At the time I am writing this article the West Bank is still sealed by the Israeli army as a “prevention measure”. Many defenders of the Israeli Government action claim it as legitimate defense which is already a farce when you observe the total asymmetry between the two opponents; however here, such an oppressive measure is being justified by the notion of prevention. This shift from suppression to prevention is a perfect example of a police/military absolute state. It is based on a fear narrative and maintains this potentiality of danger as a legitimacy of oppression.
The reason of such a fear here is based on the announcement -while Joe Biden was visiting Israel in order to support potential negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians- of 1600 new housing built in a illegal settlement in East-Jerusalem (on Palestinian land). This continuous illegal colonization (read Eyal Weizman’s Civilian Occupation) which brings the most extreme Jewish communities on the Palestinian land, will provide to the Israeli state a total advantage for eventual land negotiation. Indeed for each settlement withdrawn (and there are dozen of them), Palestinian will have to concede something as well -which is completely absurd since all those settlements have been built in a complete transgression of International Laws.
It seems to me important to recall that Israel is one of the five religious republics in the world (with Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Mauritania) and that the fact of religion and politics being mixed up together cannot bring anything else than the fear and despise of the otherness.
As a conclusion I would like to address the fact that so few medias have been writing about the seal of the West Bank (very small article in NYTimes, a bit more in LeMonde). That is the way of banalizing injustice.
Read the BBC article about the new settlement in East-Jerusalem and the NYTimes’ blog article.