Introduction: The Occupied Palestinian Territories and Late-modern wars

Abstract

The essays collected in this special issue address the intersections between the late-colonial occupation of the Palestinian Territories by the state of Israel, and the conduct of late-modern warfare. Taking the summer 2010 attack on the Gaza Aid flotilla, the devastating late-2009 assault on Gaza, and the everyday occupation and appropriation of the West Bank that continues to stranglehold the Palestinians as cues, each essay critically evaluates the material conditions that facilitate Israel's colonial project. As these essays attest, urbicide and infrastructural violence—institutionalized by the Israeli military most succinctly in the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine”— play a critical role in Israeli military practice. As the authors, each in their own way, argue, it is only by taking on these infrastructural material conditions which facilitate the Israeli occupation that one can begin to hold an honest conversation on the prospects for a peaceful solution, and an end to the colonial occupation and manufactured humanitarian crisis which plagues the Palestinians.