I am writing this article the West Bank is still sealed by the Israeli army as a "prevention measure". Many defenders of the Israeli Government action claim it as legitimate defense which is already a farce when you observe the total asymmetry between the two opponents; however here, such an oppressive measure is being justified by the notion of prevention. This shift from suppression to prevention is a perfect example of a police/military absolute state. It is based on a fear narrative and maintains this potentiality of danger as a legitimacy of oppression. The reason of such a fear here is based on the announcement -while Joe Biden was visiting Israel in order to support potential negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians- of 1600 new housing built in a illegal settlement in East-Jerusalem (on Palestinian land). This continuous illegal colonization (read Eyal Weizman's Civilian Occupation ) which brings the most extreme Jewish...

Max Rameau was invited to speak about his association yesterday at the Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces conference. Take Back The Land requisitions illegally some idle lands belonging to the city of Miami in order to provide accommodation for homeless people. The shanty town thus constituted elaborates its own rules of life in community and to maintain good relationships with the neighborhood. Max Rameau affirms that due to a "favorable" context (housing crisis), the ultimate priority for the fight should be the claim of a right to housing which is in contradiction with the current capitalistic laws of absolute profit. My suggestion here would be (for once) a tactical argument. The fact that one needs an address (therefore a home) in order to vote seems to belong to a very violent segregation towards the poorest which is in total contradiction with the bases of democracy. I am claiming it is a tactical argument based on law since I guess people would prefer to have a home rath...