| Publication |
2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
During the Second Intifada, Israel started to construct a separation barrier, officially aimed at preventing Palestinian terrorists from penetrating into its territory. Previous Palestinian attacks caused the death and injury of many innocent civilians, and raised a sense of indignation toward the incompetence of the Israeli government and security forces. The construction of the barrier, however, raised some objections, based on the argument that the barrier was not built on the Green Line (the 1949 Armistice agreement established between Israel and Jordan) and that it both expropriated extensive Palestinian agricultural lands and de facto annexed many of Israel's settlements that had been built in the occupied territories. Tracing the various practices, representations, discourses, and arenas in which the clashes between the state and the Anti-Wall movement have occurred, the article's main argument is that the relative failure of the Anti-Wall activists in their struggle, and the relative success of the state in constructing the Separation Barrier, resulted from the fact that the conflict has become, for both sides, not only a conflict about a barrier and its route, but a struggle over sovereignty and national identity. Under these circumstances, the activists failed in mobilizing the public against "the Wall", whereas the state succeeded in using various discursive and non-discursive sovereign practices, based on arguments such as "security needs", and "the battle over our homes", as a means to accomplish its mission despite the resistance that appeared.
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