?The Battle Over Our Homes?: Reconstructing/Deconstructing Sovereign Practices Around Israel's Separation Barrier on the West Bank

Abstract

During Second Intifada, Israel started to construct a separation barrier, officially aimed at preventing Palestinian terrorists from penetrating into its territory. Previous Palestinian attacks caused death and injury of many innocent civilians, and raised a sense of indignation toward incompetence of Israeli government and forces. The construction of barrier, however, raised some objections, based on argument that barrier was not built on Green Line (the 1949 Armistice agreement established between Israel and Jordan) and that it both expropriated extensive Palestinian agricultural lands and de facto annexed many of Israel's settlements that had been built in occupied territories. Tracing various practices, representations, discourses, and arenas in which clashes between state and Anti-Wall movement have occurred, article's main argument is that relative failure of Anti-Wall activists in their struggle, and relative success of state in constructing Separation Barrier, resulted from fact that conflict has become, for both sides, not only a conflict about a barrier and its route, but a struggle over sovereignty and national identity. Under these circumstances, activists failed in mobilizing public against the Wall, whereas state succeeded in using various discursive and non-discursive sovereign practices, based on arguments such as security needs, and the battle over our homes, as a means to accomplish its mission despite resistance that appeared.