Save (us from) the children: trauma, Palestinian childhood, and the production of governable subjects

Abstract

Since the Second Intifada, trauma relief has served as the primary justification for a range of international humanitarian aid projects targeting Palestinian children and youth. Such humanitarian aid projects presume that the default response to violence is trauma, and that trauma left untreated will lead to aggression and violence. Thus, implicit in trauma relief projects targeting Palestinian children is the threat that if they are not properly treated their pent up emotional energy will release itself violently in the future. Moreover, the focus on personal healing through individual self-expression in trauma relief projects serves to depoliticize the context in which violence occurs, transforming the occupation into a set of symptoms to be treated. Likewise, the focus on individual trauma forecloses other possible responses to violence, including empowerment and resistance. Drawing on participant observer research with youth-oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Palestine, as well as with Palestinian children in a West Bank refugee camp, this research seeks to better understand the role of international NGOs in producing particular forms of childhood political subjectivity, and how children themselves variously perform and transform such discursive constructions of Palestinian childhood.

Keywords:

• humanitarian aid
• trauma
• risk
• resilience
• resistance
• Palestine

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the young people of Balata Refugee Camp with whom this research was conducted, as well as the participating youth centers who made this research possible. Thanks also go to Hakim Sabbah, Abdelkarim Zawawi, and Jeremy Wildeman of Project Hope for facilitating this research as well as to Davey Davis for his technical advice and assistance with the photography. I am also grateful to the support provided to me at the later stages of writing and disseminating this research by Lynn Staeheli and the European Research Council as part of an Advanced Grant entitled: ‘Youth Citizenship in Divided Societies: Between Cosmopolitanism, Nation, and Civil Society’ (ERC 295392). Finally, thanks to Anna Secor, Karen Wells, Peter Kraftl, and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable insights. Any shortcomings are of course my own.

Funding

Research for this paper was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Palestinian American Research Center, and the American Council of Learned Societies/Mellon Foundation.

Notes

1. These findings confirm similar research conducted in other areas that have experienced violent conflict. For example, research in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the Bosnian War has shown that children exposed to conditions of war saw increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression (see for example, Rosner, Powell, and Butollo 2003; Smith et al. 2002).

2. All research activities and focus groups were conducted in Arabic. I am conversational in Arabic and was able to conduct focus group interviews and child-led tours in the local dialect, although I also relied upon the help of a local research assistant who would help with translation and clarification as needed.

3. Rather than confining our discussion solely to the themes of violence, trauma, and suffering, our focus group discussions explored issues the children themselves were interested in and the questions they thought I should be asking, within the overall heading of everyday life in Balata Camp. Themes of violence, resistance, psychological trauma, and resiliency were repeatedly raised in these focus groups, but were by no means the only topics discussed (Marshall 2013).