In October 2021, authors and scholars Ivar Ekeland and Sara Roy contributed a significant essay on Gaza to the Markaz Review, entitled “The New Politics of Exclusion: Gaza as Prologue.” In their essay, Roy and Ekeland present the argument that Gaza epitomizes the evolving politics of exclusion and control prevalent in modern society. They assert that the crises and conditions in Gaza, characterized by isolation, marginalization, and ongoing crises, mirror wider global tendencies towards fragmentation and exclusionary politics. According to Roy and Ekeland, exclusionary politics represent a strategy by which the powerful seek to sideline certain groups or populations, depriving them of political rights, representation, and the opportunity to contest their conditions in political arenas.
Features of Gaza’s State of Exception
The Gaza Strip exemplifies the consequences for a place and its population under the grip of exclusionary politics, especially when enforced by a powerful regime such as Israel’s. Roy and Ekeland highlight the exceptional treatment of Gaza’s population as a key feature of its state of exclusion. Since the Oslo Agreement, Palestinian communities have been increasingly fragmented and isolated from each other and the world, a situation that has intensified in Gaza.
Another aspect of Gaza’s state of exception is the continuous suspension and manipulation by Israel of rules, norms, and rights, which has resulted in the denial of political, economic, and civil rights to Palestinians in Gaza, effectively rendering them rightless indefinitely. This dynamic has forced Palestinians to rely on humanitarian aid and assistance. Yet, Roy and Ekeland note that even humanitarian assistance is manipulated by Israel to perpetuate its control and maintain the status quo. While the aid is ostensibly provided to meet basic needs, Israel also employs it as a means to prolong suffering, thus utilizing it as a tool of political oppression.
The political erasure of two million Palestinians, rendering them rightless and invisible, stands as a stark feature of Gaza’s state of exception. By isolating Palestinians in Gaza, imposing various sanctions on them, and subjecting them to continuous violence, Palestinians in Gaza have increasingly become excluded, not only from Palestinian politics and institutions but also from the global community.
Within this framework of exclusion, where a population is rendered rightless, invisible, and subjected to permanent misery and isolation, the normalization of such practices, coupled with international inaction and indifference, allow a regime like Israel’s to exploit the state of exception in Gaza to test weapons, surveillance technologies, and political strategies of isolation and marginalization. In a world increasingly characterized by polarization and fragmentation, Gaza has emerged as a universal model for exclusion. Roy and Ekeland argue that the situation in Gaza could have far-reaching implications, serving as a blueprint for the normalized erosion of rights in 21st-century society.
From a State of Exception to Genocide
Palestinians in Gaza and beyond have recognized that Israel’s actions in Gaza are indicative of a broader agenda, not confined to the Gaza Strip alone. With the rise of Israel’s most right-wing government, the genocidal intentions of its leaders have become increasingly apparent, as they openly discuss the need for a second Nakba at worst, or at best, confining Palestinian communities in the West Bank to fenced-off towns and cities, or Bantustans, where Palestinians are expected to live indefinitely without political rights or prospects.
Indeed, the denial of Palestinian political rights is rooted in the racist assumptions and beliefs of Zionist ideology. This ideology contends that Palestinians are undeserving of political rights, independence, self-determination, or statehood. This ideology’s practical implementation is evident in Gaza’s more than 17-year blockade, the ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel, and the imminent threat of an all-out assault on Palestinian communities in the West Bank by Israel’s army and settlers as Israel veers towards complete fascism.
For decades, many in the West have portrayed the situation in Palestine as a conflict, a narrative that suggests a symmetry between two equal parties. However, this narrative obscures the stark and overwhelming asymmetry between Israel, supported by the world’s superpowers, and the Palestinians, who possess minimal means to defend themselves against Zionist violence and aggression. This narrative has also played a role in obfuscating the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
In the face of normalizing Gaza’s state of exception, and against the backdrop of consigning Gaza – and other Palestinian communities – to a perpetual hell of subjugation and oppression, sanitized by Israel’s manipulation, falsehoods, and continual efforts to trivialize Palestinian suffering, Gaza has stood up to reject the indefinite normalization of such a reality. For two million people to be consigned to a limbo of institutionalized marginalization and exclusion is untenable.
What lessons did Israel and its allies learn from Gaza’s uprising? They responded with increased violence, more killings, and greater destruction. For them, the notion that their blueprint for eternally subjecting people to blockade, isolation, and recurrent violence, while stripping them of their rights, could fail was inconceivable. Therefore, they shifted from their implicit and subtle tactics of control and violence to explicit, large-scale annihilation of life and its manifestations in Gaza – a conflagration that, if unchecked, is likely to spread to other parts of Palestine and potentially the wider region.
