Challenges in the Field

There were multiple methodological challenges in my fieldwork ingrained in places where forces of violence and borders are at the root of whatever grows on the landscape. One of the main challenges I faced was access to spaces proximate to military sites. The separation Wall or the checkpoints are military structures and are constantly patrolled by Israeli border forces. Anyone who approaches the Wall from either side can become a target for military harassment, arrest or, in rare occasions, shooting. The reality of military occupation in the West Bank consists of Israeli military presence and Israeli checkpoints, in addition to military land confiscations, which were later developed into Jewish

settlements. Being a Palestinian citizen of Israel with an Israeli identification card enabled me to pass through military checkpoints inside the West Bank, in between Israeli

controlled areas, and out of them. Despite the ability to go in and out of areas that are listed under the Palestinian Authority, there is an Israeli military order advising Israeli citizens (specifically Israeli-Jewish ID holders) not to enter Palestinian Authority areas. Signs written only in Hebrew were placed near most checkpoints indicating that it is dangerous for Israelis to enter the Palestinian Authority controlled areas, and that such crossings would constitute a criminal act (image 8).

Image 8: Qalandia Checkpoint, between Ramallah and Jerusalem. Sign reads: “This road leads to area A that is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Entrance of Israelis to area A is prohibited, it is a life risk and it is considered a criminal act.” Photograph by the author. June 2012.

Although I have never been interrogated at length at these checkpoints, the risk of being stopped, searched, and interrogated was always there; I hold an Israeli citizenship card and could be charged for violating military orders. Occasionally, these checkpoints would be closed or would witness clashes between Palestinian youth and the checkpoint military troops. Often, such clashes lead to Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas or to closing checkpoint passages. Given the traffic and crowdedness of the cars and the Palestinian crossings, almost everyone at the checkpoint would be inhaling the tear gas. And,

accordingly. In some cases, the army would shoot rubber bullets at the direction of the youth, who would throw stones at the soldier in return. At other times, due to such clashes, the checkpoint would be closed for a few hours. I was caught multiple times in these clashes; there was nothing to do except to stay still in the car, hoping to leave the checkpoint area as soon as possible.

I conducted my research during ordinary and violent times. There was a rhythm to violence and the flow of it. In her article, “Getting by the Occupation: How Violence Became Normal during the Second Palestinian Intifada”, Lori Allen (2008) addresses the ethnographic encounters she had while living in Palestine. Her article explored spatial and social practices of Palestinian adaptation to violence. The Palestinians’ capacity to ‘getting used to’ the occupation, she argued, is a form of agency many Palestinians develop in order get around their lives within such violence and unpredictable reality. Everyday life in Palestine under the Israeli occupation is partly a result of collective-production (2008:456). “Tawwudna” and “ady” (457), Arabic for “we got used to this” or “it is normal”, are vocabularies that form a way to get by violent reality, while it is also a form of resistance to the occupation in maintaining an attachment in order for ordinary life to flow, despite material and political obstacles. Not only are spaces occupied, Allen continues, but ‘time’ preoccupies a large part of Palestinian reality and everyday conversation (2008:459). We also learn from her article that death is ‘lived’ through the everyday; it becomes familiar. Visualizing martyrs in public spaces, hence, is an act, she argues, to bring the dead back to life into the streets (464); these posters also normalize, in turn, the constant appearance of

the dead. Although my Palestinian interlocutors expressed a form of speech that addressed their capacity to “get by” the occupation, in no way do they accept this present situation. I sensed a lot of disappointments, fear, and anxiety from the Palestinian interviewees, and some degree of desperation, particularly expressed by Israelis I interviewed. Since the present was embedded with unpredictable political eruptions, most of my Palestinian interlocutors stressed the absurd reality that the military occupation had inflicted on them. They took active measures in visualizing how violence and borders are in no way ordinary.

In conclusion, doing this research required me to turn inward: to be reflexive about my life history, memory, and feelings. Conducting research in politically contested

locations where violence at times appears as an ordinary element of daily life, and, at others, as an eruption of the ordinary, requires great sensitivity to the surroundings. In addition, doing research in the visual field entails mindful engagement with the senses and with subjects’ articulation of what they see and how they see it. Therefore, while

conducting participant observation or analysis of the discourses portrayed in mainstream visual culture was necessary, it was an insufficient methodological tool. Conducting in- depth interviews with twenty-five informants was my central method in mapping out how national discourses of separation and borders are articulated through the subjects’

experiences in such suspended political reality. Additionally, through these interviews, I was able to map out the subjects’ articulation of their perception of the landscape and their attempts at rendering it both textually, through narratives about it, and visually, through the production of photographic work.

In a context of military occupation, as an anthropologist, I was confronted with my own discomfort at exploring my occupier’s ways of seeing. In such encounters, I was aware of the cautious proximity that the history of separation between Israelis and

Palestinians has imprinted on me. As a result, much was left unspoken and speculative in my conversations with Jewish Israeli informants. However, through participating in the Israeli political life or by attending lectures and events in Jewish Israeli circles, I was able to hear opinions and conversations that I could not hear through my one-on-one interviews. In other words, much of what was left unspoken and speculative in my interviews was articulated through interactions outside an interview setting, as well as through the

discourses presented in the media—visuals ingrained on the landscape, or through borders drawn physically and discursively on the land and amongst its dwellers.

Chapter Three: Landscapes of Borders