SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article seeks to address the joint Israeli and Palestinian activism that has developed in response to the building of the separation barrier or what I will term the ‘Separation Wall’ and to argue that the tactics of resistance witnessed are informed by the networks of power bound up in and represented by the physical structure of the Wall. It will aim to draw connections between physical realities and the hidden relations they represent and the act of resistance by suggesting that the Separation Wall offers not only a site of resistance in a world of increasingly invisible and multi-factorial power, but that the networks of power it represents calls for specific forms of resistance. These specific forms focus on direct action over more traditional modes of claim-making undertaken by state-based social movements premised on a liberal understanding of representative politics.