Checkpoints in the West Bank

Israel faces long-standing security threats. Antisemitism persists as one of the greatest global threats to equality. The Israeli government maintains a robust security apparatus, including checkpoints around Israeli Settlements in the West Bank, because many Israelis believe Palestinian terrorism threatens Israel’s existence as a state. However, human rights groups (B’tselem, Breaking the Silence, Checkpoint Watch), scholars (Amir Reference Amir2013; Grinberg Reference Grinberg2010; Hammami Reference Hammami2004; Kutz-Flamenbaum Reference Kutz-Flamenbaum2012; Manekin Reference Manekin2013; Tawil-Souri Reference Tawil-Souri2011, Reference Tawil-Souri2010), and the United Nations Mission to the Occupied Territories agree that enhancing Israeli security is neither checkpoints’ only use nor their sole consequence.^{Footnote 9} Indeed, in contrast to state claims that “checkpoints prevented hundreds of terrorist attacks against the Israeli population” (Longo, Canetti, and Hite-Rubin Reference Longo, Canetti and Hite-Rubin2014, 1), researchers show that checkpoints increased civilian militancy in Iraq, the West Bank, and the Philippines (Berman, Shapiro and Felter Reference Berman, Shapiro and Felter2011; Condra et al. Reference Condra, Felter, Iyengar and Shapiro2010) and demonstrate that checkpoints humiliate respondents, which in turn engenders civilian support for militant action against the state (Longo, Canetti, and Hite-Rubin Reference Longo, Canetti and Hite-Rubin2014).

Checkpoints are difficult for those living throughout Hebron Governorate. When asked what most framed their thinking about the “situation” (Occupation) in the West Bank today, respondents from throughout Hebron Governorate frequently focused on checkpoints. One respondent said, “There are 534 checkpoints in the West Bank. You can’t go anywhere …If you want to go anywhere you are trapped, worried all the time, held … I don’t like to cross checkpoints because it is dangerous, and so difficult.”^{Footnote 10}

Checkpoints are commonly understood as security points that monitor passage between two disputing populations. However, envisioning checkpoints as boundaries between two sides occludes a central outcome, if not purpose: to exert violence over and control a select population. In the West Bank, IDF checkpoints serve four primary functions. First, they separate Israeli and Palestinian populations and regulate Palestinians entering Israeli-dominated spaces to reduce Palestinian terror attacks.^{Footnote 11} Second, they surveil the Palestinian population, purportedly in response to social unrest. Third, checkpoints physically and psychologically control and intimidate individuals, akin to Fanon’s (Reference Fanon1961) “colonized mindset.” Checkpoints frequently expose individuals to violence, rude language, long wait periods, and strip searches (Amir Reference Amir2013; Grinberg Reference Grinberg2010; Hammami Reference Hammami2004; Kutz-Flamenbaum Reference Kutz-Flamenbaum2012; Manekin Reference Manekin2013; Tawil-Souri Reference Tawil-Souri2011, Reference Tawil-Souri2010). Fourth, checkpoints restrict vehicle travel for targeted populations and prohibit certain groups from driving on designated roads or accessing their own fields. Thus, checkpoints simultaneously construct different classes of citizenship, demonstrate state power over subjects’ bodies, and set up a contrast between ownership and being owned, between possession and dispossession. Razack (Reference Razack2010, 97) observes, “Palestinians do not simply walk or ride to work or school, but instead scramble, crawl or climb.”

Checkpoints have an additional outcome in this context: they become imbued with meaning as agents of the state responsible for Palestinian struggles (Tawil-Souri Reference Tawil-Souri2011) and shape how people think about resistance. By denying certain persons entry or passage while others are permitted to pass, by searching one person’s physical body while leaving another untouched, and by confining some people while affording others free movement, checkpoints represent and reify power and privilege within a society (Blomley Reference Blomley2003; Feldman Reference Feldman1991; Laws Reference Laws1994). Cast as nonviolent and innocuous, checkpoints disguise and protect state violence from public recognition (Cover Reference Cover1985). Figure 1 displays a map of Hebron Governorate with my research sites circled.

FIGURE 1.

Hebron Governorate Interview Sites. Source: Land Research Center Reports; Available at LRC, Accessed August 2, 2016

Al-Khalil: Hebron’s Old City (H2)

A grove of gnarled and ancient olive trees stands tall above the white buildings of the bustling, checkpoint-ridden Old City within Hebron Governorate’s capital, al-Khalil. Al-Khalil is a bifurcated city. H1 is a modern economic hub of the West Bank governed by the Palestinian authority. H2, containing most of al-Khalil’s Old City, is an Israeli military–controlled zone (see Figure 2 in Appendix A.3). H2’s caged maze of checkpoints and closure obstacles surveils individuals, damages private property, and threatens bodily harm as part of the city’s social fabric, woven into residents’ everyday social and professional experiences.

FIGURE 2.

Map from OCHA for the Occupied Territories

Source: http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_the_humanitarian_monitor_2014_12_11_english.pdf, Accessed November 7, 2016. Updated 2018 Map at: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-impact-israeli-settlements-hebron-city-0

H2 is home to roughly 35,000 Palestinians. It contains the only Israeli Settlements amid a preexisting Palestinian city in the West Bank. Therefore, H2’s checkpoints fracture Palestinian daily life more directly than do checkpoints surrounding Settlements elsewhere in the region. In 2015, violence in al-Khalil escalated from limited state-run security measures and minor civilian counterprotests to constant state surveillance, weekly civilian deaths at the hands of state agents, and a surge of makeshift violent Palestinian counterattacks. When I conducted fieldwork in autumn 2015, H2 was divided by more than 109 permanent barriers, fifty-three temporary blockades, and eighteen military-style checkpoints. The entire H2 zone was closed to Palestinian-owned vehicles and sometimes pedestrians, and in October 2015, some neighborhoods in H2 became a closed military zone, requiring residents to register for special permits to return to their own homes.^{Footnote 12} Figure 2 maps al-Khalil closures and checkpoints as of November 2015.

Because Palestinian protests^{Footnote 13} are common in al-Khalil’s H2 zone, the IDF frequently deploys crowd-control weapons around checkpoints, including tear gas, sound grenades, rubber bullets, skunk water, and, occasionally, live rounds. Given the IDF’s level of control; its extensive surveillance network; and the sheer number of guard towers, checkpoints, and troops, H2 can be considered a place in which Israel has “control over territory” (Kalyvas Reference Kalyvas2006). Palestinians furthermore experience high levels of quotidian harassment, disturbance, and brutal physical violence from the Settlers in the area. The result of these daily experiences of violence is a widespread feeling of social isolation among Palestinians living in H2.

South Hebron Hills: Firing Zone 918

The arid, rural villages and fields in the South Hebron Hills’ Firing Zone 918 have been used as an active military training ground for the last twenty years. Each village comprises several extended families (with 75–150 residents per village). The several thousand Palestinians in Firing Zone 918 live in close proximity to military exercises that disrupt their daily lives. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, these activities included live fire practice. Today, military training exercises continue to disturb livestock, disrupt farming practices, and destroy crops. Soldiers, tanks, and helicopters appear at frequent random intervals in the area.^{Footnote 14} Palestinian villagers are often denied permits to build permanent structures, so they are frequently forced to relocate or to live in caves and tents. Home demolitions, a feature of Area C in the West Bank, are also common here. In 1999, the twelve villages within Firing Zone 918 were evicted under IDF military orders. This effectively rendered the inhabitants of those villages homeless and forced them to take temporary refuge together in al-Tuwani, a village just outside the Firing Zone (B’tselem 2017a).

Settlers and IDF soldiers frequently harass the Palestinian residents of Firing Zone 918.^{Footnote 15} Checkpoints between Firing Zone 918 and Yatta (the closest Palestinian city) introduce major challenges to residents. Yet compared with the isolating cage of H2, the state’s checkpoint and civilian-control apparatus in this arid expanse are not present between or within the villages of Firing Zone 918. Instead, checkpoints establish a constrictive perimeter, isolating residents from the rest of the West Bank, but without restricting a community’s internal freedom of movement or ability to maintain social connections (Appendix A.3, Figure 3, maps the region). As a result of this differently structured built environment of conflict, social and familial ties between and within villages remain intact and closely knit, even reinforced by the checkpoint-induced perimeter. Select villagers’ forced, temporary relocation to al-Tuwani strengthened cross-village ties. For years, the entire community has sustained a large-scale and often successful nonviolent resistance movement.

FIGURE 3.

Repertoires of Resistance Typology, with Examples of Resistance from This Context. These Are Not Exhaustive

Checkpoints, Social Connection, and Social Isolation in Conflict Zones

Major human rights treaties recognize freedom of movement as essential to equality, social justice, and nondiscrimination.^{Footnote 18} Free movement is crucial to social functions; across cultures, physical touch is critical to forming and maintaining human connection (Suvilehto et al. Reference Suvilehto, Glerean, Dunbar, Hari and Nummenmaa2015). Physical space, including urban geography and topography, can greatly influence individuals’ opportunities for this crucial human connection (Lefebvre Reference Lefebvre1991). In conflict spaces, the built environment—specifically checkpoints—delimits and circumscribes mobility. Checkpoints—by preventing travel or intimating targeted persons into avoiding travel—structure people’s opportunities for social connection in vastly unequal and discriminatory ways (Pallitro and Heyman Reference Pallitro and Heyman2002). I suggest that the unique structure of checkpoints in a given area shapes individuals’ support for different modalities of resistance by engendering social isolation or connection.

Social Connection and Collective Resistance

Two observations frame this section: residents of H2 to whom I spoke did not believe individualized violence would work, and they supported it anyway, whereas residents in Firing Zone 918 did not believe individualized violence would work and therefore did not pursue it. Civilians in Firing Zone 918 and the surrounding towns perpetrated no attacks during the Intifada of Individuals (as of 2019, see Footnote 17). However, people here did believe change was possible—they retained hope for the future. They therefore channeled their efforts toward collective resistance activities they believed were likely to be successful. They cited social connection as the bedrock of their hope and of these collective efforts.

Thus, I suggest that in places where individuals have strong social connections, collective modalities of resistance may have considerable opportunity to thrive. Social connection is fundamental to how people muster the hope, drive, and agency to partake in collective struggle. Social connection facilitates collective resistance through at least four mechanisms, the last of which is most visibly evident in Firing Zone 918. First, interpersonal relationships (“social support”) function as a “buffer,” which partly shields individuals from stressful events and helps develop resiliency (Dean and Lin Reference Dean and Lin1977; Janicki-Deverts and Cohen Reference Janicki-Deverts and Cohen2011; Kessler, Price, and Wortman Reference Kessler, Price and Wortman1985). This may be particularly true in conflict zones, where violence has been shown to increase both collective action and prosocial behavior via increased reliance on “collective coping mechanism[s in] which individuals who have few options to flee band together to cope with threats” (Gilligan, Pasquale, and Samii Reference Gilligan, Pasquale and Samii2014). In the context of conflict and resistance, this ability to process and surmount both psychological and practical daily stress is likely fundamental to engage in collective struggle.

Second, social connection is a foundational component of trust. Trust, in turn, is critical to one’s willingness to engage in risky collective-action activities, which require individuals to depend on others to achieve success in their shared endeavors (Kramer, Brewer, and Hanna Reference Kramer, Brewer and Hanna1996).^{Footnote 19} Third, social connections facilitate practical organization requisite to building a movement. Scholars demonstrate the role social networks play in recruiting civilians into military groups (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw2010; Horgan Reference Horgan2003; Sageman Reference Sageman2011) and as critical social resources for violent (Parkinson Reference Parkinson2013; Petersen Reference Petersen2001; Staniland Reference Staniland2014; Weinstein Reference Weinstein2006) and nonviolent resistance movements (Chenoweth and Stephan Reference Chenoweth and Stephan2011; Schock Reference Schock2005; Zunes Reference Zunes1994).

Finally, social connections can enable a feeling of optimism about the possibility for meaningful change. Braithwaite (Reference Braithwaite2004, 128) finds that any time “individuals seek to achieve an outcome as a group, hope is inevitably involved.” My inductive research, detailed below, suggests that this process of building a collective sense of hope—requisite to collective action—requires robust social connection. This hope was critical not only to the support of civilians in Firing Zone 918 for collective resistance but also in their decision to eschew individual violent resistance. I suggest that the connectedness this community experiences was fundamental to outlining these preferences. A community’s belief in the possibility of change may result from a fundamentally social process of generating hope. In Firing Zone 918, a group of activists took it on themselves to build and sustain a nonviolent movement. I suggest that the checkpoints here cordoned off this community from others in the West Bank—and thus forced village residents to double down on their within-community social connections. This gave them the strength and motivation to act strategically, and with hope for success, against the state. In short, this type of built environment facilitated hope that enabled this community to eschew the unstructured, individual civilian violence in which the rest of the West Bank was mired and instead support collective, nonviolent action.

Social Isolation and Individual Resistance

In places where the checkpoint apparatus divides and sunders social networks, individuals will be physically prevented from connecting with others; residents feel isolated. I suggest that social isolation is an understudied mechanism in our understanding of civilian engagement with resistance. Social isolation creates a sense of hopelessness, a sense that change is not possible (because change “never happens”) and that good things do not happen here (because they “never have”).^{Footnote 20} As a result, civilians feel diminished enthusiasm about the possibility of collective efforts with strategic goals because they do not believe those collective efforts will work. Indeed, many view holding a belief that those efforts might work as childish or naive.^{Footnote 21} However, these civilians do not simply demobilize. They are livid, hurt, and frustrated at the daily realities they face. Thus, they remain extremely committed to the idea of resistance, but their preference for resistance modalities shifts. In this case, civilians expressed support for types of resistance that are more a venting of frustration—in some ways akin to politically motivated suicide—than an act that is designed to advance a specific political goal with an expected impact.

People do not resist every moment; sometimes they simply go about their lives. Thus, when we see any sort of resistance in this space, we should understand this as a choice to resist over the choice to disengage. Equally, residents of H2 have access to internet and the ability to communicate by phone (even when travel is restricted); thus they have a minimal ability to coordinate collective resistance, and on occasion (e.g., the October 2015 “Day of Rage” to return bodies of the dead), they do. This makes the overwhelming emphasis on individual modes of resistance all the more striking and demonstrates that is not capacity alone that precludes collective resistance efforts in this space.^{Footnote 22}

I suggest that in addition to affecting the practical concerns about collective resistance (e.g., the physical ability to meet frequently), which are well-documented considerations to the success of collective resistance movements (both violent and nonviolent), this social isolation has three effects as yet largely unexplored by scholars of resistance. First, it leaves individuals feeling powerless, frustrated, and angry, but without hope for change. Second, this isolation hinders the process of generating hope and devising collective resistance approaches. Third, hopelessness (an individual’s sense that she has little to lose) makes collective resistance unlikely.

I suggest that individuals who support collective resistance tend to believe that there is some chance that this resistance might, together with other acts, affect some modicum of change. Collective resistance is often attached to a strategic rationale that is able to bring together a broad base of people around an agreed-upon strategy. In contrast, individual modalities of resistance could be either strategic or expressive. When someone believes they have little left to lose, collective resistance—and, indeed, hope itself—is “dangerous.”^{Footnote 23} Hope invites a belief that change is possible where none can be and renders people already facing daily trials vulnerable to renewed disappointment, failure, or loss.

Other scholars add texture to this premise. Anticolonial activist Franz Fanon (Reference Fanon1961) sees revolution as the inevitable response to oppression, while James Scott (Reference Scott1990, Reference Scott1985) conceives of resistance extremely broadly and argues that preferences for resistance are likely to be hidden from public view. Finally, Spaaij (Reference Spaaij2011) argues that violent resistance can be both a personal and a political act. I suggest that support of the Intifada of Individuals was not motivated to directly change state actions and therefore was not subdued by state violence designed to combat collective resistance modalities.

Individual resistance can take many forms. Most frequently, individuals will likely partake in small, “pointless” nonviolent resistance acts—saying something rude or making something slightly more difficult for the opposition. Most of us have participated in such acts. We might “drag our feet” at work when frustrated with a boss or delay contact with a feuding family member. In conflict settings, people might mark a wall with graffiti, throw a rock at a house or guard tower, or engage in—in this context—“clashes.” This is not something anyone thinks will make a difference in the broader conflict, but it makes us feel “better” anyway. Yet, because it is still resistance, it is also still political.

Others will adopt violent forms of individual resistance. Supporting violent individual resistance actions includes condoning car-ramming attacks, stabbing attacks against soldiers, or other acts that are designed to cause harm to state agents or structures (including attacks against Israeli civilians). Many residents in H2 expressed feelings of checkpoint-induced social isolation and support for individualized violence. They reported believing that individual violent resistance was justified and worth doing, indeed, stating that people should do it, despite harboring beliefs that this resistance would not cause broader change, because they consider change in this context to be impossible. Here any action that harms the opposition is a success: by limiting their access to social connection and making life so difficult, I suggest that checkpoints took away these people’s hope for change. I suggest that this fundamentally altered the way they thought about resistance and what sort of resistance they considered supporting, turning toward violent individual resistance in addition to—or instead of—other resistance modalities, but certainly relative to socially connected individuals. Social isolation may therefore incubate civilian support for individualized violence.

Likely Confounders

A range of plausible alternative explanations for these two communities’ support for resistance exist. First is the movement organizer in Firing Zone 918: in this view, the organizer is responsible for the success of this resistance movement; if H2 had an equivalent organizer, they would have collective resistance. Second, H2 experiences more direct violence than Firing Zone 918, and it is the raw amount of violence that dictates these different responses. Third are rural–urban divides: people in urban areas have busier lives, less time/energy for collective resistance, and coordinated resistance is more difficult in urban areas. No explanation can be categorically ruled out in an inductive design, and with complex social processes, multiple factors likely relate to any outcome of interest. However, in the pages to follow, I evaluate the aggregate evidence and consider how it stacks up with my explanation and relative alternatives.

Case Selection

I conduct a comparative case study analysis (Lijphart Reference Lijphart1971; Tarrow Reference Tarrow2010) of two communities living in “closed military zones” in Hebron Governorate: H2 and Firing Zone 918.^{Footnote 24} I supplement this analysis with interviews in additional al-Khalil and rural areas.^{Footnote 25} My comparative case study framework uses the similarities and differences across these two cases to inductively build a theory, posit causal relationships between variables of interest, and identify mechanisms that connect explanatory and outcome variables (Tarrow Reference Tarrow2010, 245). Civilian exposure to violence varies dramatically across the West Bank. Respondents in H2 and Firing Zone 918 experience similar levels of Settler violence—indeed, the South Hebron Hills and H2 are known for their radical Settler populations. These two communities face very different types of IDF environments of violence, particularly those governing freedom of movement and exposure to military training operations (described above). The additional field sites experience differing levels of Settler and IDF presence and violence, have varying types and numbers of checkpoints, and are in different West Bank “Areas.” Table 1 compares field cites on key variables.

TABLE 1.

Comparing Field Sites on Key Variables

Respondent Selection: Olive-Farming Communities in Hebron Governorate

Rather than attempting to obtain a representative sample of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, I focused my research on in-depth studies of olive-farming communities.^{Footnote 26} These groups provide valuable windows into how built-environment dynamics unfold within communities—specifically those (like olive-farming communities) whose symbolic importance resonates with others in Palestine.^{Footnote 27} Olive farming occurs in urban and rural areas alike (some groves are so old that they preexisted the houses surrounding them) and thus serve as a unifying thread in the broader Palestinian historical and cultural narrative.^{Footnote 28} Because land, and connections to it, lies at the center of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, olives become a symbolic way for communities to establish legitimacy and reify ideals of resistance, perseverance, and legal claims for Palestinian property (Blomley Reference Blomley2003; Braverman Reference Braverman2009; Delaney Reference Delaney2002; Meneley Reference Meneley2011). Indeed, the olive tree has become symbolic “of the [Palestinian] struggle for land and legitimacy” (Meneley Reference Meneley2011), and olive farming represents a subtle act of civil resistance.

I conducted fifty-eight life-story-style interviews of olive farmers (Table 2).^{Footnote 29} I also conducted eight semi-structured interviews of Palestinian ministry officials and activists and five semi-structured interviews of IDF soldiers. I conducted these interviews in fall 2015, with a follow-up trip in December 2016, during the Intifada of Individuals. My time spent in these olive-farming communities involved picking olives, staying in houses of interlocutors, and sharing meals and conversations with family members of interview respondents. Each of these experiences contributed a fuller understanding of how violent events and the built environment affect civilians in the context of their personal lives and their communities (see Supplementary Materials A.3 for further discussion).

TABLE 2.

General Information about Respondents

Methodological Advantage of Life-Story Interviews and Micro-studies of Conflict

Micro-level studies of conflict can provide insight into processes not observable at the country-year level (Kalyvas Reference Kalyvas2012). Understanding attitude or belief formation in the context of conflict requires time on the ground and face-to-face interaction. This allows researchers to integrate questions not answerable at the cross-national level, to engage in theory-building that stretches the parameters of existing scholarship (Fujii Reference Fujii2009; Lake Reference Lake2014; Tarrow Reference Tarrow2007; Wood Reference Wood2003), and to situate individual interviewees into the “broader social and organizational context” in which they operate (Shesterinina Reference Shesterinina2016, 414; Parkinson Reference Parkinson2013, 420). Indeed, intensive studies of specific communities are ideally suited for research seeking to understand the underlying mechanisms of contentious politics (Tarrow Reference Tarrow2007, 592).

A life-story approach has several advantages over survey or other observational/experimental approaches to studying attitudes. This technique provides a window into how individuals process their experiences, because “it is through story that we gain context and recognize meaning” (Atkinson Reference Atkinson1998, 125; Bruner Reference Bruner2009, Reference Bruner2003). Exploring life stories provides critical insight into how individuals “construct” their own lives and beliefs. I coupled this life-story approach with a series of structured questions designed to offer standard points of comparison, as well as a questionnaire to measure violence exposure.^{Footnote 30}

Social Isolation and Civilian Violence in Al-Khalil’s Old City (H2)

As a result of this built environment and state-based violence, the Palestinian community structure in H2 has been deeply fractured. Today, only about 400 people live in the once-thriving city center (Sherwood Reference Sherwood2015). Those who remain are concentrated in disconnected enclaves and are poorer or stay as part of sumud: existence as resistance (Meari Reference Meari2014). Most families here have relatives and friends outside of H2, but these friendship and kinship networks are severely strained by difficulty of travel. Indeed, to avoid undue inconvenience, humiliation, and violence, most avoid passing through checkpoints when possible (Figure 4).

FIGURE 4.

Checkpoints and Olive Groves in H2, 2015. Photographs by the Author

Respondents in H2 describe structural restrictions on movement, constant searches, violence, and curfews as greatly restricting their economic activities, access to essential services (e.g., groceries or medical care), and the very fabric of social life. Respondents mention the stress of living close enough to checkpoints that one can smell tear gas frequently, hear the crack of live rounds or the boom of sound grenades, and feel reverberations from the IDF air force’s frequent flyovers. Concerns about violence, lost freedom of movement, and lack of social connections appear to work in tandem to affect residents’ lives. Fear and isolation together provide the undercurrent framing these experiences: “The greatest challenge for me is living in this isolated place. Even with people all around we are so alone, because there is no way to get safely to see our neighbors or go home to see my family …When I was younger I used to feel afraid all the time and now after everything that has happened to me I feel brave—what else can they take? They have taken everything and I am still here.”^{Footnote 32}

Respondents overwhelmingly described feeling extremely isolated and reported difficulty maintaining family and friendship networks. One respondent stated, “In the past, before all the soldiers and checkpoints in H2, relationships were stronger. People could talk to one another and they weren’t so afraid. Now people are separate. Those times made me happy, those are my best memories, but this is much harder.”^{Footnote 33} Checkpoints here appear to prevent the collective coping mechanism, which has been shown to increase collective prosocial behavior (Gilligan, Pasquale, and Samii Reference Gilligan, Pasquale and Samii2014).

Importantly, when people describe the occupation, they describe built structures, not the government or abstract constructs, indicating that it is these structures that embody the occupation for Palestinians: [What is the biggest challenge facing the West Bank today?] “The occupation! The walls, the guards, the checkpoints, all of it. It is the reason for everything that’s going on. It’s like diabetes, when it hits you, things go badly for you all over your body.”^{Footnote 34}

The fragmentation of community consistently emerged as a primary source of respondents’ frustration. This was a theme among a strong majority of H2 interview respondents, and the lack of social connection was frequently woven into these responses. When respondents spoke about what they most wished would change about their lives, respondents frequently said they wished for greater opportunities for connection with friends and family and raised this in conjunction with concerns for their own personal physical safety. For example, one woman I interviewed described traveling internationally as the turning point in her life, because it exposed her to the freedom she observed among people living in other places.^{Footnote 35} She linked these experiences directly to her support for resistance. When asked about her reasons for supporting violent resistance, her family’s isolation framed her thinking and choices:

Another man in H2, when asked about resistance, specifically said that social disruption increased his support for individual, violent resistance. The way movement is limited and the inability to redress grievances augment the horror of violent events, making individual violence appear to be the only possible response, and the only way to express grievances: “We are punished here for being alive. We can’t go anywhere; we have to wait for hours every time …A boy is walking with his father and they beat him [the father] right in front of their eyes. And they can’t even file a complaint! And if they go to try, they have to wait for hours—they have to wait so long it interferes with their lives so they would rather just go home. That of course leads to a desire for revenge—and it forces people toward violence.”^{Footnote 37}

People in this space seemed to think about the possibility of change or hope for the future as ludicrous or impossible. Many respondents—from H2 and surrounding districts—explicitly stated that they felt change was not possible and hope was fruitless. When asked if change was possible here, one respondent replied, “Things are only getting worse. The situation can only get worse. Change is only possible if you’re talking about change for the worse.”^{Footnote 38} Another stated change was possible: “Only for the worst. Change is not possible in this country, other places but not here.”^{Footnote 39} One respondent actually laughed at me when I asked, and simply said, “No.”^{Footnote 40} Respondents in H2 were also extremely dismissive of the idea of peace or a state-based peace process. One man stated, “Peace here is impossible …As a cat could never murder a donkey, there will never be peace …Most of the land has been taken by Settlers …Peace is just a word, it can’t happen.”^{Footnote 41}

Respondents indicated that their anger and frustration over the violence they experience from the IDF and Settlers convinced them to “stay and resist.” They considered staying as a source of pride, as resistance itself, and as a modicum of agency against the broader occupation that claims so much control over their own lives. Respondents described that state policies restricting movement, and the very experience of living in the socially isolated H2, changed their political preferences. As a result of these experiences, they believed that fighting back against this oppression—even in small, daily ways that they themselves did not believe would change the broader situation—was the right course of action.

When asked about the timeline of their evolution toward their support for different resistance modalities (e.g., the Intifada of Individuals), older respondents stated that they came to believe violent retaliation was merited, even if it would not “work”—and that peace attempts were not justified—after being cut off from the rest of the West Bank, from family in the diaspora, and from family in Gaza: “Endless restrictions and all this violence only leads to more hate …The Occupation brings violence …I could never trust or love an Israeli while they keep doing such things to me and to my family—while they keep me here with nothing I can do about it. Until I see peace from them, and freedom, I wouldn’t support peace at all.”^{Footnote 42}

In considering alternative explanations, material factors, including economic incentives and physical threats, while clearly important to people’s lived experiences, appear not to be the sole dictators of civilian attitudes toward different resistance modalities in this community. Contrary to claims that checkpoints would deter violence, my interviews demonstrate that the constant and real threat of violence did not deter support for individual, violent resistance. Indeed, I observed more support for individual violent acts in H2 than in any other area. Respondents reacted to H2’s violent built environment of conflict with an attitude of loss and desperation (“what else can they do to me?”) and increased support for individual violent resistance against their oppressors.

Although surely not a universal response, this finding in even some members of the population provides an important corrective to scholars’ tendency to assume civilians are motivated entirely by material/strategic concerns. Respondents reported that state restrictions only fueled hate and rage. Checkpoint-induced isolation emerged as a primary complaint and source of frustration, and in the absence of social support, respondents resorted to support for individual violence as a reasonable recourse against state actions that were causing them physical harm, humiliation, economic oppression, and isolation, even though they did not believe it would alter their political fortunes.

Eschewing Individual Violence and the Power of Social Connection in Firing Zone 918

In contrast to my interviews in H2, respondents in the Firing Zone explicitly rejected the idea of unstructured individual violence and instead embraced collective efforts, seeming to feel empowered by the strength of their community. [Do you support the current Intifada?] “No. We don’t even throw stones—no one here will throw stones. Of course that is a legitimate form of resistance, but if we do it, they [Israel] will call it violence. Then we go from being the victims to being cast as the aggressor …Instead, what we do is the steadfastness. We exist and as we live our lives, we resist. We work with the Committee. This is the only resistance that will work. You can’t give them an excuse to take us down …[he smiles and says] It is hard, but then life without struggle has no meaning.”^{Footnote 43}

Despite the violence they have experienced, Palestinians in this region of the South Hebron Hills have developed a vibrant, nonviolent civil resistance movement and speak from a place of personal power and agency. The history of nonviolent, collective resistance in Firing Zone 918 runs deep (King Reference King2007; Norman Reference Norman2015; Pearlman Reference Pearlman2011), with major successes (see Supplementary Materials, Appendix A).

Respondents view the IDF’s ever-present military interventions and training as incredibly destructive to their lives. When asked how they cope with the loud, disruptive air, and ground military exercises in the area, one respondent said, “Together. We are close friends with those in other villages, and together we are strong.”^{Footnote 44} People talk about community as integral to their daily lives. They report being stronger together and relying on one another to get through these “hard times.”^{Footnote 45}

Residents here cite community connections as the primary factor that makes collective nonviolent resistance efforts possible: [What convinced you that nonviolent resistance was the right path?]^{Footnote 46} “Well it all started in 2000. The main point was that we shouldn’t lose people to being shot all the time. Every person matters here—we are a small village and each person matters a lot. We can’t lose anyone. We decided this [civil resistance] is a good and effective way not to give any excuse to harm us …The community bond is the most important part of the civil resistance effort …and we never forget the rule which is that we need one another …So we are resisting.”^{Footnote 47}

During an interview, one of the founders of the committee in the area pointed to community connection as the key element that made civil resistance possible:

Two crucial aspects of social connection are implicit in this response: the value of preexisting community relationships and the ability to travel and to communicate freely in order to maintain those social ties. This connection, in this respondent’s view, made this collective civil resistance possible.

Community connection underlies every part of the nonviolent resistance movements’ successes in this part of South Hebron Hills, including individual residents’ ability to continue to take part in this resistance strategy. One of the movement’s founders said (of another member of the community), “This man, he is almost a therapist for me! I go to him for support and guidance and wisdom. He has the whole Quran memorized and he takes much time to think through things. He is someone I can talk to about the hardest things. Without him, I do not know what I would do.”^{Footnote 49} Other members of the community also cite social connections, and the interpersonal trust that results, as the critical component to their support for an organized, nonviolent approach to resistance, rather than an expressive violent one: [Why is civil resistance possible here?] “Unity and trust built between the people here is what makes it possible. Everyone feels a part of this, of one another. And also everyone has full trust in the Committee [the local Popular Resistance Committee] because they know they [the Committee] will run to help when anyone calls. And because of this people who left before have all come back. The community is the biggest part of the nonviolence.”^{Footnote 50}

In considering alternative explanations, the community organizer in Firing Zone 918, as well as the rural nature of the community, clearly facilitated support for collective, nonviolent resistance. Indeed, it is likely that without the organizer, resistance might not have taken place, and without it, residents might have turned toward individualized violence instead. However, a similar committee was attempted in H2 and several other parts of the West Bank, and none succeeded. There is no denying that the organizer’s individual charisma facilitated the movement’s growth, but the organizer himself gave credit to the community itself. Other respondents repeatedly stated that it was the community, not the organizer himself, that was responsible for the resistance. There is a reason authoritarian regimes so often restrict public gathering: without this, the connection and hope so critical to organizing are more difficult to grasp.

Likewise, although a rural area likely enabled resistance, many other rural areas in the West Bank, and other parts of Hebron District, were unsuccessful at consolidation and support for collective resistance efforts. In the case of Beit Einun, a rural area outside of Hebron City, consistent within-community checkpoints in this rural space (road closures, flying checkpoints) seemed also to leave respondents feeling isolated and disconnected, specifically stating that they had no hope for change.^{Footnote 51}

Despite expressing similar amounts of frustration and anger as their counterparts in H2, the community connections among the villages in Firing Zone 918 enabled them to hope for an abatement of violence, believe in the viability of collective resistance itself, and share a willingness to resist occupation “together.” The lack of isolation was striking, relative to H2 residents’ experiences. When asked about identity, residents in other parts of the West Bank would say they were “Palestinian” or “Muslim” first. When members of the communities in the Firing Zone 918 were asked about their identity, some joked that they were “Tuwani!” (the principal village) and then said, “No, no, Palestinian, and Muslim.”^{Footnote 52} The sense of community connection and willingness to identify on a local level was palpably stronger here than in other communities where I conducted interviews. Finally, respondents in the villages of Firing Zone 918 talked about hope. Indeed, people here were comparatively radically optimistic about the possibility of change, with one woman stating, “We are struggling against a very radical ideology here [Settlers] and that makes the struggle so hard and so complicated. But sooner or later we will make change …We have a saying: ‘If you start, you will reach it.’”^{Footnote 53}

No one else in my interviews mentioned anything akin to hope, nor the possibility for things to get better. When respondents were asked directly whether positive change was possible, outside of Firing Zone 918, all respondents said “no,” or they expected change “only for the worse.” Yet among respondents in Firing Zone 918 villages, many reported that “change was possible.”