Review: Israel-Palestinian Activism: Shifting Paradigms

Review: Israel-Palestinian Activism: Shifting Paradigms By Alexander Koensler Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 194p. $109.95. ISBN: 9781472439451 Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online, Volume 3, Issue 8, August 2015

Review by Tristan Dunning, PhD University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia

Israeli-Palestinian Activism: Shifting Paradigms is a brave, ambitious and insightful ethnographic investigation focused on the various types of contemporary activism occurring throughout the Negev/Naqab desert. Written by Alexander Koensler, a faculty member at Queen’s University Belfast, the book predominantly focuses on the plight of the Negev Bedouin and their ongoing struggles for civic equality, land rights, and the provision of basic services to unauthorised Bedouin villages.

Describing the Negev as a periphery or borderland area, Koensler investigates the blurred boundaries within the region. As such, the author urges us to problematize binary oppositions, such as Palestinian/Israeli, Oriental/Occidental, and other “common-sense” categories, that promote monolithic conceptions of identity. To this end, Koensler delves deep into the interstitial areas between such dichotomies, not only to interrogate the divide between putative collective identities, but also the divisions within such entities. It is within these “zones of friction” (p.30) that experimental forms of activisms emerge, eluding categorisation and eschewing zero-sum games, but rather focusing on building cross-cutting relationships and promoting new ways of thinking. It is these forms of activism which constitute Koensler’s shifting paradigms.

Based on fieldwork in 2004, 2006-07, and 2010-11, the volume is divided into three parts. Part one provides the theoretical basis for Koensler’s ethnographic inquiries. Part two interrogates the contradictory and illusory narratives concerning the repeated demolitions of the Bedouin “village” of Abu Saf, which became a hotbed for traditional activism. Finally, part three details some experimental forms of activities throughout the Negev based on “ecosophies” and polyphonic narratives.

In part one, Koensler offers a critique of social movement theory because it tends to affirm collective identities and views actors as relatively homogenous entities (p.13). In regard to traditional activism - or what Koensler describes as “institutional lobbying” undertaken by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) - these interpretative categorisations are predicated on static definitions which often, inadvertently, reify the divisions that CSO activism ostensibly seeks to surmount (p.16). Instead of fixed categories, Koensler argues for the need to conceptualise social phenomena within its broader context (p.14), recognition of group heterogeneity, and the utilisation of open-ended definitions to create space for novel interpretations of the conflict (p.23). One of the recurring themes throughout the volume is the need to investigate the “social life of claims” in order to rethink “the relationship between structure and agency, between actors and their context” (p.14). Koensler argues that we should prioritise a better understanding of lived experiences rather than idealised representations (p.22). Often, in short, there is a sharp divergence between the claims of specific actors and those who purport to represent them (for instance, CSOs). It is in these circumstances that the anthropological approach championed by Koensler, and the “thick” descriptions that this provides, can be so enlightening. In a revealing presage vis-à-vis the case of Abu Saf detailed in part two, an Arab-Bedouin teenager nonchalantly comments to Koensler that “There are more Jews that care about demolitions than Bedouins” (p.26).

Part two is an unflinching expose of the sometimes Kafkaesque pantomime played out around the repeated demolition and reconstruction of the village of Abu Saf. The cast of characters incorporates the whole gamut of actors from the Israel government/security forces to the Bedouin, as well as Palestinian, Israeli and international CSOs, comprising of dreadlocked hippies to stern Islamists. Often, it’s hard not to cringe at the farcical disconnects that characterised the internal and external relations of these various entities regarding the Abu Saf affair. The punch line? Nobody actually lived there (p.46). The family in question had been living on the outskirts of an official “Bedouin town” for years waiting for the government to allocate them plots of land. In the meantime, the family had built stables on land that had been considered theirs until the 1950s; the police were now threatening to demolish the structures. Approaching a local CSO organisation for advice, the

message evidently became misconstrued and instead was framed by the CSO in question as the Abu Saf family’s struggle to “return to the ancestral homeland” (p.50). In fact, Koensler reports that almost none of activists involved - including international aid organisations, the media, and politicians in the Israeli Knesset, among others - ever really bothered to inquire as to who actually lived at Abu Saf (or, rather, who did not live there in the case). These activists, rather, employed idealised representations of the Bedouin – Rousseau’s “noble savage” in effect – with only tangential relations to reality.

As the Abu Saf saga unfolds, Koensler details the contradictory insider dynamics of the demolitions, while offering a sharp critique of institutional lobbying. The Abu Saf family, for instance, was sidelined from the beginning as CSOs took over proceedings. During the first demolition the family is reduced to serving tea and coffee (p.54-55). As the media circus descends, one family member remarks “have we become a zoo, or what?” Indeed, the actual claims of the family, in whose name the mobilisation supposedly occurred, became lost in favour of “the neo-liberal logic of accelerated circulation as an end in itself” (p.71).

In particular, Koensler critiques the uncritical reproduction of ideas of local community stemming from a missionary impulse to bring “global values” to a “backwards” locality (p.51). The author’s interactions with his Bedouin interlocutors reveal a less stereotypical view of contemporary Bedouin existence. Despite the romanticised depictions of the Bedouin “living off the land” promoted by CSOs, Koensler details the consumerist lifestyles embraced by the Abu Saf family, including visits to the mall, eating fried chicken, and watching MTV on HDTV at the actual home of a family member.

The Abu Saf affair, entailing the repeated construction and demolitio n of what Koensler calls a “ghost village”, can make for awkward reading at times. Indeed, Koensler self-reflexively grapples with his “inability to find an ethically correct role in the game” (p.95). This is especially the case as Koensler reveals the anguish experienced by a variety of Israeli- Jewish activists who believed that they were seeing the repeated demolition of the Abu Saf’s family home, whereas, having spent extensive time in the region in contrast to whirlwind mediadriven activism, the author knows that the demolitions are staged. On one occasion, a European government sent the family some tents which remained empty until the day of the demolitions. Koensler then details how the family brought along carpets and pillows just prior in order to make the area seem inhabited (p.94).

Koensler is also critical of the use of imagery depicting children playing in the wreckage. In his view, such imagery infantilised the Bedouin as “hapless victims” (p.95). Rather than being a source of empowerment, Koensler argues that institutional lobbying actually reinforced divisions and further internalised the Bedouin’s own sense of victimisation. Koensler eventually discovers that the family’s claims are driven by the fact that they reside on land traditionally recognised as belonging to another Bedouin family. This second family needed the land to accommodate a new generation. The denouement? The government finally allocates the Abu Saf family a plot of land in a Bedouin town. Unsurprisingly, some CSO activists felt that they have been played as fools (p.100).

The Abu Saf affair is a fascinating account of the disconnect between CSO activities and local realities. CSOs, for instance, treated the affair as a humanitarian disaster, whereas the Abu Saf family wanted legal representation (p.84). None of the main actors comes out of the affair in an especially positive light. As a result, I struggled to identify a target audience for the volume whilst I, myself, remained enraptured. The Israeli government/security forces seem petty and vindictive, whereas the CSOs often come across as naive and consumed by their own sense of self- importance. Invoking James Scott’s “masks of power”, Koensler depicts the actions of the Abu Saf family as resistance – a demonstration of Bedouin agency (p.78). Koensler contends that the staged demolitions constituted a political strategy that allowed the Abu Saf family to invert the power dynamics “to pull a fast one” at the expense of the mostly upper- middle class Israeli- Jewish activists. It is easy to see, however, how the actions of the Abu Saf family could be read in such a way as to reinforce Orientalist tropes pertaining to “Bedouin shiftiness”.

Part three delves into the word of experimental activism aimed at redefining categories of the conflict to create “a vibrant counter-culture of fragmented autonomous spheres” (p.105). The idea is to change the consciousness and practices of both individuals and institutions. Activities are focused on promoting direct encounters rather than high- visibility. Through the promotion of polyphony – or the incorporation of multiple, sometimes contradictory, narratives – ideas can be renegotiated to open up new interpretive categories and redefine the boundaries of collective belonging.

Centred on “ecosophies”, such activism ties environmental problems to issues of social justice. Koensler details several of these activities and autonomous spaces such as silent marches and critical tours to meet the Bedouin on their own terms. After spending the night with Bedouin women, one female activist explains that the experience changed her perceptions of the roles and agency of Muslim women (p.118). She had previously assumed these women to be oppressed.

Koensler does, however, recognise the limits of such activism in structural terms while documenting an attack on the Gaza Strip from a nearby ecovillage. He also rightly points out some of the contradictory uses of ecology given that Israeli government and the Jewish National Fund has utilised such justifications – for instance, national parks and the planting of trees – to rationalise Palestinian dispossession (p.140).

For Koensler, the benefits of these experimental forms of activism lie in their ability to extend the boundaries of possibility, yet he is acutely aware of the limits of such actions. While he speaks of radical ecology, spirituality, and anarchism, he also cites one activist who critiques an ecovillage for its own narrow-mindedness: “The organisers should understand that not everyone is a hippy. If you want to do something for coexistence and not for hippies, you have to change your concept” (p.139).

Nevertheless, Koensler contends that change can only occur in a society after there has been a change in discourses (p.155). According to Koensler, the “ephemeral moments” provided by experimental activism may be the seedbed through which to subvert mainstream interpretative categories and lead to a paradigmatic shift in conceptualising the conflict. The question that he never really answers, however, is how do we facilitate such interactions on a societal level? Postscript – As a fair warning to potential readers, I felt that the author was let down by the publisher during the copy-editing process, but this is no way detracts from the excellent quality of scholarship on offer.