SYNOPSIS OF JEFF HALPER’S FORTHCOMING BOOK

LOOKING UP FROM THE OCCUPATION:

ISRAEL AND THE GLOBAL PACIFICATION INDUSTRY

Much has been written on the power of capital, alliances among the core states and corporations to preserve their global hegemony, core-periphery relations, even the centrality of the military and the Military-Industrial Complex to the capitalist system, but relatively little on how these mechanisms actually work at different levels of the system. This book looks at the workings of global pacification systems, both of the capitalist core and of the regional and local hegemons, state and non-state, which enforce the hegemonic system. It looks at the structure of global pacification systems – models of submission, cooptation, control and pacification; weaponry developed for warfare amongst the people; instruments of control; and framing and spin – and in particular at the growing integration of the military, internal security and policing (or the MISP complex, as I call it).

Israel occupies a uniquely pivotal position in the world order. A country embroiled in a war of counterinsurgency for over a century, with ongoing experience in low intensity warfare and acute problems of homeland security, it has also fought five full-fledged conventional wars, is actively engaged with the militaries of the US, Europe, NATO, China and beyond, and is a nuclear power. Its special expertise lies in developing sophisticated high-tech weaponry and instruments of control relevant not only to armies but to internal security agencies and police forces as well. Having a
“laboratory” of four million Palestinians trapped in occupied territories for over four decades, Israel’s “edge” is in producing weaponry, instruments of control, tactics and models of pacification that are “combat proven” on the ground.

Israel’s security politics, or arms diplomacy, aims to perpetuate Israel’s control over the entire Land of Israel through making itself invaluable to the world’s hegemons, be they the core countries and their corporations, strongmen of the periphery or even powerful cartels and mafias. Through the prism of Israel’s exporting a kind of “global Palestine,” by “looking up” from the MISP technologies and systems of pacification that have emerged from the Occupation, light is cast on the dark underbelly of world politics that has largely escaped attention.

Jeff Halper, an anthropologist, is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a leading Israeli peace and human rights organization. He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.