‘When you come to Ariel, you come to serenity’: Affect, Aesthetics and Normalisation of Colonial Domination in Israeli Settlements

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the normalisation of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on the part of their inhabitants. Focusing on the so-called ‘non-ideological’ settlements that evolved from ideological outposts into middle-class suburbs over the last three decades, this study engages spatial politics in Israel/Palestine in general, and the transformations of the settlement project in particular. Based on ethnographic research in the region, I argue that the acceptance and normalisation of the settlements among Israelis is closely related to their affective and aesthetic experiences. I focus on the co-production of space/territory, affect and aesthetics to show how physical transformations of the settlements since their establishment have turned many of these key nodes of the Israeli occupational apparatus into family-friendly communities, thus erasing the violence of the Israeli control over the Palestinians from settlers’ lives. I further demonstrate that these notions are not disrupted even by one of the most prominent symbols and technologies of the occupation, the fence/wall. This study thus contributes to understanding of how the interplay of spatial, territorial, aesthetic and affective practices works to normalise colonial conquest and domination by making their manifestations seemingly natural and even appealing on the part of the privileged segments of the society.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Derek Denman, Zoë Jay, Ondřej Ditrych, Jan Daniel, Dagmar Vorlíček, three anonymous reviewers and the Geopolitics editorial team for their valuable comments on previous versions of the paper. I would like to further thank colleagues who took part in the Karl W. Deutsch Political Seminar at Charles University, the Critical Studies Seminar at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, and the colloquium series of the Department of Anthropology of Politics and Governance at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology for their suggestions and advice. All remaining errors are solely my own fault.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All names have been changed to ensure anonymity. Non-referenced material is based on my fieldnotes. Research participants have been informed that the fieldwork is being carried out as a part of my doctoral studies and that information gathered during it will be used for publishing academic works, which they verbally consented to. Overall, the research was conducted in line with the ethical expectations of the department where I did my doctoral studies.

2. See https://www.flickr.com/photos/city_of_ariel/sets/72157645777614121/with/14696204932/.

3. Throughout the paper I adopt the term ‘fence’ as it is an emic term (gadera in Hebrew) used by my interlocutors. For the politics of naming this artefact of the Israeli control, see e.g. (Wills 2016).

4. This deep divide between Israelis’ and Palestinians’ experiences was inadvertently acknowledged by David, the commuter between Ariel and Jerusalem (and thus well acquainted with the infrastructures of mobility and control in the West Bank), who noted with regard to the barrier and checkpoints, ‘It is hard only for them; for me it makes no difference’ (Jerusalem, 12 June 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the VITRI Center of Excellence at the Charles University, grant number UNCE/HUM/009