The Palestinian States of Exception and Agamben

Abstract

This paper questions the applicability of Giorgio Agamben's understanding and articulation of the ‘State of Exception’ concept in the Occupied Palestinian territories. Through a detailed analysis of the Palestinian spatial conditions, it presents the different hierarchies, forms and experiences of exception Palestinians confront in their daily lives. It classifies four States of Exception: the State of Exile and Refuge; the State of Paradox; the State of Occupation and Siege: and the State of Urbicide. A detailed analysis of the States of Occupation, Siege and of Urbicide to demonstrate the several levels and experiences of exception is also presented. These experiences can be noted in phenomena from the legal and juridical framework of the Israeli occupation to the spatial surveillance, to the socio-cultural and economic dimensions of daily life, to the perceptual impacts of Urbicide on people's understanding of self, other and place. An analysis of the Palestinian modus of resilience and resistance is then explored. The paper's main arguments and analyses demonstrate that there are different forms of exception that are not limited to the juridical and legal aspects of Agamben's explanations of the State of Exception. These analyses also reveal how the Palestinians, through their resistance, constitute a real agency in shaping the geometry of the conflict. Agamben presents the State of Exception as the normal state of affairs versus the State of Exception, inside/outside sovereign/homo sacer, normal/abnormal, private/public and so on. The State of Exception for him is where an absolute use of power is performed by the sovereign against the victim who has no agency of resistance or rights as all laws are suspended and all notions are confused. It is argued that although these conditions are present in the Palestinian States of Occupation, Siege and Urbicide, using the previous juridical argument of Agamben alone might prove a barrier as it will hinder the understanding of the other hidden tensions and actions that take place within that State of Urbicide. However, it can be stated that there is a Palestinian State of Exception, but the Exception takes different forms and operates with different dynamics. The Palestinian States of Exception entail all aspects of life – not only the juridical and legal – creating multilevels of Exception that perpetually destroys and regenerates itself in an extreme form. Thus, this paper calls for a redefinition of the Palestinian States/Spaces of Exception that can explain this condition in its complicated, interconnected, and interactive layers, forms and dynamics.