Normalizing Occupation: The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements

Controversy surrounds Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the radical national and religious agendas at play there have come to define the area in the minds of many. This study, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding the process of "normalization" in the life of Jewish residents. Considering a wider range of historical and structural factors in which the colonization of the West Bank developed it allows placing its origins and everyday reality into a wider perspective. The works collected consider the transformation of the landscape, the patterns of relationships shared by the region's residents, Palestinian and Jewish alike, and the lasting effects of Israel's settlement policy. Stressed in particular are such factors as urban planning, rising inequality and the retreat of the welfare state, and the changing political economy of industry and employment. In doing so, the authors collected here provide new insight into the integration and segregation processes that are an integral part of the broader historical trends shaping Israel/Palestine.

Author: Ariel Handel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 01/09/2017
Pages: 234
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.55d
ISBN: 9780253024886

About the Author

Marco Allegra is research fellow at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais of the University of Lisbon. His publications include Palestinesi. Storia e identita di un popolo [The Palestinian People: A History] (2010) and the edited collection Conflict in the City: Contested Urban Spaces and Local Democracy (with Enrico Gualini and Joao Mourato, 2015).

Ariel Handel is the director of the Lexicon for Political Theory and co-director of the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University. He is the editor-in-chief of The Political Lexicon of the Social Protest (in Hebrew; co-edited, 2012).

Erez Maggor is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at New York University and an Israel Institute Doctoral Fellow.