Geographies of Palestine-Israel

This paper explores the multiple, entangled geographies of Palestine-Israel. It traces a range ways in which broadly geopolitical ideas have been brought to bear on the Middle East over the past several decades and the implications of this work for our understanding of this part of the world. Specifically, the paper engages with the imaginative geographies through which Palestine-Israel has been constructed, the geopolitical and biopolitical machinations of Israeli occupation, as well as narratives and practices of identity. The argument is that territory, sovereignty and security are bound up with bodies, mobility and identity, and that geo- and biopolitics need to be thought together in order to access the operations of power at multiple scales that compose and exceed the state, and in order to understand the materiality of everyday life within and beyond the context of politics.