Open AccessDeterritorializing Cyber Security and Warfare in Palestine: Hackers, Sovereignty, and the National Cyberspace as Normative
Author(s) -
Cristiano Fabio
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
cyberorient
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1804-3194
DOI - 10.1002/j.cyo2.20191301.0002
Subject(s) - cyberspace , sovereignty , national strategy to secure cyberspace , political science , national security , hacker , cyberwarfare , normative , annexation , law , government (linguistics) , computer security , sociology , public administration , terrorism , politics , the internet , linguistics , philosophy , homeland security , world wide web , computer science
Cyber security 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 cyber security 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.