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(Un)veiled bodies of resistance
How women in the Occupied West Bank village of Budrus oscillate
organised and everyday resistance practices against the Israeli
occupation since the ending of the Second Intifada in 2005
Laurie Treffers
5489407
Utrecht University
August 3, 2018
A Thesis submitted to
the Board of Examiners
in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of
Master of Arts in Conflict Studies & Human Rights
2
Photograph on cover page by author.
Copyright 2018.
3
Dr. Jolle Demmers
3 August, 2018
Research project and thesis writing (30 ECT)
Word count: 26,067
4
Abstract
This thesis contributes to bridging the theoretical gap between practices of organised and everyday
resistance by analysing the case study of resistance practices among women in the Occupied West
Bank village of Budrus. Previous research has failed to systematically link more organised forms of
resistance to acts of everyday resistance. Taking an individualist, interpretivist approach with a focus
on practices and narratives, this thesis answers the following research question: How are practices of
everyday resistance oscillating with organised resistance practices of Palestinian women in the West
Bank village of Budrus since the ending of the Second Intifada in 2005? Based on fieldwork
observations and in-depth interviews, ten core forms of resistance are identified: the weekly Friday
protests, responses to ‘alarm calls’ and Facebook activism (as organised resistance) and Friday
morning ‘picnics’, farming the land and the annual olive harvest, checkpoints and the refusal of
immobility, motherhood, education and narratives and creating counter safe spaces (as everyday
resistance). By systematically analysing these resistance practices through the four dimensions of
repertoires, relationships, spatialisation and temporalisation, this research explains how these forms of
resistance synthesise in social life. This thesis argues that a distinction between organised and
everyday resistance does not, however, sufficiently allow us to understand how women oscillate
between different resistance practices. The concepts of ‘veiled bodies of resistance’ and ‘overt bodies
of resistance’ are hence introduced. Urgency in the form of a direct threat to the land or another
villager are required for women to move between these two roles and to negotiate this role shift with
the men in their community. By critically reviewing existing notions of resistance through a gendered
lens, this research adds a more feminist perspective on female agency in conflict and resistance.
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Acknowledgements
My deepest gratitude goes to my two translators, fixers and friends, Iltizam and Ibtihal. It has been my
honour to work with two strong young women like you and I cannot wait to see what life has in store
for you. Or rather, what you have in store for life. On the hard days during writing this thesis, I
thought of your ambition and strength and it got me through.
I am incredibly thankful to the Awad family for taking me into their home for two and a half months
so that I could conduct this research. I came in a complete stranger and left as a daughter and sister of
a second family. I will remember this experience and hold my second home dearly for the rest of my
life. Thank you in particular to Anas for introducing me to your beautiful family.
Thank you to Majd Beltaji and Alison Ramer for creating my safe haven in Ramallah. Your dedication
as two women owning the fields they are working in continues to inspire me.
Thank you to my supervisor Dr. Jolle Demmers for making me grow - not only as a researcher but
also as a human being. I am grateful for all the time you spent being really excited about my research.
Thank you to my family for always supporting my insane plans. How lucky can a person be? Also,
sorry for all the money I have cost you, mom and dad.
Thank you to Oscar, for giving me the courage to pursue my dreams in more ways than you know.
You have been my backbone.
Thank you to my fellow MA Conflict Studies and Human Rights students. It was my pleasure learning
with and from you. A special thanks to the group of young women I have had the immense pleasure of
surrounding myself with. All the tears, laughs, glasses of sauvignon blanc and angry rants we have
shared must have made us friends for life.
And last but not least, I am in great debt of all the women who took the time to tell me their life
stories, who trusted me with their hopes, dreams and fears. I can only hope I have done your story
justice.
6
Map of the Occupied Palestinian
Territories
Map in The Gaza Strip & West Bank: A map folio (1994) by the Central Intelligence Agency. Budrus
is marked on the map in red by the author.
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Index
Abstract 4!
Acknowledgements 5!
Map of the Occupied Palestinian Territories 6!
Index 7!
Introduction 9!
Academic and empirical context 9!
Academic significance and objectives 11!
Methodology 12!
Theory and concepts 12!
Puzzle statement and sub questions 14!
Research design 14!
Data collection techniques 15!
Ethical considerations: anonymity 16!
Challenges and limitations 17!
Chapter outline 18!
Chapter 1. Literature review and analytic framework 20!
1.1 Introduction 20!
1.2 A typology of resistance 20!
1.2.1 Everyday resistance: Weapons of the weak 21!
1.2.2 Resistance dynamics 23!
1.3 Women’s resistance in the Occupied West Bank 23!
1.3.1 Activism and informal resistance 23!
1.2.2 Everyday resistance in Palestine: practices of sumud 24!
1.4 Analytic framework 25!
1.4.1 Operationalising ‘organised’ and ‘everyday’ resistance 27!
1.5 Conclusion 28!
Chapter 2. Women’s organised resistance practices 29!
2.1 Introduction 29!
2.1.1 Budrus: A history of protests 29!
2.2 Weekly Friday protests 31!
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2.2.1 Women’s participation 32!
2.2.2 Friday protests: dimensions of analysis 33!
2.3 Responding to alarm calls: informal mobilisation 35!
2.3.1 Alarm calls: dimensions of analysis 36!
2.4 Facebook activism and cyber colonialism 37!
2.4.1 Facebook activism: dimensions of analysis 38!
2.5 Conclusion 39!
Chapter 3. Women’s everyday resistance practices 41!
3.1 Introduction 41!
3.2 Sumud as resistance and coping mechanism 42!
3.3 Friday morning picnics 43!
3.4 Farming and the annual olive harvest 44!
3.5 Checkpoints and the refusal of immobility 45!
3.6 Motherhood, education and narratives 47!
3.7 Creating counter ‘safe’ spaces 49!
3.8 Conclusion 50!
Chapter 4. Oscillating between veiled and overt bodies of resistance 52!
4.1 Introduction 52!
4.2 Comparing organised and everyday resistance 52!
4.3 Women’s narration of interaction 54!
4.4 Oscillation dynamics 55!
4.4.1 Time, space, feasibility and type of repression 56!
4.5 ‘Veiled’ and ‘overt’ bodies of resistance 58!
4.7 Conclusion 59!
Conclusion 60!
Research findings 60!
(Un)veiled bodies of resistance 62!
Recommendations for further research 63!
References 64!
Appendix I. Overview of interviews 68!
Appendix II. Topic guide 70!
9
Introduction
It is a Friday morning in late April in the village of Budrus, the Occupied West Bank. I am walking
with Ifza and her aunt Nadia through the fields near the Israeli Security Wall, or ‘the Apartheid Wall’,
as the villagers call it. Both women, born and raised in Budrus, are among the few female participants
in the weekly protests that have been organised for the past three months. The villagers have been
protesting U.S. president Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in
December 2017. Before the protests begin, Ifza and her aunt explore the fields. While it is supposed to
look like a morning stroll, the women are looking for Israeli soldiers that might have hidden
themselves in the greenery. Sometimes soldiers do so in order to arrest children during the protests
that will follow later that day. Nadia is picking flowers while Ifza collects emptied tear gas cans in a
plastic bag. We end their weekly round at the village’s cemetery, overlooking the fields and the Wall.
The village’s mosque broadcasts the call to prayer, meaning it will not be long before the crowd of
men and young boys will reach the cemetery to march towards the Wall. Nadia starts making bouquets
from the flowers she collected and places them in the empty tear gas cans. When I ask her why she
does so, she answers: “Because it is a different kind of hope. When they give us ugly things, we turn it
into something beautiful.”1
Academic and empirical context
The turning of tear gas cans into flower vases can be seen as an example of ‘everyday resistance’. The
field of resistance studies profoundly expanded when James C. Scott introduced this term to contrast
more public forms of resistance in 1985. With everyday resistance, Scott refers to daily acts that
subalterns use to resist dominant power holders when collectively organising themselves is too
dangerous. I adopt Johansson and Vinthagen’s (2013: 10) contemporary definition, in which they
define everyday resistance as “resistance that is done routinely, but which is not politically articulated
or formally organized (yet or in that situation)”. Johansson and Vinthagen (2013: 2) write that the
concept demonstrates how resistance is “integrated into social life and is a part of normality; not as
dramatic or strange as assumed” (emphasis in original). Notwithstanding, as Lilja et al. (2017) have
recently argued, there remains a profound theoretical gap between these everyday practices of
resistance and the classical definition of resistance. For the latter type of resistance, I use the label of
‘organised resistance’. Based on the work of Johansson and Vinthagen (2016) and Hollander and
Einwohner (2004), I define organised resistance as often collectively organised action that is aimed at
challenging existing power structures and is visible and easily recognised by both the target of the
collectively organised action and observers. These two categories of resistance are generally
1 Author’s field notes, 30 March, 2018.
10
researched separately from one another, as if people practice either organised or everyday resistance in
certain times and spaces.2
The example of Nadia on this particular Friday morning in April illustrates how practices of
everyday and organised resistance are in fact enacted simultaneously in social life. Shortly after Nadia
has practiced everyday resistance by making vases out of tear gas cans, she will attend the weekly
Friday protests. There is thus access to organised forms of resistance, such as protests, yet she
practices these everyday acts of ‘hope’ to resist that what she calls ‘ugly’. Research on how these two
forms of resistance are interacting remains vacant. In order to solve this theoretical complication, this
thesis aims to answer the following research question: How are practices of everyday resistance
oscillating with organised resistance practices of Palestinian women in the West Bank village of
Budrus since the ending of the Second Intifada in 2005? Having a personal interest in women in
political conflict, the focus on women was evident. As Johansson and Vinthagen (2016) argue,
researching resistance is essentially about researching power. There are more power intersections than
the intersection between the resister and the target of resistance. One of the core intersections that we
must research in order to understand power and resistance is that of patriarchy. Building upon feminist
theory, in particular the work of Mahmood (2005), I argue in this thesis that Palestinian women
practice resistance differently than men do. Furthermore, there is the assumption that organised
resistance is a male realm, whereas, especially in the Palestinian case, everyday resistance is often
associated with women (Richter-Devroe 2011: 33). By redefining different forms of resistance and
critically looking at how women engage in both organised and everyday resistance practices through a
gendered lens, I aim to provide a more feminist understanding of resistance in general.
Budrus is a village twenty-one kilometres northwest of Ramallah and falls under the Ramallah
governorate. It has 1,500 inhabitants and was established approximately 500 years ago (ARIJ 2012: 5).
All inhabitants of the village are Arab Muslims.3 Budrus was chosen as the case study for this research
for three main reasons. First, it is a village with a history of organised protests in which women played
an important role. In 2003, the village became known for its mass protests against the building of the
Israeli Security Wall (ISW). The women of the village were of crucial importance in these protests, as
portrayed in the 2009 documentary Budrus. Women placed themselves on the front lines of the action,
resulting in substantial media attention. The villagers refer to this period as ‘Intifada Al-Jiddar’, or
‘the Wall Intifada’. A second reason for selecting Budrus as the case study for this research is because
the weekly protests in the beginning of 2018 provided concrete research material on women in
organised resistance practices. A third reason is that daily life in the village is still very much affected
2 For organised resistance, see for example Tilly and Tarrow’s (2015) work on social movements, or Chenoweth
and Stephan’s (2011) work on civil resistance. For everyday resistance, see Kerkvliet 2009, Thomson 2013 and
Colborn 2016.
3 According to local community leader ‘Abu Ahmad’. Informal meeting on 13 March, 2018.
11
by the Israeli occupation. The village is divided into two administrative areas.4 Around 11.2 per cent
of the village falls under ‘Area B’, which means the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has control
over civil matters but Israel continues to have overriding security responsibility. The main land of
Budrus, 88.8 per cent, is however classified as ‘Area C’, resulting into Israel having full control over
security and administration matters (ARIJ 2012: 15).
I focus on the period after the end of the Second Intifada in 2005, because most research on
Palestinian resistance, especially from the perspective of political conflict, is focused on the First
(1987-1991 or 1993) and Second Intifada (2000-2005).5 The scale of visible resistance during these
Palestinian uprisings against the Israeli occupation explains why these periods are of great interests to
conflict analysts and the like. However, while military repression since the Second Intifada has indeed
made it difficult for Palestinians to politically organise themselves (Richter-Devroe 2011: 16),
protests, sit-in, boycotts and other forms of political activism are still very much daily events in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Although there are a few studies that discuss sumud after
2015 (see Ryan 2015), the majority of the research on everyday resistance among Palestinians focuses
on empirical evidence from the Second Intifada (see Hammami 2006; Richter-Devroe 2011;
Johansson and Vinthagen 2015). Sumud directly translates to ‘steadfastness’ and is approached in this
thesis as a form of everyday resistance specific to the Palestinian case. Research specifically focused
on the role of women in Palestinian resistance likewise well researched, but similarly confided to the
timeframes of the Intifadas (see for example Peteet 1991, Sharoni 1995, Ameri 1999, Holt 2003). Due
to the lack of research on the period after the Second Intifada, this research aims to produce
knowledge on resistance practices of Palestinian women since 2005.
Academic significance and objectives
I argue that the research question I have formulated is a significant question to ask, as its answer can
help us understand in a more informed manner how practices of everyday and organised resistance are
interacting. As Hollander and Einwohner (2004: 551) write, the topic of resistance touches the essence
of social science, as it involves “issues and debates that that are at the heart of the sociological
perspective, including power and control, inequality and difference, and social context and
interaction”. Therefore, it is worthwhile to further explore and theorise different forms of resistance
and how they blend in social life. While Scott has fundamentally changed our perspective of what is
political, the political expressions of subalterns, especially women, remain to be analysed distinctly
from more formal forms of politics, such as organised resistance. A more feminist perspective is
needed to include marginalised voices in the analysis of political conflict. More specific to the study of
4 According to the Oslo II agreements in 1995, the West Bank has been divided into area ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. Area
A is fully administered by the National Palestinian Authority (NPA), Area B is under shared administration by
the NPA and the Israeli state and Area C is under complete Israeli control.
5 These dates are the most common timeframes used to historicise the Intifadas (see for example Norman 2011).
12
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this research adds to the debate on how practices of sumud are related
to forms of organised resistance and focuses on a time period that is often neglected in the study of the
conflict. The objectives of this research are (1) to understand the meaning of resistance in the
individual’s life; (2) to understand how everyday resistance is practiced; (3) to understand how
organised resistance is practiced; (4) to understand how everyday and organised resistance interact; (5)
to determine factors that shape the decision to deploy either organised or everyday resistance and (6)
to generate new and build upon existing theories of resistance. More generally, this research has the
main function of generating theoretical ideas, while being contextual in the sense that I am ‘describing
the form or nature of what exists’ by documenting practices of resistance among women in Budrus,
and explanatory in the sense that I am examining ‘the associations between what is’ by focusing on the
interactions between different forms of resistance (Ritchie 2003: 27). Further, the case study of
women in Budrus is chosen in order to ‘give voice’ (Ragin and Amoruso 2010: 46) to a category of
people that is often not included in the analysis of political conflict, let alone approached as an active
agent of resistance, namely Palestinian Muslim women in rural areas.
Methodology
Theory and concepts
This research takes an interpretivist epistemological stance and an ontological position that focuses on
individual agency. My core aim is to understand the practices of individuals in light of the social
structures they are embedded in. I have hence adopted a post-structuralist analytic framework
(Johansson and Vinthagen 2016: 4). One of the challenges of my research is that I use analytic tools
from different ontological traditions. It is therefore of importance to clarify my theoretical lens. I adopt
a Foulcauldian perspective of power, following the authors of my analytic framework, in which
“power is conceptualized as ubiquitous rather than located in certain groups; that is, productive rather
than merely repressive, and relational rather than reified” (Johansson and Vinthagen 2014: 4). This
definition however remains vague and does not make explicit more coercive forms of state power.
Whereas others use the distinction between sovereign power, biopower and disciplinary power6 in
conceptualising power and resistance, I use the distinction between ‘compulsory’ and ‘productive’
power as Demmers and Gould (2018: 5) do after the work of Barnett and Duvall (2005). Compulsory
power is defined as “the direct, often coercive, capacity to control the action of others” (Barnett and
Duvall, 2005a: 43 as cited in Demmers and Gould 2018: 5). It is thus about the often material
domination of one actor over another (Barnett and Duvall 2005a: 43). Productive power on the other
hand is “the constitution of specific types of actors capable of effective action within a given social
domain” (2005a: 43). This power is related to the ‘production of subjectivity in systems of meanings’
(2005a: 43). Duvall and Barnett have some interesting thoughts on how these two forms of power are
6 See Lilja and Vinthagen 2015 and Gordon 2008.
13
related to resistance. Compulsory power “fosters the inclination of directly controlled actors to possess
those attributes that enable them to counter the actions of their controllers, and, in turn, themselves, to
directly shape the behavior of others” (Duvall and Barnett 2005b: 23). Productive power, on the other
hand, requires resisters to “destabilize, even to remake, their subjectivities, and, thereby, to transform,
or at least to disrupt, the broader social processes and practices through which those subjectivities are
produced, normalized, and naturalized” (2005b: 23). I use this distinction of compulsory and
productive power rather than the distinction of sovereign power, biopower and disciplinary power
because the former allows me to simplify my analysis of power. This is necessary in order to remain
focused on the theoretical complication of this research, which is the relationship between resistance
and resistance, rather than the relationship between power and resistance.
Furthermore, I build on the feminist theory of Saba Mahmood (2005, 2006), who delivered
ground-breaking work on defining agency of women in the Muslim world. Mahmood (2006: 38)
argues that secular feminists failed to conceptualise female agency beyond the dichotomy between
resistance and subordination to patriarchal norms and that the liberal desire to be free from (male)
subordination might not be universal. In this sense, I approach agency as the autonomy and capacities
an individual woman has to pursue her own interests inside the power structures she is embedded in,
while keeping in mind that her interests might not entail to be free of male subordination.
When I label something as ‘resistance’, I mean that the act is intentionally done with the aim
to undermine (some) power. Whether the act actually undermines this power is beyond the scope of
this research. A core objective of resistance studies has been to ‘give voice’. Too often, this has
resulted in framing of ordinary everyday acts as resistance, even when the agent of that act does not
define the act as such. This is not ‘giving voice’ to subordinates, nor does it improve the analytic
usefulness of the term. To stay away from this tenacious habit of framing everything as resistance, I
will only discuss resistance practices that my respondents themselves recognise as and intend to be
resistance. Hereby, I take quite a drastic stance in the debate. As Hollander and Einwohner (2004)
write, precisely the subjects of recognition and intention are the main bottlenecks in providing a
hegemonic definition of resistance. But we cannot aim to ‘give voice’ to a group of people and then at
the same time dismiss what they are saying. I am not interested in getting involved in abstract ‘false
consciousness’ discussions, as this is not what my research is about. It is about how women oscillate
practices between everyday and organised resistance and how they experience being conscious of
power and resistance.
A problem that has been identified with this approach is that it might exclude lower educated
classes who lack a certain political consciousness (Hollander and Einwohner 2004: 542). However, as
everyday resistance is essentially about a culture of ‘hidden transcripts’, there has to be some
consciousness that makes resistance resistance. A second problem identified with my approach is that
the resister might not be able to discuss the motivations behind an act, because it is for example too
risky to do so. Conducting fieldwork in a village that is mostly under the control of the Israeli state, I
14
was unable to escape this scenario. Nonetheless, during my fieldwork, I experienced that many women
actually perceived speaking to me as an act of resistance in itself. This corresponds to Richter-
Devroe’s (2011) fieldwork experiences on resistance practices among women in the Occupied West
Bank (OWB). While my approach might indeed have left out certain groups of women and thereby
acts of resistance, it is more important to me to stay true to the objective of giving voice rather than to
ascribe words to other people’s actions. Finally, it should be clarified that I approach resistance as an
act that can have multiple motivations and outcomes. When the agent defines an act as resistance, and
I thus define an act as resistance, it does not mean the particular act cannot also be a coping or survival
mechanism and/or self-beneficial.
Puzzle statement and sub questions
As stated earlier, the ‘puzzle statement’ that this thesis aims to answer has been formulated as follows:
How are practices of everyday resistance oscillating with organised resistance practices of
Palestinian women in the West Bank village of Budrus since the ending of the Second Intifada in
2005? It is of importance to note here that while I interviewed my respondents about the period since
the Wall Intifada ended in 2004, I only first-hand observed resistance practices in spring of 2018. In
order to answer the puzzle statement, several sub questions have been formulated. The first sub
question focuses on practices on everyday resistance: (1) How are acts of everyday resistance
practiced through dimensions of repertoires, relationships, spatialisation and temporalisation by
women in Budrus between 2005 and 2018? The second sub question is formulated nearly identically,
but instead focuses on organised resistance: (2) How are acts of organised resistance practiced
through dimensions of repertoires, relationships, spatialisation and temporalisation by women in
Budrus between 2005 and 2018? The third sub question is: (3) How are practices of everyday
resistance and organised resistance interacting in ‘oscillation dynamics’ in the resistance practices of
Palestinian women in Budrus? In order to research this last question, I have divided the question in
four sub-sub questions: (3a) What are the key similarities and differences between dimensions of
repertoires, relationships, spatialisation and temporalisation of everyday and organised resistance?,
(3b) how do Palestinian women narrate the connection between these two forms of resistance?, (3c)
what are the main indicators in the decision to practice either everyday or organised resistance in a
specific situation? and (3d) how can these ‘oscillation dynamics’ be theorised?
Research design
The research strategy I adopt is qualitative and focuses on merging inductive and deductive reasoning
(Ragin and Amoroso 2010). The knowledge produced in this thesis is derived from naturally occurring
data, in the form of both participant and non-participant observation, and generated data through in-
depth interviewing. I focus on practices of individuals and how they give meaning to these practices
15
through narratives. Whereas observation and participation allowed me to gain a better understanding
of the practices, in-depth interviewing was most suitable to gather knowledge on the narratives about
these practices. The meaning I ascribe to actions is thus derived from a dialogue between this naturally
occurring and generated data.
I structured my research design around five ‘steps’ that were guided by my sub questions. The
first step was to collect empirical evidence on everyday resistance (sub question 1). The second step
was to collect empirical evidence on organised resistance (sub question 2). Third, deriving from the
sub-sub questions 3a, 3b and 3c, I collected empirical data on the interaction of everyday and
organised resistance practices in Budrus. These three steps were often entangled with one another in
practice during my fieldwork, as everyday and organised resistance interweave in social reality. The
empirical data was gathered by combining the data collection techniques of (participant) observation
and in-depth interviewing, which I will further elaborate on in the next paragraph. The fourth step was
the analysis of data. This process was again divided into two steps, namely that of descriptive and
explanatory analysis (Ritchie and Lewis 2003: 14). In my descriptive analysis, I focused on coding my
data according to the four dimensions of my analytic framework, which will be further discussed in
Chapter 1. From here, I developed classifications of different acts of everyday and organised
resistance that occurred among women in Budrus. The focus in the second phase of analysis was to
discover patterns and convergences in my empirical evidence by comparing the four dimensions of my
analytic framework. The fifth step was the theorising process, in which I returned to existing theory on
the topic to see how my findings could generate new ideas on resistance practices. The goal of this
step was to create a dialogue between ideas and evidence (Ragin and Amoruso 2010: 57).
Data collection techniques
The empirical evidence for this research has been collected by combining three core data collection
techniques, namely that of participant and non-participant observation and in-depth interviewing. This
combination allowed me to synthesise my observations of practices of resistance with the meanings
my respondents gave to these practices through narratives. I stayed in Ramallah from 3 March until 16
May, 2018. During the weekends, I lived with a host family in Budrus, participating as much as
possible in their daily lives. I helped in the household, joined family and women’s gatherings and
attended a wedding to experience local culture. During this period, I conducted interviews with twenty
women in the village. I used a topic guide7 to semi-structure my interviews, but often, probing
questions were needed to further direct respondents. This semi-structured interview technique was
used to eventually be able to systematically compare results. At the beginning of each interview,
respondents were asked to make a timeline of their most important life events in order to acquire an
overview of both their personal histories and their narration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
7 See Appendix II: ‘Topic guide’.
16
Interviews were arranged by my two ‘fixers’ and translators. One of them is a 29-year-old doctor in a
Ramallah hospital and the daughter of a prominent community leader, the other is a 22-year-old
accountancy student. They did not have previous experience with either fixing or translating. I was
unable to work with a professional translator due to logistic and financial issues. With my basic
knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic, it was possible to guide the translation to some extend. In my
experience, the main advantage of using a local, non-professional translator who personally knows the
respondent is that it is much easier to establish trust: women seemed to quickly trust me because I was
with a person that they trusted. Interviews were often conducted in groups of two or three women,
who in all cases were related to each other. This was due to practical considerations as well as that I
experienced it encouraged women to share more information if the other respondent in the interview
was doing so. The women also helped each other to remember certain events and dates.
My non-probability sample technique was that of ‘snowballing’ (Ritchie and Lewis 2003: 94)
by using the personal networks of my fixers and their families. As an independent researcher not
affiliated to any organisation, I was reliant on the contacts that I had established as my ‘gatekeepers’
of the community. In this sense I was constrained by local culture, as it was not seen as appropriate for
me as both a foreigner and a woman to walk around the village unaccompanied and introduce myself
to people. I was thus dependent on my host family and the resources they could provide me. I
interviewed twenty respondents, some of whom I interviewed twice. All women were Palestinian and
their ages varied between 22 and 86 years old. Seventeen of them were born and raised in Budrus. The
three who were not born in Budrus all lived in the village before the Wall Intifada began in 2003. I
managed to sample a group of women from different ages and backgrounds, from middle-aged
housewives and widows, to young mothers who work full-time, to students.8 I purposefully directed
my fixers in the process of arranging interviews. I would for example inform them I wished to
interview more students in order to create a more diverse sample. It should be stated here that my
translators, due to their inexperience, found it difficult to approach women they did not personally
know. As a result, the women I have interviewed often come from the same families. One family is
known in general as a ‘Fatah family’ and the other is known as a ‘Hamas family’. However, none of
my respondents identified as being politically active for either organisation, although they might
sympathise with the views of a certain party. While these two families are the main families in the
village, it might be possible that other politically oriented views are not included in this research due
to a lack of access to these women.
Ethical considerations: anonymity
Before each interview, I asked my respondents if I was allowed to record the interview and if they
wished to stay anonymous. While each of them confirmed I was allowed to use their real name, I have
8 See Appendix I: ‘Overview of interviews’.
17
refrained from doing so in this final result. This is because the village remains under close supervision
of the Israeli army and arrests during night raids and at checkpoints are a daily reality. As I could not
foresee the consequences of using my respondents’ names in my research, I have given each of them a
pseudonym. Their real names are known to my supervisor and translators.
Challenges and limitations
In this section, I reflect upon my positionality in the field and acknowledge the challenges and
limitations of this research. First of all, I believe my profile as a female student allowed me to conduct
this research. It was because I am a woman that I was able to spend time with my respondents and join
them in their everyday activities. I would not have had this kind of access as a male researcher. My
identity as a student was also important in negotiating my access. The villagers have a very high
regard of education and thus helping me in conducting my research so that I could complete my MA
degree seemed to be of genuine importance to them. Further, they seemed glad that someone was
interested in the daily struggles they are still encountering. I have only experienced positive curiosity
from the villagers and was welcomed with warm hospitality wherever I went. I believe that the fact
that I stayed with a well-respected family in the village helped in encouraging women to speak to me.
As stated earlier, I do not know if my affiliation to this particular family has closed other ‘gates’ and
thereby alternative stories for me.
A main limitation of this research has been the fact that I do not speak the local dialect and
that most of my respondents were not fluent in English. While I speak basic Modern Standard Arabic
and managed to learn a few skills in the local dialect during my fieldwork, all interviews were
conducted with translators. Due to my basic knowledge of the Arabic language, I was able to guide
translations to a certain extent. For example, I could ask what the respondent meant with a specific
word in Arabic if I noticed my translator did not directly translate it. If I had my doubts about a
translation, I asked a second translator to translate a specific sentence by listening to the audiotape. I
dealt with this language limitation in my research design by focusing on practices rather than
discourse and language.
Another main challenge I have been concerned with is the security threat towards my
respondents. It could be dangerous for women to participate in my research and discuss their
resistance practices. In some instances, women told me they were scared of possible repercussions by
the Israeli state, after which I reassured them that their safety was of the utmost importance to me, but
that I would understand if they would prefer to withdraw their consent. In all cases, the respondent
wished to continue with the interview. My notes and audiotapes were digitalised and deleted from my
laptop, phone and voice recorder before travels that might include control checks by the Israeli army.
To my knowledge, two women refused interview requests out of fear of repercussions. I do not believe
this security threat profoundly influenced my final results. Generally, I managed to create a safe space
18
and a foundation of trust in which my respondents could share their stories. The fact that I interviewed
two or more women at the same time in almost all cases and the respondent’s trust in the translator,
which often was family, seemed to make them comfortable enough to share their experiences and
views beyond severe self-censorship. It of course remains impossible to know what information has
been withheld from me.
Finally, I need to acknowledge my personal bias in regard to this conflict. In a conflict as heated
and widely discussed as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is difficult to escape bias and I will not
pretend I managed to do so. I have lived in Jordan and met many Palestinian refugees there, which
sparked my initial interest in the conflict. My time spent among Palestinians for this research has
nurtured my sympathy for the Palestinian cause. I have at all times tried to keep my personal views to
myself during interaction with my respondents. I do believe spending the process of reflecting upon
my data and writing this thesis out of the field allowed me to create a distance in which I could
practice critical self-reflection. In my awareness of my personal bias and the continuous triangulation
of my respondents’ claims, I hope I remained as objective as possible in the writing of this thesis.
Chapter outline
In Chapter 1, I provide a thorough literature review of relevant works on my research topic. This
chapter is structured in three main sections. In the first section, theoretical-based literature on the
concept of resistance is discussed. The second section focuses on empirical evidence in the case study
of Palestinian resistance, in which I discuss literature on female resistance and sumud. The third
section presents the analytic framework that I have adopted to structure my analysis.
In Chapter 2, I introduce a classification of three main forms of organised resistance that
women practice in Budrus, which are the weekly Friday protests, responding to ‘alarm calls’ and
Facebook activism. After describing these three cases in depth, I analyse them by using the analytic
framework.
Chapter 3 is similarly structured to the second chapter, but discusses practices of everyday
resistance. First, I argue how women in the village personally narrate the meaning of sumud. Then I
turn to local practices of sumud. I present a classification of Friday morning ‘picnics’, farming and the
annual olive harvest, checkpoints and the refusal of immobility, motherhood, narratives and education
and creating counter ‘safe’ spaces.
In Chapter 4, I aim to create a dialogue between the ideas presented in Chapter 1, and the
empirical evidence of Chapters 2 and 3. First, I compare my findings of Chapter 2 and 3 in the
dimensions of my analytic framework, after which I present new data on how women in the village
explain the connection between organised and everyday resistance practices. I then turn to the concept
of ‘oscillation dynamics’ and aim to specify this concept with empirical evidence. In the final stage of
my analysis, I move beyond existing theories to introduce the concepts of ‘veiled bodies of resistance’
19
and ‘overt bodies of resistance’. I argue that this distinction will allow us to better understand the
different dynamics between forms of resistance in the case of women in Budrus.
20
Chapter 1. Literature review and
analytic framework
1.1 Introduction
In the first section of this chapter, literature on resistance as a theoretical concept is explored. Whereas
‘organised resistance’ is generally a defined category that most academics agree on, ‘everyday
resistance’ is a much more contested concept. I have therefore selected four critiques on everyday
resistance to emphasise, as these critiques were most often cited in the body of literature I compiled
and have informed evolved understandings of the concept. The ‘gap’ that I have identified in literature
on the topic of resistance is then described. The second section of this chapter focuses on empirical
evidence on the topic of women’s resistance in the OPT. After giving a short overview of women’s
activism after the Second Intifada, I turn to previously conducted research on sumud. In the third and
final section of this chapter, I explain how I have constructed my analytic framework and
operationalise the concepts of ‘organised’ and ‘everyday’ resistance.
1.2 A typology of resistance
Hollander and Einwohner (2004) aim to synthesise the use of the term ‘resistance’ by reviewing over a
hundred books and articles from different academic disciplines on the topic. They conclude that a
hegemonic definition of resistance remains vacant. Authors do generally agree that two key elements
should be embedded in the definition of resistance, namely that resistance is an action and that this
action is oppositional to something or someone else (2004: 538). Hollander and Einwohner
furthermore identify two central issues that often form the core of disagreements in defining
resistance. The first disagreement is whether or not resistance has to be recognised as such by others,
and if so, by which others. The second disagreement is whether or not the actor must have the
intention to practice resistance (2004: 542). In order to deal with these central issues, Hollander and
Einwohner propose a typology of seven types of resistance (see figure 1). The indicators of their
typology are based on a distinction between actors: they use the categories of actor/agent, or the
individual who is practicing the act of resistance, target, the entity that the act of resistance is aimed at
and the observer, an outside actor, in this case the researcher. The main distinction that forms the
departure point of my research is that between overt (or organised) and covert (or everyday)
resistance. As Hollander and Einwohner write, overt resistance is the ‘consensual core of resistance’:
academic generally agree on its meaning. In paragraph 1.3, I will return to my use of the term. The
21
other category of resistance, everyday or covert resistance, is however a much more contested
category that has its own field of study. It therefore requires more attention in this literature review.
Figure 1. 'Types of resistance' by Hollander and Einwohner (2004: 544).
1.2.1 Everyday resistance: Weapons of the weak
James C. Scott introduced the term ‘everyday resistance’, which he interchangeably uses with the term
‘infra politics’ in his book Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance (1985). Based
on ethnographic research in a Malaysian village that is undergoing the ‘Green revolution’ in the late
1970s, Scott’s (1985: xvi) core claim is that peasants use ‘ordinary weapons’, such as “foot dragging,
dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and
so on” to resist the dominant power holder. These acts require “little or no coordination or planning;
they make use of implicit understandings and informal networks; they often represent a form of
individual selfhelp; they typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation with authority” (1985:
xvi). Scott (1989) frames these everyday forms of resistance as a class struggle and makes the case for
embedding everyday resistance into the analysis of political conflict. He claims that everyday
resistance is inherently political: Any account that ignores everyday resistance is ignoring how the
lower classes manifest their political interests (1989: 33). Scott (1989: 36) furthermore states that
everyday resistance must be approached as a form of collective action, as “high levels of everyday
resistance cannot be sustained without a fairly high level of tacit cooperation among the class of
resisters”. Just because small communities use dense informal social networks rather than bureaucratic
bodies, does not mean there is a lack of coordination: “What is happening is by no means merely
random individual action” (1989: 52). In Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts
(1990), Scott changes his focus towards discourse. He adds the concept of ‘hidden transcripts’ to his
theory, which he defines as “discourse that takes place ‘offstage’, beyond direct observation by
powerholders. The hidden transcript is thus derivative in the sense that it consists of those offstage
speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public
22
transcript” (1990: 4). The ‘public transcript’ is “the open interaction between subordinates and those
who dominate” (1990: 2). These hidden transcripts and their relationship to public transcripts must be
understood in order to understand the political life of subalterns (1990: 17).
While Scott’s work has provided a crucial new perspective on resistance, there are some
deeply problematic issues with his theory. First of all, as Mitchell (1990) argues, Scott’s perception of
power, hegemony and consciousness is based on a false dualism between the material outside world
and the world of culture and ideas. Mitchell’s (1990: 562) main critique is that domination is not only
materially coercive while the mind of the subaltern remains ‘free’, but that domination is creating
truths. Second, Scott’s theory does not explain the perpetual emergence of violent conflict. Gutmann
(1993: 77) writes that “the emphasis here is wrong; it is not a question of overt or covert in isolation;
rather, at least in Latin America today and historically, these forms occur together, alternate, and
transform themselves into each other” (1993: 77). Third, I find Scott’s ontology inherently
problematic. He takes different stances on human action and consciousness when explaining different
components of his theory, resulting into a lack of ontological coherence. Tilly (1991) concludes for
instance that Scott’s ontology clashes in his explanation of the relationship between hidden transcripts
and collective, organised action. Scott explains the switch from hidden to public resistance with
rational choice theory, while he uses a Marxist structuralist perspective in his first works, and a
postmodernist perspective in his book on hidden transcripts.
None of the above authors manage to move beyond mere criticism on Scott’s concept of everyday
resistance. Bayat (2000) does introduce an advanced concept, namely that of ‘quiet encroachment’, as
he finds that the concept of everyday resistance is not suitable to analyse how the urban poor in the
southern hemisphere interact with the state. He proposes the notion of quiet encroachment, or “the
silent, protracted but pervasive advancement of the ordinary people on the propertied and powerful in
order to survive and improve their lives (...) marked by quiet, largely atomized and prolonged
mobilization with episodic collective action” (2000: 545–546). According to Bayat, ‘encroachers’ start
with their acts out of necessity: they are in pursuit of survival and a dignified life. However, these acts
shift them into the realm of politics and become collective when their ‘gains’ of encroachment are
threatened and ‘passive networks’ are activated (2000: 547). I find Bayat’s concept particularly
insightful as it connects daily acts that are intended to undermine power with more organised and
collective forms of resistance. However, I disagree with Bayat’s (2000: 545) robust distinction
between deliberate, conscious political acts of resistance, coping strategies and acts of ‘encroachment’.
As written in the introduction, I believe an act can be politically conscious, a survival or coping
strategy and ‘encroaching’, or self-beneficial, simultaneously.1 I think Bayat’s pursuit of a ‘pure’ type
of resistance is futile and does no justice to the complexities of resistance practices in social life, let
1 See Introduction, section ‘Methodology: Theory and concepts’, 14.
23
alone allow us to understand what drives people’s actions beyond simplistic one-dimensional
motivations.
1.2.2 Resistance dynamics
A key question that critiques on Scott’s work raise is how forms of everyday resistance relate to forms
of organised and more collective resistance, and vice versa. As becomes evident from Gutmann’s and
Bayat’s work, empirical evidence presumes that forms of organised and everyday resistance can be
deployed simultaneously in certain times and spaces. The dynamics between these two forms of
resistance however remain undefined. This theoretical gap is the starting point of my research.
Previously, Lilja et al. (2017) have attempted to conceptualise the nexus between power and everyday
and organised resistance. They provide three possible types of dynamics. Based on Scott’s work, they
introduce ‘linear development dynamics’, in which “everyday resistance might transform into large
scale, collective and organized resistance” (2017: 44). Bayat, on the other hand, is an advocate of
‘oscillation dynamics’, in which “everyday forms of resistance (‘quiet encroachment’) and collectively
organized resistance (sudden large mobilizations in which ‘passive networks’ are temporarily
activated) might be utilized in different times and spaces, depending on what is feasible, as a reaction
to the type of repression applied against the resistance” (2017: 44). The authors themselves argue that
one type of dynamics is missing, namely a dynamic in which organised resistance encourages
everyday resistance. Building on the work of Mahmood (2005), they argue that practices of organised
resistance can create particular conceptions of the self, which allows individuals to “move outside the
boundaries of the resisting organisation and make their own everyday resistance” (Lilja et al. 2017:
47). These three possible dynamics remain vaguely outlined. My research aims to be deductive in the
sense that I explore if these possible dynamics allow me to further analyse resistance dynamics in the
case of Budrus. Now, it is time to turn to existing empirical evidence on Palestinian resistance, in
particular women’s resistance and the practice of sumud.
1.3 Women’s resistance in the Occupied West Bank
1.3.1 Activism and informal resistance
Richter-Devroe (2012: 185) writes that Palestinian women’s activism was widespread during the First
Intifada. Most women’s activism was informal and manifested itself in demonstrations and economic
boycotts. During the 2000s, popular resistance in Palestine was in “a process of localization,
professionalization and internationalization”, but women’s activism remained informal in the sense of
not being politically organised and was more community-oriented than men’s popular resistance
(2012: 186). With her use of the word ‘popular resistance’, Richter-Devroe seems to refer to the
practices that I label as ‘organised resistance’, such as protests and boycotts. Richter-Devroe is mainly
concerned with how resistance after the Second Intifada has been gendered. Through participation,
24
observation and in-depth interviews throughout the OWB, Richter-Devroe (2012: 193) states that a
core frame through which women frame their popular/organised resistance is that of motherhood. In
these ‘mother politics’, “women politicize the domestic sphere by presenting their domestic duties and
reproductive roles as a form of political activism” (2012: 193). It is often this frame of mother politics
that women use to explain their need to participate in resistance. Richter-Devroe (2012: 195)
concludes that while popular resistance among women has not yet brought the Palestinians concrete
material changes, it challenges established norms of female political agency and could eventually
result in social change. She argues that resistance among women however has to remain informal in
order to continue to exist - both because of gender roles that are ascribed to women and Israeli
repressive methods. Besides providing an impressive amount of empirical evidence on Palestinian
women’s ‘organised’ resistance after the Second Intifada, Richter-Devroe has also researched the topic
of women practicing sumud.
1.2.2 Everyday resistance in Palestine: practices of
sumud
Everyday resistance in the OPT is often described through the concept of sumud. The Palestinian
Liberation Organisation (PLO) introduced the term in the 1970s and 1980s. Richter-Devroe (2011: 33)
defines sumud as the “stubborn insistence to carrying on with life and even seizing every opportunity
to enjoy it, despite all odds”. Palestinians use the term to describe a wide variety of practices. These
can be materially based survival strategies, for example to continue to work on occupied agricultural
land, or it can manifest itself through cultural resistance (upholding Palestinian traditions) and social
and ideational resistance (upholding a sense of normality) (2011: 33). This type of resistance is often
associated with women’s resistance (Peteet 1991; Johnson 2007; Richter-Devroe 2008; Johansson and
Vinthagen 2015). Johansson and Vinthagen (2015: 114) write that sumud’s “distinguishing feature is
how it is integrated in and emerges from ordinary people’s everyday life, as individual response to the
experience of domination”. Some key manifestations of sumud that are mentioned in literature on the
topic are that of the insistence on enjoying life (Richter-Devroe 2011), resisting immobility by
traveling regardless of hardships caused by the Israeli occupation (Hammami 2004), slowing down
processes at Israeli checkpoints (Johansson and Vinthagen 2015: 129) and remembering names of lost
villages to preserve Palestinian identity (Van Teeffelen et al. 2011).
There are some perspectives in the literature on how sumud relates to more organised forms of
resistance. According to Singh, sumud is a ‘passive’ form of resistance that supports more ‘active’
overt forms of resistance (2012: 530). I disagree with this notion of ‘passive’ versus ‘active’
resistance. In both cases, the agent of resistance is doing something. Stating that the agent is ‘passive’
when practicing everyday resistance discredits the foundation of the concept, which is that everyday
resistance is also an action in opposition to power. Notwithstanding, Singh’s claim that sumud
supports forms of organised resistance is an interesting hypothesis to be further explore with empirical
25
evidence. Another possible relationship between organised resistance and sumud is given by Khalili
(2007: 99), who argues that sumud is “the only strategy of struggle when all other avenues are closed,
when organisational infrastructures are destroyed, and when complete annihilation – not only of
political institutions, but of every person – is a real possibility”. However, the sole example of Nadia
in the introduction of this thesis demonstrates the exact opposite.2 Nadia practices her act of sumud –
turning tear gas cans into bouquet vases – right before she attends the weekly Friday protests. She
thus does have access to another form of struggle, and yet she practices sumud. This explanation thus
also does not saturate my need for a more conceptual perspective on resistance dynamics.
To discuss a more concrete example of women practicing sumud, Richter-Devroe (2011)
argues that Palestinian women are framing acts of ‘enjoying life’ and traveling as resistance against
the Israeli occupation. She argues that women travel beyond the boundaries Israel has established in
order to enjoy life and are thereby undermining Israeli ‘spacio-cidal’ policies. Richter-Devroe (2011:
39) defines spacio-cidal policies as “the systematic dispossession, occupation and destruction of
Palestinian living space”. Their everyday acts aim to “redefine their occupied, fragmented and
dispossessed spaces” (2011: 39). Richter-Devroe (2011: 41) further emphasises that these acts of
pursuing normalcy and joy are not only challenging Israeli domination, but that they also undermine
patriarchal structures. The women are challenging patriarchal forms of control and restriction by
traveling and being mobile in informal networks. They are able to do so because they stay true to the
Palestinian ‘meta-frame’ of resistance by framing these acts as such (2011: 42). This example
illustrates how resistance can be a means to negotiate relationships inside a patriarchal society.
To conclude this section, my brief discussion of the empirical research demonstrates that a wide
variety of research on Palestinian women practicing either organised or everyday resistance has been
done. However, research on the topic has not yet been done in a systematic manner through which we
can understand the dynamics between everyday and organised resistance among Palestinian women.
While Richter-Devroe, for example, has conducted impressive research on both organised resistance
practices and sumud among Palestinian women, she fails to connect these two forms of resistance in
her work. In order to research these dynamics, I adopt the following analytic framework.
1.4 Analytic framework
Johansson and Vinthagen (2016) have proposed an analytic framework to research everyday
resistance. Their work resonated with me as the most useful for my own research, as they move
beyond the core critiques on Scott’s approach and are to my knowledge the first to present a
framework that allows us to systematically research everyday resistance. Johansson and Vinthagen
(2013: 9) perceive everyday resistance as part of a “continuum between public confrontations and
hidden subversion”. Their analytical framework is built on four core assumptions. First, the authors
2 See Introduction, 9.
26
aim to overcome one of the core disagreements in the field of resistance studies as identified by
Hollander and Einwohner (2004), namely, the question of intent and consciousness, by focusing on the
acts of the individual, rather than the individual’s consciousness or intent (Johansson and Vinthagen
2013: 11). As written in the introduction, while I adopt their stance on focusing on the act or practice
of resistance, I define an act of resistance precisely by the consciousness and intent of the agent.3
Second, they integrate power into their analysis (2013: 31). Johansson and Vinthagen do not provide
concrete definitions of power, but I have discussed earlier how I approach power in this thesis.4 Third,
related to this second core assumption, the authors argue that the dynamic and interactive process of
power must be analysed in an intersectional frame. This implies that while actors might be more
‘powerless’ in interaction with the target of resistance, they could be more ‘powerful’ inside other
social networks (2013: 31). Fourth, everyday resistance is a heterogenic and contingent practice, as it
exists only in a specific context (2013: 31).
But then how do we concretely analyse everyday resistance when adopting Johansson and
Vinthagen’s understanding of the concept? The authors suggest that everyday resistance should be
researched in four dimensions of social life: repertoires, relationships of agents, spatialisation and
temporalisation, and in four intersections of power relations: gender, sexuality, class and
‘race’/ethnicity (Johansson and Vinthagen 2016: 432). They emphasise that the distinction between
the four dimensions is made for analytical purposes, but that they are highly intertwined in actual
social life (2016: 419). The authors borrow some key ideas and concepts to research these dimensions
from different academic fields and ontological stances. For example, Johansson and Vinthagen (2016:
421) turn to Tilly’s concept of repertoires of contention and change it into ‘repertoires of resistance’ to
research the dimension of repertoires, in which ‘culturally learned routines’ in the social context of
individuals are analysed. They define a repertoire as “a collection of ways or methods of resistance
that people are familiar with, know of, understand and are able to handle.” (Johansson and Vinthagen
2015: 6). The dimension of relationships is intended to analyse “who is carrying out the actions of
everyday resistance; the different agents and their relationships” (Johansson and Vinthagen 2016: 422,
emphasis in original). In order to do so, the authors use the distinction that Hollander and Einwohner
(2004) make between the agent, target and observer. In the dimension of spatialisation, Johansson and
Vinthagen aim to research how social life is spatially organised. One of the concepts I adopt after their
example to operationalise this dimension is that of ‘sites of resistance’. After the work of Johansson
and Vinthagen (2016) and Chin and Mittelman (1997), I define a site of resistance as the location or
social space in which resistance is situated. Sites of resistance do not necessarily have to be spaces:
they can also be bodies. Abdo (2014: 21) has researched everyday resistance among Palestinian
female detainees in Israeli prisons and argues that Palestinian women’s bodies have essentially
become a site of resistance, since they are subject to humiliation, subjugation and victimization
3 See Introduction, section ‘Methodology: Theory and concepts’, 13-14.
4 Ibid.
27
through psychological, racial and sexual abuse. The last dimension of temporalisation remains highly
underdeveloped. In this dimension, everyday resistance is approached as “temporarily organized, and
as practiced in and through time as a central social dimension” (Johansson and Vinthagen 2016: 427).
While Johansson and Vinthagen state that they approach everyday resistance as part of a
continuum with organised resistance, their analytical framework does not overcome the gap in the
literature on the topic as identified earlier in this chapter. The question remains how everyday
resistance relates to organised forms of resistance, and vice versa. In order to make this gap
researchable, I will expand the analytic framework of Johansson and Vinthagen by applying the same
dimensions of analysis to practices of organised resistance. In the following chapters on organised and
everyday resistance, I use the dimensions of repertoires, relationships of agents, spatialisation and
temporalisation to structure my analysis. I use all four dimensions for both categories of resistance to
eventually be able to synthesise the forms of resistance in Chapter 4. Besides focusing on gender as an
intersection of power, I would like to add another intersection that Johansson and Vinthagen do not
mention, but which is crucial to take into consideration in the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:
the compulsory/productive power of the Israeli state. To complete the construction of this analytic
framework, my main two concepts, that of organised and everyday resistance, must be further
specified.
1.4.1 Operationalising ‘organised’ and ‘everyday’ resistance
As stated earlier, the distinction between organised and everyday resistance is the starting point of my
analytic framework. Theory helps us to understand reality and therefore inevitably always simplifies
that reality. The organised/everyday dichotomy does no justice to the complexity of resistance
practices in social life. Thus, while being aware that the distinction I use is artificial, I have decided it
serves my analysis best to work with this distinction. As this research is concerned with a theoretical
complication that derives from a separation between the two categories of resistance, this separation is
necessary to further build academic knowledge on the topic.
Based on Johansson and Vinthagen’s work and the typology of Hollander and Einwohner
(2004), I define organised resistance as often collectively organised action that is aimed at challenging
existing power structures and is visible and easily recognised by both the target of the resistance and
observers. Examples are revolutions, demonstrations, sit-ins, oppositional campaigns, the organisation
of village or women’s committees, existence of local organisations that are (in)formally organised to
advance independence from the state, the boycotting of goods and tax strikes, violent confrontations
with police or military and hunger strikes. Drawing from my review of the literature, I have
formulated six indicators of organised resistance: (1) The action is organised and premeditated to the
extent that at least two or more people are involved; (2) the action is therefore intentional; (3) the
action is clearly visible to the target of resistance and to the (culturally aware) observer; (4) the action
28
is performative: it is ‘dramatic’ and meant to be seen; (5) the action publicly and explicitly challenges
dominant power(s) and discourses and (6) the action is inspired by a repertoire or culturally learned
routines of specific forms/techniques of resistance.
I use Johansson and Vinthagen’s (2013: 10) definition of everyday resistance, which they
define as “such resistance that is done routinely, but which is not politically articulated or formally
organized (yet or in that situation)”. In this thesis, I use the word sumud interchangeably with
everyday resistance. I have previously mentioned examples of sumud, such as enjoying life despite
hardships and remembering names of lost villages. For everyday resistance, I have formulated the
following indicators: (1) The action is done by individuals or a informally organised small group; (2)
the action is done in a regular or habitual manner; (3) the action is not politically articulated; (4) the
action is non-dramatic and non-confrontational; (5) the action has the potential to undermine (some)
power; (6) either the act or the actor is often concealed from the target of resistance; (7) the action is
typically inspired by a subcultural attitude or repertoires of resistance and (8) the action is often not
recognised as resistance by the target, but this is not always the case.
1.5 Conclusion
In this chapter, I reviewed the most relevant literature on my topic, both from a theoretical and an
empirical perspective. I explained that the ‘gap’ in the literature is that it remains unclear how
organised forms of resistance relate to everyday forms of resistance, and vice versa. In my review of
existing empirical research, I discussed Palestinian women’s more organised forms of resistance after
the Second Intifada and practices of sumud. While there has been extensive research on both these
topics, they have not yet been systematically linked to one another. This thesis aims to do so by using
the analytic framework as presented in the last section of this chapter. Now, it is time to turn to the
collected data.
Chapter 2. Women’s organised
resistance practices
2.1 Introduction
It is a Friday morning, the most important day of the week for Muslims, in the beginning of March.
The men of the village will head to the mosque around noon for afternoon prayer, while the women
stay at home and prepare Friday lunch. But between praying, cooking and eating a meal together, the
villagers of Budrus have one other Friday obligation – the weekly protests at what they call the
‘Apartheid Wall’. The differentiated tasks in the morning hours reflect the distinctive tasks men and
women have during these protests. This chapter aims to answer the first sub question of this thesis:
How are acts of organised resistance practiced through dimensions of repertoires, relationships,
spatialisation and temporalisation by women in Budrus between 2005 and 2018? First, the village’s
history of protests against the Israeli occupation is discussed in order to provide the context in which
contemporary practices of resistance must be understood. Whereas women were at the forefront of the
action in the 2003 protests against the construction of the ISW, their roles in the protests nowadays are
mostly confined to supervising and taking care of logistics. Why, in a village that was once famous for
its women participation in protests, are women now mostly participating ‘behind the scenes’ during
this weekly event? As most of my data was gathered on the topic of the Friday protests, I focus on this
form of resistance extensively, before turning to what I label ‘responding to alarm calls’ and Facebook
activism.
2.1.1 Budrus: A history of protests
The village of Budrus is only a couple of kilometres away from the so-called ‘Green line’ that formed
the de facto border of the state of Israel after the 1948 Israeli-Palestinian war. While surrounding
villages, such as Beit Nabela, were destroyed during the war, Budrus remained on the map. To my
knowledge, there are no (English-language) academic resources on resistance practices in Budrus
between 1948 and 2003. To summarise the village’s history of resistance, I thus had to rely on my
respondents’ knowledge and memories. I was only able to triangulate their information through other
respondents. The first protests in the village apparently started during the First Intifada (1987-1991).
Respondents argue Budrus was very active during the first large-scale Palestinian uprising.1 Nadia
recalls how women, including herself, joined the men in the protests. Women would throw stones at
soldiers and sew and paint the Palestinian flag on cotton and murals. Women would also help men
1 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
30
escape or hide from the Israeli army. Hayat likewise remembers the First Intifada vividly. According
to her, the women of Budrus did not politically organise themselves during a period when so-called
‘women committees’ against the Israeli occupation became popular in the 1970s and 1980s.2 Rather,
they played a supportive role to the political practices of men. My respondents do not think the Second
Intifada (2000-2005) affected the village, as the events mainly occurred in the cities. They refer to the
Wall Intifada as a distinct period from the Second Intifada, although the timeframes overlap.
When Israel announced it would build its ‘security wall’ beyond the established ‘Green line’
borders in 2003, Budrus was one of the six villages that feared for its existence (Budrus 2009:
0:04:45). The villagers were threatened with the loss of three hundred acres of land and three thousand
olive trees. These olive trees were not only crucial for economic survival, but were also of profound
importance for the village’s intergenerational history and culture, as shown in the documentary Budrus
(2009). The documentary, directed by Julia Bacha, follows local community leader Ayed Morrar and
his 15-year-old daughter Iltizam as they organise non-violent protests against the building of the ISW.
In a time when the violence of the Second Intifada is making headlines in international media, Morrar
gathered the men of the village to peacefully demonstrate at the construction site of the Wall (Budrus
2009: 00:08:25). Remarkably, he managed to unite local leaders from political opponents Fatah and
Hamas, but the unexpected coalition did not seem to be making any progress in achieving their goal –
saving their land and olive trees. According to Morrar’s daughter Iltizam, this was due to the lack of
women participation. Encouraged by her father, Iltizam mobilised the women of the village, who now
walked in the forefront of each demonstration. The protests received a lot of media attention and
international protesters, including Israeli citizens, started to join the demonstrations. In a timespan of
ten months, the villagers organised fifty-five protests. Eventually, the Israeli government decided to
move the wall. Instead of three hundred acres, Budrus now lost ten acres of their land. The success of
the protests inspired surrounding villages in the OWB to organise similar peaceful marches against the
ISW (GNAD 2015).
Today, daily life in Budrus is still very much affected by the Israeli occupation. Besides a big part
of the olive trees being cut off from the village by the ISW, the villagers are under constant
observation by two panoptic towers on the north and west flank of the village.3 The villagers hear
gunshots six days a week, with the exception of the Israeli holy day of Shabbat, from dawn until
sunset, as there is an Israeli military training camp nearby on the other side of the fence. In order to
construct and build houses on the biggest part of the land, villagers rely completely on rare Israeli
permits. In addition, villagers deal with the daily struggle of checkpoints in commute to their
university or work in surrounding villages or cities. After the Wall Intifada, several protests were
organised between 2008 and 2017 for the Palestinians in Gaza. In 2013, villagers protested after Israeli
soldiers killed a young boy, named Samir Awad (Sherwood 2013). In 2015, 15-year-old Lafee Awad
2 Ibid.
3 The towers were built to monitor the ISW in 2004/2005.
31
met the same fate and another round of protests was instigated. According to my respondents, many
women of the village were present during the Gaza protests, whereas most women attended the
protests for ‘martyrs’ Samir and Lafee. As mentioned in the introduction of this thesis, the direct
reason for using Budrus as the case study for this research is that the villagers have been organising
weekly Friday protests since February 2018, to demonstrate against U.S. president Donald Trump’s
decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017.4 Whereas these protests initially
started as non-violent, they now usually turn into violent clashes. To conclude, it thus can be stated
that Budrus is a village with a history of protests in which women prominently participated. This
participation however has always been informal in the sense that the women did not politically
organise themselves. While the women of the village were at the forefront of the protests in 2004, their
role nowadays is quite different.
2.2 Weekly Friday protests
The Friday protests that started in February 2018, and are still being organised at the time of the
writing of this thesis in June 2018, have become almost a routine in which both the villagers and the
Israeli army play their written parts. The protests usually begin around noon, except when there is a
wedding in the village. On Facebook, several groups of villagers are active in organising the protests.
These groups consist of both, usually young, men and women. After Friday’s afternoon prayer, the
men and young boys walk from the mosque to the cemetery near the ISW, which is less than a ten
minutes walk. Before the crowd reaches the fence, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and Israeli army
trucks are already positioned behind the fence. Sometimes, soldiers, who often operate in small
groups, are stationed inside the village’s territory. What follows is a weekly game of cat-and-mouse:
the soldiers aim to push the villagers back to the centre of the village by using tear gas bombs and
rubber-coated bullets while the villagers chant slogans and young boys throw stones at soldiers.
Regularly, the army takes over the cemetery and school. There are very few women who join these
marches, except Ifza (29 years old), her mother Nahla (49 years old) and aunt Nadia (59 years old),
and sometimes her cousins. Some teenage girls join in small groups. Occasionally, other women come
to ‘protect’ their husbands and children, mainly by supervising them and making sure they do not go
‘too far’. While women are thus not very visible during the process of Friday protests, they are very
much involved ‘behind the scenes’. While watching the youngest children, they keep an eye on the
news and social media, monitor the protests from the rooftops of their houses to warn men about the
whereabouts of soldiers, collect stones for boys to throw, open their house to the wounded and those
suffering from tear gas and provide water, food and lemons, which help to decrease tear gas
symptoms. Women thus take a supportive and logistic role in this weekly routine. Around 3 PM, both
the villagers and soldiers retreat. The men and few women return home to their families and eat lunch.
4 See Introduction, section ‘Academic and empirical context’, 10.
32
I define these weekly protests as organised resistance because they are organised and premeditated,
intentional, clearly visible to the target (the Israeli state), performative and explicitly challenging
dominant power structures.
2.2.1 Women’s participation
The few women who join the protests give similar motivations to do so: out of responsibility to protect
their husbands and children, to convey a message to Israel and the international community and to
assert against the daily problems they encounter due to the Israeli occupation. What is interesting is
that all women who participate belong to the same (extended) family. Nadia, a widow and mother of
ten children, is one of the few women who join the protests every week. She argues that “it is very
important for women to participate alongside their sons and husband and everybody else. The role of
women is most of all one of responsibility. Most things come out of a mother instinct. We would get
so worried if we just stayed at home while everybody else, our family, sons and brothers, would
participate.”5 She also participates to show her rejection about what is happening to Palestinians:
“Some countries show their reaction for example through the UN council, how are we supposed to
show our rejection? A protest is a way of me showing it.”6 Her daughter Samira (21 years old) agrees:
“Sometimes there is no other place for you to share your thoughts and anger about some issues and
situations.”7 According to Nadia’s other daughter Rana, who sometimes participates in the protests,
the role of women has mostly been a supervising role after the end of the Wall Intifada: “It is good to
give them [the men] a push. They are here and they have our support. At the same time we are there to
tell them: ‘Don’t go too far, don’t put yourself in danger’.”8 Nahla joins the protests because of the
daily problems her family encounters, such as the constant fear that her loved ones will be arrested,
economical issues and difficulties with transportation, especially in cases of medical emergencies.
“The Israelis are the gatekeepers. They have the key for every gate and door of Palestine. They control
it. (…) If we did not have these problems, why would we protest?”9
Women who do not join the protests often argue they do not see the urgency as much as they
saw it fourteen years ago, that they have other obligations to their families and that there is no need for
women to get involved in violence. Manal, a 39-year-old housewife and mother of four, says both her
husband and her children participate every Friday, while she remains at home: “Sometimes I go when
other women are there, but something would have to require my presence. Right now, there is no need
for it.” With this ‘need’, she refers to the lack of urgency of a direct threat to the land or villagers.
Cousins Safa and Tahira, both 22 years old, think that there is no need for women to get involved in
the violence. Tahira states: “We think the men are stronger. If there are no men, we will go. And
5 Author’s interview with Nadia and Samira on 24 March, 2018.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
9 Ibid.
33
women have more obligations, to take care of the house and the children.”10 Hanoun (24 years old)
was very active in protests from a young age. At age twelve, she marched in the Wall Protests. Now,
she says, she has other obligations: “I am working and I have my family. My son needs care.”11
Women in the village thus place a strong emphasis on traditional gender roles: women are
supposed to take care of the household and the children, whereas the men worry about politics. The
protests are promoted as ‘men-only’ events on Facebook. According to three respondents who are
active in organising the protests on social media, this is because the demonstrations these days are
violent clashes rather than peaceful marches. But the lack of women participation is not a one-way
street: women do not refrain from joining the protests simply because they are not invited. Ifza has
previously tried to mobilise women in the village to demonstrate, but most women she approached
argued that the Friday protests are ‘no place’ for a woman to be. They would only be a burden for the
men, as the men would be worried about protecting the women. It thus seems that during the Wall
Intifada, the threat of losing land and olive trees was so urgent, that an exception was made for
women’s participation in protests. In general, the political sphere remains a male domain. While
today’s generation of young women is going to university and getting jobs, the middle-aged women of
the village often did not get a higher education. They were confined to the household and their roles as
a wife and mother. Women are generally not politically active or organised, whereas most men in the
village are affiliated to a political party. It was the urgency of the direct threat to the land in 2003 that
allowed women to negotiate a different role in organised resistance practices.
2.2.2 Friday protests: dimensions of analysis
In this paragraph, the above description of the Friday protests will be analysed and extended through
the four dimensions of analysis of Johannson and Vinthagen. 12 Turning to the dimension of
repertoires, it can be concluded that protests in the village of Budrus have become routinised. They
are an essential part of the resistance repertoire of the villagers. The strategy of resistance, initially
non-violent demonstrations at a symbolic location, and the division of roles is specific to the ‘set of
agents’, namely the villagers of Budrus. Most respondents seem to draw from a repertoire in which
women participate in the protests, but in which they mainly operate behind the scenes and in a
supporting role. The women clearly deploy a gender-based repertoire of resistance, explaining their
choices and behaviour during the protests mainly through their gender. It is because they are women
that they do not join the weekly protests by marching. They seem to find this answer self-evident. The
few women who do join the protests regularly are seen by most of my respondents as exceptional.
In the dimensions of relationships, the relationship between the agent, the woman who
chooses to participate in the act of resistance but at the same time is confined and confines herself to
10 Author’s interview with Safa and Tahira on 22 April, 2018.
11 Author’s interview with Hanoun and Hayat on 3 May, 2018.
12 See Chapter 1, section 1.4 ‘Analytic framework’, 26-27.
34
the margins of that act, and target, the Israeli state, is complicated by gender roles. The influence of
family honour, purity and virginity is of importance here. As Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2004) writes, the
sexual victimisation of women is a big threat to Palestinian resistance. Due to the social stigma
surrounding the subject, social abuse by Israeli soldiers is a very difficult subject to research and
document. There is a lot of social anxiety surrounding protecting a woman’s ‘purity’ and thereby the
family honour from sexual abuse by Israeli soldiers. According to Shalhoub-Kervorkian, this in return
has made Palestinian women’s bodies a bigger target of violence and abuse. During my fieldwork, a
young man was arrested from his family home during a night raid. As usual during these events,
soldiers emptied and searched the house. All inhabitants were forced to line up outside the house.
During my interviews a couple days after this event, female relatives of the man told me that the
Israeli soldiers only searched the women in their nightgowns, while the men had to watch. The
respondents felt deeply humiliated by this act.13 Returning to Abdo’s (2014) work, as discussed in
Chapter 114, the fact that the Palestinian women’s bodies have become a site of both oppression and
resistance as they are subjected to humiliation and abuse, complicates how female agents of resistance
in Budrus interact with the target. As their bodies could be turned into a weapon of oppression, they
seem to marginalise themselves during the Friday protests in order to protect their own and their
family’s honour.
In the dimension of spatiality, the site of resistance during the Friday protests is the ISW and
territory of the village. The Israeli state is controlling the boundaries of the landscape, the movement
and interaction in this space. The wall is a highly symbolised site, illustrated by how the villagers call
it ‘the Apartheid Wall’: for them, it symbolises Israel’s politics of segregation and inequality. The
fence is in itself a disciplinary mechanism, aimed at separating Palestinians from Israelis, but to
uphold the fence, other disciplinary functions are in place. Surveillance tactics are of crucial
importance. The panoptic towers monitor the villagers’ every move and whoever comes too close to
the fence risks being shot. The Israeli state apparently also uses the cameras to take photographs of
boys throwing stones, to later identify and possibly arrest them. Another disciplinary function is the
weapons that the Israeli army and IDF use during the Friday protests. The tear gas and rubber-coated
bullets are not meant to kill, but are intended to keep the villagers ‘in place’: away from the Wall and
Israeli territory. As a result, the Israeli army is ‘protecting’ the boundary of the Wall, whereas the
villagers ‘protest’ the boundary. It is in particular this dimension of spatiality where it becomes clear
that the protests are a form of resistance that is engaging with both compulsory and productive power.
The interaction between agent and target is a physical struggle over control of the territory: the
villagers aim to keep the soldiers at the fence by using their bodies and stones as weapons, whereas the
soldiers use tear gas and rubber-coated bullets to coerce the villagers into cooperation. However, the
wall is not solely coercive. It is also productive as its existence produces a space that the villagers can
13 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
14 See Chapter 1, section 1.4 ‘Analytic framework’, 26-27.
35
turn into a site of resistance. This finding corresponds to Uzguc (2010) analysis of the Wall as a ‘third
space’: it is both an oppressive and productive mechanism.
The dimension of temporalisation is an interesting dimension to explore here, as it is the only
dimension in which the villagers are more powerful than the Israeli soldiers during the Friday protests.
Essentially, the villagers take control of time. They decide when the soldiers ‘have’ to show up at the
fence, and when they can leave. While women are dependent on the men showing up in order to
practice their resistance, they do have some say in the dimension of temporalisation by being involved
in the planning of protests through social media. The control over the Israeli army’s time is
acknowledged by the villagers. One example that illustrates this, is that one morning, when I was
meeting Ifza to go to the fields, she figured out quite late that there would be no protests that day due
to a wedding. Nonetheless, she wanted to go to the Wall to see if there would be soldiers waiting for
the usual crowd. We walked to the cemetery, from where we could overlook the Wall. Indeed, two
tanks and half a dozen soldiers were in place. Ifza found this highly comical and took pictures and
videos to post on Facebook. She then called her father and other relatives to inform them. Quickly, the
whole village knew about the soldiers in position and it was the topic of conversation, or rather, laugh,
for a couple of days.
2.3 Responding to alarm calls: informal mobilisation
A form of organised resistance that puts women more visibly in the forefront of resistance is what I
have labelled as ‘responding to alarm calls’. On the Facebook page of the village, villagers warn each
other if soldiers are sighted near or in the village. The village’s mosque will then broadcast the
information through its speaker. The sight of soldiers usually means that someone is getting arrested
or that a house will be demolished. The villagers, including women and children, will then rush to the
scene and try to stop soldiers, or at least ‘be there for the family’, as Nadia calls it.15 Sometimes, their
interaction with the soldiers gets physical, but usually, the women aim to stand in their way. They will
for example run into a house that is about to demolished, or make lines in front of the house so that the
soldiers and/or the bulldozer cannot get through. Nahla recalls when a couple of weeks ago, she and
some other women rushed to a house that was about to be demolished. “We were standing in front of
them and we stayed there. That was the reason the Israelis did not destroy it.”16 There is no formal
plan on what to do during these alarm calls; it seems to have become a routine in which every villager
knows his or her part. Nadia says that she does not worry about her children when an alarm call
occurs, because she knows she will find them at the scene once she gets there.17 The villagers seem to
perceive their response to these alarm calls as self-evident: of course, this is what they do when
soldiers come onto their territory.
15 Author’s interview with Nadia and Samira on 24 March, 2018.
16 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018
17 Author’s interview with Nadia and Samira on 24 March, 2018.
36
While the responses to alarm calls are thus not organised in the form of being planned or
premeditated and lack political articulation, it is a public response by a group of people to the presence
of power holders. It is routinised and could in that sense be approached as premeditated. Because this
act is intentional, clearly visible to the target and performative and dramatic, I approach it as a form of
organised resistance. The action publicly and explicitly challenges the dominant power holder. This
form of organised resistance is in interaction with the Israeli state’s compulsory power: it is the arrest
or demolishing of one’s home that is resisted by placing bodies at strategic places. The acts that are
being resisted are repressive rather than productive manifestations of power.
2.3.1 Alarm calls: dimensions of analysis
When looking at the dimension of repertoires, there appears to be a culturally learned routine that
instructs villagers to rush to the scene whenever soldiers arrive in the village. The lack of organisation
involved in the alarm call responses can be explained by this culturally learned routine: why should
something that is apparently ‘self-evident’ be organised? It is a collective way of dealing with the
occupation that parents teach their children. In the realm of relationships, it is interesting to see how
suddenly, the divisions among women and men disappear. While during the Friday protests, men and
women operate in different roles; both men and women will rush to the forefront of the action when an
alarm call occurs. This also changes the relationship between women and the soldiers. Women situate
themselves in direct confrontation with the soldiers, which quite often turns into physical contact.
Apparently, there is something about the alarm calls that makes it more urgent for women to risk their
and their family’s honour than during the weekly protests. When I asked Ifza about this observation,
she argued that it is easier for women to directly confront the Israeli state when a direct effort is
expected from them, and when success is likely. In her experience, it is easier to mobilise women for a
land confiscation than for a solidarity protest for the people in Jerusalem or Gaza, as this is less
personal and further from home. This explanation is consistent with the explanations respondents gave
of why they do not join the protests. Many of them stated they did not see a direct reason to join the
protests – it is not like their land was immediately threatened as it was in 2003. We can thus conclude
that in order for women to place themselves closer to the soldiers, they need to perceive an urgency
because of a direct threat to their families and the village and anticipate success of their act of
resistance to be likely. The internal relationships during these alarm calls also explain why women in
Budrus do not feel the need to politically organise themselves. As Hayat explains: “There is no need to
belong to an organisation. If soldiers arrest a person, all women will go and help them. We all work
directly as one unit.”18
In the dimension of spatialisation, power is highly contested between the agent and target during
this act of resistance. As soon as soldiers enter the territory of the village, the power struggle
18 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018; Author’s interview with Hanoun and Hayat
on 3 May, 2018.
37
intensifies. While villagers use the ISW as a marking of their territory in everyday conversations, most
of them see the land behind the Wall still as a part of the village. The power dynamics are different
than during the protests. During the protests, soldiers are protecting the boundary of the ISW while the
villagers are protesting it. During the alarm calls, the villagers are ‘protecting’ the boundary. While
Israeli soldiers have weapons and could clear the way violently as a means of disciplining the
villagers, in practice, they often retreat when surrounded by a mob of angry villagers. In a sense, the
villagers here thus also have a disciplinary mechanism, namely that of collective gathering.
In the dimension of temporalisation, the control over time is dual. On the one hand, the Israeli
state decides when arrests and demolitions take place. Often, this is in the middle of the night, so that
quick mobilisation will be difficult for the villagers. The soldiers control how villagers spend their
time: instead of sleeping, entire households are forced to line up outside during an arrest or people
quickly have to pack their belongings when their house is about to be demolished. On the other hand,
the alarm calls often result in the fact that it takes Israeli soldiers much longer to succeed in their task,
if they succeed at all, due to the collective response by the villagers.
2.4 Facebook activism and cyber colonialism
Another form of resistance that was mentioned by several, mainly younger, respondents is that of
Facebook activism. Ten out of twenty respondents said that they share or write posts about the Israeli
occupation on Facebook, from sharing news articles about the situation in Gaza, to remembering dates
of death of martyrs and spreading information about arrests or demolitions that occurred in the village.
Three of my respondents stated that they help in the organising of the Friday protests on Facebook:
they make events, share it with their friends and encourage men and young boys to join.19 They
perceive this as a way of participating in the protests. They thus use social media as a tool to mobilise
people for organised resistance in real life. I added most of my respondents who use Facebook in this
manner on the social platform and collected a small sample of posts they wrote or shared during the
period of my fieldwork. I used this sample in addition to my generated data to analyse this form of
resistance.
Similar to categorising the alarm calls as organised resistance, I need to explain myself when I
discuss Facebook activism as a form of organised resistance. Aouragh (2008), who has done extensive
research on Facebook activism among Palestinians, calls Facebook activism for example everyday
resistance. Facebook activism is indeed a hybrid form of organised and everyday resistance. It is
everyday in the sense that it is done by individuals in a regular and habitual manner. However, it is
organised in the sense that it is intentional and clearly visible. As one of my respondents said about her
Facebook activism: “We know the Israelis are following us on social media. This is why it is
19 Author’s interview with Safa and Tahira on 3 May, 2018.
38
resistance.”20 Their posts and comments are thus meant to be seen and aim to convey a message. I
therefore have chosen to discuss Facebook activism as a form of organised resistance.
2.4.1 Facebook activism: dimensions of analysis
In order to contextualise the analysis of my data, I should discuss previous work on the topic of
Facebook activism. Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2011a) has researched what she labels ‘e-resistance’, or
electronic resistance, among young Palestinian women. While Israelis are in firm control of
technological development in the Palestinian territories, women who share their opinions in
cyberspace “deterittorialize power, renegotiate it, and use counter narratives against the masters of the
cyberworld” (2011a: 202). Shalhoub-Kevorkian thus speaks of ‘technological agency’, in which
women can move beyond spatial power structures to practice agency. In a way, Facebook activism is
more easily accessible to young women than physical resistance, as they can move beyond the
patriarchal structures that confine them to the margins of direct interaction with the target of
resistance. However, the power dynamics involved in the practice of Facebook activism are more
complex than it might seem. Aouragh (2011b: 56) argues that technology plays a dual role in conflict
areas: it is both oppressive and progressive, and therefore can enable both domination and resistance.
The worldwide web is not free of colonial structures. Tawil-Souri and Aouragh (2014: 107) speak of
‘cyber colonialism’, in which “the internet reinforces a world of contact and influence between
radically asymmetrical powers”.
Using social media as a tool of resistance is not something new in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Aouragh (2016: 136) introduces the idea of a ‘cyber intifada’, or a Palestinian ‘uprising’ in the virtual
world. I approach this idea of a cyber intifada as a repertoire, or a public transcript in the words of
Scott, in which Palestinians use social media to give a voice to the Palestinian narrative and document
injustice and oppression. It is in this sense that my respondents use Facebook and draw from this
repertoire: they produce counter narratives to public narratives of Palestinian resistance. It is thus a
shared “collection of ways or methods” that a “specific set of agents” knows how to use.21 What is
interesting is that, similar to the alarm calls, when discussing Facebook activism, the respondents do
not seem to draw from a gender-based repertoire of resistance. They do not make a distinction
between the role of men and the role of women in cyberspace resistance, whereas they do make this
distinction clearly when discussing different gender roles during the Friday protests. Patriarchal
structures are thus less visible in cyberspace than in actual life.
In the dimension of relationships, the interaction between agent and target is complicated by
several factors. While social media provided Palestinian activists with a platform through which they
could inform the general public, share the Palestinian narrative and organise events and protests, it
also makes Palestinian activists easily exposed to surveillance and possible arrest by the Israeli state
20 Author’s interview with Qadira on 28 April, 2018.
21 See Chapter 1, section 1.4 ‘Analytic framework’, 26-27.
39
(Aouragh 2014: 129). Furthermore, what activists can post is not only confined by possible Israeli
state repression. Internal oppression by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and tensions between Hamas
and Fatah are also influencing self-censorship (2014: 120). In addition, corporate algorithms and
Facebook monopolism increasingly control movement inside cyberspace (2014: 126). The interaction
between agent and target is thus severely shaped and complicated by internal politics and oppression,
and restrictions on the means of interaction. The dimension of relationships is strongly intertwined
with the dimension of spatialisation. While the existence of cyberspace gave Palestinian activists the
possibility to move beyond physical boundaries in practicing resistance, the Israelis are still very much
in control of internet infrastructure in the OPT. Tawil-Souri and Aouragh’s (2014) research shows that
Israeli policy determines what equipment can be installed and how and where installation of that
equipment takes place. The Israeli army furthermore confiscates and destroys equipment and/or
forbids its import. In summary, while there is an increased opportunity to practice resistance through
cyberspace, the access to that cyberspace is still controlled by the Israeli state.
In the dimension of temporalisation, it is interesting that many posts of my respondents are often
focused on the remembrance of past events or the celebration of life events and future plans. They for
example frequently post or share stories related to al-Nakba, or ‘The Catastophe’, in 194822 , villages
that no longer exist and the dates of birth or death of martyrs. Posts about important life events can
also be seen as a form of resistance. The birth of a child, weddings and graduations are events that are
widely shared among family members on Facebook. One of my respondents explained this
observation of mine as follows: “They want to stop our living, to stop our breathing, to stop our
education, to stop our love, to stop our marriage. Everything that is related to our living, they reject
it.”23 In this sense, women are resisting the productive power of the Israeli state. It is not only the
survival of the Palestinian people that these young women aim to display on social media. It is also
about sending a message that they have the right to determine their own lives and futures. The
celebration of marriage, childbirth and graduation is a celebration of moving beyond the available
options the Israeli state aims to construct for them.
2.5 Conclusion
In this chapter, I discussed that today’s protests in Budrus need to be placed in a longer course of
organised resistance. While Budrus was active during the First Intifada, I mainly focused on the Wall
Intifada in 2003, as there was more information available. The women of Budrus played a crucial role
in the Wall Intifada. However, after these protests, women returned to their informal, non-political
forms of resistance. The few women who join the protests regularly give similar motivations to do so:
out of responsibility to protect their husbands and children, to convey a message to Israel and the
22 With al-Nakba, Palestinians refer to ‘The Catastrophe’ in 1948, when more than 700,000 Palestinians were
forced to flee from the territory that is today known as the state Israel.
23 Author’s interview with Hanoun and Hayat on 3 May, 2018.
40
international community and to attest the daily problems they encounter due to the Israeli occupation.
The women who do not join the protests often argue they do not see the urgency as much as they saw
it fifteen years ago, that they have other obligations to their families and that there is no need for
women to get involved in violence. This explanation is given based upon a gender-based repertoire, in
which women are mainly confined to the private sphere. In addition, women seem to marginalise
themselves during the Friday protests in order to protect their own and their family’s honour. This
however does not mean they are not involved. They operate ‘behind the scenes’. Returning to the
indicators of organised resistance as formulated in the introduction of this thesis, while the action of
protesting is clearly visible, performative and publicly challenges dominant powers, this does not
mean women’s performances during these actions are also visible and performative. They interact with
the Israeli state in a more indirect way. When practicing resistance through responding to alarm calls
and Facebook activism, women however move beyond patriarchal structures. In the case of alarm
calls, the urgency and direct threat persuade them to directly confront soldiers as they did during the
Wall Intifada, whereas on Facebook, they can move beyond physical boundaries to share their
opinions and challenge the Israeli narrative.
41
Chapter 3. Women’s everyday
resistance practices
Budrus is actually a great example of sumud, because in 1967, and even
before that, a lot of people left the village. When the war started, everybody
left. (…) But a small group of people decided to stay in Budrus. Some of
them left and came back immediately after the war was over. That is sumud,
or steadfastness. The people who stayed are the reason there is a village
called Budrus today and is now Palestinian territory. – Ifza1
3.1 Introduction
Before the streets of Budrus turn into a violent scene full of tear gas grenades and emptied bullet
sleeves during the weekly Friday protests, the village is still quiet. People are preparing themselves for
the hectic afternoon that will follow. Except for Ifza and her younger cousins, who gather at her
grandmother’s house to go to the fields near the Wall. They bring snacks, pick wildflowers and herbs
to bring home, talk about their week and take photos of each other to post on social media. For the
panoptic cameras that are monitoring the village, it is supposed to look like girls having fun on their
day off. What the young women are actually doing is looking for traps Israeli soldiers might have
placed to arrest children during the demonstration that will follow later that day. This chapter focuses
on these covert forms of resistance, or sumud, that play a crucial role in women’s everyday lives in the
village. The aim of the chapter is to answer the second sub question: How are acts of everyday
resistance practiced through dimensions of repertoires, relationships, spatialisation and
temporalisation by women in Budrus between 2005 and 2018? First, I discuss the daily struggles
women in Budrus encounter and how they give meaning to the concept of ‘sumud’. While Chapter 1
provides a general overview of the interpretation of sumud and the academic debate around it2, it was
crucial for me to establish the meaning of sumud in the village before turning to local practices of
sumud. I argue that sumud is not only everyday resistance, but also a psychological coping mechanism
to deal with the hardships of daily life under occupation. Then, based on analysis of my empirical
evidence, I introduce a classification of five forms of everyday resistance that I have identified as core
1 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
2 See Chapter 1, section 1.2.2 ‘Everyday resistance in Palestine: practices of sumud’, 25-26.
42
forms of sumud in the village. Besides these Friday morning ‘picnics’, I analyse the practices of
farming and the annual olive harvest, checkpoints and the refusal of immobility, motherhood,
education and narratives and the creation counter ‘safe’ spaces.
3.2 Sumud as resistance and coping mechanism
When asked how the Israeli occupation affects the women’s everyday lives, respondents often
mention living in fear for their children, arrests of husbands and other male family members and
temporarily becoming a women-led household, going through daily checkpoints on commute to
university or work and economical issues. To elaborate on the first issue, many women stated that they
live in fear for their children being arrested or killed when playing outside, but also when they go to
Budrus’ primary and middle school, which is near the ISW. According to one of my respondents, who
is a teacher at the school, soldiers sometimes enter the building during classes or hide themselves in
the toilets, which are in a separate building outside the school.3 As a result, she allows her students to
go to the toilets two by two. Another respondent states that she never knows if her children will come
home that day if she sends them to school in the morning, due to these harassment techniques of the
army.4 Another issue that is often discussed is the arrests of husbands and fathers. Almost all
respondents had either a husband or a father who had gotten arrested at least once. In a patriarchal
society as Budrus, the absence of a husband and father for even one day can be a struggle.
When asked the question what ‘sumud’ means to them, respondents often answer that sumud
is to stay on the land, despite the sadness and pain they suffer, and to continue life by giving birth and
raising children. According to Nahla, continuing life is essentially resistance: “They don’t want us to
make families, they don’t want us to live, they don’t want us to be happy. Everything we do is against
the will of the occupier.”5 Samira describes sumud as a form of consciousness:
It is about the understanding and the consciousness of the occupation. (…)
We should never come to think about it as a normal state and live with our
enemies (…) We should live in it and make it into a culture, that this is
occupation.6
Her mother Nadia agrees and argues that sumud can expand through consciousness and education: “I
believe this generation is more conscious and educated about the occupation, so they have more
sumud. They will fight more than the previous generations.”7 However, sumud is not solely resistance
or consciousness. It simultaneously seems to be a psychological coping mechanism to deal with the
3 Author’s interview with Abeer and Azhar on 29 March, 2018.
4 Author’s interview with Manal on 20 April, 2018.
5 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
6 Author’s interview with Nadia and Samira on 29 March, 2018.
7 Ibid.
43
hardships of everyday life under occupation. Tahira explains that the fact that her mother took care of
her and her brothers and sisters after her father was arrested is a form of sumud to her. “My mother
taught me that even when my father is arrested, there is no reason to be depressed about it, as there is
still hope for staying on the land and to protect it.”8 Her mother Hayat states that her form of sumud in
this situation was to be patient and await her husband’s return while continuing life.9 Rana gave a
similar example of sumud: “It is staying despite all of the sadness. When they arrest one of your
family members or you lose a family member as a martyr, you stay.”10 Sumud is thus also a way of
dealing with everyday struggles. As Qadira describes it: “Sometimes we feel down, but our sumud
means we rise up again.”11 As written in the introduction12 and Chapter 113, I believe an act can
simultaneously be a conscious political decision or resistance, a coping strategy and an act
‘encroachment’. Just because an act can also be seen as a coping mechanism, does not mean it is any
less of ‘resistance’. Now, it is time to look at more concrete ways in which these women practice
sumud.
3.3 Friday morning picnics
Just as the Friday protests have become routinised, so have the Friday morning picnics of Ifza and her
cousins. Around 10 AM, they gather at their grandmother’s house. They drink coffee and chat about
the latest gossip. An hour later, they go into the fields. They listen to popular Arabic music on their
phones, eat crisps for breakfast and take pictures of each other, while making their usual round in the
fields to discover traps. They cover as much ground as possible without coming too close to the fence.
One of the places they stop by is the remembrance stone for Lafee Awad. The stone with a picture of
Lafee marks the location where Israeli soldiers killed the young man in 2015. The girls look
underneath trees and inside bushes. On their way back, they pick wildflowers and herbs to bring home.
Sometimes, Ifza’s mother Nahla and her aunt Nadia join. Sporadically, the Israeli army sends a
surveillance drone to see what exactly is happening during these picnics, reminding the women that
their every move is indeed carefully being monitored.
The Friday morning picnics are a form of everyday resistance because the act is intentionally
concealed from the target. The action is not meant to convey a message. Rather, it is a disguised way
of possibly undermining Israeli power when the army hides soldiers in the fields. The women use their
femininity and daily habits – social gathering, collecting flowers and herbs – to conceal their
resistance. This form of resistance is a response to compulsory power. Traps by Israeli soldiers would
be placed to arrest children, thereby practicing the ability to control the actions of others. By
8 Author’s interview with Safa and Tahira on 3 May, 2018.
9 Author’s interview with Hayat and Hanoun on 3 May, 2018.
10 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
11 Author’s interview with Qadira on 28 April, 2018.
12 See Introduction, section ‘Methodology: Theory and concepts’, 14.
13 See Chapter 1, section 1.2.2 ‘Everyday resistance in Palestine: practices of sumud’, 25-26.
44
exercising this form of ‘counter-surveillance’, the women are negotiating possible coercion of the
Israeli state. In order to do so, they need to remain concealed. The dimension of repertoires must be
linked to women’s roles in the Friday protests as analysed in chapter 2.14 The Friday picnics are
following the same script, with women playing a mainly invisible role: rather than physically being at
the fence when the protests start, they are operating in the margins, in this case preparing the protests
in a disguised manner. In the realm of relationships, women are concealing any interaction with the
Israeli state, therefor dominating this interaction. The territory they are in is spatially disciplined by
the Israeli state, due to the fence, panoptic cameras and drones. In case the women would come too
close to the fence or would engage in ‘suspicious’ behaviour, the army will send tanks and soldiers. At
the same time, women are also practicing a disciplinary function in the spatial dimension. By their
weekly picnics in the fields, it is difficult for soldiers to hide in order to arrest children during the day.
In the realm of temporalisation, it is interesting that while the soldiers are made to believe the women
are spending their time doing a leisure activity, they are actually practicing resistance, creating a
different perspective on how time is spent.
3.4 Farming and the annual olive harvest
Another example of sumud that was given by almost all respondents was that of working on and
taking care of the land. As there appears to be an increase in the Israeli state trying to buy the village’s
land, several respondents argue that simply not selling the land is a form of sumud in itself.15 The
farming of the land is a more active form of sumud that most women in the agrarian village practice.
An example of this is the annual olive harvest, which takes places every October. On the other side of
the ISW, there are multiple olive trees that were cut off from the village when the Wall was built. In
order to do the annual harvest, women have to receive permits by the Israeli government, which are
frequently denied. Even when the women are allowed to go to their family’s trees, they have three
days from 7 AM to 3 PM to conduct the harvest, which is a very limited time. In addition, women
state they often deal with harassment by Israeli soldiers. Soldiers try to slow down their work and
bother them in other ways. Going despite this harassment is not just because of the economical
dependence on the olives, but also because it provides an opportunity to practice sumud. This form of
resistance is mainly a response to productive power. Taking care of the land became meaningful as
resistance precisely because the land is threatened by the target of resistance. It allows women to turn
their land into a site of resistance.
The land is a crucial part of the repertoire of the villagers. Villagers often speak of a
connectedness with the earth and their land. Taking care of it is almost as taking care of your children,
as some women narrate their relationship to the olive trees. It is thus deeply embedded in local culture
14 See Chapter 2, section 2.2.2 ‘Friday protests: dimensions of analysis’, 34.
15 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
45
and often, women state that teaching their children to learn to love the land and how to take care of it
is a crucial part of sumud. Manal describes how her connection to the land is central in teaching her
children about sumud and resistance: “They look up to me, and they will do what I do. The way I am
living, the way I am taking care of my land. They just look at me and learn. They see how we as their
parents are trying to save this land.”16 Farming the land and the olive harvest are not necessarily forms
of resistance that are recognised as resistance by the target. It is rather sending an indirect message of
steadfastness. Women are however not only sending a message to the Israelis, but also to their
children by taking care of the land. In the realm of relationships, farming is thus a message from the
agent (the woman farming her land) to the Israeli state (the target) and to her children and community.
This dimension of is again closely related to the dimension of spatialisation. The land is deeply
meaningful to the villagers. While the villagers are in control of interventions in the landscape by
farming it and for example planting new olive trees, the overruling or compulsory power lays with the
Israeli state. An interesting example of this is that one day during the protests, one of the olive trees
caught fire due to a tear gas bomb and drought. Nahla wanted to put out the fire, but the soldiers
would not let her go near the tree. According to Ifza, the soldiers were even laughing at her mother’s
distress. The control over the land is thus continuously contested. There are also gender-specific forms
of control aimed at the agent, namely the harassment during the olive harvest. As explained in Chapter
2, this harassment is one of the reasons it is difficult for women to directly confront soldiers.17 In the
dimension of temporalisation, the Israeli state decides when and how long women can work on the
land during the annual olive harvest. For the villagers, the aspect of routine is crucial. The farming and
olive harvest, year after year, day after day, is meaningful as sumud because it is continuous. It is
about nursing an olive tree back to life after it has been burnt. Not just after the first time, but after
every single time it catches fire during the Friday protests.
3.5 Checkpoints and the refusal of immobility
Another routinised action that respondents define as sumud is that of refusing immobility by going
through checkpoints every day on commute to work or university. Nahla tells how harassment at the
checkpoints has become worse in the last couple of years and how she experiences it as torture.18 The
women speak of these processes at checkpoints as exhausting and the cause of a lot of frustration.
Samira expresses her daily frustration when going to university in Birzeit: “You go to university, and
you see the Israeli occupations flags flying in front of you. You see checkpoints. Any soldier has the
right to stand there and stop you, in the middle of the road, for no reason.”19 Often, she is late for class
due to checkpoints. It is the continuing of life despite this daily frustration that is framed as sumud.
16 Author’s interview with Manal on 20 April, 2018.
17 See Chapter 2, section 2.2.2 ‘Friday protests: dimensions of analysis’, 34.
18 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
19 Author’s interview with Nadia and Samira on 24 March, 2018.
46
Wafiyyah for example remembers that when she was in college in Ramallah during the Second
Intifada, there was always a checkpoint on her way to university. Everyday, the women had to go
through the tiring procedure of getting out of the bus, walking over a mountain and then getting onto
another bus. Yet, she finished her education.20 Fatima never received a higher education, but perceives
the education of her daughters as sumud: “Especially for girls, going to university and traveling long
distances when seeing barriers, such as checkpoints, is sumud.”21
Commuting to university or work despite checkpoints is not the only way women refuse to be
immobile due to the Israeli occupation. Ifza is one of the few women of the village who has travelled
extensively outside of the OWB. She recalls her travels as humiliating and difficult:
The borders are the worst nightmare for everyone. The Jordanian border is
the worst experience I have ever lived during my traveling. (…) They just
harass you with a lot of questions, they will take your paper and make you
wait for no reason. And the humiliation of searching your stuff.
Sometimes, they would break some of your stuff. (…) Our Palestinian
passport doesn't have lots of permissions, so traveling around the world,
without visa, is also harder for us.22
Nonetheless, Ifza continues to travel, explaining that it is about ‘enjoying my rights as a Palestinian’.
She thus faces these obstacles – the frustration, the humiliation, the lack of access - in traveling in
order to live life by her own terms.
The power that is resisted with this act of sumud is both compulsory and productive. The
coercion of the checkpoints and other control mechanisms is unavoidable if one wishes to live a life as
normal as possible in the OWB. Thus, instead of avoiding it, women renegotiate the meaning of going
through checkpoints. Their daily frustrations have a larger purpose when placed in the frame of
sumud. Women thus react in a productive manner to this compulsory power: it is about recreating
subjectivities and meanings about a form of coercion they cannot escape. The repertoire of sumud in
this case is about living life on one’s own terms, despite the hardships the occupation brings. It is an
intergenerational repertoire that is especially meaningful for girls, as women getting a higher
education or work was not as self-evident decennia ago in a rural village such as Budrus. There is thus
both a gendered and a social class aspect to the script. Checkpoints are seen as torture, harassment and
a constant reminder of the Israeli occupation. Nonetheless, their existence should not stop Palestinians
from continuing their life and education. In terms of relationships, the target of resistance is
dominating the interaction with the agent of resistance at the checkpoint. The Israeli soldier decides
20 Author’s interview with Fatima and Wafiyyah on 14 April, 2018.
21 Ibid.
22 Author’s interview with Ifza, Nahla and Rana on 24 March, 2018.
47
who he or she lets pass and who he or she will check or interrogate. The power structures here are
highly racialised. The checkpoint itself and the decision of who can move freely and who cannot is
founded on a clear separation between the Israeli Jewish soldier and the Arab Palestinian. Resistance
of the agent is often not verbally expressed, as this might lead to hour-long interrogation. It is the act
of going through the checkpoint everyday, and thereby cooperating in this mechanism of control, that
is seen as the resistance. In the realm of spatialisation, the Israeli state is controlling the landscape and
deciding who can enter and move inside that space. The checkpoints in themselves are disciplinary
functions, aimed at regulating the population. In the dimension of temporalisation, soldiers are in
complete control of time at checkpoints. It is their decision if a Palestinian will be on time on his or
her work or university. They decide if and how much Palestinian will be late. On the other hand, it is
the routine, the continuity of actions in time, that makes this act of resistance meaningful to the agent.
3.6 Motherhood, education and narratives
Giving birth, raising children and educating them on how to practice sumud, is often mentioned as the
core shape through which women in the village practice sumud. The very act of giving birth – of
giving life – is seen as resistance against the Israeli occupation as it is to continue life, to give life to
the next generation, despite Israeli attempts to contain the Palestinian people. Hanoun states: “They
want to stop our living. To stop our breathing, to stop our education, to stop our love, to stop our
marriages. Everything that is related to life, they reject it. So if we continue being alive, this is
resistance.”23 Besides giving birth, educating children is also often seen as sumud. Nadia explains how
she influenced her children’s practice of sumud:
I believe I am one of the main reasons behind my children’s sumud. They got
it from me, the way I talk about the homeland, about the occupation, about the
Palestinian issue, it transferred somehow to my children. (…) I can see my
belief in sumud is in them, they just practice it, without even being conscious
of it. This is something you get from your parents and their stories about the
homeland.24
The practice of sumud and the script it entails are thus an intergenerational practice: it is given from
one generation upon the next. Nadia states she in turn learned her sumud from her mother:
My mother was from the village of Beit Nabala, which is now abandoned. She
would always be talking about every single detail about daily life in Beit
23 Author’s interview with Hayat and Hanoun on 3 May, 2018.
24 Author’s interview with Nadia and Samira on 24 March, 2018.
48
Nabala. I felt connected to Beit Nabela, and I was so sad for it, because it felt
like my own village. As if I knew the place, and the people living there. That
is how my mother’s stories connected me to that place.25
She passed her mother’s stories about Beit Nabala on to her children and grandchildren. Manal often
tells her children about the 2003 protests, when she carried her oldest daughter, one year old at the
time, with her. She also tells them about their father, a prominent local Fatah leader, and the times he
was arrested and spent in prison.26 Hanoun recalls how her mother told her stories about, for example,
the Nakba and about Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas.27 All three women emphasise the
intergenerational aspect of telling these stories to their children. They see it as their responsibility to
teach sumud to the next generation - a responsibility that was also practiced by their mothers.
Education at schools also allows women to practice sumud. Azhar, who works at the primary
school in the village, tells her students stories about historical Palestine and the Nakba and teaches
them names of lost Palestinian villages inside Israeli territory. Her sister Abeer used to work as a
teacher. Abeer told her students for example about the 1953 massacre in Budrus’ neighbouring village
of Qibya. Both women find it their responsibility to tell their students that violence is not the best way
to resist the occupation. Azhar explains: “The boys are proud of themselves for going to the Wall and
throwing stones after class. I tell them this is not always the right way to do it. To study is better to
resist than to throw stones and being shot for nothing.”28
In the repertoire of motherhood and education as sumud, being a mother means being an
educator. It is the knowledge about sumud that must be passed on to the next generation – either
children or students – that is a form of sumud in itself. In the dimension of temporalisation, the
intergenerational aspect is thus crucial. Perspectives on the past, but also visions for the future, are
conveyed from mother to child, or from teacher to student. In the realm of relationships, the
interaction is focused on relationships inside the own community, rather than between the agent and
target of resistance. In this internal interaction, the woman takes an authoritative role. She is powerful
in narrating and sharing her stories. In the realm of spatialisation, the denial of the state of Israel is an
interesting way of resisting the Israeli state as a counter discourse. When discussing the conflict,
women continuously refer to the territory inside Israel as ‘Palestine’. In this way, they are defying
Israel’s physical power and boundaries. The act of sumud that is practiced through motherhood and
education is a main example of how productive power is targeted. By raising children and telling them
stories about the homeland, women uphold a system of meaning in which existing is resistance and in
which Palestine continues to survive.
25 Ibid.
26 Author’s interview with Manal on 20 April, 2018.
27 Author’s interview with Hayat and Hanoun on 3 May, 2018.
28 Author’s interview with Abeer rand Azhar on 29 March, 2018.
49
3.7 Creating counter ‘safe’ spaces
A key issue that women in Budrus deal with is the lack of safe spaces. Ikram explains her frustration:
Sometimes after work or in the weekend, you would like to sit with the kids
and enjoy your free time, but you cannot because most of the time there are
soldiers and tear gas and you cannot even let your kids play outside. (…)
You cannot enjoy your simple pleasures.29
Hanoun is also worried about the lack of a space safe for her son: “Any mother in life wants to find a
safe space for her children. In Budrus, there are no safe spaces to play for my son.” Hanoun does not
let her two-year-old son play in the streets. She is afraid he would get hit by a stray bullet or tear gas
can, or taken by Israeli soldiers. She wishes she could take him to the places in the mountains where
she used to go to when she was a child, to play football, sing and draw together. To deal with the lack
of safe spaces, Hanoun tries to create them in her home. She cultivated a little garden at her house, so
that her son can play ‘in nature’. She dreams of taking him to the sea one day, but it is nearly
impossible for the villagers to get permits to travel to, for example, the coastal city of Haifa. So she
allows him to swim in the bathtub. They pretend it is the sea. During these activities, Hanoun reads her
son stories or sings for him to compensate for the sound of gunfire.30
Another mechanism that makes women feel unsafe is the presence of the panoptic cameras.
One of my respondents tells me it bothers her that her hijab has to be on at all times, even when she is
sitting in her garden. “I do not feel free. Everywhere I go, I know there is a camera filming. (…) When
I go to the fields around the village… Especially for us girls, when you are in nature and there are no
people around you, you just take off your scarf and enjoy nature. But with the cameras, we cannot do
that. We have to make sure the hijabs are on all the time.”31 As a result, the women turn their homes
into sanctuaries - this is the only place where they can take off their hijab and move freely.
Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2005) introduced the idea of creating counter spaces as resistance. She
argues that the state of Israel aims to undermine the social fabric of Palestinian society and that its
policies target the feeling of safety and security of Palestinian families (2005: 115). The family home,
religious buildings and schools have become places of insecurity and political violence. As a response,
Palestinian women have created counter discourses and counter spaces of safety. In the case of women
in Budrus, the family home has become a symbolic site. It is the home in which a woman can provide
a safe space to play for her children and can take of her hijab and feel ‘free’. Some women state they
prefer to stay in the house as much as possible to avoid being filmed by the cameras. As Johannson
and Vinthagen (2015: 6) state, this avoidance of surveillance techniques can also be seen as a form of
29 Author’s interview with Ikram and Karima on 28 April, 2018.
30 Author’s interview with Hayat and Hanoun on 3 May, 2018.
31 Author’s interview with Qadira on 28 April, 2018.
50
everyday resistance. The creation of a safe haven inside the family home remains fragile. Soldiers can
enter the home, or school, at any time and take physical control of the space.
The women deploy contradictory repertoires to resist the lack of safe spaces. For Samira, as
described in section 3.1, sumud means being conscious of the abnormality of the occupation. The lack
of a safe space is not normal to her. However, another respondent argues she ignores Israeli soldiers as
much as possible. She states: “We should not consider them as soldiers, nor as something important
and big. We will continue our lives as if they are not here.”32 This is at the same time a defensive
mechanism; she also does to avoid getting herself and her family into trouble. In terms of
relationships, this form of resistance is interesting precisely because it avoids any interaction with the
target of resistance. In terms of spatialisation, the villagers are constantly reminded of the control of
the Israeli state. In Chapter 2, I quoted Nahla, who stated that the ‘Israelis have every key to every
door of Palestine’.33 This is why she calls living in Budrus ‘a kind of a prison sentence’. Some families
can see the Wall from their windows, clearly marking the boundaries of this ‘prison’. The villagers
hear the gunshots from the military training camp on the other side of the Wall, six days a week, from
dawn until sunset. On Shabbat, Saturday, the soldiers take a rest. The silence is remarkable. In other
words, the villagers are reminded by their human senses every day that they do not live in a safe and
secure space. They see the Wall and panoptic cameras, cannot escape soundscape of gunshots and
smell tear gas regularly, even in their homes. At any time, Israeli soldiers can invade the house and
destroy properties. This also related to the dimension of temporalisation: the women always live in the
fear of when the soldiers will enter their home. Will their husbands or sons be at home to provide any
physical protection? Will they be sleeping, and not wearing their hijabs? To conclude this section,
women are thus trying to create safe spaces in their own homes as a form of resistance against the lack
of safety in their daily life. Hereby they are targeting mainly productive power. Women are creatively
constructing safe spaces. These spaces are not actually safe, but it is the production of the feeling of
safety that is of importance. The spaces create are discourses of safety and can be threatened at any
time by the compulsory power of the Israeli state.
3.8 Conclusion
In this chapter, I explained how women in Budrus give meaning to the concept of sumud in their own
words. When asked how the Israeli occupation affects the women’s everyday lives, respondents often
mention living in fear for their children and arrests of husbands and other male family members and
temporarily becoming a women-led household, going through daily checkpoints and economical
issues. Women frame the concept of sumud as staying on the land and continuing life, while being
conscious of the abnormality of the occupation. Simultaneously, sumud is also a psychological coping
32 Author’s interview with Ghayda on 3 May, 2018.
33 See Chapter 2, section ‘2.2.1 Women’s participation’, 32.
51
mechanism of dealing with t