This paper examines the gendered effects of the ‘separation barrier’ in occupied Palestine in the context of Israeli settler colonialism. From 4am every morning, thousands of Palestinian men spend up to two hours waiting to pass through Israeli checkpoints to work in Israel in pursuit of higher wages. Drawing on a series of interviews with women whose husbands undertake the daily commute through Checkpoint 300 near Bethlehem, we analyse the impact of the gendered restrictions and consequences of the border technology on their everyday family lives. We examine three aspects in particular; first, the temporal effects that keep men away from the home and the family; second, the negative psychological impact of the checkpoint on couple and family relations; and third, the effect on the sexual division of labour in the home in the absence of the husband. We conclude that the disciplinary effects of the checkpoint extend beyond the physicality of the checkpoint, governing relations, affects and power relations in the intimate space of the home.

Mark Griffiths is Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at Northumbria University, UK. He is a geographer with a focus on the embodied aspects of the occupation of Palestine and the ethics of geographical research. His work has been published in Antipode, Political Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Gender, Place & Culture and Area.

Jemima Repo, Newcastle University, jemima.repo@newcastle.ac.uk

Jemima Repo is Lecturer in the Politics of Gender at Newcastle University, UK. She specialises in feminist political theory and biopolitics. Her work has been published in journals such as Economy & Society, Politics & Gender, European Journal of Women’s Studies, and Feminist Theory. Her book, The Biopolitics of Gender, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015.

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