Refugee Watch-31-Tightening Closure

This paper analyses the informal social and economic exchanges that have been taking place since the beginning of the Second Intifada (September 2000), between Israeli Palestinians and Palestinians from the West Bank. The analysis of the economy of border which has emerged from these interactions in the region of the Northern Negev (Israel) and the Southern Hebron Hills (West Bank), allows us to better evaluate the capacity of Israeli closure policies, along with the construction of the Separation Fence around the West Bank (since 2002), to separate Israelis from Palestinians, and to provide a degree of security on the Israeli side. I would argue that while reasserting and putting on stage the power of the State at ‘its borders’, these policies also contribute to open spaces for different kinds of trafficking and of criminal activities. The tightening of the closure has the paradoxical effect of promoting a degree of disorder.

Indeed, the study of informal mobility and exchanges across the borderlands separating Palestinian enclaves from Israel proper (inside pre-1967 borders) and from Israeli controlled areas in the West Bank, throws some light on Israeli mechanisms of control over the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). First, the analysis of the readjustments that have affected these cross “border” relations and exchanges help us understanding the changing shape, nature and thickness of borders between Israeli and Palestinian space. This is all the more significant as, ever since 1967, the status and location of “borders” have remained rather unclear and unstable[1].

Second, studying mobility and exchanges across these borderlands provide a better perspective on Israeli mechanisms of control, as monitoring Palestinian movements into Israel or into Israeli controlled areas has been a main tool to assert Israeli power over the West Bank and Gaza. Between 1967 and the first Intifada (December 1987), the Israeli authorities encouraged Palestinians to cross into Israel and to integrate into the Israeli market. Rendering Palestinians dependent on the Israeli economy was a part of the policy of ‘Carrot and the Stick’ introduced by Moshe Dayan after the 1967 war (Bornstein 2002). Later in the 1990s and during the second Intifada (2000-) the Israeli government has often used the increase or reduction of work permit allocations as a means to inflict collective punishment on the Palestinians, or to put pressure on the Palestinian National Authority (Kemp and Raijman forthcoming). Moreover, during the second Intifada the Israeli system of checkpoints and barriers appear to have been intended to channel and regulate the intensity of Palestinian flows in the West Bank, rather than stop them. By slowing and prolonging the journeys of people, the army and the police were able to better monitor their movements, and at the same time enhance their ability to intercept suspected individuals or groups intent on carrying out an attack on an Israeli target, whether in the West Bank or inside Israel proper (Ben Ari et al.2004). In point of fact, despite increasingly tough Israeli closure policies since the start of the second Intifada a significant number of Palestinians still enter Israel. In the third quarter of 2005, there were still 65,000 Palestinian workers employed in Israel and in the Israeli settlements (PCBS 2005, 9).

Third, observing informal Palestinian mobility and exchanges across borderlands also provides a unique perspective on the effects of Israeli closure policies on the ground, both in the short and the long term. Relations between partners on the borderlands have been deeply impacted by the Israeli system of checkpoints, closure and curfews. The growing number of juridical and physical obstacles imposed upon Palestinians has been an open invitation to skilled individuals and networks (Arab and Jewish) to help border-crossers. Furthermore, the deepening gap between the Israeli economy which is relatively prosperous, and that of the Palestinians, which is gradually deteriorating, has engendered new levels of trafficking and smuggling. In other words Israeli closure policies have fostered the emergence of a new economy of border that impacts on the very context in which these policies intended to establish a separation. The present readjustments of economic interdependencies between Israeli Palestinians and Palestinians from the West bank could have future security repercussions for the region as the wall nears completion; this ‘economy’, situated along the borderlands, has over the last seven years become a hotbed of illegal and criminal activities.

Fourth, by viewing Israeli closure policies through the lens of the border economy, it is possible to make a clearer assessment of their efficacy in terms of security on both Palestinian and Israeli sides. This study, essentially one of the connections between the tightening of borders on the one hand, and criminal activity on the other, could have relevance to other areas of the world. Drawing on the case study of the US-Mexican border, Peter Andreas (2001) as well as Jorge Santibañez-Romellon (2005) have stressed the direct link of causality between the two. I wish to follow this argument, introducing only the micro-analytical perspective of ethnography. My research is based on the data collected during successive periods of fieldwork that I have carried out between 1996 and 2006 in the region between the Northern Negev (Israel) and the Hebron Foothills (Southern West Bank). By listening, following and then observing sometimes directly, the everyday adaptations of people to circumvent Israeli closure policies in this region, I could better observe the mechanisms through which this economy of border engendered more extreme power relations, and more antagonisms and conflicts between people, thus radically impacting the perceptions of the actors.

Before beginning to analyse the economy of border that has developed between the Southern Hebron Hills and the Northern Negev, I would like to briefly present this region, its inhabitants and the evolutions of their exchanges over the last sixty years. This contextualisation will help to better locate and grasp the importance of this instance of cross- border relations in the Israeli Palestinian space. It will also provide us with a better understanding of the nature and shape of local border and borderlands.

From the point of view of observers located in the main population centres of the Occupied West Bank and of Israel such as Ram Allah, Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv, the Northern Negev and the Hebron Foothills are considered to be remote margins, ends of territories or even borderlands. In other, they are regarded as two distinct regions. Yet, once scrutinized from a closer perspective, it appears that over the last 60 years, movement and exchanges between local populations have maintained strong socio-economic networks and interdependencies between these places and their inhabitants.
The shape and content of these exchanges have changed according to the periods, showing a direct link between the institution of borders and the development of smuggling. From 1948 to 1967 when the Green Line functioned de facto as an international border between Israel and Transjordan, these exchanges took place through smuggling and clandestine travel. After 1967, when Israel invaded the West Bank and integrated it into its own economic space, these contacts were able to develop more intensively. The smuggling returned during the 1990s when the Israeli authorities imposed systematic limitations on Palestinian movement. While these limitations did not stop Palestinian mobility, they set the basis for the emergence of a parallel economy on the border, based on illegal traffic.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Negev is inhabited by both Jews and Arabs. Jews represent the majority of the population (around 75%). They reside in the main city of Beer Sheva and its suburbs, in the poor development towns built in the 1950s, and in small kibbutzim and moshavim. The Arabs inhabiting the Negev live separate from the Jews. They constitute a poorly qualified proletariat residing mainly in dormitory suburbs and slums at the periphery of Beer Sheva.

The Arabs of the Negev are the descendants of the 11,000 Bedouin who remained within the limits of the Beer Sheva district after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Most Bedouin fled or were expelled manu militari to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan and Egypt (Marx 1967, Parizot 2004). Those remaining in Israel obtained Israeli citizenship at the beginning of the 1950s. Yet, at the same period, they were displaced to the north east of the Negev to an enclosed zone, which was subject to military administration until 1966. Excluded from Beer Sheva and from the labour market the Bedouin remaining in the Negev had no choice but to withdraw to agriculture and livestock rearing (Marx 2000). In the mid 1960s, upon the abolition of the military administration, the Israeli authorities decided to urbanize the Bedouins in seven planned townships: Tell as-Saba’, Rahat, ‘Ar‘ara, Ksîfa, Shgîb as-Salâm, Lagiyya and Hûra (Map 1). At the beginning the 21st century, the 140,000 Bedouin living in the Negev area constitute a semi-urban proletariat, half of them living in these planned townships and the other half, residing in slums scattered around the main road axis, being unrecognized by the authorities (Meir 1997). The lack of economic and commercial activities in the townships and in the slums, as well as the low qualification of the manpower, renders them highly vulnerable to economic fluctuations (Abu Rabia 2000, Jakubowska 2000). The economic stagnation provoked by the second Intifada, further aggravated the situation there.

From the point of view of Palestinians living in the Center or in the northern West Bank, the south Hebron Mountains, called Jebel al-Khalîl, constitute a marginal territory; it is the limit before the desert where the Bedouin live. This Bedouin population is often considered by Palestinians as ‘traditional’ and ‘brutal’, with little loyalty to the national cause (Parizot 2001). Far from the main axis and urban centres, the Jebel al-Khalîl is hardly visited by northern West Bankers. In 2005, on the Palestinian side north of the Green Line, the four main towns (Dhahriyya, Sammu’, Yatta and Dûra) and the surrounding hamlets (kharab, plur. of khirbet) contained a population amounting to 120,000 individuals. Like the Bedouin in the Negev, the peasants of the Hebron Mountains have undergone a process of proletarianization, which began in the 1970s and was largely encouraged by the integration of the Palestinian economy into the Israeli one, beginning in 1967.

Throughout the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Bedouin living in the plain of Beer Sheva and the peasants of the Hebron Foothills have been linked through regular social and economic exchanges. Hence, after the first Israeli-Arab conflict (1947-1949) and the establishment of the Green Line[2], many people regularly crossed illegally this new border in order to maintain their contacts with the southern Hebron Hills population. Some engaged in importing goods from the neighboring Arab countries into the Israeli market. In some instances, these smuggling activities developed on a large scale and were encouraged by the Israeli authorities (Abu Rabia 1994; Parizot 2004). The aim was to supply the then fragile Israeli economy with additional goods.

In 1967, after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel, the Green Line stopped functioning as an international border. The Israeli authorities encouraged the flow of people and goods between Israel proper and the newly occupied territories (Arnon and Weinblatt 2000; Bornstein 2002). In this context, Bedouin and Palestinian peasants intensified their economic relations, and now in the open. Following the Israeli call for labour in the building and agriculture sectors,, peasants from the South Hebron Mountains abandoned their fields to work as wage-earners in Israel proper, and as such they conformed to a general trend observed in the rest of the OPT during this period (Arnon et al. 1997). As with the entire Palestinian population, the residents of this region became extremely dependent on the Israeli labor market. By the end of the 1980’s, 30% of the whole Palestinian labor force was working in Israel providing half of the Palestinian labor earnings; at the end of the 1990s, under conditions of relatively open but controlled borders, more than one-fifth of the Palestinian labor force was working inside Israel and providing one third of the total wage earnings (Rupert Bulmer, 2003, 657). Bedouin started to frequent the markets of Hebron and the surrounding villages, where they found products as well as an atmosphere more congenial to their socio-cultural expectations. Furthermore, Bedouin and Palestinian peasants developed deeper social relations through marriages: During the 1970s and the 1980s, many Bedouin contracted matrimonial alliances with brides coming from the Hebron Foothills whether from Bedouin or Peasant origins (Parizot 2004).

Social and economic ties ensured a flow of goods, people and values that eventually fostered the dissemination of cultural practices and representations. Many examples can be drawn from the literature on the Negev Bedouin. The mutual influences between the Bedouin and the Palestinian peasant society were observed by scholars as early as the 1970s in marriage celebrations (Lewando-Hundt 1978), religious beliefs (Jakubowska 1985), genealogical techniques (Parizot 2001a, 80-81), models of authorities (ibid., 135-143), etc. Between the 1970s and the 1980s, and to a certain extent until the 1990s as we shall see, cross-border relations extended the social, economic and political spaces of the Bedouin and their peasant neighbors and integrated these marginal territories. Between 1980 and

1985, the Hebron Foothills were further integrated to the Beer Sheva region, with the creation of nine Jewish settlements[3] on the Palestinian side of the Green line: In 1992, the population of these settlements reached 1,923 people and was doubled by 2004.

This process of integration came to an end with the outbreak of the first Intifada (December 1987). During the Palestinian uprising a sense of border re-emerged (Bornstein 2002) with the Jews living within the 1949 borders starting to fear to cross the Green Line into territories they now regarded as increasingly hostiles, and Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip experiencing the first limitations on movement.

In the beginning, the Israeli army imposed curfews and closures in the Occupied Territories as ad-hoc security measures. Progressively, these measures became part of a more articulated project of separation from the Palestinians (Kemp and Raijman, forthcoming). The intent to separate started to be clearly expressed during the Gulf war, when the Israeli authorities revoked the general permit of entrance into Israel granted to Palestinians, and imposed a system of individual permits (Hass 2002; Hertzog 2005). Later, the Israeli authorities reinforced their control on Israeli employers and introduced new legislations to allow Asian and Eastern European workers to enter the country progressively in order to replace Palestinian workers.

Yet, despite of the tightening of the closure and the increasing importation of ‘foreign workers’ the number of Palestinians working in Israel remained significant throughout the 1990s. It took a number of years for the limitations on movement to effectively reduce the number of Palestinian workers entering Israel. In the first years of their implementation (1987-1992), the Israeli authorities had to deal with resistance on the part of Israeli employers. Because they were accustomed and well adapted to their Palestinian employees, Israeli employers continued to employ Palestinian workers massively. In point of fact, their numbers continued to grow, and reached 112,000 in 1992. It took time for Israeli entrepreneurs to associate more systematically the safety and security factor with the influx of Palestinian workers. Murder and attacks on Israelis progressively made these employers more anxious, and this finally brought about the reduction in the numbers of Palestinians employed. As Adriana Kemp and Rebecca Raijman put it (forthcoming, n.28) “This [changing] ‘mood’ acquired highly tangible expression; in 1992, the number of workers from the territories in Israel peaked at 115,600, but in 1993, it plunged to 83,800. This drop was the result of government decisions on closure and on bringing in labour migrants [from Asia and Eastern Europe], but it also reflected decisions by Israeli employers not to engage Palestinian workers any longer”.

Although the tightening of the closure between 1992 and 1996 reduced the number of Palestinian workers by 51%, by 1997 the numbers had started to return, reaching 145,110 on the eve of the second Intifada (August 2000). It seemed that Palestinian workers could not be completely replaced by ‘foreign workers’. In the context of the economic prosperity enjoyed by Israel as a consequence of international investors’ reaction to the Peace negotiations, the need for workers remained very high (Farsakh 2000, Bucaille 2002, 118-122). Moreover, the ‘foreign workers’ allowed in by the Israel Ministry of Labour were mostly directed to the larger Israeli outfits, leaving aside small and mid-size companies (Amir 2000)[4]. Finally, those Palestinian workers who had long-term relationships with their Israeli employers, generally kept their jobs.

The limitations on movement imposed on Palestinians workers affected less their overall number than the way they worked, the percentage they represented in the total labour force in the OPT, and the orientation of labour fluxes; the number of working hours per employee dwindled (Arnon et al. 1997: 76-77). In the meantime, Palestinians entering Israel represented a lower proportion of the total Palestinian labour force than previously. By the end of the 1990s, Palestinians working in Israel represented only a fifth of the total Palestinian labor force, and provided one third of the total wage earnings (Rupert Bulmer, 2003, 657). But, the Gaza Strip was more affected by movement limitations than the West Bank. The percentage of Gazan workers entering Israel fell from 45.8% in 1987 to 15.4% in 2000, while the number of West Bank Palestinians working in Israel dwindled from 35.6% in 1987 to 24.8% in 2000. According to Leila Farsakh (2005, 141), the reorientation of the worker fluxes bore witness to the readjustments of borders during the Oslo period (1994-2000); while Gaza was progressively separated economically from Israel, the West Bank remained integrated in the Israeli market.

Furthermore, the limitations on movement condemned Palestinian workers and small Israeli companies to resort to illegal traffic. Before the first Intifada many entrepreneurs used to employ non-declared Palestinian workers. In 1987, 60% of Palestinian workers did not have work permits (Kemp and Raijman, forthcoming, n.10). Yet, during the 1990s, Israeli employers and their workers had to further breach the law by crossing illegally the limits separating the Palestinian enclaves from Israeli controlled areas. Indeed, while small Israeli companies still employed Palestinian labour, Israeli Jews often entered the region of the Hebron Hills to pick up their workers in local towns such as Dhahriyya, Sammu‘, Yatta to help them avoid police and army controls. The authorities could not stop the ongoing flux of clandestine passages of Palestinians who were being actively aided by Israeli Jewish and Israeli Arab employers, only too eager to circumvent controls.

During the mid 1990s, the building of a fence around Gaza, and the delimitation of ‘borders’ between Palestinian Authority enclaves and Israeli controlled areas, fostered the development of new exchanges and new traffic. Trade between the Negev and the Southern Hebron Mountains was indirectly bolstered with the fencing of the Gaza Strip. The fencing of the Strip reoriented the flows of Bedouin and Jewish clients towards the Hebron Foothills. The market of Gaza city ceased to be the main competitor of the market of Beer Sheva. The Hebron market and later the market of Dhahriyya took over. In the second half of the 1990s, the small border town of Dhahriyya witnessed incredible prosperity. Its market grew beyond the needs of its hinterland and became an important center of exchange where both Bedouin from the Negev and Jews from Israel proper and from the settlements came to buy goods and services that were much cheaper than on the Israeli side of the Green Line (Parizot 2004).

The creation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and the delimitation of the new administrative borders corresponding to Palestinian autonomous (area A) and semi-autonomous areas (area B) generated fresh difficulties for the Israeli police, as these new administrative borders often put smugglers beyond the reach of the Israeli authorities. As a result, during the mid 1990s, car theft within Israel increased significantly[5]. Thieves started stealing cars within Israel in order to smuggle them into the West Bank and Gaza (Moailek 2005; Hertzog 2005). In the Hebron Foothills, the towns of Dhahriyya and Yatta became the main centres for this traffic, and the Bedouin the main smugglers. At the end of the 1990s, Negev Bedouin organized other kinds of smuggling operations that became even more profitable in the context of the second Intifada.

This traffic, and the informal economy it fostered, developed further during the second Intifada. Its rise was directly connected to the tightening of the Israeli closure policy during the first years of the second Palestinian uprising. On the one hand, between 2000 and 2005, the increasing number of juridical and physical limitations[6] imposed by the Israeli authorities created new obstacles which reduced dramatically the entrance of Palestinian workers inside Israeli controlled areas. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, this number dropped to 65,000 during the third quarter of 2005 (compared to 145,110 in August 2000). On the other hand, the growing number of obstacles called for increasing mediation and assistance of suitably skilled people and networks that could help the workers and others to cross inside Israel These individuals and networks profited from new opportunities – given the context of the growing gap between the Israeli and the Palestinian economies – to develop different forms of traffic around the emerging ‘borders’. Hence, the earth mounds, the trenches and the check points actually stimulated new exchanges, often entailing more extreme power relations between cross border partners. Paradoxically, the tightening of Israeli closure policies opened new spaces for criminality and insecurity.

During the second Intifada, in addition to drastically reducing the number of work permits[7], Israel progressively reinforced its closure system in the southern Hebron Mountains. In the spring of 2002, bypassing police or army controls became more difficult. During operation “Defensive Shield”, the Israeli army re-invaded the towns of Dhahriyya, Dûra, Sammu‘ and Yatta (Map 1). The Palestinian police stations were partially destroyed or, as in Dûra, transformed into a base for the newly occupying army, and the towns were then placed under prolonged curfew[8]. In order to stop the car smuggling, the Israeli authorities were extremely severe in the way they dealt with the towns of Dhahriyya and Yatta: Even if the border towns were evacuated few months later, the army continues to enter them regularly in order to carry out targeted assassination or arrests.

In 2004, closures entered a new stage. Until then, it was mainly reliant on the checkpoint located close to the Green Line on the road linking ad-Dhahriyya to Beer Sheva, and on random patrols (Map 1). Border Guard patrols would stop Palestinians trying to enter area C (OPT areas under Israeli administration) or trying to use settlers’ by-pass roads (n° 317, 60, 348 and 325). During summer 2004, more visible signs of a tightening closure policy emerged. Earth mounds and temporary checkpoints[9] were added to the existing structures in order to cut off Dhahriyya, Yatta and Sammu‘ from Hebron and from the Center of the West Bank. Later, following a suicide bombing committed in August in the Israeli town of Beer Sheva, the Israeli army created two new checkpoints on road 317: one south of Sammu‘ and another north of the Jewish settlement of Metzadot Yehuda. Finally, in 2005, parts of the separation fence have been built more or less along the Green Line, East of Dhahriyya and South of Sammu‘ and Yatta (Map1). While in July 2007, the Fence has still not been closed completely East of Dhahriyya and South East of Sammu‘, the Israeli authorities have made it increasingly difficult for Palestinians of these areas to enter Israel proper.

The closure policies dealt a sharp blow to the Palestinian economy and increased the gap between it and the Israeli economy. At the global level, while the GDP per capita in Israel remained relatively stable between 1999 and 2003 (from $16,940 to $16,240), in the Palestinian territories it fell from $1,850 to $1,110. According to OCHA it reached $934 in 2004[10]. In the Southern West Bank, the general crisis increased the impoverishment of a population which was already among the poorest of the West Bank (World Bank 2001). Paradoxically, Israeli closure policies reinforced the need to cross into Israel. In the context of the collapsing Palestinian economy, the need to find jobs elsewhere became more critical for the population. Moreover, growing economic inequalities between the Bedouin and their Palestinian neighbours became evident. Combined with increasing difficulties to move across what used to be the Green Line, these inequalities changed the terms of borders exchanges and encounters between the two populations. The extent of transformations within border exchanges is well exemplified by the readjustments that occurred in worker smuggling.

During the 1990s, Bedouin and Palestinian drivers shared the market for transportation from the Hebron Hills to the region around Beer Sheva. After the outbreak of the second Intifada, the restrictions on movement, and the barriers, prevented the Palestinians from competing with the Bedouin. Drivers of the West Bank have remained limited to the main towns of Dhahriyya, Dura, Yatta and Sammu’ and their surroundings. As a result, Bedouin have progressively obtained a monopoly on the worker traffic and have imposed much higher prices on their Palestinian clients.

Under these conditions, the transportation of Palestinian workers quickly became a coveted source of enrichment for Bedouin drivers, as workers from the Hebron Foothills went on crossing the Green Line in search for work inside Israel. New Bedouin groups grasped this activity to fight for monopoly. Being overwhelmingly dependant on Israeli work, Palestinian workers had little choice but to continue crossing the Green Line in order to ensure the survival of their families. Little work was available in the Palestinian territories and work in Israel paid three times as much. Between 2005 and 2006, in the area controlled by the Palestinian Authority, an unqualified day of work was paid 50 NIS[11] (10€) compared with 100 to 150 NIS (20-30€) paid in Israel for an illegal worker.

Consequently, Palestinians had to accept the high fees charged by the Bedouin who could now claim that the passage had become riskier than previously. During the first years of the second Intifada, workers came into Israel from Sammu’, Dûra, Yatta, Dhahriyya and the surrounding villages of these towns. They would pay up to 150 NIS (~30€) each, for a one way trip to the Bedouin towns of Hûra, Lagiyya, or the Jewish towns of Beer Sheva and Qiryat Gat. Many would thus remain in Israel for a week, sometimes or even a month in order to spread the cost of the journey.

Between 2002 and 2005, the construction of the separation wall in the North of the West Bank drove newcomers to the Hebron Foothills. People from the regions of Nablus and Ramallah travelled all the way to the south in order to cross the Green Line. Then, they rode Bedouin or Jewish Israeli taxis to reach the regions of Hadera, Kufr Qara, Baqqa al-Gharbiyya. The cost of such a one-way trip would reach more than 500NIS (100€), the equivalent of 3 to 4 days of work (map 2).

The sharp rise in prices, and the tightening of Israeli police controls, drastically changed the circumstances of the stay in Israel. Palestinian workers travelled less frequently and prolonged their stays sometimes for months. The wealthiest and the luckiest would rent places to sleep in Bedouin planned townships. However, as increased controls by the police started to scare off local landlords, most of the workers were condemned to improvise places to hide at night for protection from the cold. In the North of Israel, they gathered in public dumps (Hass 2004), in Beer Sheva they slept in the sewers.

According to my estimations, between 2003 and 2005, an average of 40 Bedouin minibuses crossed daily through the border zone between the South of Sammu‘ and the West of the Ramadhîn. Each month, between these two Palestinian towns, 8,000 to 12,000 one-way individual trips would be executed across the Green Line[12]. This traffic was worth around 800,000 to 1,200,000 New Israeli Shekels (~160,000-240,000 €) per month. These figures include neither the workers who crossed into Israel by foot or by private cars, nor the workers who took Israeli Jewish private cars or taxis.

The appropriation of worker trafficking by the Bedouin is only one instance of the progressive hold they have gained on the local economy within the last five years. Individuals and groups of Bedouins also smuggle fuel in order to supply illegal petrol stations inside Israel. Smuggling of livestock, clothes, furniture have been organized on both a small and a large scale. The profits from this traffic stand in sharp contrast to the dwindling incomes of households which have characterized the economic crisis in the OPT.

The changes that have taken place at the level of worker trafficking reveal the broad readjustment of power relations between the two populations: the Israeli Palestinians (the Bedouin) and the West Bank Palestinians. While Bedouin have become by degrees the enabler and patron, Palestinian workers have seen their situation continuously deteriorating. The scarcity of work and the increasingly severe controls over clandestine workers entering Israel, made the Palestinian labourers even more vulnerable in relation to their smugglers. The picture is even grimmer when considering the growing vulnerability of Palestinian workers once they are inside Israel, in relation to both Jews and Arabs.

The deterioration in relations between Palestinian workers and their employers has directly impacted on perceptions between border populations, and especially on those prevailing between Israeli Palestinians and their kin and networks in the OPT. I have shown elsewhere (Parizot 2004) that, Israeli policies notwithstanding, exchanges between Palestinians from the Negev and Palestinians from the West Bank have been redefining the notion of ‘border.’ During the end of the 1990s, and the beginning of the 2000s, these exchanges were increasingly marked by bitter and violent encounters, with the result that there is now distrust and even fear on both sides. They have fostered a feeling of differences and fragmented experience between cross-border partners. Practiced on daily basis, and over a long period of time, these differences and antagonisms have been internalized and have often been perceived as a given. This is all the more true as people have been using these experiences to reconstruct dominant narratives that stress the distinctions between them. Each experience is added to other stories that people have either heard or witnessed personally. Narratives about “us” and “others” are often presented as facts; they are built upon sedimentation of multiple stories about “ourselves” and “others” (Vila 2003, 107; van Dijk 1993, 126). These cross-border encounters and the experiences people have drawn from them validate antagonizing categories and narrative such as the one opposing “peasants”(fellahin) to “Bedouins” (bedu). This old dichotomy (referring to pre 20th century period) comes back to distinguish these two populations despite the fact that they share very similar style of life: both have been for a long time sedentary and have recently been involved in a process of proletarianization.

Moreover, the tightening of the closure policies during the second Intifada, and the economy of border it has engendered, has created the impression of established borders, or at least of a kind of separation between Israeli and Palestinian spaces. The readjustments of the exchanges and of the perceptions taking place between Palestinian populations on both sides of the Green Line reveal a process of growing dissociation between these two groups. The Jewish population in Israel is also feeling that an actual separation has been achieved between Israeli and Palestinian spaces. Indeed, Palestinians seem to have completely disappeared from the landscape of ordinary Israeli citizens.

Yet, this feeling of growing separation should not mask the complex readjustments fostered by the closure policies and the new economy of border. As a matter of fact, Palestinian workers still enter Israel to work. Even if their number has dramatically dropped, and even if from the point of view of the dominant Jewish Israeli society they have slipped from view, their numbers in Israel are still significant: In 2005-2006 there were approximately the same number of workers inside Israel as in 1996. The difference is that they have actually been integrated into increasingly marginal areas and economic activities where, over he last six years, wild forms of capitalism have become the rule. The imposition on Palestinians of incremental obstacles to movement has created the following paradox: on the one hand, the State is seen to assert its authority at the “borders”, while on the other, these very actions have inadvertently engendered the emergence of networks and economic activities deep within Israel that remains beyond State control. In a way, rather than clarifying borders and setting up an actual separation, Israeli border policies seem to have secured spaces of disorder, and to have blurred borders.

The feeling of blurring borders in the Israeli Palestinian space becomes all the more apparent when considering the networks of entrepreneurs that organize this economy of border. Indeed, in this economy of relations and exchanges, it would be wrong to ascribe fixed positions to groups according to their administrative status (Israel citizens, non-citizens, etc.) and their ethnic background (Jews, Arabs). Positions and power in this border economy are not only determined by these criteria. As I shall demonstrate, networks of border entrepreneurs are highly heterogeneous and involve complex collaborations between the different populations of the Southern Israeli Palestinian space including State representatives. These networks are not a new phenomenon. Such collaborations have always prevailed in this region. Rather, the new configurations of these networks, and especially the way they spread along spaces and between groups, shows the extent of the readjustments in the economy of border provoked by Israeli closure policies. Looking at such networks provides us an interesting perspective on local power mechanisms during the second Intifada and the way the Israeli State maintains its control over borderlands.

In the Northern Negev and the Hebron Foothills, economic networks involve as many Bedouin as Israeli Jews. For in the region all these different actors tend to profit from the opportunities of the border economy. However, Israeli border policies have progressively reoriented the fluxes of Palestinian workers inside Israeli society. During the second Intifada, the importation of Palestinian labour by Israeli Jews dropped significantly while it seems to have remained stable with regards the Bedouin. In other words, Israeli border policies readjusted the role played by Palestinians in the Israeli economy and readjusted interdependencies.

Indeed, Palestinian workers do not play the role they used to play in the Israeli economy before the second Intifada. In 1999, they still had a significant place in the building and the agricultural sector, 27% and 12%, respectively. In 2004, they represented only 8% of the manpower in building and 4% in agriculture. The Israeli economy relies less on “in situ delocalization” (délocalisation en place)[13], i.e. it relies less on the importation of cheap Palestinian labour into Israel to lower the costs of production, and to improve productivity. With the closure policies and the obstacles imposed upon Palestinian workers to working within the Jewish Israeli society, it is as if the authorities had indirectly turned this form of “delocalization” into a “delocalization at the margin”, i.e., to import cheap labour into specific marginal group of its citizens, such as the Bedouin or the Jewish population living in the development towns of the Negev (Sderot, Ofaqim, Yeroham, etc.).

Moreover, we can also speculate on the extent to which the Bedouin economy has become dependent on the import of Palestinian manpower and goods. During the second Intifada, the Bedouin also suffered an economic downturn, exacerbated by cuts in child allowance. Stopping the exchanges by closing the Separation Barrier between the Negev and the Hebron Foothills might be an additional blow to their fragile economy. Without the possibility of hiring cheap Palestinian labour and without the possibility of importing cheap Palestinian building material, the cost of house building would double. This would have a deep impact on local household expenses. Moreover, the high rate of natural growth (5,5% per year) of the Bedouin population creates a strong demand for construction in a context where there is already a lack of residential areas.

Finally, households’ expenses will grow as people would have to purchase daily consumption goods within the more expensive Israeli market, instead of being able to buy in the cheaper Palestinian market. As we have noticed earlier, over the last forty years, Bedouin have been purchasing a large amount of goods inside the Gaza market and later inside West Bank markets. The outbreak of the second Intifada and the tight closures imposed on Dhahriyya limited the access of Bedouin to these markets. However, Dhahriyya and Hebron merchants adjusted to this new reality. They opened new shops in the Bedouin town of Rahat in Israel contributing to the market’s rapid growth. In the last 6 years, this market has become, for the Bedouin, the main market aside of that of Beer Sheva. Merchants from Hebron have bought a significant number of shops in Rahat. The need to register their shops under local names led them to engage in joint ventures with local Bedouin. Inhabitants of Rahat believe that more than 60% of the shops in their town market are actually held by West Bankers.

 The heterogeneity of border entrepreneur networks is also linked to their instrumentalization by the Israeli authorities. Informal collaborations exist between Israeli authorities such as the police, Border Guards and the General Security Services (Shabak) on the one hand, and the smugglers of Palestinian workers on the other. The State agencies often pressure the Bedouin drivers into becoming informants. When they arrest a driver, the authority representatives threaten to confiscate the smuggler’s vehicle, to impose a hefty fine, or even to send him to jail, unless he agrees to collaborate with them, in some cases even to identify suspects or wanted individuals. It is difficult to avoid this indirect form of surveillance. Furthermore, competition between drivers is harsh, and some do not hesitate to denounce new competitors.

The State authorities are also indirectly involved in trafficking in work permits through Palestinian collaborators who nevertheless remain in close contact with their family in the Occupied Territories. Sometimes they use their position and their links with Shabak in to obtain work permits for their family members and their neighbours. By interceding on behalf of their kin they are able to maintain favour with them while acting out their role as informant for the benefit of their Israeli masters.

The tolerance shown towards the new economy of the border provides a double benefit for the Israeli authorities. First, it allows for the constitution of cheap sub-contracting networks of information. Second, the privileges granted to the smugglers and to the clandestine workers allow Shabak and the police to create de facto patron-client relations with a part of the local population. This practice creates a system of controls similar to that identified by Amira Hass (2002, 14-15) between the Israeli authorities and a part of the Palestinian elite during the Oslo period. This system of controls was based on the granting of the VIP card. The VIP cards allocated to members of the Palestinian National Authority and to members of NGOs, would allow the holder to travel almost freely in the whole Israeli Palestinian space. According to the author a person privileged by this system of exception would not take the risk to publicly protest against measures taken by the Israeli Authorities. She or he would fear to lose her/his right of movement, her/his source of wage and eventually her/his social or political capital. In the Hebron Foothills, this system of exception could also be regarded as mean to maintaining certain stability.

In sum, between 2000 and 2006, before the completion of the Fence in the Southern West Bank, Israeli policies of closure have not established a clear cut separation between Israeli and Palestinian spaces. Rather, they have changed the shape and nature of the already instable local borderlands. Indeed, if these policies have reduced the flows of people and goods between the Negev and that living in the Hebron Foothills, they did not stop them. These reduced exchanges have taken new shapes, as people organized new ways of circumventing the Israeli obstacles and controls. During the second Intifada, Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line set up well-organized networks to smuggle people and goods into Israel. They gave rise to a highly organized economy of the border that readjusted the existing social and economic integration between local regions. This economy also led to deep readjustments of power relations between local populations as is demonstrated by the emergence of wild forms of capitalism that directly impact on mutual perceptions between Palestinians. The new economy of border has thus to be understood on three levels: it is a new economy of exchanges, a new economy of power relations and a new economy of perceptions.

This new economy of border reveals a certain blurring of boundaries between the people involved. It is actually structured around extremely heterogeneous networks of border entrepreneurs, where the place and position of the actors is not necessarily defined according to ethnic origin or to citizenship. Sometimes, the identification of the oppressed and the oppressor depends on the perspective of the observer. In some cases of trafficking, even the border between smugglers and the State authority is blurred. To paraphrase Pablo Vila, the metaphor of resistance is not consistent with border situations. He explains (2003, 325): “Most current mainstream border studies [in anthropology]…identify a subject who is clearly and undoubtedly ‘resisting’, and a structure of power that, without contradictions, is always ‘oppressing’. This makes us lose sight of the much more complicated picture of the actual border, where people constantly move from positions of ‘resistance’ to positions of ‘oppression’.”

Moreover, the instrumentalization of smuggling networks by the Israeli authorities further blurs borders. Temporarily, the instrumentalization of smuggling networks by the Israeli authorities might reinforce their control over local borders, yet down the line this instrumentalization could affect the functionality of the whole mechanism of control. Furthermore these heterogeneous networks enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, as has already has been seen in Israel in the past. It is not rare for soldiers to pass information to smugglers, or close their eyes to certain illegal practices. In the mid 1990s, on the border with the Gaza Strip, informal collaboration between Border Guards and local thieves allowed the development of significant trafficking in stolen cars that extended temporarily beyond the control of Israeli State authorities (Moailek 2005). At the end of the 1990s on the Egyptian border, young Bedouin with good connections in both the army and the police were able to exploit the poor coordination between the two agencies to manage a successful drug-running operation.

The completion of the Fence in the southern West Bank and the implementation of effective separation between Palestinian and Israeli spaces and populations will bring new challenges to Israeli authorities. First, the Fence will not merely strike a sharp blow to the Hebron Foothills economy; it will also deeply weaken the neighbouring Bedouin economy, a process that might have later repercussions on the local Negev economy. The completion of the Fence will then create new frustrations among a population already involved with the State in a durable conflict over land. The second challenge to the Israeli authorities, and to a certain extent to the Palestinian National Authority lies in gaining mastery over smuggling networks that have been structured around the economy of border. What if these entrepreneurs find themselves without border to trespass? If they do not find way to circumvent the fence, these entrepreneurs might go in search of alternative illegal sources of incomes inside Israeli and Palestinian spaces. This will not merely increase the rate of criminality in the Negev it will also endanger security and the economic prosperity of neighbouring Israeli and Palestinian areas. All in all, in the Israeli Palestinian context, as it is often the case in many other region in the world (Andreas 2001) the tightening of borders policies tend to open margin for criminal activities and disorder around the borders.

[1] In 1967, Israel has de facto integrated the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza strip under its administrative rule, the local Palestinian population in its economy, but it has refused to incorporate them as citizens (Bornstein 2002). Later in the 1990s, the implementation of the Oslo agreements (1994-2000) defined limits delineating the autonomous zones of administration attributed to the newly created Palestinian National Authority. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada (September 2000), these “borders” have been again challenged by Israel. West Bank Palestinian enclaves have been invaded by the Israeli army during the operation Defensive Shield (spring 2002), and ever since, they have been regularly entered during Israeli incursions and military operation.

[2] The Green Line was the Armistice Line of 1949. It functioned de facto as a border between Israel and the neighbouring Arab countries until 1967.

[3] Eshkolot and Tene, East and South of ad-Dhahriyya; Shim‘a and Otni’el, on the road 60 between Dhahriyya and Sammu‘, and finally, Shani, Karmel, Metzadot Yehuda, Susiya and Ma‘on south and South East of Sammu‘ and Yatta.

[4] Quoted by Farsakh (2006, 140).

[5] http://www.iris.org.il/cartheft.htm, February 6, 2006

[6] In February 2005, the number of earth mounds, checkpoints, trenches and barriers set in the West Bank to monitor the movement of the Palestinian population rose to 600 (Cf. UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, mars 2005)http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/OCHA/OCHABarRprt05_Full.pdf , site read on 16 february 2006

[7] During the second Intifada, the number of work permits dropped from 60,000 in 2000, to less than 10,000 in the third quarter of 2005, cf. UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, OCHA protection of civilians. Weekly briefing notes, Jerusalem : OCHA, 7-13 September 2005 et 30 November-6 December 2005.

[8] Palestinian Media Center http://www.palestine-pmc.com, April 11, 2002.

[9] Such as that close to the Jewish settlement of Shim‘a (route 60), that of Rifa’iyya, North of Yatta on the road 356 (June-August 2004), or that of al-Fawwâr

[10] Between September 2000 and December 2002, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA), the damages caused by the conflict on the Palestinian infrastructures amounted to 1,7 Billion US dollars. Poverty reached almost 47% of the population.

[11] NIS = New Isreali Shekels.

[12] This number refers to the number of individual trips and not workers who enter Israel. It is hard to evaluate how many workers cross the Green Line through this mean as many come back few times per month.

[13] The expression is borrowed to Emmanuel Terray (1999, 15-17)

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