This talk attempts to contend with the architects and architectures of genocide in Gaza through three ‘corridor stories’ that have become part of our public purview: ‘the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors’, the ‘Gaza maritime humanitarian corridor’ and the ‘India-Middle-East Corridor’. Individually and collectively, they describe a particular fantasy of securitisation, spatial control and financial speculation that orchestrate the possibility of forever-war. They are also a window into the multiple, layered violences it takes to contain life and rupture lifeworlds, clustered in and generated through an array of infrastructural projects operating to recast and legitimise Israel’s imagined (non)future for Gaza. To tell these stories of making and unmaking, I unravel the different ways that corridor geographies work across multiple intimate and global scales: as snake-like infrastructural lines, constituting a dense ensemble of physical, symbolic and virtual chains of actors, materials and relations meant to secure the circulation of goods, people and finance against potential (unthinkable) disruption. Breaking these down into their component parts reveals multiple truths about both Israel’s death-dealings and the global investments required to sustain them, obfuscate them, normalise them. And so, this talk also brings to light the affective and material power of the corridor, the Israeli state and its allies, with the aim towards their disruption, as a hoped-for contribution to the incredible work of students, workers, artists, educators and so many others, encouraging divestment from Israel’s genocidal project.
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