Palestine is disappearing, fast - fulfilling the objectives of Israel's founding fathers. Over many decades Israel has developed and refined policies to disperse, imprison and impoverish the Palestinian people, in a relentless effort to destroy them as a nation. It has industrialised Palestinian despair through ever more sophisticated systems of curfews, checkpoints, walls, permits and land grabs. It has transformed the West Bank and Gaza into laboratories for testing the infrastructure of confinement, creating a lucrative "defence" industry by pioneering the technologies needed for urban warfare, crowd control and collective punishment.

Leading journalist Jonathan Cook examines the many different guises in which these experiments on the Palestinians are being carried out. He also exposes the dismal failure of the Israeli left, human rights organisations and the global media to hold Israel to account. This is a powerful and controversial analysis of one of the most enduring and entrenched conflicts in contemporary world politics.

Commendations

'This is an impressive and timely book written by one of the most knowledgeable writers on the Palestine-Israel conflict. Its insight into the devastating impact of Zionist settler colonialism and its account of the current reality on the ground are unique ... A must read for those seeking peace and justice in the Middle East.' - Nur Masalha, Reader in Religion and Politics and Director of Centre for Religion and History and Holy Land Research Project, St Mary’s University College (UK), and author of The Bible and Zionism (2007)

Jonathan Cook is the only western journalist to be based in Nazareth, the capital of the Palestinian people in Israel. He was previously a staff journalist on the Guardian and Observer newspapers, and has also written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the Times, Le Monde diplomatique, the International Herald Tribune, Al-Ahram Weekly, Counterpunch and Aljazeeria.net. He is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (2006) and Israel and the Clash of Civilisations (2008).