Political and domestic geographies of checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank

Speaker: Dr Mark Griffiths, Centre for International Development, Northumbria University

Checkpoints have become a primary technology of the occupation of Palestine. Thousands of Palestinians pass through them each day, negotiating delays, corridors and biometric technologies and enduring discrimination, arbitrary detention and the constant threat of extreme violence. In this talk I explore the subject-making processes of checkpoints and the ways that they meet certain ends of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The discussion builds on fieldwork in areas around Checkpoint 300 south of Jerusalem through which pass 7,000-10,000 labourers – almost exclusively men – each day. I consider how the lives of the men are tied to the checkpoint and, beyond the immediate space of the checkpoint itself, how the domestic lives of families, especially those of women, are affected by the restrictive and anxiety-inducing mobilities of Checkpoint 300.