Present checkpoint futures: the relaunch of checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem in the occupied Palestinian territories

Abstract

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. ABSTRACT 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.