« It all depends on Ben Gourion! » Contrôles des mobilités étrangères vers les Territoires Palestiniens Occupés à l’aéroport de Tel Aviv-Jaffa

• Main Author: Clio Chaveneau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Reims Champagne-Ardennes 2016-01-01
• Series: L'Espace Politique
• Subjects: mobility rights; privileges; mobility restriction; Occupied Palestinian Territories; discriminatory control; border experience
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/3601

Numerous studies have tackled the social and symbolic dynamics at work on the external and internal borders of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). My focus here is on a group of actors that has generally been overlooked: the "internationals" living in the OPT. Hundreds of them regularly have to go through Israeli control to access the OPT. Most of them travel through Ben Gourion Airport (Lod-Tel Aviv). I argue that this passage is a foundational experience, shaping their perspective on migration. At Ben Gourion, they are submitted to profiling by Israeli airport agents, searched, interrogated and even denied entry, following changing Israeli policies. This paper is based on an ethnography of airport crossing, testimonies and interviews of foreigners, How do these usually privileged actors live through this imposed border crossing experience? I will show that the border matters to them as a first-ever experience of impeded mobility. For some groups of them, with closer links with Palestinians, this is compounded with an experience of heightened suspicion and discrimination.