Radical Indeterminancies: Affirmations and Subversions of the Separation Wall—The Case of the Palestinian Children of the Junction

The Children of the Junction are Palestinians, mostly males ranging in age from 3 to 16 years, that slip in-between, below or over the various road blocks and walls that separate Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories. They are trying to make their way from their family’s homes in the territories to major traffic junctions in Israel. At the junctions, they attempt to provide for their families by cleaning windshields, begging for money, or selling various goods. In this paper, I discuss this phenomenon by analyzing two sets of Israeli representations of it: two short documentary films, and two transcripts from parliament sub-committee meetings about them. Following Reece Jones (2012. Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India and Israel. London: Zed Books), I consider how the main function of the spatial constructs of separation between Israeli and Palestinian territories is to establish the separation epistemologically and politically. By acknowledging the failures of Israel’s means of physical and geo-political separation as well as the children’s counter-performances that signify these, I display how these children at certain points subvert and at other points affirm these performances of separation.