Ivana Bevilacqua

This research offers a multi-scalar spatial analysis of infrastructural violence across global, regional, and bodily dimensions in Palestine/Israel. Focusing on the political geographies of the Triangle region, the study explores how settler colonial ambitions for absolute sovereignty intersect with capitalist imperatives for accumulation through infrastructural operations, predating new frontiers, spaces outsides and scales, in order to assert a seemingly irreversible and exclusive presence over Indigenous land. While settler colonial infrastructure is often depicted in the literature as a tool for dispersing, isolating, and erasing Indigenous communities, this research examines how it has also, at times, invited or compelled Palestinians to integrate into colonial systems of circulation. I argue that this dynamic reshapes race and class relations in a way that positions Palestinians as subjects of Israeli capitalism. The study employs a decolonial Indigenous methodology and a mixed-methods analysis in political geography to reimagine how infrastructure can be decolonised. Developed in collaboration with Palestinian organisations, including the Arab Centre for Alternative Planning (ACAP) and the Wadi Ara Popular Committee, it recentres the perspectives and agency of Palestinian communities from which I aim to learn. The proximity with local constituencies ensures the research remains accountable to participants and produces outcomes that are directly relevant to their struggles and demands. In doing so, it offers an opportunity to generate politically urgent insights that prioritise justice, reparations, and self-recognition as prerequisites for long-lasting peace in the region. It first analyses archival records to examine the continuities and ruptures between British colonial and Israeli settler spatial regimes in Palestine. Focusing on forced labour in prison camps for the development of colonial infrastructure, the research demonstrates that racial hierarchies are neither static nor ahistorical; instead, they evolved in response to the geopolitical and ideological shift from empire to settler-colonial state, as well as the political actions of imprisoned communities. Specifically, the study unveils that while most prison labour camps were dismantled after the 1948 Nakba, the incarceration and exploitation of Arab and Palestinian communities continued under Israeli rule, adapting to support the logistical needs of the newly established settler regime. Secondly, through participatory observations at local planning committees, the study investigates neoliberal shifts within the settler-colonial spatial regime. It challenges the idea that extending Israeli infrastructural networks closer to Palestinian communities has the potential to overcome systemic barriers and provide social and spatial mobility in settler-colonial cities. It demonstrates that, far from being a form of “decolonial gentrification” (Schwake & Yacobi 2023) and “urban decolonisation” (Maoz & Karkabi 2024), as often argued in the literature, such initiatives have brought the state and its Zionist apparatuses closer to Palestinian life. These initiatives, promoted under neoliberal agendas for “economic inclusion”, have de facto decentralised control to private actors, delegated policing functions to Palestinian municipalities, and enhanced informality, further dispossessing Palestinian communities through evictions. Finally, through semi-structured interviews with local Palestinian communities and sensorial engagement with infrastructure through walking and driving, the study examines the subversive use of infrastructure by Palestinians, uncovering possibilities for alternative spatial trajectories grounded in everyday land-based relationships. It argues that merging local resistance with radical decolonial practices creates an “infrastructure of dissent” capable of shaping horizons for Indigenous futurities.