Voicing the silence: the naturalisation of violence under the rule occupation

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the relevance of Israeli soldier narrations in which they bear witness to human agency under conflict and adversity to call for the end of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The soldiers, members of the NGO Breaking the Silence, speak up about the occupation, showing the conflicting experiences of military and civilian life in a society that normalises the denial of military human rights violations. By asking Israeli society to listen to their stories, the soldiers’ accounts show how the historic military power in the Occupied Palestine Territories (OPT) has evolved into a naturalisation of violence that generates a radical configuration of intractability, which has transformed the perception and meaning of violence. By framing the soldiers’ accounts in the space fragmentation and securitisation practices, the article argues how the asymmetrical use of force is exerted to manage and control the lives of the Palestinian population. The speech act addresses the ethics of doing something to make a difference in the conflict and the wish to renew social bonds, redefine pride and shame and return a sense of honour, loyalty and self-respect.

KEYWORDS:

• Testimony
• violence naturalisation
• everyday life
• performativity
• asymmetric use of force

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Following the ethnographic protocol of qualitative data, the transcribed materials were processed and analysed using a coding process (Charmaz & Thornberg, 2014; Saldana, 2016) with the support of the NVivo software. The coding subjects were related to everyday life, control, mobility regulations, agricultural land access, family separation, settler interactions, soldiers’ conflicting selves and force overuse. Due to the limited space of the paper, only a limited portion of this material is quoted in the following pages.

2 From the 1990s Peace Now has challenged Israeli society by offering tours in the West Bank to unveil the reality of occupation. Different groups have called attention to this practice of framing discursive, visual and embodied experience by highlighting specific topics, such as house demolition (ICHD), checkpoints (Machsom Watch), urban planning-barriers and encirclement policies in the city of Jerusalem (Ir-Amim), land rights (Friends of Susya) and more.

3 B’Tselem, Human Watch Report, Unrwa, Adalah, have for the past 50 years collected and cross-checked documentation attesting to human rights violations.

4 https://www.btselem.org/topic/routine_founded_on_violence (last accessed 29 January 2020).

5 The film Smile, and the World Will Smile Back, a documentary by the al-Haddad family of Hebron, made in collaboration with Ehab Tarabieh (volunteer photographer in the B’Tselem camera project) and filmmaker Yoav Gross, was screened at the short film competition at the Berlinale International Film Festival in 2014.

6 According to Peace Now Settlement Watch, in the OPT there are 132 settlements and 121 outposts, settlements that were established since the 1990’s without government approval and are considered illegal according to Israeli law; they estimate that of the more than 600,000 settlers, more than 200,000 of them are living in Jerusalem. The Central Bureau of Statistics measured the growth rate of settler population as two times higher than the overall population (4.1% versus 2%). Last accessed 29 January 2020, http://peacenow.org.il/en/category/settlements.

7 Hebron was excluded from the Oslo Agreement. A separate 1997 Interim Agreement states that the city is divided into two parts: the H1 area under Palestinian control and the H2 area under Israeli control. Settled in the H2 area are about 800 ultra-Orthodox Jews, 35,000 Palestinians and about 2000 IDF soldiers to protect the settlers and securitise the area through a large surveillance apparatus. Palestinian residents live under the ruling law enforcement of the Israeli army and the Palestinian Police Force for civil law. Settlers come under the law of Israeli Police. This ruling law governance is one of the sources of escalating violence, as minor facts easily evolve into more complex cases.

8 After the 1967 war a group of veterans were recorded testifying about their reactions to the Six-Day War, later compiled in a book and documentary film entitled, ‘The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk About The Six Day War’. They spoke about their regrets and moral misgivings about the war. Negative public opinion arose against the book and the soldiers, portraying soldiers’ testimony as a pattern of weak masculinity, soon labelled ‘shooting and crying’. The anti-war protest during the first Lebanon War created an environment for a second soldiers’ response, this time called ‘Soldiers Against Silence’. It cast new criticism of war casualties, paving the way to the ‘90 to the Four Mothers movement to campaign for withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon. The essence of those testimonies was politically different from BtS accounts.

9 Zohar Shapira (Special Forces), (BtS, 2016, video testimony, last access July 2017, currently unvailable).

10 The murder violated the sacred Islamic area during the Friday prayers, killing 29 Muslim worshippers and wounding another 125.

11 Seventeen Israeli Security Forces, five Israeli civilians, and 88 Palestinian civilians, including nine minors, were killed in the second Intifada (Feuerstein, 2007).

12 All testimonies collected in the ethnography are reported, as per qualitative research protocols, with nicknames.

13 The area was progressively depopulated in 1967. The number of Palestinians living there at the time was 7500, which decreased to 6000 in 1970, to 1620 in 1985 and to 1501 in 1990 (B’Tselem, 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aide Esu

Aide Esu is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Cagliari (Italy) where she directs the Political Science School. She was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Pittsburgh (PA). Her research focuses on the intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine, including an ethnographic study of the Israeli military’s public discourse on security and grassroots groups. Currently, she conducts researches on the process of militarisation and anti-military movements. She is a board member of the European Association of Israeli Studies.