Published by Verso last month, Eyal Weizman’s newly edited preface to Hollow Land marks the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Read “The Vertical Apartheid” on openDemocracy.

openDemocracy first showcased Weizman’s research as ‘Politics of Verticality’ fifteen years ago. The wide reception of this text and Hollow Land, first published ten years ago, led to fresh thinking about colonisation and the system of Israel’s domination of Palestine, as well as to new concepts in geography. In this new preface, Weizman returns to examine these themes, noting how an evolving vertical system of domination has in the past 15 years hardened into a geographically unique structure that he calls Vertical Apartheid, one in which layers, both physical and juridical, create a laminated political system whose dismantling would require a new form of thinking.