Book a visit. Mona Shtaya. Introduction: How did we get here? Subjecting Palestinians to such scrutiny from security and military apparatuses narrows their expressive spaces and plunges them into a state of constant anxiety.
This practice also carries out a commercial purpose: Occupied Palestine effectively functions as an open-air laboratory for Israel to test techniques of espionage and surveillance before selling them to repressive regimes around the world. Palestinians are subjected to multiple layers of surveillance, all of which aim to monitor Palestinian voices, restrict freedom of expression, and discourage their autonomy. Surveillance in Palestine bears an uncanny resemblance to the Panopticon , a mechanism of social and psychological control proposed by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century.
At the center of the Panopticon stands a guard in a watchtower. Surrounding the watchman are prison cells, all within his eyeshot, so the prisoners, not knowing whether they are being watched at any given time, are constantly on their best behavior. Surveillance lies at the very heart of occupation. Palestinians are subjected to Israeli authorities' digital monitoring on a daily basis, at checkpoints, during protests and social gatherings, and on social media.
Palestinians are also subjected to what Shoshanna Zuboff has termed surveillance capitalism , whereby social media companies collect user data for profit through increasingly invasive means of data collection and analysis.
In the absence of legislation protecting their right to privacy , Palestinians are particularly vulnerable to such corporate meddling into their lives. Finally, Palestinians regularly experience breaches of their privacy by the Palestinian Authority in its attempt to monitor them and prevent opponents from expressing their opinions. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank living under military occupation have always suffered significant social control and monitoring, often in the form of unannounced raids or searches of their homes and brutal interrogation at border crossings and checkpoints.
