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Wednesday
Dec052012

concrete occupation

FIRST FARMERS FOR 2500 YEARS TO SETTLE GILBOA IN ISRAEL ; 4 DECEMBER 1962 ©TopFoto

This is from TopFoto's '50 years ago' from December 4, 1962. The note that accompanies the image reads: "David's Curse Lifted"  Mizpeh Gilboa, Israel.  Two of the new settlers at Mizpeh Gilboa are pictured mixing cement and sand for their new houses.  So far six permanent buildings have been erected in the settlement plan according to the settler's choice.  Water is still brought up by tankers from Nurit, but a pipeline [from] Beisan Wells is planned.  UPI Photo 1962

The headline indicates something of the myth of terra nullius that was prevalent at the time of the 1967 War: that no one lived in this new land, and if they did, they weren't taking advantage of it.  

It also shows how concrete allows relatively unskilled fabrication: two farmers, sand, rock and tankered-in water. And yet the results are so permanent that they take on the inevitability of geology.  It is that re-mineralisation that cement goes through that so distorts the legitimacy of construction.

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