Israeli biopolitics: Closure, territorialisation and governmentality in the occupied palestinian territories

Geopolitics

Volumn 13, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 701-723

  Parsons, Nigel ^a   Salter, Mark B ^b  

^a MASSEY UNIVERSITY   (New Zealand)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM; GOVERNANCE APPROACH; POLITICAL BORDER; SOVEREIGNTY; TERRITORIAL DELIMITATION; TERRITORIAL DISINTEGRATION;

ASIA; EURASIA; ISRAEL; JERUSALEM [ISRAEL]; MIDDLE EAST; OCCUPIED TERRITORIES; PALESTINE; WEST BANK;

EID: 57349099240     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040802275511     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. E. Zureik, 'Constructing Palestine Through Surveillance Practices', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 28/2 (Nov. 2001) pp. 205-227.
2. M. Foucault, 'Security, Territory, and Population', from Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, in P. Rabinow (ed.), Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (New York: New Press 1994) pp. 67-71.
3. For a definition of terms see Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage 1999) pp. 209-210.
4. Huxley defines governmentality as "practices shaping the actions of others and strategies for the management of population." M. Huxley, 'Governmentality, Gender, Planning: A Foucauldian Perspective', in P. Allmendinger and M. Tewdwr-Jones (eds.), Planning Futures: New Directions for Planning Theory (London and New York: Routledge 2002) p. 137.
5. C. B. Brettell and J. F. Hollifield (eds.), Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines (London and New York: Routledge 2000)
6. P. Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Border (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2000).
7. G. Falah and D. Newman, 'The Spatial Manifestation of Threat: Israelis and Palestinians Seek a 'Good' Boundary', Political Geography 14/8 (1995) pp. 689-706
8. G. Falah, 'Re-envisioning Current Discourse: Alternative Territorial Configurations of Palestinian Statehood', The Canadian Geographer 41/3 (Fall 1997) pp. 307-330
9. D. Newman, 'The Geopolitics of Peacemaking in Israel-Palestine', Political Geography 21/5 (2002) pp. 629-646.
10. M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France, 1977-78, Michael Senellart and Graham Burchill (ed. and trans.) (NY: Palgrave Macmillan 2007) p. 129.
11. Ibid., p. 5.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., p. 44.
14. E. Weizman, The Politics of Verticality. Open Democracy, available at .
15. M. Foucault, Society Must be Defended, Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76, Arnold I. Davidson and David Macey (ed. and trans.) (New York: Picador 2003) p. 15.
16. M. Foucault, 'The Birth of Biopolitics', from Michel Foucault: Ethics Subjectivity and Truth, Paul Rabinow (ed.) (New York: The New Press 1997) p. 73.
17. Zureik (note 1) pp. 213-216.
18. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2000)
19. M. B. Salter, Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rienner 2003).
20. M. Foucault, 'Truth and Power', from Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, Colin Gordon (ed. and trans.) (New York: Pantheon 1980) p. 131.
21. Zureik (note 1) pp. 223-225.
22. M. Anderson, Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press 1996) p. 1.
23. M. Albert and L. Brock, 'Debordering the World of States: New Spaces in International Relations', New Political Science 35/1 (Spring 1996) pp. 62-3.
24. E. Balibar, 'What is a Border?', in Politics and the Other Scene (New York: Verso 2002) pp. 78-79.
25. W. Walters, 'The Frontiers of the European Union: A Geostrategic Perspective', Geopolitics 9/3 (Autumn 2004) pp. 674-698.
26. E. Zureik and M. B. Salter, 'Introduction', in Global Surveillance and Policing: Borders, Security, Identity (Portland: Willan 2005) pp. 1-10.
27. Y. Shamir (dir.), Checkpoint (Eden Productions and Amythos Films 2003).
28. R. Khalidi, The Iron Cage (Boston: Beacon 2006) p. 136
29. U. Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East (New York: Random House 1998)
30. B'Tselem, 'Freedom of Movement' (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories 2003), available at
31. Israel and the PLO, Safe Passage Protocol (Jerusalem, 5 Oct. 1999)
32. reproduced in The Journal of Palestine Studies 29/2 (Winter 2000) pp. 151-152.
33. Since the writing of this paper, the Occupied Palestinian Territories no longer share a single political leadership - Gaza being controlled by Hamas and the West Bank by the Palestinian Authority. Since the withdrawal of Israel and Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, we focus on the West Bank.
34. For an early academic discussion in Arabic see Ali Jarbawi, 'Qara' Awliyya fi Khitat al-Fasl al-Amani al-Isra'iliyya' (An Initial Reading of the Israeli Security Separation Plan), Majalat al-Darasat al-Filastiniyya [Journal of Palestine Studies] 22 (Spring 1995) pp. 141-156.
35. This checkpoint has recently been privatised, in order to provide better "service."
36. Y. Lein, Behind the Barrier: Human Rights Violations As a Result of Israel's Separation Barrier (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories 2003), available at .
37. Closure also injured the Israeli economy by an estimated 5 percent of GDP. UNSCO, Closure Update. Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontation, Border Closures and Mobility Restrictions (2001).
38. For analysis of the incompatibility of closure and economic development, see A. Le More, 'Are 'realities on the ground' compatible with the international state-building agenda?' in M. Keating, A. Le More, and R. Lowe (eds.), Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground: The Case of Palestine (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs/Chatham House, 2005) pp. 27-40.
39. D. Newman, 'Shared Spaces - Separate Spaces: The Israel-Palestine Peace Process', Geojournal 39/4 (1996) p. 369.
40. J. Halper, 'The Matrix of Control' (2001), available at .
41. Weizman (note 9).
42. M. Kearney, 'Borders and Boundaries of State and Self at the End of Empire', Journal of Historical Sociology 4/1 (March 1991) p. 56.
43. N. Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1999) p. 34.
44. Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA), PASSIA Diary 2003 (Jerusalem: PASSIA 2003) p. 271.
45. B'Tselem, Land Grab: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank, Researched and written by Yehezkel Lein and Eyal Weizman, edited by Yael Stein (Jerusalem: B'Tselem 2002) pp. 74-84.
46. M. Dean, 'Liberal Government and Authoritarianism', Economy and Society 31/1 (Feb. 2002) pp. 48-49.
47. Dean (note 2) p. 209.
48. Head of the Jewish Agency's Land Settlement Division Matityahu Drobless developed the Master Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria in 1978. The reasoning was explicit: "State land and uncultivated land must be taken immediately in order to settle the areas between concentrations of [Palestinian] populations and around it ... being cut apart by Jewish settlements, the minority [sic] population will find it hard to create unification and territorial continuity." Cited by Weizman (note 9).
49. DellaPergola cited in H. Agha and A. S. Khalidi, A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine (London: RIIA 2006) p. 125.
50. In Jerusalem, the Palestinian population of 230,000 is set to reach 358,000 by 2020 as the Israeli proportion of the city drops from a high of 84 percent in 1972 down to 62 percent fifteen years hence. Ha'aretz (29 Nov. 2004).
51. M. Khan, '"Security First" and its Implications for a Viable Palestinian State', in Keating et al. (note 27), pp. 59-73.
52. Savir (note 22) pp. 81-82, and p. 142.
53. Ha'aretz (3 Nov. 2002).
54. World Bank (main authors Sebastien Dessus and Nigel Roberts), Fifteen Months - Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis: An Assessment (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 18 March 2002) pp. 6-7. Perhaps the most detailed tracking of closure in the public domain is available from Machsom Watch at .
55. G. Deleuze, 'Postscript on the Societies of Control', October 59 (Winter 1992) p. 4.
56. Kifah Fanni, interview, Ramallah (15 June 2003).
57. Foucault was adamant that there was no complete power - all power, he argued, had the potential for resistance, but equally, power could be productive as well as repressive. Foucault, 'Truth and Power' (note 14) p. 119.
58. A. Hass, 'Israel Forces Internal Movement Permit on Palestinians', Ha'aretz (19 May 2002)
59. A. Hass, 'Israel's Closure Policy: An Ineffective Strategy of Containment and Repression', Journal of Palestinian Studies 31/3 (Spring 2002) pp. 5-20
60. A. Hass, 'What Good Are Rocks Against Tanks?', Ha'aretz (31 Jan. 2002).
61. N. Parsons, The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to al-Aqsa (London and New York: Routledge 2005) p. 298.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., pp. 298-299.
64. Ibid., p. 299.
65. Majalat Markaz al-Takhtit al-Filastini (20 May 2002)
66. Al-Ayyam (29 May 2002).
67. For in depth reporting and case studies of Israeli and Palestinian DCLs, see H. Ziv, The Bureaucracy of Occupation: The District Civil Liaison Offices (Joint Report of Machsom Watch and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, 2004), available at .
68. Parsons (note 46) p. 299.
69. H. 'Alawi, interview, Ramallah (17 June 2003)
70. D. Salama, Fatah member of the Legislative Council for Nablus, interview, Ramallah (15 June 2003).
71. H. al-Hasan, Fatah central committee member, interview, Ramallah (15 June 2003).
72. Staff member at the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Civil Affairs, interview, al-Bira (17 June 2003).
73. Bir Zeit University students, interviews, Bir Zeit (12 June 2003).
74. UNRWA, Map of UNRWA's Area of Operations (Gaza: UNRWA Public Information Office 2001). Most of this section is based on an interview with Jihad Abu Znayd, member of the Fatah regional leadership committee (iqlim) for Jerusalem, formerly Director of Prisoners' and Released Prisoners' Affairs at Orient House, and women's rights activist in Shu'fat refugee camp. Jihad Abu Znayd, interview, East Jerusalem (11 June 2003).
75. Al-Quds University, 'General Information', available at
76. and B. Ra'ad, 'Geography of Occupation', available at .
77. S. Nusayba, interview, Jerusalem (11 June 2003).
78. B. Ra'ad (note 57).
79. BBC News, 'Net Aid for Palestinian Students' (19 March 2004), available at .
80. See also Al-Quds University online: .
81. Al-Quds Open University, 'Mission of QOU 2005-2010', available at .
82. N. Blincoe, The Dope Priest (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1999) p. 290.
83. Bir Zeit University students (note 55).
84. Al-Ayyam (17 Nov. 1998).
85. S. Zuhayqa, interview, East Jerusalem (10 June 2003).
86. Muna Barbar, iqlim member plus staffer at the PA's Ministry of Sport and Youth, formerly employed at Orient House, interview, Shu'fat (15 Jan. 2005).
87. M. Klein, A Possible Peace Between Israel and Palestine: An Insider's Account of the Geneva Initiative, H. Watzman (trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press 2007) p. 89.
88. Le More (note 27) p. 37.
89. For example, the villages of Kufr al-Dik and Dayr Balut are no more than eight kilometres apart, but on opposite sides of a main road. The drive for a Palestinian is now three or four times that length because the direct route is forbidden. The journey between the settlements of Modim and Givat Ze'ev is a similar distance but can be completed, by an Israeli, in ten minutes.