Human Geography Omar Salamanca the Southern Areas of Khan Yunis and Rafah
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Ghent University Academic Bibliography unpluG and play: ManuFacturInG collapse In Gaza Omar Jabary Salamanca Middle East and North Africa Research Group Ghent University Abstract: This article examines how colonial violence (es decir, los sistemas de distribución de agua, electricidad, has been recast in light of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza cloacas, combustible, etc.) se asegura que, lejos de terminar during the summer 2005. By looking at infrastructural con la ocupación, la evacuación implicó el surgimiento de networks —the systems that distribute water, electricity, una nueva escala espacial desde la cual experimentar nuevos sewage, fuel etc—it explores how far from ending the métodos de control y represión. En particular, el artículo occupation, disengagement provided a distinct spatial tiene por objetivo poner en evidencia que estos sistemas scale from which to experiment new methods of control fundamentales para el funcionamiento de la vida son and repression. In particular, it seeks to expose how these lugares geopolíticos para ejercer el control espacial, y son life support systems function as geopolitical sites of spatial una herramienta biopolítica para regular y suprimir la vida. control and as biopolitical tools to regulate and suppress life. En particular se demuestra que los discursos, estrategias Specially, it illustrates how the mobilization of discourses, y doctrinas, criminalizan estos sistemas, convirtiéndolos strategies and doctrines, criminalize these critical systems en objetivos ‘legítimos’ y ‘preventivos’. Basándose en la turning them into ‘legitimate’ and ‘pre-emptive’ targets. destrucción de la única planta de energía eléctrica y en las Drawing on the destruction of Gaza’s only power plant and consecuentes sanciones (limitaciones en el suministro de the subsequent sanctions on electricity and fuel, it argues electricidad y combustible), se establece que la destrucción that the destruction and manipulation of infrastructural y la manipulación de redes de infraestructura tienen networks has severe consequences, particularly in public consecuencias graves, sobretodo para la salud pública. El health. In exploring these claims with respect to Gaza, the análisis de estas cuestiones en el caso de Gaza demuestra article draws attention to the ways in which infrastructures la importancia del rol que juegan las infraestructuras en la play a crucial role in regulating the elastic Gaza’s regulación del elástico colapso humanitario en Gaza. El humanitarian collapse. The article closes introducing artículo culmina introduciendo el concepto de violencia the concept of infrastructural violence as way to further infraestructural como elemento para profundizar el debate. explore this discussion. Palabras clave: violencia infraestructural; evacuación de Gaza; Israel; geopolítica; biopolítica; colonialismo Keywords: Infrastructural violence, Gaza disengagement, Israel, geopolitics, biopolitics, colonialism. Introduction Desenchufe y Juegue: la Fabricación del Colapso More than four decades of Israeli occupation have en Gaza transformed the Gaza Strip into a place where life has been rendered dispensable. It is a sacrificed space: a Resumen: Este artículo analiza cómo han cambiado los roles en la violencia colonial tras la evacuación de Gaza en showcase where de-colonizing moments and outbursts agosto de 2005. Enfocándose en las redes infraestructurales of resistance are crushed in spatial performances 22 Omar Salamanca that speak far beyond its borders. Nevertheless the and doctrines that criminalize these public utilities actual contents of that showcase remain strangely as ‘terrorist infrastructure’, turning these essential unseen. Gaza is a space where territory and life is assets into political, ‘legal’, and military targets. The problematized as such; but the logistical and discur- destruction of Gaza’s power plant and the subsequent sive procedures through which Gaza is made into sanctions on fuel supplies are used as an example to target and a site of regulated humanitarian collapse expose the wider political and public health implica- remain hidden. How is this accomplished? And what tions of targeting these life-support systems. Finally I explains its effectiveness? The aftermath of the Israeli reflect upon the idea of infrastructural violence and its redeployment within Gaza during the summer 2005 role in the current humanitarian catastrophe. raises fundamental questions about how this event abstracted Gaza by way of distance. Concurrently, it A Mock Farewell Party demonstrates how reassembling the regime of control In the early morning of September 12 2005, after and containment contributed to legitimize the crimi- shutting down the gate of the Kissufim crossing, Gaza nalization of everyday life and its sustaining fabric. As commander Brig Gen Aviv Kochavi, the last soldier French philosopher Henri Lefebvre aphorises, “there is to leave the Strip, declared: “The mission has been a politics of space because space is political” (Lefebvre completed … The responsibility for whatever takes 1976: p.33). Studying the exercise of power through place inside falls upon the [Palestinian] Authority” actual colonial infrastructure and bureaucracies thus (Shany 2006: p.3). These words and an executive aims at revealing the enactment of a particularly decree proclaiming the end of military rule concluded violent politics of space. the unilateral disengagement plan in Israel’s “offi- cialdom”, seemingly putting an end to 38 years of In what follows I work with these ideas to expose occupation of the Gaza Strip. The previous month left the ways in which, in the wake of Gaza’s unilateral memorable images of a disengagement drama broad- disengagement plan, the Israeli government reinforces casted around the world. Unarmed Israeli security the manipulation and destruction of infrastructural forces pulled out defiant and distressed settlers from networks as a political tool to create and regulate a houses and synagogues. Meanwhile bulldozers reduced 1 humanitarian crisis . In doing this, the paper is an the suburban colonial landscape of Israeli settlements, attempt to develop a preliminary and critical geopoli- military infrastructure, agricultural fields, and indus- tics of the infrastructure-violence nexus in the Gaza trial states to rubble. In less than a month, more than Strip. The paper begins by describing the spatial reas- eight thousand settlers were removed and the most semblage of Gaza following the Israeli evacuation. visible infrastructure of the occupation completely I argue that this new assemblage represents a new dismantled. The world celebrated the disengagement colonial reality whereby infrastructural networks gain as a move towards peace. force as geopolitical sites to assert spatial control and as biopolitical tools to regulate and suppress life. I Yet Gaza remained subject to a suffocating then look at the mobilization of discourses, strategies closure (see Figure 1). Its territory fragmented. And the spectre of Israel intervention loomed ever-present. 1. The material collected for this paper and the actual Furthermore, Gaza’s economy had been de-developed writing of it was previous to the Israeli war of aggression against over four decades of Israeli occupation and exposed, Gaza during the winter 2008-2009. Although these events have together with the West Bank, to a campaign of not being incorporated into this article, the bloody attack and its unfolding consequences are of the outmost importance for outright urbicide after the beginning of the second this study in so far as they are proof of the violent turn on Israel’s Intifada in 2001 (Roy 2004; Graham 2002). This occupation that this research locates in Gaza after the so called open-ended military operation violently rewrote disengagement. This is particularly so in terms of the misuse Gaza’s geography and particularly the northern loca- and abuse of infrastructure networks for geo-and-bio political purposes as they are exposed here. tions of Beith Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and Jabalia and Volume 4, Number 1 2011 23 Unplug and Play Figure 1. AccessFigure 1. Closure. and Gaza Strip. December 2007 OCHA) (source: 24 Human Geography Omar Salamanca the southern areas of Khan Yunis and Rafah. It was will not be a political process with the Palestinians” a systematic effort to ‘shrink by bomb and bulldozer’ (Shavit 2004). The unilateral move had nevertheless these living spaces so as to fit the narrow strip within higher stakes. Sharon’s plan aimed at getting rid of the expansion of the mid-nineties wall, the buffer zone Gaza’s economic and demographic burden while and the spatial designs of Israel’s colonial project. The revisiting its legal status as an occupied territory human and material costs of this campaign, which (Cook 2006). The Israeli Government could thus were amplified by frequent closures, left Gaza in a free its hands from any binding responsibility, as an permanent state of crisis. Yet the praised ‘peace’ initia- occupier state, towards Gaza’s territory and its inhab- tive from the early nineties, the Oslo accords, was in itants. Spectacle, as recreation of a powerful repertoire fact the main responsible in regularizing a framework of images depicting the dismantlement of the colo- that enforced a state of permanent dependency as nial landscape and the evacuation of a civilian and well as spatialities of fragmentation and segregation military army,