Through adopting a focus on the gendered micro-politics of lived realities, this paper investigates the perpetuation of political stasis in the context of Israel-Palestine. Following Lauren Berlant’s (2007) delineation of ‘ordinary life’ wherein specific life-worlds emerge through affective attachments, the paper explores how the creation and maintenance of ‘small worlds’ may preclude action on larger political scales including the national level. In this, gender functions as a diagnostic category, making visible both the centrality of the Jewish Israeli family to micro-environments and the differential interests of individuals who pursue normalcy within these realms. Importantly, these ‘small worlds’ reflect diverse value systems and understandings of politics specific to the ethnic, religious, economic, and geographic orientations of the Jewish Israelis invested in their construction. These distinct spheres of immediate influence converge in the nexus of militarism, nationalism, and social regulation, collectively perpetuating the status quo even as ideals of justice and equality are pursued in more intimate dimensions. Based upon one year of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, this paper examines the links between micro and macro scales, revealing how active distancing from the political realities of military occupation may result in a new practice of domination: the production and preservation of normalcy. While revealing specific conditions of constraint and contours of possibility, an intersectional approach to gender emphasises how the pursuit of ordinary life engages multiple relations of power, framing Jewish Israeli decisions around political engagement and action. Berlant, L. (2007) ‘Nearly Utopian, Nearly Normal: Post-Fordist Affect in La Promesse and Rosetta’, Public Culture Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 273-301.