Israelis and Palestinians in the Shadows of the Wall

Spaces of Separation and Occupation

Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, Cédric Parizot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317111849
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History

Shedding light on the recent mutations of the Israeli separation policy, whose institutional and spatial configurations are increasingly complex, this book argues that this policy has actually reinforced the interconnectedness of Israelis and Palestinian lives and their spaces. Instead of focusing on the over-mediatized separation wall, this book deals with what it hides: its shadows. Based on fieldwork studies carried out by French, Italian, Israeli, Palestinian and Swiss researchers on the many sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, it highlights a new geography of occupation, specific forms of interconnectedness and power relations between Israeli and Palestinian spaces. It offers a better understanding of the transformation of people's interactions, their experiences and the ongoing economy of exchanges created by the separation regime. This heterogeneous regime increasingly involves the participation of Palestinian and international actors. Grounded in refined decryptions of territorial realities and of experiences of social actors' daily lives this book goes beyond usual political, media and security representations and discourses on conflict to understand its contemporary stakes on the ground.

PART I
Geographies of Occupation

Chapter 1
Outsourcing the Checkpoints: When Military Occupation Encounters Neoliberalism¹

Shira Havkin

Introduction

The process of outsourcing the control over checkpoints along the boundaries of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which began during the 2000s, creates a complex entanglement of military and neoliberal logic. The study of this process aims to understand the part privatization plays in reorganizing modes of governing and redeploying forms of power and violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

In 2003 the Israeli government decided to outsource the management of checkpoints, which until then had been managed by the police or the army, by appointing private security firms. The decision applied solely to checkpoints located in the “Seam Zone” (merhav hatefer), along the Separation Wall in the West Bank and at the entrance to the Gaza Strip. Whereas the checkpoints at the entrance to the Gaza Strip were built directly on the Green Line, in the West Bank most of them were built in the territories occupied in 1967. These therefore cannot be considered “border” checkpoints as no agreement has yet defined the boundaries between Israeli and Palestinian territories in international law.² These checkpoints reinforce the unilateral institutionalization of the lines separating Israelis and Palestinians.

The declared objective of the promoters of the privatization policy is as follows: “To reduce the friction that currently exists in the checkpoints and improve the quality of service without decreasing the level of security screening. These crossings will be considered as official border crossings and will resemble the terminals found in every country in the world” (Tal 2006). The outsourcing, which is defined as transmission of control to the civil sector, or the “civilianization” of the “crossing points” (izruah hamaavarim),³ is considered to be a form of demilitarization. The first checkpoints were privatized in January 2006. Since then, the management of 13 of the 33 “border” checkpoints have been fully outsourced and put under the official responsibility of the Crossing Points Authority. Their operation was delegated to private security firms. The remaining 20 checkpoints, located in the Jerusalem area, have a more ambiguous status in terms of privatization, managed by a heterogeneous “assemblage” of military and police officers and employees of private firms. Five firms were selected⁴ on the basis of a call for tender in 2006. Besides security and surveillance tasks, some of these temporary employment agencies also provide casual cheap labor for cleaning and maintenance tasks for private and public bodies. The Crossing Points Directorate, which later became the Crossing Points Authority (CPA), was specially created for this purpose by the Ministry of Defense, and is the “customer” of these firms.

Firstly, studying the privatization of checkpoints in Israel enables us to understand how the role of the Israeli state has changed in setting up modes of occupation. Unlike the approaches that tackle privatization in terms of state withdrawal or abandonment (Strange 1996; Swann 1988), I understand this process rather as a redeployment of its means of intervention (Hibou 1999; Bayart 2004). In actual fact, the related administrative procedures are such that the state of Israel maintains its power and control over these locations while off-loading certain forms of responsibility.

Secondly, the study examines the effective operation of the new power apparatus set up in the “terminals” and the way in which it restructures the practices of domination. Once privatized, the checkpoints are comparable to what Michel Foucault referred to as the power apparatus proper to neoliberal governmentality (Foucault 2004a, 2004b). Their “rational” and “modern” character, as well as their stated aim of “reducing friction,” tend to inscribe the conflicting power relations that prevail between occupiers and occupied in strategies, practices and discourses. These institutionalize them and make them seem “natural” and “normal,” in other words, acceptable and consensual. It is in this sense that the privatization of checkpoints may be understood as an attempt to depoliticize, a de-politicization which—according to the definition given by Jacques Rancière—is not the dissolution of politics but its very exercise: “Depoliticising is the oldest task of politics, the one which achieves its fulfilment at the brink of its end, its perfection on the brink of its abyss” (Rancière 2004 [1990], p. 19). This chapter therefore analyzes this polishing-like process which seeks to conceal the oppressive power relations at work at the checkpoints and the new forms of domination and arbitrariness to which they give rise.

This analysis also examines the new spatial and symbolic relation between the inside and outside produced by the creation of the “border terminals.” These places, which are intended to “resemble border terminals like in every country in the world” according to the official text quoted above, simulate borders where there are actually none, as for the state of Israel the OPTs are neither an inside nor an outside. The construction of the “terminals” is obviously part of an Israeli decision to separate and externalize these territories. Nevertheless, parallel processes of extension of the settlements, maintaining the presence of the Israeli army and the omnipresent possibility of military incursions inside the OPTs reveal an opposite policy: that of appropriating the territories and maintaining them under Israeli control. Moreover, the Israeli decision makers refuse to consider the path of the Separation Wall as a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. In this context, the apparatus of the outsourced checkpoints draws on a logic of sedentarization of a “border” which isn’t one, as a further attempt to frame and structure the perplexing situation of territoriality without borders (Rabinowitz 2003, Parizot 2009a).

This research is based on fieldwork carried out in the West Bank between 2003 and 2010, mostly conducted as participant observation. From 2003 to 2005 frequent trips were made to the checkpoints as part of the Machsom (“checkpoint”) Watch movement, an Israeli women’s organization that conducts daily observations around several dozen checkpoints in the West Bank in order to watch the behavior of soldiers, document violations of Human Rights and intervene where possible.⁵ This research is also based on texts dealing with the outsourcing: Israeli press articles and official documents (parliamentary commission protocols, annual reports by the state comptroller’s office, calls for tender, etc.). A close reading of these documents reveals valuable information about the elaboration of the privatization process and the decision-making it involved. A critical analysis of these official discourses enables an examination of the common senses and specific rationalities of agents and institutions. The intermingling of written sources with field observations allows an analysis of the process both through its discourse and its practice, official and unofficial.

This analysis does not deal with the effects of this transformation on the daily lives of Palestinians nor with the resistance it arouses. Focused on the political strategies, the discourses and the effective strategies of Israeli control, the aim of this research is rather to shed light on the process through the prism of power, its mechanisms, structures and rationales. The chapter begins by analyzing the genesis of the outsourcing of the checkpoints, through two parallel processes that emerged in the 1990s: on the one hand, the restructuring of forms of governmentality in Israel, and, on the other, the transformation of the occupation regime through the setting up of the separation policy. The second section of this chapter analyses the impact of the outsourcing of the checkpoints on the implementation of Israeli control apparatus in the OPTs.

Political History of Outsourcing

The decision to outsource the checkpoints was taken in a historical and political context where two processes converged: the first was the spread of neoliberal doctrines in Israeli society leading to the adoption of strategies of privatization, outsourcing and “good governance” in the public sector and in the army; the second the change in the occupation regime and the institutionalization of a separation policy, which, in the context of the occupation always comes along with mechanisms of control and appropriation.

Privatization and “Good Governance”

The outsourcing of the checkpoints took place together with a massive privatization of institutions and state-run services in Israel, beginning in the second half of the 1980s and becoming more widespread during the 1990s (Bichler and Nitzan 2001; Filc and Ram 2004; Swirski 2005; Hason 2006; Ram and Berkovitch 2007; Maman and Rozenheck 2009). The restructuring of relations between the state and the private sector does not affect Israel alone. It is part of the rise of neoliberalism characterized by heightened mistrust of state-run structures and civil servants, which Michel Foucault referred to as “State phobia” (2004b). It is in the name of this mistrust that the reform of the public sector is justified. Inspired by the practices of private management, it imposes efficiency as an assessment criterion and competition as the main instrument of management. The neoliberal reform of the public sector was achieved by introducing competition between the public and private sectors and the adoption of new strategies of public management guided by the principles known as good governance. Competition, downsizing, outsourcing, regulation by specialist agents, staff flexibility and the creation of performance indicators all constitute instruments that administrators and political decision makers will import and distribute throughout the public sector in the name of “good management” (Dardot and Laval 2009).

As many researchers have pointed out, despite their stated objective, privatization and outsourcing are not necessarily rational in strictly economic terms of efficiency and productivity. Whether there is an economic justification for the outsourcing of the checkpoints remains an open question. It is difficult to assess the costs incurred in building the new “terminals,” setting up the sophisticated technological infrastructure and creating new administrative branches such as the CPA attached to the Ministry of Defense, particularly since the budget intended for this reform comes from separate sources: national (Ministry of Defense, a special budget for the “Seam Zone,” a special budget for the “civilianisation of the crossing points”), private sector capital, and international players (mainly the generous support of the United States government). The protocols of the Knesset Commission on Internal Affairs and the Environment stress the difficulty in calculating the costs and mention the disagreements between the representatives of the various ministries on the subject (protocol n. 17, 20 June 2006). In a report by the State Comproller at the time, the drawbacks and dangers of outsourcing military tasks and industries are openly discussed (State Comptroller 2004; Maoz 2009).

Rather than tackling the efficiency of privatization in strictly economic terms, I prefer to approach it in terms of its political rationale. In general, privatization transforms political investment into economic power and redistributes power and profits between actors (Hibou 1999). It thus opens up new horizons for private investment in the security sector, a substantial product in the Israeli economy and a growing field of export (Nevo and Shur-Shmueli 2004; Gordon 2009a; Hever 2010; Levi 2010). The process strengthens the penetration of the neoliberal entrepreneurial rationale into the public sector, particularly the army. In order to create the conditions for competition between Tzahal and private industries, the army, for whom until recently labor and goods have not come with a price tag, is now forced to adopt the same calculation methods as the private sector.

The Israeli army began this “managerial revolution” in the early 1990s. In 1991 the Israeli government appointed the first commission of specialists—the Sadan Commission—to propose structural reforms for the army. In 1993, Tzahal was the first army in the world to adopt the so-called Total Quality Management (TQM) strategy. This management theory, which is widely adopted in private companies, particularly in Japan, is based on 14 principles, the main ones being product quality management and customer satisfaction as a guarantee of a company’s sustainable profit (Deming 1986). The conclusions of the Sadan Commission were presented in June 1994 and suggested “redistributing tasks between the army and the private sector according to criteria of competition and market forces.” The IDF⁶ thus had to professionalize the military tasks considered its “core competencies” and to open up its non-core functions to competition from the private sector, opening the way for outsourcing to third parties (Liber 1999; Levi 2010).

Figure 1.1 Sketch of a crossing. This sketch was originally published in an official call for proposal for the management of the checkpoints. Israeli Ministry of Defense, May 15, 2005.

The outsourcing of the checkpoints occurred at a time when the practices of the Israeli army in the OPTs in general and management of the checkpoints in particular were subject to intensified criticism. During the First Intifada (1987–1993) the criticism focused mainly on the brutality and violence of military practices. In the 1990s the criticism from within Israeli society changed focus and the IDF was largely blamed for neglecting its main task—combat—while concentrating on the everyday policing tasks of the occupation (Shelah 2003). At the beginning of the Second Intifada (2000–2005) the critics targeted the poor management of checkpoints, which became a major field of the daily confrontation between Palestinians and the occupying forces. In 2004 the Spiegel Commission criticized the lack of regularity and consistency in applying the regulations, problems “of discipline, behavior, ethics and morale,” insufficient military training, lack of personnel, infrastructures and control technologies. It concluded that poor management “was detrimental to the image, trust and credibility of Tzahal in the eyes of the international community and of foreigners on site” (NRG 2004). During the most violent period of the Second Intifada, from 2002 to 2003, Israeli and international “civil society” stepped up their criticism of army practices at the checkpoints, supported by images, eyewitness accounts, and information diffused by the media.⁷ Checkpoint management involved a great number of soldiers and was broadly criticized both within and beyond Israeli society, thus becoming an increasingly costly task, both materially and politically, for the Israeli army. In this context, outsourcing checkpoint management provided the army with the means to offload the task and, to a certain extent, avoid responsibility for it.

Privatization and Separation

The outsourcing of the checkpoints should also be seen in the context of recent transformations of the Israeli occupation regime, i.e. the implementation of a policy demanding separation since the early 1990s. The term “separation” takes on a special meaning here: it does not refer to a simple territorial distinction between Israeli and Palestinian spaces, but rather to the application of a control and domination strategy in a territory that remains entirely under Israeli control (Benvenisti 1988; Weizman 2007; Gordon 2008; Ophir and Azoulay 2008; Ophir, Givoni, and Hanafi 2009).

Historically, separation and annexation have been rival political projects for solving the supposedly temporary situation of military occupation. They first envisaged the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel, while the second foresaw a single political system governing the entire Israeli-Palestinian state, granting Palestinians access to civic rights. Since the initial discussions on the future of the OPTs in 1967 and until the present day, both programs have remained marginal. The extension and entrenchment of the occupation have transformed a temporary situation into a permanent state. The rationale that the Israeli policy finally followed was based on treating the population and the territory as distinct entities. This policy aimed to maximize the territory under Israeli control without integrating the Palestinian population into the political community, thus maintaining a Jewish demographic majority. The resultant political dynamic is based on a dialectic that sets out two strategies of domination: separation and appropriation. All Israeli political processes, strategies and projects in the OPTs are marked by this double logic: behind each appropriation initiative lies one of separation and every separation initiative is doubled by strategies of appropriation (Azoulay and Ophir 2008, 2009).

The balance between the two dynamics has, however, changed over time. In the first 20 years of the occupation the state of Israel focused on the strategy of appropriation, allowing the Palestinians to cross the Green Line in order to work in Israel. In 1972 the army granted Palestinians in the OPTs a general entry permit and by the year 1987, 39 percent of the labor force in the OPTs was working in Israel (Kemp and Raijman 2008). This strategy of integrating or appropriating the Palestinian population of the OPTs into the Israeli economy did not mean integration into the political community; on the contrary, it was based on the fundamental distinction made between Israeli citizens, who had social protection and civic ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Maps
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Lists of Abbreviations
• Introduction. The Shadows of the Wall: Reappraising the Israeli Occupation Regime
• PART I: GEOGRAPHIES OF OCCUPATION
• PART II: THE ECONOMY OF SEPARATION
• PART III: STORIES AT THE MARGINS
• PART IV: POLITICAL CROSSINGS
• Bibliography
• Index