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