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Short abstract:

The Basel System is an Israeli biometric system that surveils Palestinians from the Occupied Territories who work in Israel. This talk traces Basel’s history from its origins in the Oslo Accords to its implementation as a technology of occupation, and examines its legacy in Palestine/Israel today.

Long abstract:

While the Oslo Accords’ negotiations unfolded throughout the 1990s, tens of thousands of Palestinians traveled daily from the Occupied Territories to work in Israel. In the negotiations, Israel agreed to maintain their future employment and enable their mobility between the Accords’ anticipated neighboring Israeli and Palestinian states. The solution for this, designated in one of the Oslo process’ protocols, was a biometric permit and border crossing infrastructure. Later named the “Basel System,” this infrastructure’s development was already underway when negotiations collapsed and the Second Intifada began in the early 2000s. After that, Basel transformed into a technology of Israeli military occupation as it became integral to checkpoints and permit systems in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In the absence of available archives, this paper traces Basel’s history and current implementations through oral history interviews with engineers who designed the system, reports on checkpoints documented by the human rights organization MachsomWatch and interviews with its members, ethnographic observation at six West Bank checkpoints, and interviews with Palestinian workers who are surveilled by the Basel System. By bringing together STS and related scholarship on surveillance in Palestine/Israel, I show that biometrics operated as a tool of separation that underwrote both Oslo’s two-state ambitions, and Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian Territories. Basel also exemplifies how early-2000s Israeli security politics increasingly intertwined with technological surveillance of Palestinian mobility. The presentation concludes by discussing Basel’s consequences for life under occupation, its influence on subsequent Israeli biometric systems, and its broader legacy in surveillance in Palestine/Israel today.