The land of the checkpoints: Study of the daily geographies of checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

When the Israeli state occupied the Palestinian Territories in 1967, it gradually imposed restrictions on Palestinian movement. At first easily circumvented by Palestinians, these restrictions have become an intricate, multi-layered ‘architecture of occupation’ over the last 50 years. This architecture of occupation includes the Wall, illegal Jewish settlements and an elaborate checkpoint system. As a consequence, many Palestinians and Jewish settlers have to pass through Israeli checkpoints on a daily basis. In this PhD thesis, I have analysed their experiences. I have studied the workings of the checkpoints – its rules and regulations, managers and machines – and the diverse ways in which Palestinian commuters engage with the checkpoints. I conclude that these checkpoints produce arbitrary, mutable and selective regimes of mobility, and that they should be seen as the outcome of the endless interplay between its managers, commuters, rules, material devices and procedures of control.