Security practices and the Palestinian issue: an analysis of the checkpoints and sanitary measures imposed by Israel in the West Bank during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022)

• Grant number: 24/06372-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2024
• End date: June 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Samuel Alves Soares
• Grantee: Beatriz Paiva Fantinel
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research seeks to analyze checkpoints and sanitary measures imposed by Israel in the West Bank, as israeli security practices, in the period of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022). To this purpose, the Palestinian Issue will be analyzed considering its colonial past and the maintenance of coloniality in a triple dimension: of being, of power and of knowledge. The image of the Other, in addition to supporting a dichotomous status quo, is related to security practices, in order to produce an agenda focused on security, and with the process of (in)securitization. In this context, the restriction of the movement of palestinians through checkpoints, where control and surveillance mechanisms are used, has become worse with the pandemic, a period used as a pretext for the implementation of more restrictive measures by Israel government. Regarding health measures, the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), known as the "land of checkpoints'', were already vulnerable before the pandemic, period marked by precarious vaccination and lack of equipment. Parallel to the points presented, the methods of control, surveillance and preventive policing have become worse with technology, which plays an essential role in the maintenance of coloniality, and with technological objects, which produce the otherness of minorities and the normalization of majorities. In order to be able to analyze the changes occurred in checkpoints and sanitary measures in the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods, the dimensions of the research will be analyzed holistically and according to the sobjectivist methodology, in order to avoid the dualistic vision current in colonial thinking that still shapes the International System today.