Bypassing

With the collapse of the modernist ideal, private networks providing potentially high-efficiency services for their customers were developed. Fibre optic networks, superhighways, tunnels and bridges, and new energy networks tend to bypass the old networks or be superimposed on top of them, connecting some parts of the territory and ignoring others that are less appetising from a business point of view. For the places and people that are bypassed by the new infrastructure systems, all that remains are the public networks or informal mechanisms.

The bypass exists in all infrastructure networks, but it is most obvious in highway systems. Today, the highway system is redirecting the development of residential settlements and our way of moving around in space. After leaving our fortified garages in our cars, we drive down armoured routes, taking us to protected office areas or shopping centres.

In the 1990s, privatisation radicalised technologies of control, differentiating various groups based on the power they held over the space. This has created a territory that can be crossed at different speeds depending on the person’s income, and national, ethnic, and social belonging. Electronic devices such as sensors and closed-circuit video cameras watch over access points and monitor toll payments.

Surveillance goes hand in hand with exclusion. Only the wealthiest users can bypass the congested public streets and gain access to the privileged road networks. The same roadways that were seen as devices for progress and modernisation in the visions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Corbusier are revealed as instruments of control and segregation.

An investigation of the tangible flows of people, rather than intangible flows of information and finance, must be given priority in order to bring to light regimes of control over movements. It is for this reason that this study has chosen to focus on the functioning of the highway infrastructure, which physically connects and disconnects entire segments of the population and territory. The layout of a street can have the same importance as a border; it can include or exclude, unite or divide, create belonging or estrangement.

This point of view is radically opposed to the perspective that bases its analysis on the rhetoric of a world without borders where nation-states no longer exercise any power. In our view, old and new borders are being reinforced in both contemporary society and space, and nation-state politics appear to be anything but worn out. A look at the regime of control imposed on our everyday movements in space is enough to make this clear.

Asymmetric Permeability of Spaces: The Highway Networks in Palestine-Israel

From bypass roads…

The Israeli colonies in the Occupied Territories are strategic points for controlling the territory. As points of control dispersed across a ‘hostile territory’, the settlements could not function unless they were connected to each other and to Israel through a continuous and uniform infrastructure. The link between colony and infrastructure can be viewed as the binary control code at work in the West Bank.

The combination of these two elements generates what Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper defines as ‘the matrix of control’. If we compare the map of the West Bank territory with the plan of a prison, we note that: a) the prison officers’ guard posts correspond to the colonies situated on the hills; b) the corridors that allow for the cells to be policed correspond to the highway networks that bypass the Palestinian villages; c) the cells where the prisoners are incarcerated correspond to the villages inhabited by the Palestinians. In addition to linking settlements, the highway system blocks development of Palestinian villages, creating borders and barriers between communities that at one time were connected. According to B’Tselem report,

Contrary to the customary purpose of roads, which are a means to connect people with places, the routes of the roads that Israel builds in the West Bank are at times intended to achieve the opposite purpose. Some of the new roads in the West Bank were planned to place a physical barrier to stifle Palestinian urban development. These roads prevent the natural joining of communities and creation of a contiguous Palestinian built-up area in areas in which Israel wants to maintain control, either for military reasons or for settlement purposes.

This strategy of controlling the flows and using the roads as barriers has its roots in the history of the occupation of the West Bank. Immediately after the 1967 war, in addition to the construction of Jewish outposts, a highway system allowing the circulation of military and civilian vehicles was needed to control the occupied territory. According to Benvenisti and Khayat, during the decade of 1967-77, the highway networks were planned primarily along the north-south axis. Since there was no desire for integration with the Israeli highway system, no roads running east-west were planned. Attention was focused particularly on consolidating Highway 90, which runs from north to south along the border with Jordan and is easily reached from Jerusalem via Highway 1. According to the military strategists, in the event of an Arab invasion, this would have allowed military vehicles to easily reach the border and respond to the attack.

During the next decade, with the presentation of the new master plan for the settlements of Judea and Samaria, the geopolitical strategy for constructing the networks changed.

The Settlement Master Plan for 1983-1986...expressly states that one of the primary considerations in choosing the site to establish settlements is to limit construction in Palestinian villages.

The plan envisaged clearing distances between one hundred and thirty and four hundred feet for the construction of new highway routes, well over the lengths area required for the planned traffic speed and density. For major and regional roads, the clearance distance reached up to 2,000 feet. This brought the total of the area occupied by the infrastructure network to 91,923 acres, almost the entire built area of the West Bank (in 1987 the built area covered 106,255 acres).

Given these proportions, it seems clear that the objective of the plan was not to connect Palestinian villages but rather to build a matrix that would cage them in. The decision to dedicate such a large area to the infrastructure was a strategic expedient to physically and bureaucratically curb Palestinian expansion. The clearance distances specified in the plan allowed for the demolition of a significant number of houses. For security reasons, the new Palestinians houses could not be built less than 1.86 miles from highways. This regulation did not apply to Jewish settlements, which were built based on special urban plans.

The new master plan envisaged an integrated network between the colonies and Israel and at the same time introduced regulations designed to restrict almost any growth of the Palestinian villages.

Many objections were raised, although they were ignored, while the approval procedures remained unclear. Although the plan was never formally approved, based on the regulations contained in it, the occupation forces went ahead with the expropriations and demolitions needed for the construction of roads reserved for the exclusive use of Israeli settlements.

The plan included the design of an infrastructure network that connected the West Bank settlements with the metropolitan areas of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Driven by lower rents, state incentives, and the possibility of living far from the most congested areas, many Israeli residents decided to go and live in the new West Bank colonies, which were well-served by a new and efficient highway grid. During the peace process in the 1990s, this logic reached its apex. According to B’Tselem report,

Starting in 1993, with the signing of the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (Oslo I) and the redeployment of Israeli Defence Forces to the West Bank, the bypass road system gained momentum. In 1995, new road construction reached its peak. Israel began the construction of over 62 miles of roads in the West Bank alone, more than 20 percent of all roadwork performed in that year.

The new extensive highway grid provided Israel with spatial control over the West Bank. The bypass road system is designed to link the Israeli colonies, cutting off Palestinian villages, and to effectively incorporate the West Bank into Israel proper. The flows are under direct control of Israeli, which directs them through permanent and temporary checkpoints, barriers and military patrols. For a Palestinian traveller, there is no possibility whatsoever to go from one city to another without passing through one or more checkpoints. The matrix of bypass roads that circle the major Palestinian cities is a formidable straitjacket.

Most of the highways were constructed on land belonging to Palestinians. The expropriations carried out by Israel in the Occupied Territories since 1967 were, and continue to be, an instrument of colonisation and control.

Before the 1990s, expropriations were carried out for ‘military reasons’. Once the geopolitic situation changed, so did the pretexts for the expansion of new settlements and the construction of new roads. During the Oslo peace process, Israel expropriated in the name of the ‘public interest’, claiming that the bypass roads were also useful to Palestinians. During the second Intifada, the expropriations were continued for ‘security reasons’. The line between military and civil law, between standards and exceptions does not exist. From time to time, to produce a formal justification, a space of legislative ambiguity is created.

By observing the transformations of the regimes imposed on the use of roads in the Occupied Territories, the evolution of the strategies aimed at the control and surveillance of undesired population flows becomes clear. Over time, although built in the name of ‘public interest’, the bypass roads that allow Israeli colonies to bypass the Palestinian villages became increasingly exclusive in character, transforming into ‘sterile roads’ – Israel military jargon for roads that have been decontaminated of Palestinians.