Kafka at the West Bank checkpoint: de-normalizing the Palestinian encounter before the law

Abstract

The checkpoint has emerged as a quintessential trope within the contemporary Palestinian imagination, to such an extent that “checkpoint narratives” have arguably come to assume a dangerously “normalized” status as everyday, even iconic features of Palestinian existence. Turning to the films Route 181 by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, and like twenty impossibles by Annemarie Jacir, this article explores how alternative representations (and theorizations) of checkpoint encounter might serve to “de-normalize” the checkpoint in a way that invites us to interrogate the very nature of the checkpoint apparatus in itself, including the nature of the “law” that it represents. Mobilizing the critical paradigms of the “state of exception” and “homo sacer” drawn from the theoretical work of Giorgio Agamben and the literary work of Franz Kafka, the article argues that apprehension of the enduring oddity and abnormality of the checkpoint serves as a vital mode of critical resistance to the policies of “spatio-cide”, “securitization” and colonialism exercised at the hands of the State of Israel through the checkpoint mechanism.

Keywords:

• West Bank checkpoint
• Michel Khleifi
• Eyal Sivan
• Annemarie Jacir
• Giorgio Agamben
• state of exception.

Notes

1. In both Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah and I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, passage through the checkpoint at the Allenby Bridge assumes symbolic significance as a “rite of passage” that enables Barghouti to reconnect with the Palestinian homeland by enduring the same trials of scrutiny and indignity as other Palestinians. In Amiry’s memoir, meanwhile, checkpoint security at the airport becomes a site of comical encounter and triumph as she bravely transgresses its “law” upon her return to Palestine from overseas, while Darwish’s classic poem “Identity Card” records a similarly resistant encounter between a Palestinian subject and an officer who forces him to account for his identity and presence in a precursory manner to the function later assumed by the checkpoint. The checkpoint also frequently separates lovers, as in Abu-Assad’s Rana’s Wedding, in which the wedding itself finally takes place at the checkpoint, in defiance of the laws that would keep the couple apart, while Suleiman’s Divine Intervention also features a recurring encounter between two lovers who meet at the Qalandiya crossing between Ramallah and Jerusalem simply in order to sit in a car together and hold hands.

2. The term “normalization” has emerged in political discourse, particularly that surrounding the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. It refers to the presentation of Palestine’s abnormal conditions of oppression as “normal”, and thus as conditions that must be endured or accepted, resulting in a “colonization of the mind” for Palestinians. It extends to the idea that Israel presents its own behaviour as a “norm” to which Palestinians must adapt if they wish to achieve peace and reconciliation with their Israeli neighbours. It is often viewed as a form of political “whitewashing” by the Israeli State, though elements of the international community – for example, those who enter into trade agreements with Israel – are also sometimes viewed as participating in normalization.

3. Eyal Weizman comments much more extensively upon the physical and indeed aesthetic abnormality of the checkpoint in his work Hollow Land, where he argues that the very architecture of various checkpoint mechanisms – such as the one-way mirrored terminals at the Allenby Bridge crossing; the “clumsy and ugly” (2007, 161) structure of the Separation Fence or the artificial partition of the West Bank into the checkpoint-controlled Zones A, B and C – consciously serves to alienate the Palestinian subject from the landscape, acting as an omniscient reminder of the otherwise “invisible occupation” (142).

4. In his recent work States of Emergency, Stephen Morton’s chapter on “The Palestinian Tradition of the Oppressed and the Colonial Genealogy of Israel’s State of Exception” offers a much more comprehensive and far-reaching analysis of Israel’s occupation of Palestine as a “state of exception” beyond its use of the checkpoint mechanism (which is my specific focus in this article). This excellent work connects Agamben’s theoretical paradigms not only to Israel’s present-day colonization of Palestine, but also traces the origins of such conditions back to the “colonial state of emergency in British Mandatory Palestine” (2013, 173).

5. It must be noted that neither Khleifi nor Sivan occupy a straightforwardly nationalized subject-position in relation to the “laws” of the Israeli checkpoint: while an Israeli citizen, Sivan is well known as an outspoken critic of Zionism and Israeli state policies, while Khleifi, though identifying as Palestinian, was born in Nazareth (formally recognized as a location in Israel) in 1950, emigrated from Israel in 1970 and now resides in Belgium (see Gertz and Khleifi 2006, 37). Thus both directors arguably possess a level of international agency that divorces them from the everyday experiences of the checkpoint experienced by many permanent residents of the West Bank: a position that is at once a privilege, and an important facet of their ability to discern the abnormal nature of the checkpoint.

6. It should be noted that the term “Muslim” does not in fact have political significance in the context of Agamben’s usage but, rather, draws upon the term used within the camps to describe those suffering from starvation. The derivation of the term is uncertain, but may have been used to apply to those too weak to stand, who consequently assumed a bowed position, as though in prayer.

7. Sumud describes the qualities of “steadfastness”, “resilience” and “endurance” that operate as important forms of resistance for Palestinians, who are frequently unable to enact other forms of agency (Halper 2006, 46). The symbol of sumud for many Palestinians is the olive tree, whose natural rooting in the ground symbolizes strong, enduring connection to the earth: a motif in stark contrast to the artificial architecture of the checkpoint mechanism.

8. It is interesting to note that Derrida also identifies an element of the “uncanny” or unheimlich present in Kafka’s parable in the way that he draws attention to the “abundance of [ … ] hair” (Derrida 1992, 195) upon the gatekeeper (the fur coat he wears, his long beard and the placement of his nose within his facial hair): startling details to include within such a short parable, which construct the guard as an alien, unsettlingly tangible and uncomfortable presence within the narrative. The uncanny aesthetic present in Jacir’s work similarly serves to de-normalize the subject’s encounter “before the law”, resulting in an alienating visual experience that reflects the discomfort of the checkpoint encounter itself.