Thorough Surveillance: The Genesis of Israeli Policies of Population Management, Surveillance, and Political Control towards the Palestinian Minority

Abstract

Ahmad Sa'di. Thorough Surveillance: The Genesis of Israeli Policies of Population Management, Surveillance, and Political Control towards the Palestinian Minority Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. 224 pages. Hardcover £70.00Reviewed by Magid ShihadeAhmad Sa'di's work has been central in theorizing the relationship between the Israeli state and its Palestinian citizens-those who remained within the boundary of the newly created state in 1948 through war, dispossession, and expulsion of the majority of the native Palestinian population. Those who remained (about 160,000 or 15 percent of the total Palestinian population) were granted citizenship by the Israeli settler-colonial state over time, yet only nominally. They were and remain outsiders to the Zionist settler-colonial project that purports to represent all Jews both who live in and outside of Israel. In fact, their presence on the land runs counter to Zionist plans and slogans well before 1948; land without a people for a people without a land, or in other words terra nullius, a pattem similar to other settlercolonial proj ects that imagine and advance their plans based on the idea of an empty land. And when it is not, which is always the case, it must be emptied from its native population because their very presence is proof against the myth of the settler-colonialists. If it cannot be completely emptied, which is also always the case, then other policies must be designed to control those who remain and empty them from their national and cultural memory, so that they feel strangers in their own land.In his book, Sa'di documents a well-thought-out and planned policy of the state toward the native Palestinians, which he calls policies of population management, surveillance, and political control. This argument, based on unpublished archival material of Zionist and Israeli leaders and experts, is counter to strongly held academic approaches by Israeli scholars (from right, center, and left) that Israel had no explicit policy toward its native Palestinian minority (it became a minority through expulsion of the majority) (pp. 1-5, 7).In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the book consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 documents the discussion among Zionist and Israeli leaders and their Arabists-experts on affairs-on what to do with those native Arabs who remain within the Israeli state. The conclusion was that until opportunity or circumstances permit to transfer them outside the boundaries of the state (an idea which continues to stay alive in a state that has no declared borders), different tools should be used to manage this Arab problem (p. 2). In chapter 2, Sa'di details the development of the policies that aimed at population management, surveillance, and political control. Chapter 3 details the legal framework that was used by the Israeli state to give the veneer of a legalistic state, by enacting Emergency Regulations or imposing a Military Regime over the territories where these Palestinians were concentrated.Chapters 4 through 6 examine specific aspects of the policies that have been implemented. Chapter 4 discusses the policy of category/identity making; the making of a unified Jewish identity, a hegemonic one, and the unmaking of Palestinian identity through the ethnicizing of religion and ways of life and the manufacturing of new ones and the emphasis on agitating conflicts among and within each. …