From Above and Below: Surveillance, Religion, and Claim-Making at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif

Abstract

This article explores the development and negotiation of colonial surveillance practices and technologies at religious sites. In this article I posit that colonial surveillance at religious sites is different—that, unlike in other colonial spaces, the particularities of holy sites as arenas of contestation can enlarge the scope of worshippers’ negotiation of state surveillance technologies and practices, while enabling new modes of claim-making of rights and resources articulated through surveillance. I draw on the case study of Haram-al-Sharif/Temple Mount, a site in occupied East Jerusalem holy to both Muslim and Jewish worshippers, to explore how different surveillance policies and practices are articulated and contested at religious sites in a (settler) colonial setting. I examine three facets of surveillance employed at this holy site: Israeli digital surveillance, Palestinian grassroots sousveillance, and internationally prescribed adjudicating surveillance. Through an examination of these different facets, this article investigates how particular religious, national, and citizenship claims emerge when surveillance is leveraged in order to balance, mitigate, or resolve conflicts.