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To resist the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Palestinian prisoners are smuggling sperm samples out of Israeli prisons to enable their wives to undergo fertility treatment. Bodies and bodily matter figure as central actors in this practice of resistance. In this article, I draw from fieldwork I conducted with Palestinian women and medical staff in the occupied West Bank to examine the tension between carcerality and matter(ing). I argue that bodies and bodily matter are constitutive of the relationship between oppression and resistance. I analyze how Israeli military authorities assign evidentiary status to Palestinian bodies and illustrate how Palestinian families challenge the Israeli carceral system through new modes of embodied resistance. This article demonstrates how intersecting forms of oppression shape and are being shaped by bodies and their materiality. It also suggests that theorizing the materiality of power from Palestine offers new ways of understanding the political work that bodies do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to food and water are fundamental human rights, even in situations of military occupation, as the occupying power has the responsibility to ensure and respect these rights for the civilian population under its control. Israel has systematically violated the right to water and food of the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank for decades. The persistent violation of these rights has taken on an even more serious dimension in the case of Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli military intervention in the Strip in October 2023. The international community has the obligation to unequivocally position itself to investigate these violations of fundamental rights and put an end to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has enormous negative effects on people’s lives. People with disabilities (PWDs) who have been made vulnerable and who tend to face significant barriers in accessing public services are likely to be affected even more. This study aims to shed light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on PWDs with special attention to their ability to access public services in the West Bank region of the occupied Palestinian territory. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted between March 2021 and October 2021. The study was divided into two phases. The first phase consisted of interviews with people with different disabilities, while the second phase targeted policymakers and stakeholders in discussion of the results of the first phase. A total of 16 interviews with people with different types of disabilities (7 males, 9 females) were conducted via telephone. For the second phase, a total of 6 interviews were conducted with stakeholders most responsible for addressing the issue of disability and the needs of PWDs in the West Bank. Analytical memos were prepared for all interviews. Main themes and subthemes were identified by reading and re-reading memos and transcripts until themes and subthemes emerged. Results: All participants agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic had affected all aspects of life for all groups of people, including PWDs. The effects of the pandemic exacerbated the overall living conditions and access to basic services for PWDs. The results show that access to public transportation, public services, and to health services was all interrupted during the pandemic. This was compounded by deterioration of the financial situation for PWDs which further worsened their access. The stakeholders’ interviews confirmed and explained the findings as mainly due to lack of prioritization of PWD’s rights and needs. Conclusion: The study emphasized that most of the reported barriers to accessing essential services were intensified during the pandemic.Furthermore, the results show that PWDs and their needs are not considered a priority by the Palestinian Authority, exacerbated by the Israeli occupation. Our findings underline the importance of including PWDs in any future crisis planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is published as part of the Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography special issue 'Palestinian Futures Anticipation, Imagination, Embodiments', edited by Mikko Joronen, Helga Tawil-Souri, Merav Amir & Mark Griffiths. The almost 100 Israeli checkpoints that are located inside the West Bank and on its 'border' with Israel play a particularly important role in the architecture of occupation. They represent key political technologies that are used to monitor, discipline and/or selectively limit the mobility of Palestinians. In this paper, I analyse the ways in which the design of the newly relaunched Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem represents a certain specific 'checkpoint future', materialized in the continued 'evolution' of Checkpoint 300, its machines and 'façade of legitimacy': a future in which the Israeli military regime controlling the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) is kept in place and the checkpoints and their inherent violence are increasingly normalized. Furthermore, I argue that this 'checkpoint future' does not lead to a less violent or arbitrary checkpoint regime. This remaining presence of violence should not be framed as a failure, instead, the continued presence of violence, analysed here as experienced and expressed in the arbitrary functioning of the checkpoint machines, as well as the 'legitimised façade' of Checkpoint 300 are intrinsically bound and an expression of the same violent future: a future with an enduring Israeli military regime in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how processes of visuality produce geopolitical imaginaries of the West Bank in the everyday register. Drawing on the visual geopolitics literature, I turn to a grounded approach of ethnographic observation to consider how the West Bank is framed for international tourists. I trace two guided tours of the West Bank with attention to the differences in the visual, discursive, and embodied practices that constitute their scopic regimes. By analysing the sights tourists are allowed to see or made to see, I illuminate the geopolitical implications of how the West Bank is framed: the scopic regime of mainstream tourism normalises the Israeli military occupation by obscuring its violence, while the critical gaze of alternative tourism seeks to challenge it by foregrounding its violence. The juxtaposition ultimately reveals the complicity of both types in sustaining the asymmetrical logics of occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues the built structure of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank is only part of the mechanism that serves to define territorial boundaries and restrict Palestinian movement. A more pervasive and debilitating process of boundary formation occurs through affect-laden performances that typically take place in border areas or sites of surveillance, where state actors and technologies police Palestinians. These performances serve to produce fear and shame: two affects that circulate and act as structuring agents preventing Palestinian movement and resistance. Thus, Israel extends its borders through socio-spatial-technical practices, deep into Palestinian spaces. The underlying evidence for this study originated out of critical performance ethnography and a drama workshop conducted with Palestinians, theorised in part through Sara Ahmed's notion of an 'affective economy' of emotions. Overall, this study re-orients the predominant view of occupied space in the West Bank as an oppressive architectural blockade, to that of an affective regime constituted by a set of relations that require repeatable performances to produce the effect of territory. This re-framing opens possibilities for re-thinking resistance to the occupation by suggesting Palestinians may disrupt or alter the circulation of affect in order to reclaim their space and curtail Israeli extraterritorial ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the difficulties for children and youth in attaining an education while living under Israeli military occupation. It focuses on three Palestinian students in the West Bank who shared their experiences with the author about their trials of getting to and staying in school, their limited opportunities for gaining higher education, and their sense of well-being, to demonstrate the impact of military occupation on their daily student life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from November 16, 2013 through February 15, 2014, including in regard to diplomacy. The role that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry played in efforts to establish peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict is discussed. An overview of the impact that Israeli settlers in the West Bank, Palestine have on efforts to establish peace is provided. Armed conflict between the Israeli military and Gaza Strip, Palestine including Israeli aerial bombing, is also discussed.

This paper examines the authority of the Military Commander to requisition privately owned land for the construction of the Separation Barrier within the West Bank, which is held through a regime of belligerent occupation. The examination focuses on Article 52 of the Hauge Regulations, which deals with the issue of requisitions in kind. Moreover, the relationship between Articles 23(g) and 52 of the Hague Regulations is discussed, in light of the ICJ's decision whereas Article 23(g) is irrelevant after the close of active hostilities. This paper argues that while Article 52 grants the Military Commander the authority for such requisitions, Israel must demonstrate in each specific case that there a specific duty of the army of occupation which gives rise to a specific need of the army of occupation, in accordance with Article 52. The relevant decisions of the International Court of Justice and the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) are examined, especially the High Court of Justice's Beit Sourik judgments and the International Court of Justice's Legal Consequences case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reprints articles pertaining to the settlement of Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. 'Quartet's Road Map Irrelevant to Dramatic Changes on the Ground,' from the November to December 2002 issue of 'Settlement Report'; 'Settlement Facts,' from the November through December 2002 issue of 'Settlement Report'; 'Settlement Tightens the Noose on Jerusalem,' by Amira Hass, from the October 9, 2002 issue of 'Ha'Aretz.'

Details significant international events for the month of October 2001. Holding of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit; Israeli forces' entry into two Arab neighborhoods in the West Bank city of Hebron; United States President George W. Bush's plan to send aid to Afghanistan.