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Visiting Scholar at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies

Badarin used his Seminar address to explain how Israeli measures to suppress the intifada in fact restricted the Palestinians to ever smaller areas of land.

Emile Badarin, a Visiting Scholar at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, presented the Center's weekly research seminar on September 25, 2014. Badarin used his Seminar to explain a recent paper of his, "Settler colonialist management of entrances to the native urban spaces in Palestine," published online in the Journal of Settler Colonial Studies (September, 2014).  Badarin's work focused on the second Palestinian Intifada (which began in the year 2000).

Audience Engagement

Badarin used his intervention to illustrate how the Israeli authorities deployed well established "settler colonial" tactics to dominate Palestinian urban spaces and territories, focusing primarily on the means used by the Israeli occupying powers to control entrance to and exit from urban spaces. Beyond merely suppressing the acts of civil disobedience of the Intifada, the methods which the Israeli military uses to control access to Palestinian urban spaces were also used to increasingly restrict the areas available for Palestinian use. The most prominent example of this approach, said Badarin, was the construction of the "Separation Wall" (which began in 2005), as well as the checkpoints which, today, many Palestinians take for granted. Finally, Badarin presented the audience members with photographs which showed examples of the installations—such as checkpoints and metal detectors—which the Israelis used to deeper entrench their dominance.

The audience members in attendance at the Seminar contributed to the lively debate which followed, with many pointing out the role played by US technology firms in supplying the cameras and other equipment which the Israelis used in their daily oppression of the Palestinians.