Driving in Palestine

"Driving in Palestine presents a visual account of the author's movement on the segregated roads in occupied Palestine. It also includes poetic and critical essays by Palestinian, Canadian, and Lebanese scholars and artists. Captured in motion, from the windows of moving vehicles, between 2010 and 2020, the photographs in the book expose hindrances to freedom of movement and surveillance apparatuses imposed on the Palestinian people by the Israeli settler colonial regime. The book reveals manifestations of Israel's systems of military occupation, colonization and Apartheid as related to restricting Palestinians freedom of movement. Some of the obstacles Palestinians face, which the book discloses, include segregated roads, watch towers, checkpoints, Jewish-only colonies and roads, Apartheid wall, surveillance cameras and balloons. The appalling effect of these structures includes crippling of the Palestinians daily activities, rapturing their social connectivity, and multiplying their suffering. The bookinvites readers to imagine themselves moving alongside an illegal Jewish-only colony atop a Palestinian mountain, glance at an Israeli soldier pointing their weapons from a watchtower, cross a military checkpoint where teenage soldiers hold machine guns,or contemplate surveillance at the sight of cameras and air balloon."--
During the past seven decades, Palestine has been sealed from the Arab world and shattered into fragmented and coded areas: 1948 area, 1967 area, Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza, and A, B and C areas within the West Bank. Each area is ruled by different laws, including different roads and permits that control the mobility of Palestinians and privilege Jewish settlers.Driving in Palestine is a research-creation project by acclaimed artist Rehab Nazzal, who explores the visible indices of the politics of mobility that she encountered firsthand while traversing the occupied West Bank between 2010 and 2020. This photography book consists of 160 black and white photographs, hand-drawn maps and critical essays in Arabic and English by Palestinian and Canadian scholars and artists.The photographs were all captured from moving vehicles on the roads of the West Bank. They focus on Israel’s architecture of movement restrictions and surveillance structures that proliferate in the West Bank, including the Apartheid Wall, segregation walls surrounding illegal colonies, gates, fences, watchtowers, roadblocks and military checkpoints among other obstacles to freedom of movement.
This research-creation project by artist Rehab Nazzal documents the politics of surveillance and mobility in contemporary Palestine through photos, hand-drawn maps and critical essays in English and Arabic.