Permeable walls? Limits and opportunities of Israeli-Palestinian forms of solidarity

Abstract

In wars and violent conflicts, the potential of cross-cutting alliances of solidarity across frontlines are often overseen. The ethnographic perspective, I argue in this article, can contribute to a more detailed understanding of these alliances, which have always existed in wars. Based on fieldwork about rights and justice activism, I investigate activism that crosses lines both at the ‘border’ between Israel and Palestine, and at the ‘internal frontier’ between Arab-Bedouin citizens and the authorities, in Israel’s southern Negev desert. I describe the surroundings of a meeting between Arab-Palestinian families and Israeli activists in the partially destroyed Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (or Hebron), occupied and inhabited by both settlers and the Israeli army. The second event investigates significant moments of a peace march based on the methods of Gandhi. In the cases presented here, Israeli-Palestinian collaboration, friendships and solidarity, have been crucial in creating detailed knowledge about violence and right violations.