Walled in/walled out in the West Bank: performing separation walls in Hany Abu-Assad’s Omar

Abstract

Techniques of colonial governmentality, such as the conjointly reinforcing institutions and practices of the military court system and the network of military checkpoints and other devices, continuously act to undermine (and concurrently reinforce) the disputed sovereignty of Palestine. Bearing a striking resemblance to practices of governance developed in colonial settings, a ‘new military urbanism’, comprised of political devices (in the Agambian sense) such as roadblocks, checkpoints and concrete barriers, works to control the everyday lives of civilian populations. At the core of this military urbanism lies the mechanism of walling. In particular, the wall that makes up the West Bank security barrier, erected in 2002 by the Israeli Government ostensibly to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian militant attacks, constitutes the strongest spatial manifestation of an unyielding state of exception – the place where life has lost its political existence. Focusing on the Palestinian film Omar (2013), written, produced and directed by Hany Abu-Assad – mainly on the ways it engages with territorial conflict and transgression – the central purpose of this article is to analyze its representation of the West Bank wall as both a physical reality of the state of exception and a site of radical potentiality. To frame the analysis of how Omar reflects upon the scope and possibility of nation-state sovereignty today, and also upon the value of human, bare life, the article will begin by addressing other visual narratives of street art that effectively reterritorialize the space of exception that is the West Bank. The article will also examine Omar’s positioning at the nexus of the national and the transnational as a product of the Palestinian film industry.