Those of us who have been watching Al Jazeera (and maybe stopped because of a level of saturation with very disturbing images) know the visual impact of seeing dead bodies, body bags, wounded, starving and emaciated children, people treading on each other to get to food.
This is Gaza. For 20 months, we have been seeing a genocide unfolding in real time. But to think about what is happening in Gaza as a conflict or a war (as Israel would like us to believe, done in self defence) is to rely on conventional vocabulary to explain what is happening there.
A much better way to think about it is to rely on Achille Mbembe’s concepts of necropolitics and the creation of deathscapes, that he has applied to the occupation of Gaza by Israel.
Mbembe developed the concept of necropolitics (the politics of death), drawing on the work of the French philosopher Michele Foucault’s ideas of biopower about how populations are controlled, not necessarily through violence and coercion, but rather relying on ways to discipline bodies through regulating life in a way that makes it impossible to live a normal life.
This is described as political power which dictates who is allowed to live or who is to die. It brings about the deaths of people through direct action or inaction. Death is a function of biopolitics that involves the power of the sovereign (state) to kill.
But these decisions are deeply embedded in a racist understanding of those who are exposed to biopolitics. People who are viewed as disposable, or less desirable and whose deaths are viewed as less grievable form part of these racist calculations.
Borders also feature large in the determination of who can cross borders and who cannot, and the conditions that are created under which people are allowed to live beyond borders.
For some population groups, there is a state of exception created where the law does not apply to them and where they are forced into bare life (or a mere state of survival). This has been illustrated with migrants in other countries who live as refugees in camps and cannot leave or find a way to live beyond mere survival.
It is the creation of deathworlds that confirm on people a state of living death.
These deathworlds or deathscapes allow for the “walking dead”, where people live under such appalling conditions that they exist in a state between living and dying. Necropolitics therefore refers to the regulation of the body where those in power can take a decision to let some live and others die.
The biopolitics or regulation of bodies that Israel has used against the Palestinians for decades consist of movement restrictions such as checkpoints, roadblocks, curfews, fences, walls and permits.
Palestinians are prevented from travelling outside the West Bank into Israel or between Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians have limited access to basic services, resources and opportunities and are subjected to constant surveillance, humiliation and violence. They live in constant insecurity.
Physical, emotional and psychological terror
The conducting of military operations and raids in Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli soldiers often results in arrests, destruction of properties and casualties. Palestinians are subjected to physical, emotional and psychological terror.
Up to October 2023, there was also the illegal expansion and annexation of lands and the building of Israeli settlements on these lands. It also meant the seizure of natural resources and the devastation of residential areas and buildings.
There is also biopolitical control and governmentality of dead Palestinian bodies. Israeli authorities withhold bodies, do not allow families to view bodies, limit the number of mourners, or do not allow certain funeral rites to be exercised. This is to prevent the celebration of martyrdom.
What this form of regulation through biopower does is to deny the Palestinians fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of movement and association, rights to bodily integrity and dignity.
Biopower also takes on the form of maiming Palestinians. In her controversial book, Right to Maim (2017), Jasbir Puar argues that Palestinians are debilitated in order to control them. Israeli assassins aim at body parts (eg the knees) of Palestinians in order not to kill them, but to let them live with disabilities.
Gaza has the highest statistics in the world of children living with amputated limbs. Unicef estimates it to be between 3,000 and 4,000 children. One way of maiming Palestinians is through shooting people in the eye with rubber-coated metal bullets.
Miriam Deprez (“Visual necropolitics” [2023]) argues that there is deliberate ocular trauma caused by snipers targeting the eyes of Palestinians that is a type of visual violence. It also determines who can see and who can be seen. Those who cannot see cannot return the gaze of the Israeli soldiers who keep the occupation in place. The hills and high grounds around Palestine give the Israeli soldiers a privileged position for surveillance and selecting targets.
According to the Fred Hollows Foundation, a charitable organisation attempting to restore eyesight, blindness and visual impairment are the third most prevalent disability category in Palestine. Eye surgery needs to be done in Israel, which does not want eye hospitals to be erected in Palestine. Many Palestinians cannot get emergency surgery after an eye injury because it can take a long time to get into Israel.
This is what Mbembe calls the war on life support – a war on life-affirming infrastructure. By May 2025, 1,500 Palestinians had been blinded and for 4,000 more, becoming blind was imminent.
Another issue here is the prevention of people bearing witness to atrocities. Being able to see is necessary to bear witness.
But what has become important in order to counter the biopolitical treatment of Palestinians is what is called “telegenic death” – the showing of images of the dead to wider audiences in a way as visual symbols of suffering and solidarity.
These bodies are not abstract – what was dehumanised in life becomes humanised in death. When we see dead bodies, we are able to respond on an emotional level. The body is not only a statistic anymore. This is what Al Jazeera does.
Since October 2023, Israel has moved from a quotidian form of biopolitics to a “for the world to see” biopolitics – of destroying the livelihoods of Palestinians, moving them from north to south and back, destroying life-saving infrastructure of hospitals, killing defenceless people indiscriminately, now starving them and shooting those who go in desperation to collect the little bit of food being dispensed.
After one of the attacks by Iran on Israel, Israeli authorities were outraged by an attack on a hospital and civilians in Israel. This illustrates the thinking about Palestinians as not human, their lives do not need to be saved, their hospitals not spared.
We need to keep watching Al Jazeera if only to give the Palestinians a telegenic death and to bear witness. DM