How Israel uses biopower and necropolitics to control Palestinian bodies

Violence against Palestinians has been an ongoing experience for over 70 years, but a particular type of violence is inflicted against Palestinians by the Israeli government.

Biopower is what French philosopher Michael Foucault used to describe the way in which ‘the state’ controls the lives of its citizens through different institutions including hospitals (psychiatric facilities), prisons, bureaucracy, border/identity controlling, and other mechanisms.

In doing so, the state effectively gains control over the living body through a combination of heavy monitoring and regulation that can dictate where, when, and how a person uses their being.

In this way, by regulating the individual, the collective is also controlled. To contextualise this, these policies can include things such as visa application processes to issues such as violent policing.

While this certainly explains many of the apartheid/settler-colonial policies inflicted against the Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, it also affects the Palestinian diaspora in their attempts to return as well.

"Frequent references to the Gaza Strip as an ‘open-air prison’ effectively highlight the efforts of the Israeli government at turning it into an easily manageable population through which they can test and enforce violent biopolitics"

This biopower, for example, restricts the movement, livelihoods, and health and well-being of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the most apparent way through the 15-year total blockade.

This affects everything from moving in and out of Gaza, including goods and medical necessities, as well as electricity and water.

Frequent references to the Gaza Strip as an ‘open-air prison’ effectively highlight the efforts of the Israeli government at turning it into an easily manageable population through which they can test and enforce violent biopolitics.

Israel deploys such tactics against some of its Jewish population of colour; for example, the manipulation of Jewish-Ethiopian women into taking contraceptives without their consent, with some reports citing a 50% reduction in population growth of the community. 

Targeting the Palestinians, there are ongoing processes of forced expulsion — Masafer Yatta for example, arbitrary administrative detention, medical neglect of prisoners, with Israeli authorities frequently denying cancer patients treatment, the neglect of hunger striking prisoners, the inexcusable treatment of Ahmad Manasra, testing of war technology on civilian populations - AI guns in Hebron for example — are all other examples of oppressive biopolitics.

What, however, is becoming simultaneously more blatant and, in my perspective, more debased, is not only the control of the living but the control of the dead too.

This is what Achille Mbembé refers to as necropolitics, in essence, the power over life and death, to decide who is worthy of living and who is expendable.

Even Mbembé’s original 2003 text on necropolitics makes mention of Palestine, for example, he says, “Late-modern colonial occupation differs in many ways from early-modern occupation, particularly in its combining of the disciplinary, the biopolitical, and the necropolitical. The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine.”

To highlight the growing perversion, there are several recent instances in which necropolitics was practised in relatively novel and increasingly depraved forms.

The most recent revolve around the raids of Jenin and the outskirts of Ramallah, throughout these past weeks, where the occupation forces committed indiscriminate murder, used aircraft to attack targets in the small areas, and encouraged and supported settler violence.

There are at least two new and problematic tactics prominent here; the first is the intentional obstruction of life-saving efforts through the obstruction of paramedics and emergency workers, and the second is the use of drone/AI technology to attack targets in close quarters. 

It is clear that the recent instances of blocking life-saving services from reaching injured Palestinians in these raids are a strategic effort in increasing mortality; in addition to the initial violence itself. This perverted ‘population control’ is seen in numerous other efforts of the Israeli occupation. 

"Late-modern colonial occupation differs in many ways from early-modern occupation, particularly in its combining of the disciplinary, the biopolitical, and the necropolitical. The most accomplished form of necropower is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine"

Through the use of remotely manned, or unmanned machinery, there is an undeniable one-sided violence. This not only highlights the Israeli dehumanisation of Palestinians but in a broader sense the increasingly disproportionate nature of this occupation and the changing nature of general conduct in conflict.

Through the use of drone technology, the Israelis are in a position where risks (to life) and damage become increasingly inconsequential vis-a-vis the Palestinian target.

Furthermore, during this latest onslaught of violence, there have been video recordings of journalists in their press vests being targeted by Israeli snipers on an exposed rooftop. Through controlling the life and death of journalists, the protected function of these bodies, as well as the information they generate, are also regulated by this abstract authority of brutal force.

Remembering the high-profile murder of journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh and the fact that no one has been held accountable for her death is a testament to this too.

However, to highlight the sadism and project ‘power’ her casket was attacked by Israeli police during the funeral procession. 370 bodies of individuals (generally those who conduct resistance operations) are currently withheld from their families. Furthermore, the families are then subject to collective punishment including home demolitions.

Recently, settler attacks have reached the cemeteries with graves being vandalised and some completely destroyed. While this all highlights instances of necropower, it also stresses that here, necropower is passed through not only the state apparatuses but illegal settlers, arguably just another state apparatus, as well. 

Countless pages can be written on the ongoing violence and through many theoretical lenses.

But this is all done to provide a clear framework for understanding the concentrated effort in damaging and controlling the Palestinian people.

It is to stress to the international community that this is a one-sided conflict; any resistance efforts by the Palestinians cannot continue to be framed as the instigators, but rather a natural response to this ever-increasing oppression.

Nadine Sayegh is a multidisciplinary writer and researcher covering the Arab world. For over ten years, she has covered a variety of both social and geopolitical issues including gender in the region, human security, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories