Abstract
This paper examines how Palestinian peace activists draw upon place, space, and material performance to present themselves as ethical individuals while working with Israeli activists. Israeli-Palestinian cross-border interactions have largely been examined for their pacifying and de-politicizing impacts, and are widely discredited in Palestinian society as taṭbīʿ, or normalization. Palestinians who engage in these activities are deemed to be naive or traitorous. I examine the materiality of internationally-funded projects and programs of reconciliation, and demonstrate how political claims are made through mundane objects such as sticky notes, photocopies, and chairs. This research draws upon eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted on the Palestine-Israel border from 2018 to 2023. I use performance theory and the management of front and back stages to reconciliation programs to posit a theory of material performance and demonstrate how Palestinian activists make citational use of location and landscape, materials such as clothing, the number of people present, and poetry to engage in political claim-making and present themselves as ethical individuals. This paper also examines the public and private discourse that Palestinians employ in relation to geographical location, current events, and national ideals such as the bereaved mother, to present reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis as fundamentally political, and tied to the project of Palestinian statehood and national identity.
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