Acts of Solidarity: Crossing and Reiterating Israeli–Palestinian Frontiers

Abstract

In academic and public discourse on the Zionist–Palestinian conflict, there still prevails a ‘methodological nationalism’ based on a separatist imagination overshadowing the existence and role of Israeli–Palestinian forms of communality and solidarity. This article analyses micro‐political practices that cross existing frontiers, both within Israel and between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. Through recent conceptualizations of ‘acts’, I read these ethnographic episodes in their intentional and performative dimension. What is the role of these ‘acts’? What are their effects, both on participants and the wider public? Through two interconnected cases, different functions of acts are explored. The first case relates to encounters between Israelis and Palestinians in the embattled city of Hebron in the occupied Palestinian territories; the second investigates moments during a Gandhi‐inspired peace march at the ‘internal’ frontier of the Israeli Negev desert. The ethnographic perspective reveals what lies behind and beneath the acts, going beyond the conflict's obvious structures of power. Acts function primarily as a valve of catharsis for the participants themselves, both overcoming and reproducing hegemonic discursive elements of the conflict. Paradoxically, acts of solidarity are often crucial in shaping public knowledge about the conflict in more sectarian terms.

Providing counter-narratives: the positive role of hostels in the Israeli-Palestinian context

“…We are therefore left with a situation whereby a global consensus has emerged that Israelis and Palestinians do not cooperate, that Palestine is dangerous, and that open discussion is impossible due to the sheer emotion of the situation in the region. It is at this impasse that we must seek out those supressed narratives in the region which run counter to these dominant narratives, those examples of crosscutting relations that Koensler (2016) highlights and which scholars such as Ram et al (2017) or Hammami and Laven (2017) make evident in their very authorship. Our study aimed to discover if tourism can play in a role in promoting such alternative narratives.…”

“…Therefore, the predominant narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian context in tourism studies stresses tourists as partisan actors in contested space (Ram, Isaac, Shamir, & Burns, 2017). This is not to suggest that tourism scholars desire a proliferation of violence or conflict, but that the dominant narrative is one that normalises a dichotomous view of space and propagates an 'us vs them' or 'status quo' mentality, which does not encourage an awareness of the ambiguous borders that define the Israeli-Palestinian context (Koensler, 2016;Ram et al, 2017).…”

“…For the staff, it was felt that working with Israelis could get them labelled as traitors by other Palestinians, and for the guests, their decision to cross into Area A and Ramallah put them at risk of lengthy interrogation at Israeli airports when they flew home, something many guests told us was a concern of theirs. Despite these challenges, Area D, in both its name and the partnerships it seeks out, represents a rare challenge to the narrative of a zero sum game, proving Koensler's (2016) theory that the boundaries of the Israeli-Palestinian context are more blurred than often thought.…”

“…To do this, we have taken the example of a hostel in the Palestinian city of Ramallah to see how it attempts to challenge this ruinous status quo by promoting alternative, positive narratives of the deeply contested Israeli-Palestinian space, and also to assess whether the tourism space of the hostel assists it in this mission. In doing so, we hope to underline the role tourism can play in highlighting cross-border relations and cross-cultural understanding which are often overlooked within the greater dichotomous vision of Israeli-Palestinian relations (Koensler, 2016).…”

Historicising geographies of solidarity

“…Rather than focusing narrowly on the goal of solidarity, this wider historical lens allows us to understand the complex impact it can have on individuals and wider political cultures (Featherstone, , p. 33). As Koensler (, p. 349) notes in the context of relationships in Palestine–Israel, “beyond the impact on the participants themselves, acts of solidarity can also stimulate change in broader political discourse, opening new opportunities for activism.” Ross's (, ) work on the Paris Commune and May '68 is particularly interesting here in tracing the afterlives of these iconic events in shaping transnational political imaginaries. Among the exiles spreading the ideas of the Commune were Reclus and Kropotkin, figures who are central in recent work on the historical geographies of anarchism.…”