Constructing Impossibility: Israeli State Discourses about Palestinian Child Labour

Abstract

This paper analyses discussions of the Israeli Parliament's Committee on the Rights of the Child about Palestinian children who make their way from the occupied Palestinian territories to traffic junctions in Israel, where they earn money in various ways. Using theories by Derrida and Latour, I claim that the children compel the state to rhetorically display humanitarian care, while overlooking its commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child so to avoid aiding them in practice. Placing these children in a bureaucratic lacuna, Israel denies its duty to offer hospitality to all children.