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| 12/25 |
| 2005/8/30 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:39344 Activity:nil |
8/30 http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2005/feature_motro_sepoct05.msp http://redirx.com/?3hc5 "Some people claim that the Oslo process was deliberately designed to segregate Palestinians into isolated enclaves so that Israel could continue to occupy the West Bank without the burden of policing its people. If so, perhaps the map inadvertently revealed what the Israeli wordsmiths worked so diligently to hide. Or perhaps Israel's negotiators purposefully emphasized the discontinuity of Palestinian areas to appease opposition from the Israeli right, knowing full well that Arafat would fly into a rage. Neither is true. I know, because I had a hand in producing the official Oslo II map, and I had no idea what I was doing." - danh \_ Why are you an anti-semite, danh? RACIST. |
| 12/25 |
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| www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2005/feature_motro_sepoct05.msp King James I, of Michigan By Geoffrey Gagnon Lessons From the Swiss Cheese Map Why have Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ignored the importance of good m apmaking? in silence, then sprang out of his chair and declared it to be an insufferable humiliation. Up until that point, the Israeli team had insisted on focusing discussion s with the Palestinians on the text of the agreement, which had gone thr ough countless draftsmaps were off limits. As one of the soldiers accom panying the Israeli delegation, I came to appreciate the meticulous care with which the verbal components of the agreement were negotiated. My d uties included translating parts of the agreement from English (the offi cial language of the agreement) into Hebrew so that, as soon as it was s igned, it could be sent to the Knesset (Israel's Parliament) for ratific ation. During the final weeks of the marathon negotiations, I would receive the latest marked-up draft, update my translation, and review my work with G ilad Sher, one of the delegation's most respected attorneys. Israeli troops were slated to "redeploy," not "withdraw," from parts of the "West Bank," not from the biblical lands of "Judea and Sam aria." The agreement made no mention of a future Palestinian state; it s tressed, rather, that the ultimate goal of the Oslo process was to reach "a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 3 38." These resolutions demand that Israel withdraw from territories occu pied in the 1967 war, including the West Bank. The Interim Agreement, the fruit of the Oslo II talks, divided the West B ank into three areas: A, B, and C Area A, which included the West Bank' s major population centers but ultimately comprised only 3 percent of it s area, would immediately come under full Palestinian control. Area B, w hich included more sparsely populated Palestinian communities and compri sed 24 percent of the West Bank, would be subject to joint Palestinian a nd Israeli control. Area C, the rest of the West Bank, would remain unde r full Israeli control during the initial withdrawal stage, though furth er Israeli withdrawals from Area C were planned for later stages. Many o f the provisions in the agreement underplayed the fact that 73 percent o f the West Bank would remain in Israeli hands. ") Unfortunate ly, the main map accompanying the agreement communicated the opposite me ssage. The dominant visual elements of the map attached to the final Interim Agr eement are dozens of disconnected bright yellow blotches. Each is surrou nded by a thick red line, further emphasizing its isolation. Upon closer examination, you notice eight brown blotches. The brown blotches mark A rea A (full Palestinian control); Area C is absent from the key and there is no sign of the pr e-1967 border, ominously implying that the fate of the 73 percent of the West Bank designated for further Israeli withdrawals had already been d ecidedin Israel's favor. Following Arafat's dramatic walkout, the Israelis increased their initial proposal for the yellow areas, Area B, by 5 percent, and the Palestinia n leader signed the agreement. But his opponents derided him for accepti ng the Swiss cheese mapa vision of Palestinian sovereignty punctured by holes. The official map reinforced the arguments of Oslo's harshest cri tics, like Edward Said, who saw the agreement as a humiliating capitulat ion to Israeli expansionism. Some people claim that the Oslo process was deliberately designed to segr egate Palestinians into isolated enclaves so that Israel could continue to occupy the West Bank without the burden of policing its people. If so , perhaps the map inadvertently revealed what the Israeli wordsmiths wor ked so diligently to hide. Or perhaps Israel's negotiators purposefully emphasized the discontinuity of Palestinian areas to appease opposition from the Israeli right, knowing full well that Arafat would fly into a r age. I know, because I had a hand in producing the official O slo II map, and I had no idea what I was doing. Late one night during th e negotiations, my commander took me from the hotel where the talks were taking place to an army base, where he led me to a room with large fluo rescent light tables and piles of maps everywhere. He handed me some dri ed-out markers, unfurled a map I had never seen before, and directed me to trace certain lines and shapes. No c artographer was present, no graphic designer weighed in on my choices, a nd, when I was through, no Gilad Sher reviewed my work. MAPS RECORD FACTS BUT, WHETHER BY DESIGN OR BY ACCIDENT, they also projec t worldviews and function as arguments. Every map reflects a set of judg ments that influence the viewer's impression of the underlying data. The choice of colors and labels, the cropping, and the process of selecting what gets included and what gets left out all combine to form a visual gestalt. A skilled designer can make peace seem inevitable or impossible , reassuring or terrifying, logical or jumbled. For the visually aware reader, this point will seem obvious. Artists know that visual representations are as malleable as verbal ones. Peace nego tiators tend to be passively aware that maps, like charts and photograph s, can be crafted to emphasize a certain point of view. Since they can't conduct a meaningful conversation about borders without maps, however, they are forced to use a tool they don't know how to control, hoping tha t their good intentions will lead them in the right direction. Many of the basic principles of information design parallel well-known pr inciples of good writing. "Vigorous writing is concise," teach Strunk an d White in their classic American prose manual, The Elements of Style. " A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessa ry sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecess ary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." The information graphics guru Edward Tufte makes similar points about graphic design, railing aga inst what he calls "chartjunk"the meaningless visual noise that clutter s so many computer-generated displays. Effective writing, say Strunk and White, reflects deliberate choices about micro and macro organization; good writers strategically craft each sentence and paragraph so that the most important ideas are placed in the most prominent positions. Tufte similarly shows how muting secondary and structural elements like arrows , grids, underlines, frames, legends, and shadows reduces visual clutter and helps to clarify the primary information. the design will often be noisy, cluttered, and informationally flat." THE MAIN CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGE IN MAPPING THE INTERIM AGREEMENT was how to depict Area Cthe part of the West Bank that remained in Israeli contro l when the agreement was signed in 1995 but which was explicitly slated for further Israeli withdrawals, though the scope and timing of these wi thdrawals would be determined at later stages. As we have seen, rather t han tackle this challenge, the official map ignored it, neglecting to ma rk Area C altogether. Since its signing, other mapmakers have struggled with how to depict the agreement, and in particular Area C The results demonstrate how differently the underlying data of Oslo II can be interp retedand how difficult it can be to modulate a map's political symbolis m Take, for an example at one extreme, the map produced by Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, a Palestinian research institute that publishes, a mong other resources, A Geopolitical Atlas of Palestine, a cartographic history of Israeli "colonization" and Palestinian dispossession. see here), Palestinian-controlled areas seem like li ttle spots floating helplessly in a petri dish. Area Cthe white space s urrounding the green and salmon islandsis absent from the key and is vi rtually indistinguishable from Israel. The pre-1967 border, which forms the silhouette of the area that some critics of Oslo argued should have comprised the new Palestinian state, hovers accusingly in the background . ARIJ's mapmakers took care to label Palestinian cities with their Arab ic names, in some instances adding Hebrew or Western na... |
| redirx.com/?3hc5 -> www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2005/feature_motro_sepoct05.msp King James I, of Michigan By Geoffrey Gagnon Lessons From the Swiss Cheese Map Why have Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ignored the importance of good m apmaking? in silence, then sprang out of his chair and declared it to be an insufferable humiliation. Up until that point, the Israeli team had insisted on focusing discussion s with the Palestinians on the text of the agreement, which had gone thr ough countless draftsmaps were off limits. As one of the soldiers accom panying the Israeli delegation, I came to appreciate the meticulous care with which the verbal components of the agreement were negotiated. My d uties included translating parts of the agreement from English (the offi cial language of the agreement) into Hebrew so that, as soon as it was s igned, it could be sent to the Knesset (Israel's Parliament) for ratific ation. During the final weeks of the marathon negotiations, I would receive the latest marked-up draft, update my translation, and review my work with G ilad Sher, one of the delegation's most respected attorneys. Israeli troops were slated to "redeploy," not "withdraw," from parts of the "West Bank," not from the biblical lands of "Judea and Sam aria." The agreement made no mention of a future Palestinian state; it s tressed, rather, that the ultimate goal of the Oslo process was to reach "a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 3 38." These resolutions demand that Israel withdraw from territories occu pied in the 1967 war, including the West Bank. The Interim Agreement, the fruit of the Oslo II talks, divided the West B ank into three areas: A, B, and C Area A, which included the West Bank' s major population centers but ultimately comprised only 3 percent of it s area, would immediately come under full Palestinian control. Area B, w hich included more sparsely populated Palestinian communities and compri sed 24 percent of the West Bank, would be subject to joint Palestinian a nd Israeli control. Area C, the rest of the West Bank, would remain unde r full Israeli control during the initial withdrawal stage, though furth er Israeli withdrawals from Area C were planned for later stages. Many o f the provisions in the agreement underplayed the fact that 73 percent o f the West Bank would remain in Israeli hands. ") Unfortunate ly, the main map accompanying the agreement communicated the opposite me ssage. The dominant visual elements of the map attached to the final Interim Agr eement are dozens of disconnected bright yellow blotches. Each is surrou nded by a thick red line, further emphasizing its isolation. Upon closer examination, you notice eight brown blotches. The brown blotches mark A rea A (full Palestinian control); Area C is absent from the key and there is no sign of the pr e-1967 border, ominously implying that the fate of the 73 percent of the West Bank designated for further Israeli withdrawals had already been d ecidedin Israel's favor. Following Arafat's dramatic walkout, the Israelis increased their initial proposal for the yellow areas, Area B, by 5 percent, and the Palestinia n leader signed the agreement. But his opponents derided him for accepti ng the Swiss cheese mapa vision of Palestinian sovereignty punctured by holes. The official map reinforced the arguments of Oslo's harshest cri tics, like Edward Said, who saw the agreement as a humiliating capitulat ion to Israeli expansionism. Some people claim that the Oslo process was deliberately designed to segr egate Palestinians into isolated enclaves so that Israel could continue to occupy the West Bank without the burden of policing its people. If so , perhaps the map inadvertently revealed what the Israeli wordsmiths wor ked so diligently to hide. Or perhaps Israel's negotiators purposefully emphasized the discontinuity of Palestinian areas to appease opposition from the Israeli right, knowing full well that Arafat would fly into a r age. I know, because I had a hand in producing the official O slo II map, and I had no idea what I was doing. Late one night during th e negotiations, my commander took me from the hotel where the talks were taking place to an army base, where he led me to a room with large fluo rescent light tables and piles of maps everywhere. He handed me some dri ed-out markers, unfurled a map I had never seen before, and directed me to trace certain lines and shapes. No c artographer was present, no graphic designer weighed in on my choices, a nd, when I was through, no Gilad Sher reviewed my work. MAPS RECORD FACTS BUT, WHETHER BY DESIGN OR BY ACCIDENT, they also projec t worldviews and function as arguments. Every map reflects a set of judg ments that influence the viewer's impression of the underlying data. The choice of colors and labels, the cropping, and the process of selecting what gets included and what gets left out all combine to form a visual gestalt. A skilled designer can make peace seem inevitable or impossible , reassuring or terrifying, logical or jumbled. For the visually aware reader, this point will seem obvious. Artists know that visual representations are as malleable as verbal ones. Peace nego tiators tend to be passively aware that maps, like charts and photograph s, can be crafted to emphasize a certain point of view. Since they can't conduct a meaningful conversation about borders without maps, however, they are forced to use a tool they don't know how to control, hoping tha t their good intentions will lead them in the right direction. Many of the basic principles of information design parallel well-known pr inciples of good writing. "Vigorous writing is concise," teach Strunk an d White in their classic American prose manual, The Elements of Style. " A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessa ry sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecess ary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." The information graphics guru Edward Tufte makes similar points about graphic design, railing aga inst what he calls "chartjunk"the meaningless visual noise that clutter s so many computer-generated displays. Effective writing, say Strunk and White, reflects deliberate choices about micro and macro organization; good writers strategically craft each sentence and paragraph so that the most important ideas are placed in the most prominent positions. Tufte similarly shows how muting secondary and structural elements like arrows , grids, underlines, frames, legends, and shadows reduces visual clutter and helps to clarify the primary information. the design will often be noisy, cluttered, and informationally flat." THE MAIN CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGE IN MAPPING THE INTERIM AGREEMENT was how to depict Area Cthe part of the West Bank that remained in Israeli contro l when the agreement was signed in 1995 but which was explicitly slated for further Israeli withdrawals, though the scope and timing of these wi thdrawals would be determined at later stages. As we have seen, rather t han tackle this challenge, the official map ignored it, neglecting to ma rk Area C altogether. Since its signing, other mapmakers have struggled with how to depict the agreement, and in particular Area C The results demonstrate how differently the underlying data of Oslo II can be interp retedand how difficult it can be to modulate a map's political symbolis m Take, for an example at one extreme, the map produced by Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, a Palestinian research institute that publishes, a mong other resources, A Geopolitical Atlas of Palestine, a cartographic history of Israeli "colonization" and Palestinian dispossession. see here), Palestinian-controlled areas seem like li ttle spots floating helplessly in a petri dish. Area Cthe white space s urrounding the green and salmon islandsis absent from the key and is vi rtually indistinguishable from Israel. The pre-1967 border, which forms the silhouette of the area that some critics of Oslo argued should have comprised the new Palestinian state, hovers accusingly in the background . ARIJ's mapmakers took care to label Palestinian cities with their Arab ic names, in some instances adding Hebrew or Western na... |