Israel and The Technology of Segregation
The Israel-Palestinian conflict has produced endless dialog, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, but little viable solutions to the 56-year problem. This hardens the positions of each side making the only outcome mutual destruction of Arab and Israeli. Instead, we must understand the underlying structure that produces this conflict. It is only in analyzing first principles can we offer satisfactory solutions.
Nation-States
‘Nation-states’ is a concept developed in the late 19th century where a territory is controlled by the socioeconomic entity of the state. Modern Nation-States create territories of governance. Instead of historical boundaries, ethnic groups, or shared culture, states were formed to support free-market capitalism. The logic of national boundaries comes entirely from global economic forces.
Instead of grouping people by place, ethnicity, and culture, capitalism required a new social division based on economic territory. The Nation-State controls capital, economic wealth, laws, human rights, and access to freedoms. It has a monopoly on warfare and is the only legitimate agent of force against humanity. Violence executed by social groups against the state becomes terrorism and is considered illegitimate because it is not sanctioned by the state.
Israel as it was first conceived as a Nation-State in 1948 lacked a cohesive boarder which it could defend. The Six-Day War of 1967 created a defensible space in which Israel could defend itself, yet the war required a segregation of the indigenous peoples of Palestine.
The Technology of Segregation
The abstraction of the socioeconomic Nation-State required it to control the space of a territory. This is accomplished through laws, flows of capital, and state policies. When this is not sufficient, the state resorts to violence and active segregation. This is the technology of segregation or ‘socio-spatial marginalization’. It creates a separation between a ‘citizen’ of a territory and a marginalized group. It first socially marginalizes a group, then it spatial segregates them.
The prototype of segregation in Europe was the Jewish ghetto. Jews lived in Europe, not as citizens, but as a marginalized community. They were spatially segregated into ghettos. Since they were not citizens, they were not subject to the laws of the state. If a Jew engaged in a crime the whole community was punished through collective punishment.
In the United States indigenous people were the first to experience Socio-Spatial Marginalization. They were forcibly removed from their homeland and moved to reservations. Freed slaves were next to be exploited in the United States, as they were systematically denied property rights and forced into inner-city ghettos.
Socio-Spatial Marginalization was used by the Muslim Turks against the Christian Armenians to systematically destroy their ability to create a Nation-State in 1915. This prompted the term ‘genocide’ for the first time. Hitler used the Armenian Genocide as the prototype for the Jewish Holocaust by forcibly removing Jews from their homes into concentration camps.
It is incorrect to assume segregation is a historical abnormality perpetuated by evil dictators. The United States government interned Japanese Americans during World War II forcibly removing them from their homes and property. The technology of Socio-Spatial Marginalization is a necessary tool of the Nation-State. We see this today in urban ghettos where Black Americans experience lack of economic development. We also see this in Israel as Palestinians are segregated into concentration camps in Gaza and the West Bank.
Socio-spatial Marginalization starts with the Modern idea of a territory. Ethnic minorities exist outside the social structure of the state. People are first socially marginalized then spatially removed from their homeland. The power of the government is used to wage war on the people of a territory. This technology consists of the following:
1. Segregate a minority of the population of a place. This includes minimizing their ethnic history and treating them separately from the majority.
2. Using mechanisms of the state to take away the minorities’ land rights, or ownership of their places of living and working.
3. Force migration from their ethnic or historical lands.
4. Force them onto reservations, internment camps, or ghettos.
5. Perpetually limit economic access and capital.
The twentieth century can be seen as the discovery and implementing of Socio-Spatial Marginalization by Nation-States in a systematic scientific way.
It becomes a technology.
Nation-States and War
The history of the twentieth century is surprisingly simple. World War One was a development from colonialism to capitalist Nation-States. World War Two was a development from Euro-centric colonialism to American Imperialism. The Cold War was a segregation of the globe into a bi-polar world of capitalist and pre-capitalist states. Globalism is the creation of Nation-States of accumulating capitalism, and under-developed pre-capitalist Nation-States.
The creation of Israel at the end of WWII was the acknowledgement after the holocaust that marginalized people need a Nation-State to protect them from the war making power of other Nation-States. Otherwise, Socio-Spatial Marginalization can end in genocide as the state uses violence on the people of its territory. This was necessary for Israel after WWII as it is today. Israel must exist today as a Nation-State to protect Jews against antisemitism.
The paradox of Israel as a Nation-State is it must use Socio-Spatial Marginalization to maintain its ethnic identity as a Jewish state. Ironically it creates ghettos for Palestinians segregating and perpetually limiting economic development. Most surprising, is the use of collective punishment against two million Gazans for the terrorism of a few thousand Hamas. Collective punishment was used historically against the Jews throughout their history. Israel has become the thing they have fought so hard against. Israel as a Nation-State is in direct opposition to Jewish ideals and historical identity.
The Nation-State of Israel
Modern Israel is not Jewish. It is not an ethnic group. Not a religion. Not a people. Modern Israel was created in 1948 as a Nation-State to be a Western outpost in a sea of non-Western Middle Eastern peoples. The Six-Day War in 1967 established Israel as an outpost for American Imperialism in the Middle East giving it vast war-making powers.
Jews need the Nation-State of Israel as protection from antisemitism, but the state is not the people. We need to rethink the role of Israel as a Nation-State and American Imperialism in general. Shouldn’t Israel live up to its ideals and be used to protect the freedoms of all peoples of its territories, not just a privileged minority?
We shouldn’t ‘stand with Israel’ or ‘stand with Palestine’. We should stand for the people of these territories while acknowledging Israel and Palestine are Modern constructs. The Nation-State is not a fixed entity but mutable based on the needs of economic governance of a territory. As social conditions change, so should the Nation-State. Israel should live up to its ideals and become more than a Nation-State. It should evolve into something new to show how states can overcome segregation and war and instead embrace peace for all its peoples.
The way to do this is to stop dividing the territory of Israel into two economic zones- one for capital accumulation, and one for economic repression. Create one zone for wealth, peace, and abundance. This requires one Nation-State to ensure capital development, economic wealth, laws, human rights, and access to freedoms for all its citizens. Perhaps this means a federated union of states, where Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are combined into one Nation-State. The two-state solution was, at best, a lie to perpetuate socio-spatial marginalization of the Palestinians. We need to reimagine an Israel as Nation-State that provides for all its people without segregation.
For more on the technology of Socio-Spatial Marginalization read:
