MESA Banner
Human Advantage: The Liberal Policing of an Occupying Army in the West Bank
Abstract by Maya Wind On Session V-06  (Policing, State, and Society)

On Wednesday, October 7 at 11:00 am

2020 Annual Meeting

Abstract
A settler society with unsettled borders, Israel sustains a seven decades long military occupation that requires wide scale policing. Based on the routine management of a military government in Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel makes the case for its unique battle-proven model of population-centric warfare and counterinsurgency policing, exporting its theories, technologies and trained personnel worldwide (Graham 2011, Hajjar 2006, Khalili 2013, Weizman 2011). Rather than understand Israel’s policing model as comprised solely of tactical and technological expertise, my research examines it as a discursive project grounded in reframing Israel’s military occupation as the national security problem of a democratic state. This paper examines policing in the West Bank by the Nahal, a unique brigade of “Fighting Pioneer Youth” in the Israeli military, that is emblematic of both Israel’s “liberal occupation” and its settler-colonial structure. Established in 1948, the Nahal has long bridged civilian and military endeavors, from engaging in combat and building new settlements along the frontier, to collectivist agricultural labor and educational volunteer work. Today Nahal soldiers conduct daily policing in Occupied Palestinian Territory, while maintaining their status as the liberal brigade and “human advantage” of the Israeli military. Nahal soldiers engage in routine debates about the moral code of policing a civilian population, and see their mission as holding the Israeli military accountable to its liberal values. Based on ethnographic and archival research, I theorize the Nahal as constitutive of Israeli settler-colonial security, and argue that the often-overlooked discursive project of Israeli policing in Occupied Palestinian Territory underlies the global travels of its expertise.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
Colonialism