Coronavirus Surveillance and Palestinians
Author: 
Elia T. Zureik
David Lyon
Digital Section: 
Essays
Special Feature: 
Who Owns Palestine? (Part 2)
Keyword: 
surveillance
coronavirus
Covid-19
public health
biopolitics
settler colonialism
Israel
Palestine
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Abstract: 

Public health initiatives directed towards the mitigation of COVID-19 vary tremendously from country to country, depending on social-historical and political-economic factors. In the case of Israel/Palestine, already existing health disparities are reproduced more starkly in COVID-19 conditions. However, Israel’s colonial project in Palestine also appears in sharp relief, seen most clearly in the controversial involvement of the Israeli Security Authority (Shin Bet) in mass surveillance, digital contact tracing, and related high-tech policing of quarantine orders.

Author biography: 

Elia Zureik is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. He is the author of Israel's Colonial Project in Palestine: Brutal Pursuit (Routledge, 2016), co-editor with David Lyon of Computers, Surveillance, and Privacy (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), and co-editor with David Lyon and Yasmeen Abu-Laban of Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory, Power (Taylor & Francis, 2010; Routledge, 2011).

David Lyon is former director of the Surveillance Studies Center and Professor Emeritus of Sociology and of Law at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. His newest book is Pandemic Surveillance (Polity Press, 2022).