By Rod Such: This slim book, only 152 pages long, contains volumes. Although it focuses on a single aspect of the Israeli occupation – the use of permits to control the Palestinian population – Israeli author Yael Berda manages to illuminate the occupation as a whole.
The focus of Living Emergency is even narrower than the “permit regime” implied in the subtitle, as it examines work permits specifically and, in particular, the use of the security threat designation to deny work permits to Palestinians.
Berda is an attorney who represented hundreds of Palestinian clients between 2005 and 2007 from her Jerusalem office. Those experiences form the basis of this study of Israel’s “population management” strategies that have also been described by other authors as Israel’s “social engineering” or “matrix of control.”
The focus of Living Emergency is even narrower than the “permit regime” implied in the subtitle, as it examines work permits specifically and, in particular, the use of the security threat designation to deny work permits to Palestinians.
Living Emergency: Israel’s Permit Regime in the Occupied West Bank by Yael Berda, Stanford University Press (2017)
Living Emergency conveys a Kafkaesque world imposed on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who may one day find that a steady construction job in Israel simply evaporates, a work permit denied and a livelihood destroyed by classified rules and secret evidence. Many face a Catch-22, knowing that refusing to become an informer in exchange for a work permit can be considered resistance to the occupation and therefore a security threat in itself.Berda is an attorney who represented hundreds of Palestinian clients between 2005 and 2007 from her Jerusalem office. Those experiences form the basis of this study of Israel’s “population management” strategies that have also been described by other authors as Israel’s “social engineering” or “matrix of control.”