destroy its Palestinian towns. 94 Transportation networks would prove critical to this. 95 2.2. Segregating, Fragmenting and Isolating Palestine in Order to Create Israel With transportation infrastructure having played a critical role in laying the foundations for the creation of Israel, Zionist-Israeli leaders then deployed transportation networks to consolidate their new regime. At the same time, they used transportation to both physically and symbolically fragment and subjugate the Palestinian people. IsraeliJewish transportation networks and roads were usually built and established on higher ground, while Palestinian roads and networks (if actually built or developed) were lower or underground (such as through tunnels). This created not only geographic superiority but also symbolic superiority; Israeli-Jewish roads and networks were superior physically, geographically and metaphorically. Eventually, the geographic fragmentation paved the way for geopolitical and legal fragmentation through the creation of distinct terminology based on a fragmented and separated geo-political reality (namely Arab-Israelis, West Bankers, Jerusalemites and Gazans), which impeded on the continuity of the Palestinian common identity. As stated by Salamanca, “[I]nfrastructures are a crucial material and symbolic means through which the settler community is territorialized while simultaneously indigenous outsiders are de-territorialized.” 96 At a deeper level, Israeli policies differentiated Palestinians of differing geographical areas, with their own distinct legal regimes, creating distinct problems and obstacles, and in total isolation from other Palestinians and their respective experiences of Israeli oppression. 94 Nabih Bashir, “The Judaization of the Galilee: A Long-Lasting Strategy Faced by a Bulwark of Palestinian Tenacity,” Palestinian Journeys, webpage, available at: https://www.paljourneys.org/en/timeline/ highlight/14507/judaization-galilee [accessed 28 February 2020]. 95 In July 1937, the British Peel Commission, charged with investigating the events of the Palestinian revolt, proposed a plan to partition Palestine into two states––one Arab, the other Jewish––in addition to a region that would remain under the direct control of the Mandate. The plan placed most of the district of Galilee (with its five sub districts: Acre, Nazareth, Safad, Tiberias, and Baysan) within the Jewish state. Also, the Zionist leadership made the occupation of the entire Galilee one of the goals of “Plan Dalet” which it launched in April 1948. See Ibid. See also Plan D (3)(c) & (d), in “Plan Daleth (Plan D),” MidEast Web Historical Document, webpage, available at: http://www.mideastweb. org/pland.htm [accessed 28 February 2020]. 96 Salamanca, supra 59. 32

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