Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T13:55:08.343Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Baking at the Front Line, Sleeping with the Enemy: Reflections on Gender and Women's Peace Activism in Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2012

Hagar Kotef
Hagar Kotef
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One day in the summer of 2004, a shift of activists from Checkpoint Watch (CPW) brought to the checkpoint some cookies that one of them had baked earlier that morning. Checkpoint Watch is an all-women Israeli organization that opposes the Israeli checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli 1967 occupation more broadly. Its members conduct routine tours to monitor changes in the deployment of checkpoints and stand in regular shifts at the larger, manned checkpoints in the West Bank. As they spend several hours weekly at specific checkpoints, some activists develop acquaintances with both the soldiers who operate them and the Palestinians who regularly pass through them. Many also stop for coffee at the local Palestinian “shacks,” conduct weekly political debates with soldiers, and try to pass the time in conversation. Therefore, it may have seemed trivial, for the activists, to share homemade cookies with the people they encounter weekly. This is precisely what happened on that morning in 2004: a trivial event that probably happened many times before and many times afterwards.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 551 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 2003. Responsibility and Judgment. Ed. Kohn, Jerome. New York: Schocken BooksGoogle Scholar
Azoulay, Ariella, and Ophir, Adi. 2004. “The Ruling Apparatus of Control in the Occupied Territories.” Presented at The Politics of Humanitarianism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories conference, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.Google Scholar
Azoulay, Ariella, and Ophir, Adi. 2008. This Regime Which Is Not One: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River (from 1967 Onwards). Tel Aviv: Resling (in Hebrew).Google Scholar
Bayard de Volo, Lorrain. 2006. “The Dynamics of Emotion and Activism: Grief, Gender, and Collective Identity in Revolutionary Nicaragua,” Mobilization 11 (3): 149–67.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. 1993. “Feminist Theory and Hannah Arendt's Concept of Public Space.” History of the Human Sciences 6 (2): 97–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bishara, Azmi. 2006. Yearning in the Land of Checkpoints. Tel Aviv: Babel (in Hebrew).Google Scholar
Bohmer, Carol, and Shuman, Amy. 2008. Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
B'Tselem, . 2007. “Ground to a Halt: Denial of Palestinian's Freedom of Movement in the West Bank.” http://www.btselem.org/Download/200708_Ground_to_a_Halt_Eng.pdf.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2000. Antigone's Claim. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Cornell, Drucilla. 2004. “The New Political Infamy and the Sacrilege of Feminism.” Metaphilosophy 35 (3): 313–29.Google Scholar
Das, Veena. 2008. “Violence, Gender, and Subjectivity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 37: 283–99.Google Scholar
De Alwis, Malathi. 2002. “‘Housewives of the Public’: The Cultural Signification of the Sri Lankan Nation.” In Crossing Borders & Shifting Boundaries, vol.2, ed. Lenz, Ilse et al. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 19–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Waal, Alex. 1997. Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Dietz, Mary. 2002. Turning Operations: Feminism, Arendt and Politics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gordon, Neve. 2008. Israel's Occupation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Guzman Bouvard, Marguerite. 2002. Revolutionizing Motherhood. Oxford: SR Books.Google Scholar
Foley, Conor. 2009. The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Halper, Jeff. 2000. “The 94 Percent Solution: The Matrix of Control.” Middle East Report 216. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer216/94-percent-solution (accessed September 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammerman, Ilana et al. 2010. “We Do Not Obey.” http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=41562 (last accessed September 27, 2010).Google Scholar
Handel, Ariel. 2009. “Where, Where to and When in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: An Introduction to a Geography of Disaster.” In The Power of Inclusive Exclusion, ed. Ophir, Adi, Givoni, Michal, and Hanafi, Sari. New York: Zone Books, 179–222.Google Scholar
Haq, Farhat. 2008. “Militarism and Motherhood: The Women of the Lashkar-i-Tayyabia in Pakistan.” In War and Terror: Feminist Perspectives, ed. Alexander, Karen and Hawkesworth, Mary E.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hass, Amira. 2005. “The Natives' Time Is Cheap.” Ha'aretz. February 23.Google Scholar
Hasso, Frances. 2005. “Discursive and Political Deployments by/of the 2002 Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers/Martyrs.” Feminist Review 81: 23–51.Google Scholar
Helms, Elissa. 2003 “Gender Essentialisms and Women's Activism in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina.” In Feminists Under Fire, ed. Giles, Wenona et al. Toronto: Between the Lines, 181–98.Google Scholar
Helms, Elissa. 2007. “‘Politics Is a Whore’: Women, Morality and Victimhood in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina.” In The New Bosnian Mosaic, ed. Bougarel, Xavier, Helms, Elissa, and Duijzings, Ger. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Honig, Bonnie. 1995. “Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity” In Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, ed. Honig, Bonnie. University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, 135–166.Google Scholar
Kotef, Hagar, and Amir, Merav. 2007. “(En)Gendering Checkpoints: Checkpoint Watch and the Repercussions of Intervention.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 32 (4): 973–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotef, Hagar, and Amir, Merav. 2011. “Between Imaginary Lines: On Justifications of Violence, Cemented Checkpoints, and the Paradox of Successful Failure in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Theory Culture and Society 28(1): 55–80.Google Scholar
Levi, Vered, 2007. “Being There,” Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?Item No = 811905 (accessed September 37, 2010).Google Scholar
Mansbach, Daniela. 2007. “The Power of Duality: The Protest of ‘Checkpoint Watch.’” Theory and Criticism 31: 77–99.Google Scholar
Maunaguru, Sitralega. 2009. “Gendering Tamil Nationalism: The Construction of ‘Woman’ in Projects of Protest and Control.” In Unmaking the Nation, ed. Jeganathan, Pardeep and Ismail, Qadri. New York: South Focus, 157–73.Google Scholar
Molyneux, Maxine. 1985. “Mobilization without Emancipation? Women's Interests, the State, and Revolution in Nicaragua.” Feminist Studies 11: 227–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neugebauer, Monica E. 1998. “Domestic Activism and Nationalist Struggle.” In The Women and War Reader, ed. Lorentzen, Lois Ann and Turpin, Jennifer. New York: New York University Press, 177–83.Google Scholar
Neuman, Tamara. 2004. “Maternal ‘Anti-Politics’ in the Formation of Hebron's Jewish Enclave.” Journal of Palestine Studies 33 (2): 51–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OCHA (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). 2010. West Bank Closure Map. June. http://www.ochaopt.org/maps.aspx?id=106. (accessed: June 2011)Google Scholar
Ophir, Adi. 2002. “The Administration of Disaster and the Forsaking of Lives.” Theory and Criticism 23: 67–104.Google Scholar
Orleck, Annelise. 1997. “Introduction.” In The Politics of Motherhood, ed. Jetter, Alexis et al. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 3–22.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2006. The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ruddick, Sarah. 1995. Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Samuel, Kumudini. 2003. “Activism, Motherhood, and the State in Sri Lanka's Ethnic Conflict.” In Feminists Under Fire, ed. Giles, Wenona et al. Toronto: Between the Lines, 167–79.Google Scholar
Setter, Shaul. 2007. “Sleeping with the Enemy? On Tali Fahima's Erotic Politics.” Presented at Historicism, Homonormativity, and Queer Political Formations. University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar
Sharoni, Simona. 1997. “Motherhood and the Politics of Women's Resistance: Israeli Women Organizing for Peace.” In The Politics of Motherhood, ed. Jetter, Alexis et al. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 144–60.Google Scholar
Sjoberg, Laura, and Gentry, Caron E.. 2006. Mother Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics. New Yokr: Zen Books.Google Scholar
Sparks, Holloway. 1997. “Dissident Citizenship: Democratic Theory, Political Courage, and Activist Women.” Hypatia. 12 (4): 74–110.Google Scholar
Sparks, Holloway. 2009. “Gender and the Politics of Democratic Disturbance in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Presented at the Western Political Science Association Annual meeting, Vancouver (Canada).Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann. 1995. Race and the Education of Desire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Swerdlow, Amy. 1993. Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
“Tali Fahima: Zakariya Zubeidi Is Israeli Security Service's Whore” 2008. Ha'aretz. http://www.haaretz.com/news/tali-fahima-zakariya-zubeidi-is-israeli-security-service-s-whore-1.285313 (last accessed September 27, 2010).Google Scholar
Tronto, Joan. 2008. “Is Peacekeeping Care Work? A Feminist Reflection on ‘The Responsibility to Protect.’” In Global Feminist Ethic, ed. Whisnam, Rebecca and DesAutels, Peggy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Weizman, Eyal. 2007. Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Zerilli, Linda. 2005. Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar