From Invisible Spectators to the Spectacle of Terror: Chronicles of a Contested Citizenship

Chapter 2 examines the radical invisibility of Palestinians within the Israeli visual field by looking closer at the absurdist terrain of being rendered invisible in one’s own home(land). The chapter probes the twofold position of the circulating image of the Palestinian marked by both invisibility (absence, un-image-ability), and hypervisibility (a visual archetype conflated with the “spectacle of terror”) by analyzing two films by the acclaimed Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. The chapter’s reading of Suleiman’s films further highlights the different mechanisms involved in rendering invisible Palestinian citizens of Israel on the one hand, and in concealing Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories on the other.