Israeli trip. From Kiriat Arba to Kedumim: 60 miles. Total time: 1 hour 5 minutes.
January 14, 2003. From the colony of Kiriat Arba, with a yellow-plated Israeli taxi, we start off on Bypass Road 60. We pass through the first checkpoint we come to without stopping. We note that some of the sections of the road we’re on are the same ones we traveled along in the Palestinian bus. There are no cars with white Palestinian license plates. We pass through the checkpoint before arriving at the entry to Jerusalem. We bypass Bethlehem through a tunnel and a viaduct. In some points, the road is protected from stone-throwing by barriers. The bypass road literally climbs across the Palestinian village of Beit Jalla, passing over it like a bridge. We drive through the traffic for Jerusalem, continuing northwards. At the checkpoint, we are stopped for a control. After a few questions, we are allowed to continue. We proceed to the colony of Kedumin, where our journey finishes.

Israeli route: By-pass road A60 North. Palestinian route: Changing taxi at
Qalandia checkpoint.

Israeli route: By-pass road A60 North Palestinian route: Crossing the countryside to avoid
near the colony. checkpoint.

The regime of prohibitions instituted ‘for security reasons’ effectively restricts the freedom of movement of three and a half million people on the basis of their national belonging.

Similar sorts of practices have also been put into effect inside Israeli territory. The Trans-Israel Highway, a 220-mile toll highway built in the most densely populated area of Israel, has become the main axis of the matrix of control.

The Trans-Israel Highway

Highway 6, the Trans-Israel Highway, was officially completed in January 2004. It extends from the border with Lebanon, in the north, to the city of Be’er Sheva in the south. The roads that traverse Israel and the West Bank from east to west all intersect with it. By observing Palestine-Israel from the point of view of its infrastructure network, its space – seemingly separated by walls and borders – is seen to be completely unified. The islands of the colonial archipelago in the Occupied Territories are joined together and connected with Israel through an efficient and continuous highway system. The highway runs parallel to the wall for a long section, showing that the space of flows and apparatuses of exclusion are complementary. The wall acts as a membrane that allows some flows to pass while blocking others; together with Highway 6, it forms a single system capable of including and excluding, connecting and disconnecting. This logic does not apply solely to the West Bank: it also invades the territory of Israel.

The government’s long-standing and explicit policies of “Judaizing” the Galilee...to ensure a Jewish majority here, and preventing territorial contiguity between cities, towns and villages will be furthered by the highway’s construction... The Trans-Israel Highway will require massive expropriations from Palestinian communities in Israel, while limiting their natural expansion through highway and Jewish settlement construction that primarily serves the Jewish population. Eighty-five percent of the land to be confiscated for the road’s construction is from Arab landowners in a state where only 3% of the land is Arab and remains unconfiscated.

The highway was constructed by a private company that obtained special status through a law voted into existence by the knesset in 1995 that allows it to confiscate land. Public interest is thus contracted out directly to a private company. The legal status of these companies is ambiguous. Public and private functions are mentioned depending on the contexts the companies are involved in.

The highway is equipped with a ‘free flow’ toll system which eliminates the need for the driver to stop at the booth. When the vehicle enters the highway, it is scanned and photographed by an optic surveillance system. The vehicle owner’s data is collected by the private company through direct access to the Ministry of Transportation databases. The owner receives the bill for the amount owed directly at his or her home. Failure to pay can result in the owner’s driving license being withdrawn, and, in more serious cases, the private highway police can confiscate the vehicle.

Epilogue: The Diffusion of the Model

Practices for control and surveillance of the flows that we have analysed so far are not specific to the Palestinian Occupied Territories. They appear in other geographical contexts – from Australia to East Asia to North America – and they take form in various ways: in the functioning of the toll-road bypass freeways in the large urban agglomerations of Los Angeles, Toronto, and Melbourne; in the use of highways as ‘sanitary cordons’ used to divide new settlements for the emerging classes from the informal settlements of Istanbul, Jakarta and Manila; in the use of pedestrian bypasses in office centre complexes.

Alongside the privatisation that has taken place in many sectors during recent years, the system of private toll highways, ensuring more efficient and speedy travel, has quickly taken on a rapidly growing role.

In many cities, private highways have been superimposed directly on top of the old congested public transport network. The Riverside SR 91 Freeway in Los Angeles, Highway 407 in Toronto, and the CityLink Project in Melbourne are highway routes built as networks for bypassing crowded public streets.

New major roadways in Istanbul, Jakarta and Manila are used as genuine sanitary cordons that divide residential neighborhoods from the slums. This new generation of highways is used to bypass urban areas that are considered unsafe, and to restrict the growth of undesirable populations.

The new toll systems that are built into the highway routes function as devices for control, for cataloging and for automatic surveillance. Today, high technology has enabled control and surveillance to reach levels of invasiveness and pervasiveness that are unprecedented.

SR 91 Freeway, Road 407 and Transurban CityLink are the names of the new bypass road networks built in three major cities: Los Angeles, Toronto and Melbourne. They are toll highways built to bypass the overcrowded public roadways that use electronic control systems for entry and exit points so that drivers are freed from having to stop at the toll booth. Some have toll fares that vary depending on the time of travel and the traffic flow. The construction companies that built them offer reserved spaces for paying customers who want to get across the city quickly.