Deterritorializing Cyber Security and Warfare in Palestine: Hackers, Sovereignty, and the National Cyberspace as Normative
| Author(s) |
Fabio Cristiano
|
| Contact |
Fabio Cristiano, Lund University, Lund University Box 192, 221 00 Lund, Sweden. E-mail: fabio.cristiano@svet.lu.se |
| Issue |
CyberOrient, Vol. 13, Iss. 1, 2019, pp. 28-42 |
| Published |
December 20, 2019 |
| Type |
Article |
| Abstract |
Cybersecurity strategies operate on the normative assumption that national
cyberspace mirrors a country’s territorial sovereignty. Its protection commonly
entails practices of bordering through infrastructural control and service delivery, as
well as the policing of data circulation and user mobility. In a context characterized
by profound territorial fragmentation, such as the Occupied Palestinian Territory
(OPT),1
equating national cyberspace with national territory proves to be reductive.
This article explores how different cybersecurity strategies – implemented by the
Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas – intersect and produce
a cyberspace characterized by territorial annexation, occupation, and blockade.
Drawing on this analysis, it then employs the conceptual prism of (de-)–(re-)
territorialization to reflect on how these strategies, as well as those of Palestinian
hackers, articulate territoriality beyond the normativity of national cyberspace. |
| Keywords |
Palestine, cybersecurity, national cyberspace, cyber warfare, securitization
|
