Borders as Gendered Space: Comparative Analysis of the U.S- Mexico Border and Israel- Palestine Border(s)

Border and Israel Palestine BarrierLast summer, Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense, and the morbid conditions of unaccompanied Central American child migrants in Texas detention centers took the... [ view full abstract ]

Border and Israel Palestine BarrierLast summer, Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense, and the morbid conditions of unaccompanied Central American child migrants in Texas detention centers took the center stage in American media. Work centered on these two conflicts produced by academics and community organizers discuss the racialized discourse that legitimizes state violence on both the U.S-Mexico Border and the Palestine-Israel barrier. These two barrier zones participate in the construction of one another: while the United States provides the funding and model for Israel’s wall and military, Israel has secured contracts for high tech surveillance systems at the U.S Mexico border. Analyzing the discussions taking place in Western media by political commentators, newscasters and political leaders reveals a similar process of racialization for Palestinians and Latino/a migrants that aim to devalue them and deny them of personhood. Rendering Palestinians and Latinas/os “socially dead” allows for the making of barrier zones as “death worlds”, where the land and people are conditioned to destruction and death. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the West’s construction of Palestinians and Latina/o immigrants as enemies through racialized discourses legitimizes the heavy militarized construction of these two walls. The relational analysis of these two walls demonstrates how nation-building projects that rely on territorial barriers to define belonging, engage in violent processes of social valuing that inevitably lead to death.