Insights into the Checkpoints between Israel and Palestine: An Analysis of Google and Twitter/X Reviews

Borders constitute a timely topic all over the world. While globalization has generally fostered movement, we see that freedom of movement has recently been impeded and excludes certain parts of the population. Thus, they constitute a sphere of discrimination. In a recent survey conducted, borders were named as the number one location where the Palestinian population experiences discrimination. Given the importance of the topic, this project proposes to study borders from a different angle by employing state-of-the-art mixed methods. Google reviews of checkpoints as well as Twitter/X posts across the West Bank are analyzed in a quantitative and qualitative fashion. The newly created datasets contain 848 google reviews and 806 Twitter/X posts. While google reviews have decreased since the 7^th of October 2023, Twitter/X posts have increased. Automated sentiment analyses reveal that most google reviews are neutral, whereas Twitter/X posts tend to be more negative. In both datasets, Qalandia – a checkpoint located outside of Ramallah – stands out with significantly more negative reviews. The themes that emerge from a preliminary qualitative analysis primarily center around dehumanization, apartheid, safety, anger and irony. As the reviews point out the arbitrary nature of checkpoint screenings, the paper links findings back to Foucault‘s understanding of disciplinary power and Tilly‘s idea of queues and opportunity hoarding as mechanism of inequality.