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Abstract
This essay explores the challenges and opportunities that the Covid-19 pandemic has afforded Israel as it broadens its settler-colonial objectives internally, in Gaza, and elsewhere. In particular, it sheds light on the heightened militaristic and economic approaches taken by Israel to further entrench its siege of Palestinians in Gaza and to export increasingly advanced technologies of surveillance and state control long deployed against the Palestinian people. This investigation thus offers an opportunity to probe settler colonialism's strategic opportunism in the face of the historic pandemic.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded through UK Research and Innovation as part of the Global Challenges
Research Fund: Research for Health in Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (R4HC-MENA) project, grant number ES/P010962/1.
Notes
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5 Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (London: Verso, 2002), p. 68.
6 Foucault, Psychiatric Power, p. 243.
7 Foucault, Psychiatric Power, p. 243.
8 Alison Bashford, ed., Quarantine: Local and Global Histories (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); John Chircop and Francisco J. Martinez, eds., Mediterranean Quarantines, 1750–1914: Space, Identity and Power (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).
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10 Alexandre I. R. White, “The Art of Medicine: Historical Linkages; Epidemic Threat, Economic Risk, and Xenophobia,” The Lancet 395 (April 2020): pp. 1250–51.
11 Rebecca Stead, “Remembering Israel's ‘Disengagement’ from Gaza,” Middle East Monitor, 15 August 2019, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190815-remembering-israels-disengagement-from-gaza/.
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14 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings,” in Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover, eds., Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 81.
15 Yves Winter, “The Siege of Gaza: Spatial Violence, Humanitarian Strategies, and the Biopolitics of Punishment,” Constellations 23, no. 2 (June 2016): pp. 308–19.
16 Winter, “The Siege of Gaza,” p. 309.
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18 Francesco Sebregondi, “The Zone in Reverse: Logistical Power and the Gaza Blockade,” Architecture of Logistics 23 (Autumn–Winter 2018): pp. 37–522.
19 Maureen C. Murphy, “Israel Shot at Gaza Fishers 347 Times in 2019,” Electronic Intifada, 10 January 2020, https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-shot-gaza-fishers-347-times-2019.
20 Robert D. Sack, Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
21 Conal Urquhart, “Gaza on Brink of Implosion as Aid Cut-Off Starts to Bite,” The Guardian, 15 April 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/16/israel.
22 See Gisha's unoffial translation of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories's Order no. 605, “Procedure for Monitoring and Assessing Inventories in the Gaza Strip,” within “Re: Administrative Petition 2744/09 Gisha v. Ministry of Defense—Transfer of Documents Requested in the Petition,” 13 October 2010, https://www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/HiddenMessages/DefenseMinistryDocumentsRevealedFOIAPetition.pdf.
23 Amira Hass, “2,279 Calories per Person: How Israel Made Sure Gaza Didn't Starve,” Haaretz, 17 October 2012, https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-israel-s-gaza-quota-2-279-calories-a-day-1.5193157.
24 “Monthly Humanitarian Bulletin,” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Occupied Palestinian Territory, May 2018, https://ochaopt.org.
25 Urquhart, “Gaza on Brink of Implosion.”
26 Gideon Levy, “This Is How the Moderates Look,” Haaretz, 8 September 2007, https://www.haaretz.com/1.4972850.
27 Francesco Sebregondi, “The Smart City of Gaza,” Volume 49 (September 2016): pp. 81–84.
28 See World Health Organization (WHO), Monthly Report: May 2020; Health Access Barriers for Patients in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 23 June 2020, http://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/palestine/documents/WHO_June_2020_Monthly_Report.pdf?ua=1.
29 Days of Palestine, “WHO: Quarter of Patients Denied Israeli Permit to Get Medical Care Outside Gaza Were for Cancer,” Crimes against Humanity, 2 March 2020, https://daysofpalestine.com/post/13789/WHO-Quarter-of-patients-denied-Israeli-permit-to-get-medical-care-outside-Gaza-were-for-cancer.
30 David Blair, “Israeli Drone Commander: ‘The Life and Death Decisions I Took in Gaza,’” The Telegraph, 19 November 2014, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11234240/Israeli-drone-commander-The-life-and-death-decisions-I-took-in-Gaza.html.
31 Christa C. Bryant, “Israelis Ponder Alternatives to ‘Mowing the Lawn’ in Gaza,” Christian Science Monitor, 20 November 2012, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/1120/Israelis-ponder-alternatives-to-mowing-the-lawn-in-Gaza.
32 Lori Allen, “Getting by the Occupation: How Violence Became Normal during the Second Palestinian Intifada,” Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 3 (August 2008): pp. 453–87.
33 Lori Allen, “The Scales of Occupation: ‘Operation Cast Lead’ and the Targeting of the Gaza Strip,” Critique of Anthropology 32, no. 3 (2012): pp. 261–84.
34 Erik Swyngedouw, “Technonatural Revolutions: The Scalar Politics of Franco's Hydrosocial Dream for Spain, 1939–1975,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32, no. 1 (January 2007): pp. 9–28.
35 Stephen Graham, “Switching Cities Off,” City 9, no. 2 (2005): pp. 169–94.
36 Ala Qandil, “Gaza Faces Imminent Water Crisis,” Al Jazeera, 17 July 2014, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/gaza-faces-imminent-water-crisis-201471755035576420.html.
37 Amira Haas and Ido Efrati, “Gaza's Water System Collapsing Due to IDF Strikes, Says Red Cross,” Haaretz, 15 July 2014, http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.605332.
38 David Lloyd and Laura Pulido, “In the Long Shadow of the Settler: On Israeli and U.S. Colonialisms,” American Quarterly 62, no. 4 (December 2010): pp. 795–809.
39 Mike Moffitt, “Israel Says COVID-19 Vaccine Is Only Weeks Away,” SFGATE, 28 February 2020, https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/COVID-19-coronavirus-vaccine-Israel-15093659.php.
40 Ido Efrati and Chaim Levinson, “Israeli Research Center to Announce It Developed Coronavirus Vaccine, Sources Say,” 18 March 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-coronavirus-vaccine-israel-biological-research-institute-develope-1.8665074.
41 Yossi Melman, “What Goes on behind the Walls of Israel's Institute for Biological Research?” Haaretz, 11 May 2011, https://www.haaretz.com/1.5011051.
42 Aaron Reich, “Novel Coronavirus Vaccine Being Tested on Rodents in Israel,” Jerusalem Post, 2 April 2020, https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-researchers-made-significant-progress-in-coronavirus-vaccine-623133.
43 The Week, “COVID-19 Vaccine Two-third Ready, Claims Israeli Scientist,” 20 April 2020, https://www.theweek.in/news/health/2020/04/20/COVID-19-vaccine-two-third-ready-claims-Israeli-scientist.html.
44 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 53.
45 Joshua Mitnick, “In Israeli War on Coronavirus, Arab Doctors Rush to the Front,” Christian Science Monitor, 16 April 2020, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2020/0416/In-Israeli-war-on-coronavirus-Arab-doctors-rush-to-the-front.
46 David Lloyd, “Settler Colonialism and the State of Exception: The Example of Palestine/Israel,” Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 1 (2012): pp. 59–80.
47 Gideon Levy, “Israel after Coronavirus: One Crisis, One State—and That Includes the Palestinians,” Haaretz, 6 May 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-after-coronavirus-one-crisis-one-state-including-the-palestinians-1.8819039.
48 Levy, “Israel after Coronavirus.”
49 Ephraim Lavie et al., “Israel's Arab Society and the Coronavirus Challenge,” INSS Insight no. 1288, 31 March 2020, https://www.inss.org.il/publication/coronavirus-and-the-israeli-arabs/.
50 Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London: Cassell, 1999), pp. 387–409.
51 Mitnick, “In Israeli War on Coronavirus, Arab Doctors Rush to the Front.”
52 Mitnick, “In Israeli War on Coronavirus, Arab Doctors Rush to the Front.”
53 Dina Kraft, “Meet the Majadlas: An Arab Family of Doctors on Israel's Coronavirus Front Lines,” Haaretz, 21 April 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-an-arab-family-of-doctors-on-israel-s-coronavirus-front-lines-1.8786492.
54 Patrick Wolfe, “Recuperating Binarism: A Heretical Introduction,” Settler Colonial Studies 3, nos. 3–4 (2013): pp. 257–79.
55 Nihaya Daoud, “The Reluctance to Test Israeli Arabs for COVID-19 Is a Ticking Time-Bomb,” Haaretz, 31 March 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-pays-a-price-for-ignoring-the-arab-community-in-its-coronavirus-response-1.8729117.
56 Paul Gaston Aaron, “The Idolatry of Force (Part II): Militarism in Israel's Garrison State,” JPS 48, no. 2 (Winter 2019): p. 58.
57 Jonathan Lis, “Netanyahu Mulls End to Shin Bet Tracking of Coronavirus Patients, Official Says,” Haaretz, 30 April 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-netanyahu-mulls-end-to-shin-bet-tracking-of-coronavirus-patients-official-says-1.8809596.
58 Gedaliah Afterman and Maya Shabi, “What Asian States Can Teach Israel about Coronavirus Surveillance Tech,” Haaretz, 13 April 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-what-asian-states-can-teach-israel-about-coronavirus-surveillance-tech-1.8761539.
59 Richard Silverstein, “Israel Is Militarizing and Monetizing the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Jacobin, 16 April 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/4/israel-military-surveillance-coronavirus-covid-netanyahu.
60 David M. Halbfinger, Isabel Kershner, and Ronen Bergman, “To Track Coronavirus, Israel Moves to Tap Secret Trove of Cellphone Data,” New York Times, 16 March 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-cellphone-tracking.html.
61 Ronen Bergman, “Israel's Not-So-Secret Weapon in Coronavirus Fight: The Spies of Mossad,” New York Times, 12 April 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/world/middleeast/coronavirus-israel-mossad.html.
62 Michael Bachner, “Mossad Officer Describes Covert Global Battle to Obtain Ventilators at All Costs,” Times of Israel, 1 April 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-officer-describes-covert-global-battle-to-obtain-ventilators-at-all-costs/.
63 Bergman, “Israel's Not-So-Secret Weapon.”
64 Refaella Goichman, “Israel Is the Only Democracy Using Its Security Services to Track Coronavirus Victims,” Haaretz, 26 March 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-is-the-only-democracy-using-its-security-services-to-track-virus-victims-1.8712554.
65 “IDF Unit Preparing to Enforce Bnei Brak Closure, 4,500 Elderly Bnei Brak Residents to Be Evacuated to Hotels,” Yeshiva World News, 2 April 2020, https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1846253/idf-unit-preparing-to-enforce-bnei-brak-closure-4500-elderly-bnei-brak-residents-to-be-evacuated-to-hotels.html.
66 Sean Lawson, “Coronavirus Lessons for National Cybersecurity. It's the Boring Stuff, Stupid,” Forbes, 28 April 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/seanlawson/2020/04/28/coronavirus-lessons-for-national-cybersecurity-its-the-boring-stuff-stupid/#b9d927d45426.
67 Joel Schectman, Christopher Bing, and Jack Stubbs, “Special Report: Cyber-Intel Firms Pitch Governments on Spy Tools to Trace Coronavirus,” Reuters, 28 April 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spy-specialreport/special-report-cyber-intel-firms-pitch-governments-on-spy-tools-to-trace-coronavirus-idUSKCN22A2G1.
68 Joseph Marks, “The Cybersecurity 202: Privacy Experts Fear a Boom in Coronavirus Surveillance,” Washington Post, 14 April 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-cybersecurity-202/2020/04/14/the-cybersecurity-202-privacy-experts-fear-a-boom-in-coronavirus-surveillance/5e94901988e0fa101a7615be/.
69 Intellexa's Tal Dilian said his company's platform would cost between $9 and $16 million for countries with large populations. Start-Up Nation Central, an Israeli nongovernmental organization, has compiled a directory of some 150 Israeli technology companies trying to cash in on the pandemic. Hamagen, Hebrew for “the shield,” is an app launched in March by the Israeli Health Ministry that uses geolocation technology to inform users about any points of contact with known Covid-19 cases. The Defense Ministry has meanwhile offered support to an Israeli start-up called Vocalis Health, which is developing an app capable of diagnosing Covid-19 based on the sound of someone's voice. AnyVision, a surveillance and facial recognition company that scans faces at military checkpoints claims that its computer-vision and deep-learning technology can pick out an infected person on a watch list in a crowded stadium. At Sheba Medical Center, AnyVision's system was connected into a network of about six hundred surveillance cameras in public areas, setting off alarms when someone entered a department without wearing a mask or letting management instantly determine who else needs to be quarantined when a hospital worker tests positive.
70 Wendy Singer, “Israeli Innovators Harness Artificial Intelligence Technologies to Curb the Global COVID-19 Pandemic,” Forbes, 13 April 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/startupnationcentral/2020/04/13/israeli-startups-artificial-intelligence-covid19-coronavirus/#3d4e71564567.
71 David M. Halbfinger, “Israeli Army's Idea Lab Aims at a New Target: Saving Lives,” New York Times, 7 May 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/world/middleeast/coronavirus-israel.html.
72 Gian Balsamo, Proust and His Banker: In Search of Time Squandered (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2017).
73 Gideon Levy, “Israel Trading in Ventilators for Helpless Gazans Is Inhumane,” Haaretz, 15 April 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-trading-in-ventilators-for-helpless-gazans-is-inhumane-1.8768709.
74 Joseph Owen, “States of Emergency, Metaphors of Virus, and COVID-19,” Verso Books blog, 31 March 2020, https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4636-states-of-emergency-metaphors-of-virus-and-covid-19.
75 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
76 Channel News Asia, “WHO Chief Calls COVID-19 ‘Enemy against Humanity,’” 19 March 2020, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/coronavirus-covid-19-who-enemy-against-humanity-12554256.
77 Noa Shusterman and Udi Dekel, “The Coronavirus in Gaza: Insights from a War Game,” INSS, 13 April 2020, https://www.inss.org.il/publication/coronavirus-and-gaza/.
78 Yohanan Tzoreff and Kobi Michael, “The Corona Pandemic and the Palestinian Arena: Significance for Israel,” INSS Insight no. 1295, 6 April 2020.
79 Tamara Nassar, “Gaza Has Barely Any Coronavirus Test Kits,” Electronic Intifada, 14 April 2020, https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/gaza-has-barely-any-coronavirus-test-kits.
80 Levy, “Israel Trading in Ventilators for Helpless Gazans Is Inhumane.”
81 Human Rights Watch, “Joint Statement on Israel's Obligation vis-à-vis West Bank and Gaza in Face of Coronavirus Pandemic,” 7 April 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/07/joint-statement-israels-obligation-vis-vis-west-bank-and-gaza-face-coronavirus.
82 Michael Herzog and Ghaith al-Omari, “Coronavirus on the Israeli-Palestinian Scene (Part 2): The Gaza Strip,” PolicyWatch no. 3311, The Washington Institute, 21 July 2020, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/coronavirus-on-the-israeli-palestinian-scene-part-2-the-gaza-strip.
83 Jack Khoury, “With Coronavirus in Check, Gaza Worries about Economic Fallout,” Haaretz, 7 May 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-with-coronavirus-in-check-gaza-worries-about-economic-fallout-1.8828968.
84 Shoroq Hamad et al., “Exploring the Impacts of Covid-19 on Adolescents in the Gaza Strip,” ODI, June 2020, https://www.odi.org/publications/17036-exploring-impact-covid-19-adolescents-gaza-strip.
85 Hamad et al., “Exploring the Impacts of Covid-19.”
86 HelpAge International and El Wedad Society for Community Rehabilitation, “Gaza: Thousands of Lives of Chronic Disease Patients at Risk during COVID-19 Pandemic,” press release, 23 June 2020, https://www.helpage.org/newsroom/latest-news/gaza-thousands-of-lives-of-chronic-disease-patients-at-risk-during-covid19-pandemic/.
87 Hugh Lovatt, “Defeating Covid-19 in Gaza: Is It Enough?” European Council on Foreign Relations, 7 April 2020, https://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_defeating_covid_19_in_gaza_is_it_enough1.
88 Giorgio Agamben, “Lo stato d'eccezione provocato da un'emergenza immotivata,” Il Manifesto, 26 February 2020, https://ilmanifesto.it/lo-stato-deccezione-provocato-da-unemergenza-immotivata/.
89 Sourced from an English translation of the aricle in n88. See Giorgio Agamben, “The State of Exception Provoked by an Unmotivated Emergency,” Positions Politics, n.d. (emphasis added), http://positionswebsite.org/giorgio-agamben-the-state-of-exception-provoked-by-an-unmotivated-emergency/.
90 Agamben, “The State of Exception.”
91 See Giorgio Agamben, “Stato di eccezione e stato di emergenza” (State of exception and state of emergency), Quodlibet, 30 July 2020, https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-stato-di-eccezione-e-stato-di-emergenza; “Biosicurezza e politica” (Biosecurity and politics), Quodlibet, 11 May 2020, https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-biosicurezza.
92 Hanna Ritchie et al., “Mortality Risk of COVID-19,” Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate.
93 Marco D'Eramo, “The Philosopher's Epidemic,” New Left Review 122 (March–April 2020), https://newleftreview.org/issues/II122/articles/marco-d-eramo-the-philosopher-s-epidemic.
94 Michel Foucault, “The Risks of Security,” in Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 3, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2000), pp. 365–82.