IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

Within the space of the West Bank, two simultaneous infrastructural process are disclosed by the Israeli state. The first process, an increased expansion of road networks connecting Israeli settlements to Israel proper. The second is the mushrooming of yellow metal gates on the entrances of Palestinian villages, towns and cities which regulate movement of people, vehicles and products. This paper examines how these dual practices function within a settler colonial framework to enable settler mobility and expansion while reordering and restricting Palestinian life. It argues that control is managed not only through large scale planning systems but also through mundane designs objects that constrain everyday movement. The study focuses on the yellow gate as a material and symbolic device. It shows that these objects function as technologies of governance that physically fragment space and render movement conditional; and symbolically embed the dehumanization of the Palestinian people through the utilization of a standardized and utilitarian design which is commonly associated with cattle containment. Their integration in an urban environment allows them to act as an infrastructural camouflage through which coercion is framed as regulation. The expansion of integrated road systems allows the mobility, economic and spatial fluidity between the settlements and Israel proper. It boasts a state narrative of development, efficiency and modernity. Utilizing both micro and macro scale planning systems obscures the violence they produce. The normalization dehumanization of Palestinians – rendering them symbolically and physically eliminable – reveal how settler colonialism endures as a continuous and culturally embedded logic.