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
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/j.cyo2.20191301.0002