Imperialism was the theory, colonialism the practice, of
changing the uselessly unoccupied territories of the world into
useful new versions of the Europe metropolitan society
Struggle Over Land: Israeli Spatial Policies over the Occupied
TerritoriesABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is an analysis of the
Israeli spatial policies over the Occupied Territories. It is
argued that those cannot be properly understood without taking into
account the colonial-settler character of Israel which continues to
this day. The Israeli geopolitical imagination necessitates the
simultaneous existence and non-existence of the Palestinians for
its legitimization. Those factors together feed into the
indeterminedness of the Israeli borders, imaginatively kept open as
nodal points for further expansion, deeply affecting the lives of
thousands of Palestinians.This paper is an attempt to analyze the
Israeli policy concerning the Occupied Territories of Palestine
from a spatial perspective. While it is true that the importance of
spatial dynamics is not unique to Israel and that territoriality is
a prime aspect of every state; some features specific to that
country make such an analysis particularly revealing in Israels
case. Keeping that in mind, the purpose of this paper is to place
the current spatial politics of Israel within the historical
context of her foundation as a colonial-settler society. It shall
be emphasized that this analytical framework owes much to Edward
Said both in its substance and inspiration; as after more than
three decades of its first publication, the authors insights and
analyses in The Question of Palestine continue to shed light on
what happens today.A proper understanding of the logic of current
Israeli policies, such as the turning of Gaza into the Worlds
largest prison camp or the building of a separation wall along the
West Bank is best possible within the historical framework marked
by the colonial-settler character of Israel. While peace
negotiations proceed saturated with new maps and plans, Israel
continues to unilaterally transform as well as control and destroy
the space inhabited by the Palestinians through temporary measures
adopted for security reasons. But the oppressive measures against
the Palestinian population are only one side of the coin;
incomplete without its mirror image, the Jewish settlement. Those
two movements indeed, pointing to the two opposite ways of how
Israel deals with two different populations; are complementary at
the analytical level: they form the geography of imagination of the
Israeli state. Before addressing this concept of the geography of
imagination adopted from Ghazi-Walid Falah in detail; I would like
to return to Edward Said and his discussion of imperialism and
colonialism in relation with Zionism.The first thing that strikes
the reader in The Question of Palestine is the umbilical cord
between imperialism and Zionism which provided the ideological base
for the foundation of Israel. There is no doubt that Israel has
been founded through settler colonialism. Can we say therefore that
the foundation of Israel was an imperialistic project? What is the
relationship between colonialism and imperialism, in the Israeli
case in particular as well as in general?Wikipedia, under the
article of colonialism distinguishes two main types: settler
colonialism and exploitation colonialism. The first involves large
scale emigration; be that for religious, political or economic
motives. In the second, the metropole uses the colony, its
resources as well as population for purposes of economic
extraction. Perhaps the fact that we are, or I am more familiar
with this second type did refrain me from seeing the same logic
underlying both: This logic is intimately linked to imperialism and
has a prime importance in understanding Israel, both in its past
and current states. Hence in Edward Saids words: Imperialism was
the theory, colonialism the practice, of changing the uselessly
unoccupied territories of the world into useful new versions of the
Europe metropolitan society. (Said, 1979, p. 28)Uselessly
unoccupied territories is the keyword in Saids sentence. It tells
pages about the lot and the history of colonized peoples and
territories. The two adjectives describing the noun territory, also
describe the logic of imperialism as an ideology: as the word
unoccupied renders the native populations of colonized lands
non-existent, the designation useless points to the unique
entitlement and moral authority of the metropole to bring under
human use those blank parts of the globe. Edward Said shows how the
19th century idea of the distinction between the civilized and
uncivilized man sealed by science transformed the non-European
world into something to be claimed, occupied and ruled by Europe.
(Said, p. 25) Cultivating the land was thus the prerogative of the
civilized man in his supreme capacity of the use of his productive
powers: in the hands of the native, the land was either badly
cultivated or left to rod. Our two above-mentioned adjectives
jointly hold the key to the moving spirit and legitimization of
imperialist ventures: The territories are unoccupied because the
natives inhabiting them are from the stock of inferior races; they
are subhuman, therefore non-existent. Consequently, to occupy them
and put their latent capacity into effective use is almost a moral
duty of the European colonialist: hence both the concepts of right
and duty are embodied in the single word uselessly in its relation
to colonized territories.
Zionism may not be an imperialist project in itself, but it did
operate through and thanks to its logic and existence. Said places
Zionism within the wider framework of imperialist ideology; and
shows the relationship of these two present on a number of levels.
Surely Zionism is not just another manifestation of European
colonial undertakings, if we can make such a generalization. What
distinguish Zionism from other European colonial ventures are its
Jewish character and its vision of building a national homeland for
a landless people. The first, points to the minority status of a
people within Europe, which underwent countless persecutions and
oppression. The second constitutes the moving spirit through which
the Zionist project was put into practice: It was not the mere
existence of virgin territories waiting for exploitation and the
concomitant right and duty of putting them under effective use that
moved the Jewish settlers into Palestine: the quest was first and
foremost for a national homeland. And Zionism collaborated with
imperialism for this objective.This collaboration was at the two
interrelated levels of the ideological and the material: the
ideology of imperialism provided a perfect legitimization and a
framework for the fulfillment of Jewish aspirations on Palestine;
its reality procured her with more than powerful allies in the
shape of the European imperial states. For all their minority
status, the Jews were European and hence entitled to rule over the
territories and peoples of the Orient whomever those happen to be.
Imperialism endowed Zionism with a legitimization, a modus operandi
and powerful allies necessary to turn its ambitious projections
into reality. The foundation of Israel is thus based on these
premises, of which we need a firm grasp for understanding her
today.Before finishing this long detour, I would like to introduce
a final element about the Israeli state. Since its declaration of
independence from the British Mandate in 1948, Israel has fought
several wars changing her borders; and today the status of the West
Bank and Gaza remain unresolved after endless negotiations: The
borders of Israel are indeterminate, and consciously so. Israel
keeps her boundaries open, not in the sense of militarily allowing
passage (this she would never do) but in the sense of treating them
as always subject to expansion and change. This malleable geography
consciously left unclosed marks a state under an ever process of
foundation: In the current maneuvers of Israel for grabbing from
the West Bank as much as possible, lies not only a commitment to an
end result with Israel holding the maximum from the territory of
historical Palestine, but maybe more than that a commitment to the
process itself. The none-closedness of this geography is rooted in
the foundational ideology of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish
people. This homeland needs to be geographically unbounded as the
people it is intended to house is not either delimited. Waves of
immigrants formed the foundation stone of Israel; and are still a
constant feature of her society and demographics. The last big wave
of immigration did in fact take place in the aftermath of USSRs
dismantlement, resulting in an influx of population comparable to
the post-WWII situation. Israel not only opens her arms to the
Jewish people around the world but also creates diverse incentives
in order to keep a constant flow of immigration pouring into her
borders.We said before that the migration flows constituted the
foundation stone of the state of Israel. When exactly can we locate
this moment of foundation? In Israels declaration of independence
in 1948? Can we locate it at all? Or can we say that Israel is a
state ever in her stage of foundation, always in the process of
being founded, functioning on this image of a future to be
realized, embodied in the dream of Eretz Israel? In fact, the logic
of state in Israel functions by keeping her boundaries
indeterminate: the colonizer-settler character of Israel is not
something confined to a past historical moment. Israel continues to
absorb and settle new waves of immigrants while at the same time
colonizing the remaining chunks of historical Palestine. I think
that the spatial policies of Israel can best be understood by
considering her colonial-settler character, ready to accommodate
and settle indeterminate numbers of immigrants of whom by
definition she is the welcoming home.It goes without saying that
the Palestinians constitute the defining other of the Israeli
state. Israel simultaneously functions on their existence and
non-existence: both are necessary to the logic of the state. The
existence of the Palestinians is indispensable as it provides a
powerful legitimization for state action in the face of the common
enemy. Also, Israel makes use of unskilled Palestinian labor force
without granting them any sort of social/political rights.The
non-existence of the Palestinians stems directly from the
imperialist and colonialist discourses which delegate the
non-European native populations to the status of sub-humans, and
hence of non-existence. As Edward Said so skillfully shows in his
analysis, the Israeli colonizers wanted to have the land without
the people living on it, and the argument is still valid today.
However, this fact is complicated by the above-mentioned necessity
of the Palestinians to the very Israeli identity. From the tension
between these two (the necessity of the existence and non-existence
of the Palestinians) emerge the different ways in which Israel deal
with the lands and populations under occupation.Ghazi-Walid Falah,
in his article The Geopolitics of Enclavisation and the Demise of a
Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, argues that
Israelis strategy since the second Intifada has not been solely one
of security and counter terror but part of a long-term strategy of
spatial demolition and strangulation. (Falah, 2005, p. 1441) The
author argues that this strategy seemed to have the double aim of
first, unilateral separation from the Palestinian population and
than second, its territorial dismemberment. The author further
argues that this Israeli policy shattered the territorial basis of
a two-state solution to the conflict. Falah further shows that the
2nd Intifada has been a wonderful opportunity as a legitimization
of the nationalist realpolitik and the imaginary of the Israeli
state, which he summarizes in the following sentence: The effective
control of ever more land for potential settlement, not for
purposes of security but for purposes of state ideology and
territorial expansion. (Falah, 2005, p.1342).In order to discuss
Israels relationship with space, Falah underlines three conceptual
frameworks: The first is the geography of the colonial-settler,
grounded on the spatial imagination of creating a state in another
peoples country. The second, points to the geography of national
redemption thus aiming to control over ever further space. The
third emerges as a geography of threat as inhabited by the
Palestinians, which therefore needs to be dismembered and enclaved.
Falahs discussion makes it clear that the state ideology, and the
Israeli elites rationale did not change much since their first
inception with very first migrations of Jews into Palestine. Such a
geographical imagination paralyzes any possible peace settlement
between Israel and the Palestinians. As argued above, the state
ideology of Israel is founded on a geopolitical vision of national
redemption, this coupled with her defining other in the image of
the Palestinians. Falah argues that Israel, building on these two
premises keeps her boundaries intentionally indeterminate. (p.1349)
This indeterminedness is both a result of the ideology of Zionism,
projecting a national space of redemption; and the medium through
which the Zionist project is actualized on the ground.Falahs
analysis shows that Israeli state ideology aims at no less than
controlling and settling all Mandatory Palestine. Another faultline
characterizing Israeli realpolitik is related to the demographics
of the region, setting the tone for peace negotiations oscillating
between one-state and two state solutions. Israel, facing the
demographic threat of losing her Jewish character in case of a
future merger with the Palestinians produces new formulae against
the actualization of such a dim prospect for them.Having this
theoretical approach in mind, we can now look at the actual shapes
that Israels spatial policies took in the last decade. Israel
pursues a range of different spatial technologies in order to
control, enclave or simply destroy the populations of the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank; this, in the name of temporary security
measures. The emphasis of temporariness is important here, as it is
through this alleged temporariness that Israel keeps her geography
malleable, subject to change when necessary and capable of
expansion. The measures are never really transitory in their
substance because their existence is projected into an
indeterminate future; but because they are transitory at the
discursive level, they can adopt extreme forms deemed legitimate
under exceptional conditions. This permanent temporariness of the
Israeli spatial policies is what complicates the plight of the
Palestinians today.One of these measures is Israelis unilateral
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. From many points of views Israels
disengagement is deceptive. Israel seems to adhere to the principle
of partitioning only in the surface. Falah explains that
disengagement is not synonymous with partitioning: the latter is a
method of conflict resolution in which one party completely
divorces itself from a territory and passes it over to the other
party as a permanent redivision of space. In the case of the Gaza
Strip however, Israel who nonetheless withdrew her settlements and
military from the interior, continues to remain in complete control
of the territory from the outside; turning the space into the
worlds largest prison camp. This she does through controlling the
checkpoints from and towards Gaza and remaining in firm control of
the Egyptian border as well as controlling her coastal waters and
airspace. The resulting enclave emerges as an unsustainable entity,
cut off from its hinterland and surrounded by Israel from all
directions for security purposes. The story of the Rafah district
as told by Ghazi-Walid Falah would be instructive in terms of
showing how these security measures function on the ground. Rafah
was a Palestinian settlement area neighboring the Egyptian border,
isolated from the rest of the Gaza Strip from the west, east and
north. It underwent several attacks from the Israeli Defense Forces
mainly in the form of house demolitions. The history of the spatial
buffering of the area dates back to the 1993 Oslo accords, which
gave to Israel the control of the Salah Al Din border route, than
routinely patrolled by IDF. Falah reports that the process of
buffering began in 2001 with night-time raids to the quarter. In
2002, after having demolished several hundred houses in Rafah, a de
facto buffer zone between the patrol corridor and the camp was
created. (p. 1357). Than followed the construction of a 8 m. high
metal wall along the border, this clearly in breach of Oslo
agreements. This metal wall, supposedly built for the security of
Israeli military, became another node for demolition and expansion.
The wall which was in fact built between the camp and the Israeli
patrolling corridor in order to protect this latter, became itself
something to be protected; this at the cost of further demolitions
in places where the houses happened to fall close to the metal
wall. In that way Israel continued to nibble more and more
territory from the Palestinians using the pretext of the second
Intifada and its concomitant security discourse.
Falah shows that this tactic of securing land through the
creation of a military excuse is not confined to the history of the
metal wall in the Rafah district: setting up a military checkpoints
at the heart of a Palestinian locality has been a typical tactic of
Israeli expansion in Hebron as well as in Eastern Jerusalem and in
other localities. In this way, argues Falah, the making of Israels
borders did not stop with her declaration of independence in 1948.
I would further add that this indeterminedness is what feeds the
state ideology and keeps in constant motion the state of Israel;
through an imagination of expansion via new settlements, which
legitimizes the Israeli state both in its existence and actions.If
military checkpoints formed a nodal point from which Israeli
expansion burgeoned, their civil counterparts have been the
outposts set up on West Banks hilltops by young Israelis, rebelling
against the suburban culture of their parents. The breaching of the
Oslo accords formed the framework of this process.The Oslo interim
agreement of 1995 split the territories of Gaza and the West Bank
under the three categories of A, B and C. The area A comprises the
Palestinian cities and is under full Palestinian control. The Area
B is contains the Palestinian countryside and is under Palestinian
civil, Israeli military control. The area C is under the control of
Israeli military for both civilian and security affairs. According
to the World Banks report on The Economic Effects of Restricted
Access to Land in the West Bank, The land area controlled by the
Palestinians is fragmented into a multitude of enclaves, with a
regime of movement restrictions between them. These enclaves are
surrounded by Area C, which covers the entire remaining area and is
the only contiguous area of the West Bank. (p. iv) Area C covers
approximately 59% of the land in the West Bank, and the World Bank
report puts that it is underutilized and sparsely populated.
Jerusalem was not included in this 3 fold splitting, which was
designed to be a transitory arrangement, premised upon the planned
Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which
today seems a distant possibility. Whereas the Israeli state do not
openly pursue a policy of settlement, which would undermine her
credibility within the international arena, it does encourage her
citizens to settle on Palestinian territory through word and deed
in order to confront the Palestinians with a fait accompli at the
negotiation table.The story of the Migron settlement as told by
Eyal Waizman, in his book Hollow Land is instructive and telling.
The author begins the story by stating the difficulty the settlers
face for getting permits after the signing of the first Oslo
accord; but the settlers always find a workaround with the
connivance and/or collaboration of Israeli authorities. For Migron,
the whole story begins in 1999 with the complaints of a group of
settlers on the bad reception of their cellular phones. The
company, Orange than agrees to set up a cellular antenna on the
hilltop selected by the settlers; this being a same hilltop which
previously was claimed on archeological grounds from the excavation
of which no result apart from the naming of the site was achieved.
Israeli Defense forces permitted the construction of the cellular
antenna on the private land of some Palestinian farmers because
according to them cellular antennas formed part of security
measures. The construction company after setting a mast connected
the hilltop to the central electricity and water services. As the
construction of the antenna followed a slow pace, the settlers
erected a fake antenna and got a military permission to hire a
private guard, which than put his trailer together with his family
and connected his house to the water and electricity services
already present there. Other families soon joined them, and hence
was formed the settlement of Migron, around a cellular antenna, the
biggest of the 103 settlements scattered around the West Bank at
the time of the authors writing its story. Migron, however was not
the only settlement built in this fashion.The story of the
settlement of Migron is two-fold: from the point of view of
Israelis, it is another moment of the foundation and realization of
the Zionist dream of Eretz Israel. The Palestinians on the other
hand live it as another instance of the violation of their life,
property and political rights on an ever shifting environment of
unpredictability. This unpredictability may be the most difficult
part of the lot the Palestinians have to endure as adapting to
different circumstances while possible, is always more difficult
than enduring a stable status quo. However, as argued above,
keeping the situation unresolved and indeterminate is the constant
policy of the Israeli state. This policy is in its most visible in
the construction of the separation wall between the West Bank and
Israel proper, which according to the Israeli state, was a
transitory measure for security purposes aimed at separating the
two peoples in the first place.
Eyal Weizman underlines the malleability of the wall and points
to the different actors involved in the shaping of its route,
including the Israeli settlers, the UN, the Israeli Court of
Justice the International court of Justice as well as local and
international NGOs. Weizman calls this process as the diffused
authorship of the project made possible by its elasticity.
(Weizman, 2007, p. 163) Frenzy for new settlements such as Migron
described above stemmed from the settlers desire to influence the
Walls path by seeding the terrain with anchor points around which
it might loop (Weizman, 2007, p. 167). The result effect is of
course the nibbling away of more territory from the Palestinian
side.
Weizman than gives examples of the rerouting of the Wall,
demolished and reconstructed at several instances following
petitions and court decisions. Settler petitions for falling at the
Israeli side of the Wall, environmentalists campaigns in case where
the construction could bring in environmental damage as well as the
Israeli Court of Justices decisions for balancing human rights
against security are among the actors resulting in the Walls
rerouting. Weizman states that it is at the interest of Israel of
cooperating for solving the immense humanitarian problems as it
serves deflecting the fundamental political and legal illegitimacy
of the entire project. (Weizman, 2007, p.174) Hence Weizman puts
that although the Israeli court of Justice seemed to adopt an
adversarial position towards the government by underlining the
importance of balancing security needs against human rights, took
in fact part in the Walls construction by ordering its rerouting
several times, which means its acceptance of the project as
legitimate.Weizman throughout his book underlines the elasticity of
the entire construction project, subject to change through the
agency of different actors. This very malleability and
indeterminacy is characteristics of Israeli borders in general as
we have argued above. It is a function of the colonial-settler
character of Israel, which continues without much change from the
first waves of immigration into Palestine to this day. The logic of
continuous expansion and accommodation of new waves of immigrants
require indeterminate borders capable of furthering territorial
expansion. However there is a little problem, in the fact that the
land which is subject to our calculations here, is a land already
populated by its native inhabitants. As Edward Said succinctly put,
the founders of Israel wanted the land without its people. The same
logic is at interplay today as one-state solutions to the conflict
bring about specters of Israels losing her Jewish character and of
becoming a minority. Israel has been built on the idea of the
non-existence of the Palestinians but their existence as the
defining other of Israel is also indispensable. Furthermore,
although Israel refrains more and more from using Palestinian labor
force, Palestinian labor is still very important to the Israeli
economy. How does Israel deal with this dilemma?I think that one of
the Israels solutions for this simultaneous existence-inexistence
of the Palestinians is the locking in of the Palestinians within
small enclaves where they are settled. Those enclaves although
under the Palestinian authority are incontiguous which make it
impossible for them to constitute a politically or economically
viable entity. The Gaza Strip itself is such an enclave, and is
called as the World Largest Prison Camp. Gaza is one of the most
densely populated tracts of land in the world and is home to about
1.3 million Palestinians, about 33% of whom living in United
Nations-funded refugee camps. The area is under severe lack of
basic human necessities such as a functioning sewage system as well
as clean water, the provisions of which Israel continuously
sabotage. As stated above, Gaza is controlled by land, sea and air
by Israel, which put under question the credibility of her
unilateral disengagement.The West Bank on the other hand, is
divided up into several enclaves which makes impossible any
socio-economic integrity within such a configuration. Ghazi-Whalid
Falahs discussion on the Projection of the West Bank Final Status
Map (Falah, 2005, p. 1363) makes it clear what is the Israelis
vision for an independent Palestine within the framework of a
two-state resolution to the conflict.This map known as Baraks
generous offer to Arafat divides up the area under Palestinian
control into three bigger and one smaller chunk, creating three
incontiguous enclaves surrounded by Israeli territory, the corridor
between them and Jordon remaining transitorily under Israeli
control for undefined security purposes. Though it is projected
that the future transfer of this corridor to the Palestinian
authorities was expected to unify the territories under Palestinian
control, Falah shows that one should not be deceived by this clause
as temporary measures in the case of Israel always turn to be
permanent ones.This generous offer has been refused by Yasser
Arafat resulting in his political exile in Ramallah until his
death. However this has not been the end of the enclavization of
Palestinian territories through the so-called security measures
such as the construction of the Separation Wall or the
establishment of new settlements into the heart of Palestinian
territories. One example discussed by Weizman is the founding of an
outer ring of Jewish settlements to the Eastern Jerusalem in order
to cut off his latter from its hinterland within the West Bank and
to turn it into a small enclave within Israeli territory. Within
this ever-changing geography of numerous controls, checkpoints,
clashes over settlement areas, separation walls; the ordinary
Palestinian struggles to live and to assert his existence through
various adaptation and resistance measures. Such geography
fundamentally undermines the Palestinian travel rights, and even if
the West Bank itself would not be separated into further enclaves,
the problem of contiguity between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
are of prime importance under any prospect of two-state
solution.
It is where Israel produces fantastic measures in order to
overcome this problem of incongruity the great part of which she
herself created. There emerges an absurd archeology geography of
the Kafkaesque fashion as shown by Weizman. A number of different
road projects show the geographical imagination of the Israeli
state as told by Weizman: they are based on the complete
geographical separation of two people on the same territory: a
three dimensional approach is adopted for ensuring the separate
travel of Israelis and Palestinians through a combination of
viaducts and tunnels; with various separate checkpoints at
crossroads. Weizman quotes from the architects of one such road
praising on one of the merits of the project as ensuring the travel
of Israeli commuters without being aware of their Palestinian
counterparts driving the road below: we are again encountered with
the simultaneous existence and non-existence of the Palestinians
both necessary for Israel. The three dimensional approach is also
adopted by this latter for the dividing up of different landscapes
and resources on a vertical basis, such as the administration and
use of the Western Bank water aquifer: the deeper levels which
contain the most precious water sources are secured for Israeli use
whereas the Palestinians can only make use of the seasonal
groundwater.Following this system of enclavization, there are a
number of analogies between the South African Apartheid regime and
the situation of the Palestinian people both within the Green line
and in the occupied territories. Bernard Regan in his article The
State of Israel and the Apartheid Regime of South Africa in
Comparative Perspective shows that calling the present situation in
Israel and the Occupied Territories as an apartheid regime can be
misleading. In the case of Israel, the Law of Return and the
Absentees Property Law denied the return of Palestinian residents
and their claim to property. According to the first, residents not
registered in the Population Register in 1952 could not return with
a claim of citizenship. The property law applied similarly by
declaring absentee anyone residing outside the area of Israel. In
fact, the exodus of the Palestinians was completed in 1949, just
after the declaration of the Independence of Israel, and the two
laws were stripping off all claims of return and citizenship as
well as of property of the great majority if not the total of the
Palestinians who fled the country. The objective of the [Israeli]
legislation was to take the land but not the people. The objective
of the apartheid system was to take the land and the people but to
confine indiginous black citizens to a tightly constrained
geographical and political space within the country,(Regan, 2008,
p.207) summarizes Regan in his article. In fact, under the aparheid
regime, the non-whites were citizens but second-class ones as they
were subject to lesser rights and liberties. The Palestinians
living on the Occupied Territories are not Israeli citizens but
however are often subject to Israeli military administration and
legislation, in fact Israel seems not to know what exactly to do
with this population. In the words of Regan: The state of Israel
remains a colonising state unwilling or unable to define its own
nature or its own borders because it refuses to recognse the right
of the Palestinian people to be treated and recognized as a
national entity. (Regan, p. 211)Before finishing this discussion of
the spatial politics of Israel, I would like to introduce another
spatial logic of colonialism with which maybe we are more familiar
in the case of Egypt. Egypt provides an example of exloitation
colonialism. Timothy Mitchell in his book Colonising Egypt shows
how the management of the space used new forms of control and
surveillance in order to get the maximum efficiency from the
population in terms of agricutural production . These methods in
Egypt dates back to Ottoman modernization, continuing through with
more intensity to the time of Khedive Mehmet Ali Pasha and the to
direct British colonisation. The key words used by Mitchell are
enframing, ordering and exhibition. Those are the technologies
through which the Egyptian population was governed via strict
surveillance. To draw a comparison, in this case, the colonisers
wanted both the land and the people. In both cases, the colonisers
treated the native peoples inhabiting the colonised territory as
subhuman. But in Egypt, we ecounter a totally different spatial
politics, first of all marked by order. This different set of
policies brings into light further characteristics of the spatial
dynamics of Israel.First of all, it is nothing but orderly. Elya
Weizman names the process of the construction of the Wall as a
structured chaos. The setting up of new settlements through a range
of workarounds for getting the permits, allegedly ad hoc and
temporary security measures such as the demolition of the houses in
the Rafah settlement, all seem to perfectly fit within this
designation of the structured chaos. Israel seems rather to have
adopted a military geographical imagination, subject to changes
according to the developments on the ground. Whether or not the
peace negotiations continue, Israel seems more committed to this
process of fighting a semi-defined enemy than to a final resolution
finishing the conflict.Reference List:
Alatout, S. (2009). Walls as Technologies of Government: The
Double Construction of Geographies of Peace and Conflict in Israeli
Politics, 2002-Present.Annals Of The Association Of American
Geographers,99(5), 956-968.Currie, K. (2008). Gaza, the World's
Largest Outdoor Prison.Against The Current,23(2), 37-38.
Falah, G.-W. (2005). The Geopolitics of 'Enclavisation' and the
Demise of a Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
Third World Quarterly 26(8), 1341-1372.Regan, B. (2008). The State
of Israel and the Apartheid Regime of South Africa in Comparative
Perspective.Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal
(Edinburgh University Press),7(2), 201-212.
Said E. (1979). The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage
Books.http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/MENAEXT/WESTBANKGAZAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:21946232~menuPK:294370~pagePK:2865066~piPK:2865079~theSitePK:294365,00.htmlhttp://www.arij.org/images/stories/pictures/maps/Geopolitical%20map%20of%20the%20west%20bank%202009.jpghttp://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/MAPS/wbgs_campdavid.htmlPAGE
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