Higher Education Under Siege: Attacking Spaces of Hope in Palestine

Abstract

This paper examines attacks on higher education in Palestine through the lens of siege warfare. Focusing on attacks directed against Kadoorie campus in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, it argues that the combination of military, infrastructural, industrial and administrative tactics which have been used to isolate and enclose the campus; raid, injure, maim and kill people and animals; destroy property and key physical defences; degrade natural resources vital to its survival; disrupt university life and educational routines; and erode the physical and mental capacities of its students and staff over time, are not only illustrative of siege warfare but of ongoing and continuous attacks on Palestinian futures in the present. In so doing, this paper seeks to advance cross-disciplinary conversations on the spatial-temporal dynamics of modern siege warfare, and to draw more direct attention to the strategic confluence that exists between settler colonial violence and siege warfare in practice.