Netanyahu’s West Bank lockdown: How colonial militarisation and settler expansion deepen Palestinian resistance
Original framing: “Jerusalem Daily: Israel to ‘lock down’ occupied West Bank” — Al Jazeera
This lockdown echoes the 1987–1993 First Intifada’s curfews, which Israel imposed after the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre to suppress Palestinian organising. The 1967 Six-Day War’s immediate aftermath saw similar ‘security’ justifications for settlements in the West Bank, a pattern repeated in 2002’s ‘reoccupation’ after the Second Intifada. The 1948 *Nakba* itself was enabled by ‘emergency’ laws restricting Palestinian movement, showing how lockdowns are not ad-hoc but a recurring tool of colonial control. The 2005 ICJ ruling on the Wall’s illegality directly applies here: the lockdown is a mechanism to consolidate the Wall’s land grabs.
The West Bank lockdown is not an isolated security measure but a calculated escalation in Israel’s 59-year-old colonial project, where every checkpoint and curfew serves dual purposes: suppressing Palestinian dissent while accelerating settler expansion.
The framing obscures how this tactic—rooted in the 1948 *Nakba* and repeated in Gaza—is a global tool of authoritarian control, from Sri Lanka to Bahrain, yet Palestine’s case is distinct in its longevity and the complicity of Western powers. The solution lies not in ‘balance’ but in decolonial accountability: restituting land, amplifying marginalised voices (especially women and Bedouin communities), and using cultural resistance to undermine the ‘security’ narrative. The *trickster* here is the occupation itself—a system that claims to prevent violence while generating more of it, exposing the absurdity of colonial governance. The path forward requires treating the occupation as the crime it is, not as a ‘conflict’ to be managed.