Entrapped transnationalism: West Bank and Israeli Palestinians between closeness and distance

Abstract

Studies of transnationalism typically frame it in opposition to the entrapping effects of borders. Yet, for many people, transnationalism is negotiated in contexts marked by forced separation and differential mobility. Drawing on long-term fieldwork among West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, this article explores transnational ties and orientations in relation, not in opposition, to the entrapping effects of borders. Specifically, I examine the two-way traffic in emotions and perceptions that marks family, social and symbolic relationships between West Bank and Israeli Palestinians. I show how entrapping and transnational processes combine to generate a tense interplay between closeness and distance, solidarity and estrangement. The paper calls attention to complex transnational formations among people prone to entrapment such as detained and deported migrants, refugees and minorities divided by rigid borders, and it suggests that a focus on emotions and perceptions is critical if we are to understand such formations.

Keywords:

• Transnationalism
• entrapment
• regimes of differential mobility
• emotions and perceptions
• Palestinians
• Israel and the West Bank

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Ethnic and Racial Studies editors and reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions. I would also like to thank Jesse Nissim, Giovanni Picker and Gretchen Purser for their helpful comments on a previous draft of this article. Most of all, I am deeply grateful to all the Palestinian women and men in the West Bank and in Israel who made my research possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the US National Science Foundation [grant number 0826614], as well as the following institutions at UC Berkeley: the Department of Sociology, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, the Center for the Study of Law & Society, and the Institute for International Studies.

Notes

1. I lived and conducted research in Jerusalem (1998–2000), the West Bank (spring 2002, summers 2003, 2004, 2005, and eight months in 2007–2008), the Gaza Strip (summer 2002), and the Israeli city of Lod (six months in 2007–2008). In the period from 1998 to 2008 I also repeatedly traveled across the Green line, the ‘border’ between Israel and the West Bank and visited several other Arab localities on both sides of the Green Line.

2. While this article focuses on the relationships between West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, the ‘entrapped transnationalism’ approach here developed is also relevant for other segments of Palestinians, for example those living in the Gaza Strip.

3. A parallel process of separation affected Gaza Palestinians, whose number more than doubled due to the mass influx of Palestinian refugees in 1948, who were under Egyptian rule from 1948 to 1967.

4. In 2012 the Israeli High Court upheld the prohibition on permanent residency for West Bank and Gaza spouses of Israeli citizens. In addition to splitting or relocating their families, these spouses are left with the option of applying for temporary permits which neither grant them access to health services nor allow them to work.

5. The number of families affected is not clear. The Israeli Minister of Interior has reported that in the 1990s it processed 22,414 family unification applications and approved 16,007 without specifying the number of residence permits that it actually issued (Conte 2005, 34).

6. I follow here Heyman (2013, 304) who suggests conceptualizing ‘legalization and illegalization as processes (in particular as social–political projects), rather than as states of being’.

7. All names are pseudonyms.

8. In the early 1990s, the Israeli state replaced West Bank and Gaza Palestinian workers with foreign workers.

9. Rasha has a sister and a brother who, like her, have moved to Lod as a result of marriage.

10. By claiming that Basima is his sister, Sami's goal is to signal to the soldiers Basima's status as Israeli citizen; while by playing the ‘religious card’ he hopes that the soldiers will be satisfied with his mediation.

11. The history of Lod is marked by the displacement of its Palestinian residents in 1948. Until 1948, Lod was an Arab town called Lydda. After the mass expulsion in 1948, only 1,050 Palestinians were left. The recomposition of the Palestinian population in the city has taken place since the 1970s due to internal migration. In 2008, about 16,800 Palestinians lived in Lod (25% of the town's total population).

12. Urban planning in Lod follows an ‘ethnocratic’ logic, discriminating against the Palestinian residents of the city (Yacobi 2009).

Additional information

SILVIA PASQUETTI is a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.

ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ. Email: [email protected]