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ABSTRACT
Violence, while conceived of and defined as objective, is in reality a subjective phenomenon that takes on myriad forms (political, physical, and psychological). From a constructivist perspective, the identification of violence is contingent on conflicts to signify actions as legitimate; in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the experience of different forms of violence has meant that violence has come to acquire multiple meanings. This violence is legitimate from both Israeli and Palestinian points of view, and it creates and fulfils a cycle that perpetuates intractable conflict. This article aims to demonstrate how strongly this culture of violence has affected the state-formation process in this area, and it calls attention particularly to ongoing statebuilding processes in Palestine. The paper will also explore the intricacies related to violence and border definition in terms of ‘mapping practices’ and territoriality, and examine how, in the wake of the Oslo agreement, the Palestinian statebuilding process is created under the ruling power of the Israeli military force, restraining Palestinian capacity to create state bodies capable of establishing and retaining the monopoly of violence.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributor
Aide Esu is a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Pittsburgh (US), and teaches Sociology at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Cagliari (Italy). In 2004, she directed an interdisciplinary research project including scholars from Israel (Tel Aviv University) and Palestine (Al Quds) on shared memories as a new framework to develop a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. She has been subsequently involved in numerous projects, including Crossing Borders, and has been involved with the Tami Steinmetz Centre for Peace Research, Tel Aviv University and the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. She has given several public lectures in international conferences in the last ten years, including London, Barcelona, Budapest, Jerusalem, Venice, Milan, Gothenburg, and Munich. ([email protected])
Notes
1 Since the first Intifada, a long series of reports on human rights violations produced by B’Tselem, OCHA–UNRWA, Human Rights Watch, Machsom Watch, have dealt with issues such as the living conditions, health and sanitation, house demolitions, water supplies, freedom of mobility, detentions and the collective physical damage (Peleg Citation1995; Hajjar Citation2001; Giamaican et al. 2004; Kelly Citation2006).
2 The first Israeli defence organization was the Hashomer (watchmen), which was founded in 1909 and absorbed in 1920 when the Haganah (defence) was formed. Inspired by Revisionist Zionism and founded by Jabotinsky, the Irgun faction followed a terrorist path (the King David Hotel bombing, the Deir Yassin massacre) together with the Lehi faction. In May 1948, a week after the state declaration, Ben Gurion set up the IDF as a conscription army. The PLO was a political and paramilitary organization created in 1964, which consisted of eight groups committed to army resistance, and it was considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel until the Madrid Conference in 1991. In 1993, the PLO secretly negotiated the Oslo accord with Israel, and in September 1993 Arafat declared the recognition of the right of Israel to exist.
3 In late nineteenth century, Herzl's political manifesto to create a nation in Palestine for the dispersed Jews was considered a utopia.
4 Sari Hanafi (Citation2006) wrote about the concept of spacio-cide as an ideology that targets the destruction of the space through the military–judicial–civil apparatuses by applying the principle of colonization, the principle of separation, and the state of exception.
5 The World Zionist Organization, the aim of which was to create a Jewish state, was recognized by the League of Nations and the British Mandate as the official Jewish public body (Jewish Agency; see Engerman and Metzer Citation2004).
6 Kimmerling observed that after the occupation of the West Bank, the language of religious orthodoxy began to penetrate political discourse; in the public sphere, the term ‘sacred Israel’ (Eretz Israel) and the biblical toponymy of Judea and Samaria were largely accepted.
7 The daily routines were severely affected by the terrorist attacks on public transportation in Jerusalem; taking the bus during this time was considered a high risk practice. House demolition was a practice of retaliation in the West Bank for people suspected of terrorist activity. B’Tselem collected several violations that certified the development of psychological violence, actions like early morning wakeups by the Israeli army, violations of the right to property, equality, a decent standard of living and freedom of movement are considered part of this geography of fear.
8 Cohen (Citation2008, 8) states that ‘between 1983 and 1997 … fully 136 new publications were authored or coauthored by Israeli scholars, 76 per cent first saw the light of day in English-language journals’.
9 In his research, Nachman Ben-Yehuda (Citation1995) deconstructed the narrative of the Masada myth. He shows how the history of the defeat has been transformed into a national patriotic legend through the rewriting of textbooks, the writing of children's books, and the use of various propaganda materials by the media and tourist industry. Every year, recruits climb to the top of the plateau to give the oath ‘Masada will not fall again’.
10 See the detailed reports issued over the past 30 years by B’Tselem, Peace Now, Human Watch Report, and UNRWA on the violation of human rights in the Occupied Territories.
11 As B’Tselem reported, ‘The confiscation of an identity card from a resident of the occupied territories seriously impedes his or her ability to lead a normal life. Every resident of the territories aged 16 years and older is required by military order to carry an identity card at all times. A resident of the occupied territories who does not have an identity card on his or her person is committing a felony, and is liable for imprisonment of up to one year. In the first year and a half of the Intifada identity cards of residents of the territories were routinely confiscated by a number of authorities. Agents of the Civil Administration taxation department frequently confiscated identity cards, conditioning their return upon payment of debts to the tax authorities. Soldiers confiscated identity cards in order to force residents to perform various tasks, sometimes even as a form of punitive action.’ See: http://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files2/update_august_1991.pdf
12 The first two attempts date back to the British period: the constitution of the Palestinian gendarmerie and the Palestinian police, followed by the attempts of Jordan and Egypt to include Palestinians in their police forces. The Israelis tried the same after 1967.