Description
This article addresses how the forced abandonment by state institutions leads to the dispossession of racialised and indigenous communities from their land. I investigate with how a lack of policing relates to increased and concentrated criminal activity in racialised zones. The ‘localisation’ of crime then provokes increased state intervention and surveillance, advances arguments for disorderly and irresponsible activity on part of racialised and indigenous communities, and provokes uneven criminal/economic relations with white/ settler/ imperialist zones.
I explore these issues through the case study of the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the forced abandonment of Palestinian zones and communities. The PCP face a range of orders from the Israeli military occupation and apartheid regime, which control and limit their access to Palestinian communities. Parts of the West Bank and specifically East Jerusalem are becoming areas of increased criminal activity and further exploitation. While this paper addresses the impacts of a ‘lack of state services’ on the viability of local communities, it places these concerns in an anti-colonial and transnational framework, addressing tensions within statist responses to local grievances. Drawing on ethnographic research with the PCP this intervention explores how localised criminalisation and race relate to dispossession.
