Geopower, <i>Geos</i> and the Colonisation of Palestine

ABSTRACT While the majority of geographical work on colonialism in Palestine centres on territory and land, this article foregrounds geopower and geos in the making of spatial relations. Three arguments are made over three corresponding sections. The first draws on recent writing on geopower and geos (primarily that by Elizabeth Grosz, Elizabeth Povinelli and Kathryn Yusoff) that addresses the idea that political order and subjectivities grow from geological formations and life/non‐life divisions. Following this work, I make an argument with obvious significance for geographers: the geos is a theoretically under‐explored spatial unit that may predicate manifold spatial relations (e.g., the practices and politics that produce ‘land’ or ‘territory’). The second section considers historical accounts of early Zionist and Israeli settlement to show how geopower underpins the conceptualisation of Palestinian space as alternatively life‐sustaining or life‐threatening in ways that predicate the sequester of land and territorial claims. The stakes are not merely historical or theoretical: the third section focuses on three contemporary sites—(i) the war‐affected soils of Gaza, (ii) the cultivation of olive trees in the West Bank (iii) and practices of agri‐resistance in Bethlehem—to explicate how geopower and geos remain central to ongoing colonial control and struggles in Palestine.