From forced displacement to forced immobility: the Israeli mobility regime to the post-disengagement Gaza Strip

The article investigates the effects of the mobility regime imposed by Israel after the disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, when Israel withdrew all its Jewish settlements from the region. Although the Israeli State claims to have no further responsibility for Gaza under international occupation law, its remote-control policies reveal the continuation of colonial domination by other means. In this scenario, we argue that Gaza emerges both as a space of expulsion, where Palestinians must move and remain, and as a deathscape, since the effects of the policy of (im)mobility of people generate fatal effects. In a historical perspective, the article argues that Gaza experienced two contrasting phenomena: a moment of forced displacement, when 200,000 Palestinians took refuge in the region during the creation of the State of Israel, in 1948, and a moment of forced immobility, caused by restrictions on the movement of people and products, occurring since 2005. Although contrasting, both phenomena can be understood through the Zionist settler colonialism framework, which, since its foundation, has sought to deal with the "Arab" problem: the demographic threat to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.