From Biopolitics to Necropolitics: Implications for the Contemporary Israel–Palestine Conflict

Abstract

The conflicts that have persisted for decades between Palestinians and Israelis experienced an escalation of violence during 2023, revealing the ineffectiveness of international institutions responsible for maintaining peace in providing lasting solutions. This scenario fosters the manifestation of biopolitics, in which political control over life reduces the civilian population of Gaza to “bare life,” stripping them of any protection of human rights. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the conceptual evolution from biopolitics to necropolitics and to examine its implications not only as isolated phenomena but as endemic features of the contemporary conflict between Israel and Palestine. To achieve this, a bibliographic review study with a dialectical approach is proposed, aiming to validate theoretical elements (theory testing) through a case study, drawing on the contributions of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille Mbembe to analyze the current conflict and its correlation with the phenomena conceptualized by these authors. The study concludes that there is a clear production of necropolitics, as conceived by Mbembe, in the region, promoted by the Israeli nation-state, which acts directly upon the Palestinian civilian population. This implies the systematic destruction of a people under the supposed protection of the sovereign state, revealing how power is exercised not only to manage life but also to organize death.