Civilian consciousness of the mutable nature of borders: The power of appearance along a fragmented border in Israel/Palestine

What is the role of citizenship in a protest? How are civilian rights used as a source of power to craft socio-spatial strategies of dissent? I argue that the growing civilian consciousness of the “power to” (i.e. capacity to act) and of the border as public space is enhancing civil participation and new dissent strategies through which participants consciously and sophisticatedly use their citizenship as a tool, offering different conceptualizations of borders. This paper examines the role of citizenship in the design and performance of dissent focusing on two groups of Israeli activists, Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. Using their Israeli citizenship as a source of power, these groups apply different strategies of dissent while challenging the discriminating practices of control in occupied Palestinian territories. These case studies demonstrate a growing civilian consciousness of the mutable nature of borders as designed by state power. Analyzing the ways actors consciously and sophisticatedly use citizenship as a tool in their dissent, which is aimed at supporting indigenous noncitizens, I argue that Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall enact and promote different models of citizenship and understandings of borders, in Israel/Palestine. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Although citizenship can be understood in many different ways, it is generally seen as a dynamic concept that frames inhabitants’ sets of rights in a particular place. New rights can make the possession and wielding of previous rights more effective, and the accession of such rights can either remove or build new fences between groups. Thus, as a form of ongoing contract between a state and an individual, citizenship expresses inclusionary and exclusionary practices. Furthermore, tied directly to place, citizenship is associated with a spatial array of borders, which have a crucial effect on the control of resources and socio-cultural relations (Parker et al., 2009). Borders often drive struggles among individuals, communities, and nations over territory, with new spatial orders constantly generated. Thus, borders, like citizenship, are tools that express inclusionary and exclusionary practices by defining the pattern and direction of movement, to establish connections and intersections between people (Newman, 2006; Paasi, 1996, 2009). These patterns of movement are vulnerable to manipulation by the state and other institutions through maps, physical demarcation, signage and technologydall means used to regulate populations through “biopower” (Foucault, 2007). As a whole, both citizenship and borders are social-spatial concepts that limit and allow the physical and legal actions of individuals, All rights reserved. playing a significant culturaleideological role in which geo-policy and culture intersect to establish a national identity (Agnew, 1994; Amin, 2004; Rumford, 2006). Exploring these relationships between citizenship and borders, Étienne Balibar (2002) argued that the human rights become unprotected at the very point when it becomes impossible to categorize them as the rights of the citizen of the state. And thus, in our contemporary reality of “biometric borders” (Amoore, 2006), and “insecure world” (Ericson, 2007), the border zone has become the place where the expelled reside: “Not only is it an obstacle which is very difficult to surmount, but it is a place he runs up against repeatedly, passing and repassing through it as and when he is expelled or allowed to rejoin his family, so that it becomes, in the end, a place where he resides” (Balibar, 2002: 83). This daily bordering practices contribute to the construction of the border as public venue, and politicalepublic space (Balibar, 2009). In other words, a political space becomes a public spacewhen (or ‘sphere’) (and inasmuch as) it is not only ‘mapped’ by sovereign powers (including supranational organizations), or imposed by economic forces (the ‘automatic domination of the market’), “but also ‘used’ and ‘instituted’ (or constituted) by civic practices, debates, forms of representations, and social conflicts, hence ideological antagonisms over culture, religion, and secularism, etc.” (Balibar, 2009: 201). Thus, every public space is, by definition, a political space, but not every political space is (already) public space (Balibar, 2009: 201). T. Hatuka / Political Geography 31 (2012) 347e357 348 The idea of the border as a public space and in particular as a performative space, has been addressed by scholars who have pointed to its contemporary ritualistic practices (Hatuka, 2010). “The assemblage of technologies and calculations that form the sequences of the securitized border” argue Louis Amoore and Alexandra Hall, “serves to authorize its actionse to differentiate the bodies that must wait, stop, pass or turn back. The border’s scopic regime construes as ‘correct’ or ‘normal’ its apparatus, checks and inspections, rendering as necessary the multiple processes of verification” (Amoore & Hall, 2010: 302). Sophie Nield, further suggests that appearance, identity and space work together in the encounter at the border similarly to the way it works in a theater (Nield, 2006: 64). These conceptualizations of the border as public and theatrical space are the departure point of this paper, inwhich I analyze the way citizens address and challenge bordering practices and the “power over” (i.e. control). I argue that the growing civilian consciousness of the “power to” (i.e. capacity to act) and of the border as public space is enhancing civil participation and, in some cases, new dissent strategies through which participants consciously and sophisticatedly use their citizenship as a tool, offering different conceptualizations of borders. Border surveillance empowered by modern technology is clearly the most effective means to achieve what Foucault has named “docile bodies” (Foucault, 1975). However, one must be careful when using these terms; enforced order can be challenged through sociopolitical agencies (Hatuka, 2010, 2011), and it is anticipated that the phenomenon of dissent, though more visible along contested borders, is expected to spread to other venues with the growing civilian consciousness of its mutable nature. In illuminating this idea empirically, I focus on the interrelationship between citizens and borders by analyzing actions of dissent taking place along the Green Line in Israel/Palestine e the armistice line agreed upon by Israel and the Arab states in 1949. After the 1967 war, this line was internationally accepted and came to be the border between Israel’s sovereign territory and the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. Similar to international borders, this line has multiple rolese territorial, physical and social e all of which are embedded in socio-political power relations. Still, in this case, Israel, as the occupier of Palestinian lands, has a dominant position in affecting the character and manifestation of the line. This dominant position has been particularly apparent in the last decade, with daily actions along the Green Line and within the territories characterized by an unequal use of control practices for different ethnic groups (Allegra, 2009; Arieli & Sfard, 2008; Parsons & Salter, 2008; Shafir & Peled, 2002; Yiftachel & Ghanem, 2004; Zureik, 2001). These discriminating control practices have resulted in various spatial trajectories, regulated by checkpoints and a separation wall (Arieli & Sfard, 2008; Human Rights Watch, 2010; Weizman, 2007). As a result, the state’s separation tactics have created multiple distinct sets of “borders” for the Israelis and for the Palestinians of the West Bank. Consequently, while Palestinians are legally limited in their movements and actions, the citizens of Israel can cross the Green Line and move within a large part of the occupied territories without limitations. This privilege is usedmostly by Israeli settlers in theWest Bank, Israeli activists, and the army who controls and limits the movement of people. Exaggerated by the controversial layout of the separation wall and the expropriation of Palestinian lands, this complicit condition transforms the territories into a contested zone.1 Taking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a point of departure, this research concentrates on a spatial view of a border, seen as a line separating national communities. In that, it seems to differ from contemporary discussions about borders, which conceptualize borders beyond a territorialist modern perspective, responding to the various changes in the world and especially in regards to European borders (Balibar, 2009; Parker et al., 2009: 586, 583; Rumford, 2008). Yet, addressing Israel/Palestine, where ethnoterritorial conflicts continue to dominate the political agenda, this paper perceive borders as “the places where ‘our’ territory begins and ends” (Newman, 2010: 775), specifically analyzing the way different actors negotiate, construct and sustain the geopolitical territorialist thinking of borders. In so doing, I follow Ó Tuathail’s (2005) arguments, stressing the need to rethink notions of borders and citizenship while not leaving behind the geopolitical frame of thinking. Focusing on borders and citizenship relationships along the Green Line, the separationwall, and along an array of checkpoints, I scrutinize the actions of two Israeli groups: Machsom Watch (Machsom, in Hebrew, means “checkpoint”), which monitors checkpoints in the West Bank as well as military courts where Palestinians are being tried, and Anarchists against the Wall, which primarily protests along the separation wall, joining Palestinian protests in their villages. The analysis shows how each group crafts distinct socio-spatial strategies of dissent, and how activists, as privileged actors, are using their citizenship status to protect and enhance the appearance of the underprivileged. In that sense both borders and citizenship are seen as dynamic and negotiable manifestation of power. My argument is twofold: first, we witness an awareness of the mutable nature of borders, with actors challenging the state’s orders by negotiating directly with its representatives (i.e. army, border operators) and by initiating dynamic forms of dissent that respond to the political reality. Second, and particularly in the absence of an agreed-upon border, these actions are tools of civilian negotiation over the spatial array of borders as well as over competing concepts of citizenship. More specifically, given that each of these groups opposes the fragmented sovereignty of Israel in the West Bank (Gazit, 2009), I show how each group establishes a distinct civilian consciousness and advocates a different model of citizenship that corresponds to a different conceptualization of borders: Machsom Watch fosters a national model, stressing national consciousness and common heritage, while Anarchists against the Wall advocates a more cosmopolitanglobal approach that calls for acknowledging the absence of both the legal and spatial rights of the under-privileged and oppressed. These different perceptions also correspond to their differing views of the state’s politics and the way each perceives the future border between the two people in Israel/Palestine. Based on attending and watching the groups in action (i.e., joining the ride with MW and the protest with ATTW), followed by personal interviews with key actors in their homes, as well as a review of internal archival documents supplied by activists and newspaper reports, this paper begins by framing the idea of civilian consciousness and proceeds to document and interpret the strategies and tactics used by Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. Findings show that the groups’ tactics of action indicate an awareness of the mutable nature of bordering practices as performedby the state.While these actionsmaynot have an immediate effect on the reality of the borders, they have a discursive effect, as well as the capacity to challenge the state’s model of citizenship. The power of civilian consciousness Many scholars often view citizenship as an extension of democratic theory, which focuses on political institutions and procedures, while others focus on the attributes of individual participants (Kymlicka, 2007). Contemporary discourse of citizenship is highly debated, and thinkers suggest different positions regarding the liberal, communitarian, social democratic, immigrant and multicultural, nationalistic and feminist models (Shafir, 1998). Each of these positions differs in its views of the relationships Fig. 2. Borders and citizenship as means in the process of place-making. T. Hatuka / Political Geography 31 (2012) 347e357 349 between citizenship, rights, practice, and the idea of common “good,” consequently resulting in diverse definitions. Examples are John Rawls’ (1993) proposal of identifying justice with the idea of “fairness” and giving priority to rights over goods, the call for reforming social institutions in a way that will allow accommodation of cultural distinctiveness of multiple ethnic groups in a single state (Kymlicka, 2007), and Iris Marion Young’s proposal to shift the focus from the search for commonality (and, as a result, bypassing diversity) to make the public sphere truly representative of individuals as well as groups (Young, 2000). These examples portray the scope of citizenship in providing a common status for individuals, helping to integrate members of society, on the one hand, and excluding non-members, on the other (Young, 1990) (See Fig. 1). Yet while citizenship and territorial borders both function in relation to the sovereign state, territorial borders do not always mark the borders of citizenship (Allegra, 2009). Contemporary concepts such as “being political” (Isin, 2002) cosmopolitanism (Archibugi, 2008; Beck, 2006; Nussbaum, 2008), and denationalized citizenship (Sassen, 2009) suggest new venues to address the relationships between borders and citizenship (Rumford, 2008; Ó Tuathail, 2005). Taking a socio-cultural perspective on these ideas, I suggest looking at borders and citizenships as interrelated concepts within active ongoing practices of performance andmaterialization (Nield, 2006). True, citizenship and borders tie people to a place in different ways, but they are tools used to frame civil society in a particular space, fixing the conditions and the basic rules of all associational activity (including political activity) and daily life (Walzer, 1983). Yet they also have a temporal dimension and are undergoing constant modification (Balibar, 2002; Paasi, 1998; Sassen, 2009). It is also the understanding of the border as an exception e a space where, in Agamben’s terms, the rule of law and emergency procedure merge into indistinction (Agamben, 2005) e that contributes to the perception of the border as a place where the unexpected, chaotic and unruly is compressed (Amoore & Hall, 2010). This double character of change and fixity and its effects on daily life does not imply a change on a daily basis; rather, it suggests that both borders and citizenship are performative (Butler, 1990, 1992; Goffman, 1959; Salter, 2011) or even theatrical (Nield, 2006) concepts, crafted by humans and thus adaptable and challengeable (Fig. 2). In the study of border/citizenship performativity, three interrelated dimensions are crucial for the analysis of citizens’ participation in the process of borders’ place-making: tactics, context and identity (Fig. 3). First, tactics, or theway actions are displayed and dramatized (Goffman, 1959), define the degree of an act’s publicness in a place and its impact on the public at large (and asks the question of where and how to act along borders). The particular physicality of the border (which is bounding but in itself is not a bounded place) and Fig. 1. Borders and citizenship as providers of socio-spatial common status. the way the actors perceive their scope of power are the two factors that highly influence the tactics of an action. Second, the particularity of the border as a space comes into play in the way actors define the context of power (what is the lens through which we see the state/borders/civil rights?), and the way actors do or do not challenge current state apparatuses, “inside/outside division” (Salter, 2011), and address the included/excluded binary. Defining these tasks requires in-depth knowledge regarding rights and law, both local and international. The third dimension, identity (how dowe see ourselves?) is a crucial factor in the case of borders e where appearance is a key component in the securitization rituals e the way actors appear, communicate and define their identity vis-a-vis the appearance of the sovereign (i.e., new identities, disassociating themselves from national identity, etc.) is crucial. This does notmean a counter-hegemonic definition of identity, but rather being conscious of actors’ appearances in projecting messages, and not taking appearance for granted. It is important to note that these rather flexible dimensions, tactics, context and identity, allow citizens to initiate informal dynamic frameworks vis-a vis the rather formal definitions of both citizenship and borders. In this respect, then, borders provide heterogeneous sites through which citizenship, as a socialepolitical manifestation, excludes the other, but this exclusion also increases counter-social informal “borderwork” (Rumford, 2008), which obliges authorities to respond. In the following section we introduce a note on the eastern borders in Israel/Palestine (addressing the West Bank and excluding Gaza), and then examine the dissent experiences of Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. Borders in Israel/Palestine: an introductory note The borders of the Israeli statewere set out in the 1949 armistice agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. These borders, which came to be known as the Green Line, stopped functioning as a border between two sovereign entities (Israel and Jordan) after the 1967 war and occupation of the West Bank by Israel. Historically, the character and manifestation of the Green Line has been dynamic, at least from the Israeli point of view, shifting from an approach of separation (1937e1967), to an approach that advocated territorial inclusion with no political rights for the occupied Palestinian population (1967emid 1990s), to an approach that again fosters separation (since the Oslo agreements signed in 1993) (Arieli & Sfard, 2008: 21e50). After the violent escalation of the conflict in October 2000, with the Second Intifada (the second Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation), and the repressive Israeli response to it, the conception of a physical border emerged in the form of a separation wall (Arieli & Sfard, 2008: 21). The wall’s construction, begun in April 2003, was first initiated by Fig. 3. Borders and citizenship: framework for assessing dissent along borders. T. Hatuka / Political Geography 31 (2012) 347e357 350 the Israeli politicians from the Left, who advocated separation as means to promote later withdrawal from the occupied territories, while maintaining Israeli security. The initiative was later adopted by parts of the nationalistic right, who also re-designed its location eastward beyond the Green Line, seeing it as a solution to the “demographic” problem (i.e., keeping a Jewish majority in Israel), while annexing many of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank (Yiftachel & Yacobi, 2005: 144). Creating a “new political geography,” the wall further contributed to the unjust conditions in which the majority of the West Bank territory and resources are controlled by Israeli citizens, and Palestinians, lacking real sovereignty, have only limited self-governance in restricted areas (Yiftachel & Yacobi, 2005: 154e155). Furthermore, the Israeli practices of control along the wall, separating the movement of Palestinians and Israelis who reside in the West Bank, have constituted ‘biopolitical’ control of the occupied Palestinian population (Parsons & Salter, 2008). Among these surveillance practices, the wall and the checkpoints significantly influence the Palestinians’ daily life and civil rights and stand as physical embodiments of the sociopolitical Israeli control supported by the creation of a system of identity management (Weizman, 2002; Zureik, 2001). This has created multidimensional practices of closure (both macro and micro), enhancing the fragmentation of territory and territoriality and the sophistication of a “closure regime” (Parsons & Salter, 2008). Most studies of the Israeli surveillance practices focus on control and closure from within the context of colonization (Parsons & Salter, 2008; Zureik, 2001). Addressing the relations between the border (as the effort of the state for closure) and citizenship (as the e often limited e power of the agent), allows us to reflect on new possible constructions of both, through practices of negotiation and a growing awareness of the public at large. Examining the experiences ofMachsomWatch and Anarchists against theWall, we can see that though similar in their criticism of the occupation and its discriminating practices, each offers a different mode of action. Analyzing their tactics, accessibility to and awareness of power, as well as the way they perceive their Israeli identity, provides the ground for elaborating on the dynamic of civilians negotiating bordering practices, while also supporting the cause of indigenous non-civilians (i.e. Palestinians) (Fig. 4). Negotiating bordering practices (1): Machsom Watch, “being a group of women, Israeli” Triggered by the Second Intifada, Machsom Watch (MW), was established as a volunteer organization of Israeli women who monitor Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank as well as Palestinian trials in military courts (MachsomWatch, 2011a). Starting in February 2001 as an initiative of a few women from Jerusalemwho decided to observe the happenings at the Bethlehem checkpoint, this organization responds to the violation of human rights at checkpoints located either near the Green Line or within the West Bank, which serve to restrict Palestinian movement within the West Bank (Gazit, 2009; HRW, 2010: 14).2 With the growth of the organization, monitoring of checkpoints now takes place across the West Bank and, at the height of its activity, included approximately 400 activists. MW members operate in shifts of small teams of two or three activists, seven days a week (MachsomWatch, 2011b). During shifts, they wear identification badges that make them recognizable as MW members (Participant observation A, 2009) and at the end of each shift, they produce a summary report of activities to be published on their website (Interview A, 2009) (Figs. 5 and 6). Tactics: acting as mediators As a whole, MW’s tactics includes three interrelated practices: watching (monitoring), intervening in favor of the Palestinians in situations of human rights violation, and producing reports (in Hebrew and English) (Amir, 2009; Mansbach, 2007). In addition to watching, activists communicatewith the Palestinians andwith the soldiers or checkpoint’s civil operators, tracking the control regulations in the place. Communication with officials takes place on the personal level and on the basis of specific requests from the Israeli women. Upon approaching checkpoint operators/soldiers, activists attempt not to confront, but rather to critique and educate them in a soothing manner.3 Moreover, they may even develop collaborative relationships with civil administration officers who, in part, control the checkpoint’s management (i.e., an Israeli Defense Force [IDF] body). With the Palestinians, activists form personal communications, based, at least in part, on their ability to help them: Relationship with the Palestinians is more on the personal level. I mean, very quickly our phone number became known to people all over the West Bank. And then, I can receive a phone call from someone in Wadi Nar, that’s between Beit Lehem and Abu Dis, alsoe between Palestine to Palestine, and hewould tell me he’s being delayed and askme to do something (Interview A, 2009). This differentiation in power between Palestinians (non-citizens being controlled) and operators/soldier (controlling) situates the activists (Israeli women/mothers) as mediators (using the “power to” to negotiate the “power over”). Practically, since MW gain the trust of both sides, this position assists them in advocating Palestinians’ demands to the Israeli state representatives. Symbolically, through their practice of dissent, activists remain separate from both groups that actually inhabit the checkpoint. Driving themselves to checkpoints, activists navigate along multiple borders with a spirit of adventure, unaccompanied by Fig. 4. Green Line (in green), Checkpoints visited by Machsom Watch (in red), [based on a map sent by the group that represents general activity during the years 2001e2010. Changes of activity are influenced by day-to-day events and political decisions. Oct 2010] Map of actions of Anarchists against the Wall based on data from AATW website, Oct, 2010 (in black) (Drawing: Yair Gutterman). T. Hatuka / Political Geography 31 (2012) 347e357 351