Gaza Is Being Closed and the West Bank Is Being Fragmented

 

How does settler-colonialism remake Palestinian space and future?

A Palestinian reading of a recent academic study

Gaza is being closed, and the West Bank is being fragmented. On the surface, it appears we are facing two different paths: war, blockade, destruction and displacement in Gaza, and settlement, land expropriation, checkpoints and movement restrictions in the West Bank.

But a recent study by researchers Nick Heinke and Levon Ter-Ghazaryan, titled “Temporal–spatial folds in Gaza and the West Bank: Palestinian perspectives on the logic of settler-colonialism,” offers a different reading. The study argues that different instruments of control do not imply a different fundamental structure; Gaza and the West Bank form two spaces within a single settler-colonial formation.

The spatial–temporal fold: when control becomes part of everyday life

The study uses the concept "the Spatial–temporal fold", drawn from Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold and reworked through Palestinian literature and decolonization studies.

The fold does not refer only to a geometric form, but to the way geography interweaves with time, politics and daily life. Control over land does not stop at its physical boundaries, but extends to movement, work, housing, education, infrastructure, the economy and the possibilities for the future.

The two researchers propose four interconnected dimensions of this fold: the physical closure of space, the regulation of power and social conflict, the production of knowledge and truth, and the influence of the "outside" in determining spatial and political outcomes.

Thus the past and the future become part of the struggle over the present. Memory, language, family and land preserve a historical Palestinian continuity, while the settler project works to reshape the future through planning and legal and demographic change!

Gaza: a semi-closed fold!

The study describes Gaza as a "semi-closed fold"; according to the researchers’ analysis, Israel’s withdrawal from settlements in 2005 did not produce genuine Palestinian independence, but reorganized control through blockade, remote surveillance, control of entry and exit and of aid and reconstruction, along with repeated rounds of military violence.

After 7 October/October 2023, the closing of this fold increased due to extensive bombing and displacement, the destruction of homes, infrastructure and schools, the disintegration of family and social life, and the growing reliance on aid.

But the more dangerous question is not only about the destruction, but about the future of reconstruction: who decides what is rebuilt? Who finances it? Who sets the conditions for security, borders and reconstruction? And who holds political decision-making authority?

Here the study raises the concept of "Trusteeship-like governance", where Palestinians may manage services while fundamental decisions related to security, borders, financing and the future of governance remain in the hands of external actors!

This is a crucial point: rebuilding Gaza must not be turned into service and population management while sovereignty and political rights remain suspended!

Reconstruction is not only cement, financing and infrastructure; it is also a question of authority, decision-making and the future of the Palestinian people!

The West Bank: a fold penetrable in highly unequal ways!

As for the West Bank, the form of control differs, but it is not separate from the same structure. The researchers describe it as "a fold penetrable in highly unequal ways, but increasingly closing." Settlers and Palestinians live in the same geographic field, but they do not move through it under the same conditions!

Settlers enjoy broader freedom of movement, legal and institutional protection, while Palestinians face a network of checkpoints, restrictions, military laws, land expropriation and settler violence!

The study uses the image of the "curve" to express this reality: one space apparently, but internally organized according to different levels of rights, movement and authority!

Thus settlements, bypass roads, checkpoints, settlement outposts and legal classifications become tools for gradually reshaping the Palestinian field!

Annexation through regulation: changing the map without a comprehensive declaration!

One key concept the study raises is “Annexation-by-regulation.”

The idea is that annexation does not necessarily require a comprehensive legal declaration; it can be achieved gradually through changes in laws, procedures and spatial facts, so that Israeli control becomes more entrenched while the possibility of a contiguous, viable Palestinian space declines.

This means the danger lies not only in seizing new land, but also in the accumulation of measures that seem separate yet reshape the map, rights, movement possibilities and stability.

Gaza and the West Bank: different instruments, unified structure!

The study’s main conclusion is that Gaza and the West Bank are not separate crises: in Gaza, Palestinians are being pressured within a besieged and devastated space, increasingly dependent on external aid. In the West Bank, Palestinians are being distributed into separate parts, while the space available to settlers expands and Palestinian movement is restricted!

These are two different spatial techniques: closure in Gaza, fragmentation and reshaping of the field in the West Bank. But the outcome, according to the researchers’ analysis, is integrated: reorganizing Palestinian space so that control over land, population, resources, movement and the future becomes part of everyday reality!

For this reason, the study warns against treating Gaza and the West Bank as two separate worlds. Geographic fragmentation does not erase the unity of memory, family, identity and political experience.

The struggle is not waged over land alone!

The study moves beyond material geography to another level: the production of knowledge and truth. According to this analysis, settler-colonialism does not only reshape land; it also attempts to determine the narrative that interprets land, history and the future!

From this perspective the researchers criticize narratives that may present closure as peace, annexation as planning, and trusteeship as reconstruction!

In contrast, Palestinian memory, language, family, history and attachment to the land preserve a continuity that challenges attempts to dismantle Palestinian space!

Here time itself becomes a field of struggle: not only what happens today, but who has the power to determine what can happen tomorrow! Control over the future can, in some cases, be deeper than control over the present!

From the fold to the question of the Palestinian future!

The study does not present the fold as an inevitable end, but opens the field to possible paths ranging from extermination, exclusion and continued closure, to reopening!

From this viewpoint, resisting total closure does not mean only opening a crossing or easing a blockade, but requires a political, material and epistemic process simultaneously!

Several directions emerge in this context: re-linking Gaza and the West Bank politically and spatially, rejecting reconstruction that separates services from sovereignty, treating settlement expansion, outposts and checkpoints as instruments of gradual annexation, protecting essential life-sustaining infrastructure without reducing the Palestinian issue to humanitarian management of the crisis, and keeping Palestinian survival tied to sovereignty, reconstruction tied to political rights, and the future tied to the right of self-determination!

Conclusion: who decides the future of Palestine?

Heinke and Ter-Ghazaryan’s study provides an important framework for understanding what is happening in Palestine. Gaza and the West Bank are not separate worlds, but two different folds within a single settler-colonial formation.

Gaza represents the most closed form: blockade, destruction, displacement, dependence on aid, and increasing external control over the terms of reconstruction.

The West Bank represents another form: a space more outwardly open, but increasingly subjected to fragmentation, settlement, checkpoints, violence and legal changes that gradually entrench annexation.

Importantly, as the researchers present it, the study does not treat Palestine as merely an application of a Western theory; rather it argues that Palestinian knowledge and Palestinian experience must be central to understanding the reality!

What appears to be different policies — besieging Gaza and destroying it and externally managing its reconstruction, and settlement and gradual annexation in the West Bank — can be read as differentiated forms of a single process:

Reorganizing Palestinian space so that Palestinian presence becomes more fragmented, its movement more restricted, and its political future more subject to external forces!

Conversely, keeping Gaza and the West Bank within a single Palestinian framework, tying survival to sovereignty, and linking reconstruction to political rights, represents, in the study’s logic, a form of “reopening the fold”!

The struggle is not only against control of the land, but against turning temporary measures into permanent colonial facts!

And the deeper question this study poses is not: How can Gaza or the West Bank be administered separately? Rather: How can the completion of the colonial folding that separates Palestinians spatially, temporally, and politically be prevented, and the way be reopened for a geographic and political unity that preserves Palestinian existence and its right to self-determination?

·         Source: Nik Heink and Levon Ter-Ghazaryan, “Temporal–spatial Foldings in Gaza and the West Bank: Palestinian Perspectives on the Logic of Settler Colonialism”, Territory, Politics, Governance, published online on 28 August 2026. The article is based on the Arabic translated text of the study.