Crime and Policing in a Settler-Colonial Context: The Case of Palestinians in Israel

Abstract

This article explores how the Israeli politicians and police shape anxieties about crime in a settler-colonial context. I consider three components of this context (control, inequality, and separation) and look specifically at the role of Israeli laws and police, as settler colonial agents, in shaping crime and its control within Palestinian areas. This article assumes that Israeli perception of threat do not depend on public order and security factors. Consequently, the Israeli state aims in controlling Palestinians is to mitigate a perceived national threat by imposing several methods of policing. The article argues that politicians, as settler-colonial ideologists, construct the law as an instrument that is used to criminalize Palestinians by linking them with violence and crime, and emphasizes that police statistics are a social event, which is constructed as a direct result of settler colonialism.     

Key words: Palestinians, settler colonialism, crime, policing, modes of control