Fabric of life : the infrastructure of settler colonialism and uneven development in Palestine

This dissertation aims to resurface and make visible infrastructure networks as concrete expressions of settler colonialism and uneven development. Focusing on contemporary Palestine, particularly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, this thesis investigates the ways in which infrastructures come to matter socially, politically, economically and spatially both symbolically and as a set of materials. Drawing on the histories and geographies of road and electricity grids, Fabric of Life explores the ways these infrastructures are constructed, imagined and governed but also how they are experienced and contested. The research takes roads and electricity as object and subject of analysis and traces their role in shaping and producing space while also using them as window into understanding the various actors and ‘larger’ forces and structures that constitute these grids. An interdisciplinary analytical focus on the ‘hardware’ (e.g. wires) and ‘software’ (e.g. policies) aspects of infrastructures and their co-evolution with urban spaces and populations opens up critical perspectives on existing accounts of the political and economic geographies of Palestine. It offers a powerful way of thinking about these large socio-technical systems as a complex assemblage of actors, agents, policies and processes that connect to, and drive, much debated processes of settler colonialism, modernity, statecraft and uneven development. Concurrently, by providing an analytical study of infrastructures, the project generates new knowledge about and insight into the Palestinian case. In pursuing these themes, this thesis represents an attempt to resist and complicate dominant accounts of occupation and development in Palestine but also to make a vital contribution to a broader scholarship in critical urban studies and settler colonialism

Unplug and play: manufacturing collapse in Gaza

This article examines how colonial violence has been recast in light of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza during the summer 2005. By looking at infrastructural networks —the systems that distribute water, electricity sewage, fuel etc— it explores how far from ending the occupation, disengagement provided a distinct spatial scale from which to experiment new methods of control and repression. In particular, it seeks to expose how these life support systems function as geopolitical sites of spatial control and as biopolitical tools to regulate and suppress life. Specially, it illustrates how the mobilization of discourses strategies and doctrines, criminalize these critical system turning them into ‘legitimate’ and ‘pre-emptive’ targets Drawing on the destruction of Gaza’s only power plant and the subsequent sanctions on electricity and fuel, it argues that the destruction and manipulation of infrastructura networks has severe consequences, particularly in public health. In exploring these claims with respect to Gaza, the article draws attention to the ways in which infrastructure play a crucial role in regulating the elastic Gaza’ humanitarian collapse. The article closes introducing the concept of infrastructural violence as way to further explore this discussion

Urban warfare ecology: A study of water supply in Basrah

This article assesses the impact of armed conflict on the drinking water service of Basrah from 1978 to 2013 through an ‘urban warfare ecology’ lens in order to draw out the implications for relief programming and relevance to urban studies. It interprets an extensive range of unpublished literature through a frame that incorporates the accumulation of direct and indirect impacts upon the hardware, consumables and people upon which urban services rely. The analysis attributes a step-wise decline in service quality to the lack of water treatment chemicals, lack of spare parts, and, primarily, an extended ‘brain-drain’ of qualified water service staff. The service is found to have been vulnerable to dependence upon foreign parts and people, ‘vicious cycles’ of impact, and the politics of aid and of reconstruction. It follows that practitioners and donors eschew ideas of relief–rehabilitation–development (RRD) for an appreciation of the needs particular to complex urban warfare biospheres, where armed conflict and sanctions permeate all aspects of service provision through altered biological and social processes. The urban warfare ecology lens is found to be a useful complement to ‘infrastructural warfare’ research, suggesting the study of protracted armed conflict upon all aspects of urban life be both deepened technically and broadened to other cases

The Madrid conference: translating the one-state slogan into research and political action agendas

This text report on a meeting that took place during the first week of July 2007, within the framework of the annual summer courses organized by the Universidad Complutense at El Escorial, Spain. The course, presented under the title “Israel–Palestine: One Country, One State,” was organized by Universidad Nómada and the Fundación Europa de los Ciudadanos in cooperation with Ali Abunimah, Omar Barghouti, and VirginiaTilley

Gated ondernemerschap in Palestina

Sinds kort heeft de ‘vredesindustrie’ in de Palestijnse gebieden het plan opgevat om economisch georiënteerde ruimtelijke enclaves op te richten. Deze irreële ontwikkeling staat echter in groot contrast met de realtiteit ter plaatse. De productie van enclaves binnen enclaves gaat uit van een koloniaal status quo, terwijl ze zelf bijdraagt tot sociaal-ruimtelijke ongelijkheden en ze zelfs versterkt. Het Palestijnse voorbeeld mag dan wel extreem zijn, het convergeert in hoge mate met de algemene trends binnen het neoliberale project dat de zogenaamde MENA-regio zo ernstig destabiliseert

Geesten bevrijden, koloniale machtsverhoudingen omgooien

Dit artikel zoomt in op de tentoonstelling “De-Colonizing Architecture”, ontstaan uit een samenwerkingsverband van de in Bethlehem en Londen gebaseerde architecten Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti en Eyal Weizman. Het is een tentoonstelling die uitdaagt en uitnodigt om de mogelijkheden te verkennen die ontstaan door creatief na te denken over manieren om Israëls bezettingsarchitectuur- zoals de Joodse nederzettingen en militaire bases in de Palestijnse bezette gebieden- om te keren en weer toe te eigenen via fysiek-architecturale interventies. Deze erg gedurfde tentoonstelling leidt tot verfrissende inzichten, maar roept ook een aantal vragen op om mee te nemen in het debat terzake dat ongetwijfeld verder gevoerd zal worden

Past is present: settler colonialism in Palestine: special issue of settler colonial studies

This special issue of settler colonial studies emerges out of a March 2011 conference on settler colonialism in Palestine organised by the Palestine Society and the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies. It is the editors' hope that this issue will catalyse creative, collaborative work that puts the settler colonial framework firmly on the agenda of Palestine studies. The need for such engagement arises from the editors' recognition that while Zionism and the Palestinians are gradually being included in the growing body of scholarly works on comparative settler colonialism, the analytical framework that comparative settler colonialism offers has yet to enter the field of Palestine studies