Concrete and Code: Field Notes from the West Bank, 2023
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The concrete wall meets "the invisible border wall" (Akhmetova, 2026). The West Bank separation barrier in Bethlehem stands at 9 meters and stretches 708 kilometers. Banksy's The Walled Off Hotel stands four meters from where this image was taken. An Australian artist, Lushsux, painted this large mural portrait of Mark Zuckerberg and the quote attributed to him reads: "the more of your data I gather, the more I understand what it means to be human." Zuckerberg's face on the concrete wall is almost an ironic collapse of the distinction between the maximally visible concrete barrier and the invisible, distributed, ambient technology that outfits the wall and the ground with motion sensors, thermal imaging cameras, unmanned ground radars.
The barrier is outfitted with advanced tracking, physical, and cyber technologies, including AI tracking software (Red Wolf, Blue Wolf, Mabat 2000, seismic sensors, and cellular and signals interception). Red Wolf is an experimental AI system installed at checkpoints that scans faces, cross-references biometric profiles against a server called Wolf Pack, and automatically flags individuals for passage or denial. Once the data is collected, the migrant is not encountered as a person but rendered legible through data points as their data is 'understood' through their digital trails and social media activity. In my doctoral thesis I developed the invisible border wall concept where I outlined how successive systems of control are built over one another, each partially obscuring the last, but none fully replacing the previous ones. Yet, unlike the physical barrier, the invisible border wall resists being honest about what it is and how it operates, which data it collects, how it processes it, and what conclusions it has come up about you as your cross a border.
The invisible border wall is more than technology and data gathering; it is also border externalistion. The border is here, in the middle of a street, materialised in the body of a soldier who is seen checking papers in Hebron's H2 zone. Here Israeli military heavily restricts Palestinian movement to protect localized settler enclaves. Here the border is maximally visible, performed in public, in daylight, in front of tourists. Here the border is mobile yet the logic is identical to pre-sorting, rendering people legible, passage or denial based on identity data. As I walked through these streets, they were strikingly, unnaturally empty. Palestinian vehicular movement is prohibited here. The absence of people is the border control.
I was a tourist, and so where these people being asked for IDs. The Palestinians among them were not allowed to move forward. The question left behind is who is more honest - the soldier on the street or the Red Wolf algorithm? Where as the soldier represents sovereign state power over space and identity - visible display of control, the invisible border wall, the algorithm deliberately refuses this display.
Visually chaotic and almost brutalist in its honesty. Nothing is hidden. The cables are exposed, the mounts are improvised, the generations of hardware overlap. This set of cameras and loudspeakers is likely a specialised part of the Israeli police’s Mabat 2000 surveillance grid to surveil the Old City of Jerusalem which is one of the most politically, religiously, and socially sensitive square kilometers on Earth. Old City of Jerusalem has major holy sites for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. It is also a frequent flashpoint for protests and political clashes. These cameras likely cross-reference faces in real-time against state databases. The system is also likely equipped to track objects and detect "anomalies" by using behavioral prediction algorithms.
Some of these cameras may also be equipped to log and track letters and numbers on vehicle license plates. Amnesty International and other human rights organisations have noted that the surveillance density in the Old City is so high that there are often one to two cameras every five meters.
This image was taken at the village of Susya, a Palestinian village located in the southern Hebron Hills of the West Bank. The village sits next to an Israeli archaeological site and the Israeli settlement of Susya, thus making it a contested point for land access and displacement. The border here is not a wall, a camera, or a soldier checking papers. Border control is embedded in planning law and building codes as another form of the invisible border wall - the border is administrative and it is being outsourced beyond the hard lines of the West Bank/Israel barrier. The administrative border control actively moves the Palestinian population in this area off this land.
The community I visited had to construct makeshift homes and shipping container structures in secret and overnight because the permit system, demolition orders, the legal mechanism that makes permanent construction challenging. Military Order 1797 allows Israeli forces to demolish any structure in Area C within 96 hours of a notice they deem to be unauthorised. Not far in the distance on the ridges that oversee the valley, I saw border patrol and military outposts stationed. Given the vastness of this area, surveillance is likely done with spotters and drones. Palestinian villages are not allowed to connect to the national water or electricity networks. To have water, residents have to haul it in via mobile tanks, which can cost five times what nearby Israeli residents pay. The village relies on independent livestock networks and small, donor-funded solar panel arrays. Herding animals (sheep and goats) remain their primary economic anchor and means of survival. The child in the foreground is sitting in the dirt next to a rusted trailer, looking out over a landscape where, on the ridge in the distance, the lights and structures of the Israeli settlement of Susya are visible. The same sightline, two different relationships to water, electricity, and the right to build.
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