Limits of Dissent, Perils of Activism: Spaces of Resistance and the New Security Logic

On 26 December 2003 an Israeli activist was shot by the Israeli Army whilehe was participating in a demonstration organized by Anarchists Against the Wall (AAtW)in the West Bank. This was the first time Israeli Soldiers have deliberately shot live bulletsat a Jewish-Israeli activist. This paper is an attempt to understand the set of conditions, theenveloping frameworks, and the new discourses that have made this event, and similarshootings that soon followed, possible. Situating the actions of AAtW within a muchwider context of securitization—of identities, movements, and bodies—we examinestrategies of resistance which are deployed in highly securitized public spaces. We claim thatan unexpected matrix of identity in which abnormality is configured as security threat renderthe bodies of activists especially precarious. The paper thus provides an account of the newrationales of security technologies and tactics which increasingly govern public spaces