Spatial–temporal folds in Gaza and the West Bank: Palestinian perspectives on settler-colonial logics

Current trusteeship-style proposals for Gaza and accelerated annexation-by-regulation in the West Bank demand an integrated analysis of Palestine. Drawing on Palestinian settler-colonial scholarship and 44 interviews, this article develops the spatial–temporal ‘fold’ as a decolonial geographical heuristic for reading Gaza and the West Bank together. It argues that Gaza’s near-total enclosure and the West Bank’s internally fragmented, asymmetrically permeable space are differentiated folds of a single Israeli settler-colonial formation. Each reorganises mobility, infrastructure, knowledge and political possibility while preserving the structural aim of eliminating Palestinian self-determination and presence. The article advances a grounded Palestinian-centred analytic of enclosure, survival and hope.