This first complete history of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip allows us to see beyond the smokescreen of politics in order to make sense of the dramatic changes on the ground that have developed over the past four decades. Looking at a wide range of topics from control of water and electricity to healthcare and education, as well as surveillance and torture, Neve Gordon's panoramic account reveals a fundamental shift from a reliance on a politics of life--when, for instance, Israel helped Palestinians plant more than 600,000 trees in Gaza and provided farmers with improved varieties of seeds--to a macabre politics characterized by an increasing number of deaths. Drawing attention to the interactions, excesses, and contradictions created by the forms of control used in the Occupied Territories, Gordon argues that the occupation's very structure, rather than the policy choices of the Israeli government or the actions of various Palestinian political factions, has lead to this radical shift. Provocatively addressing difficult questions about why occupying forces in general are unable to normalize their rule, this book sheds new light on the way power, people, and place are shaped in this bitter ongoing conflict.