Based on fieldwork in the Jewish settlements in and near the Gaza Strip prior to the Israeli withdrawal, Unsettling Gaza critically examines secular liberalism, religiosity, and the complexities of being Israeli. The book holds up a mirror in which the liberal left and the radical right each find themselves reflected in the face of the other.

Auteur

Joyce Dalsheim is a cultural anthropologist who studies nationalism, religion and the secular, and conflict in Israel/Palestine. She has her doctorate from the New School for Social Research, and has taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Wake Forest University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In 2005, she held the Rockefeller Fellowship at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Résumé
Joyce Dalsheim's ethnographic study takes a ground-breaking approach to one of the most contentious issues in the Middle East: the Israeli settlement project. Based on fieldwork in the settlements of the Gaza Strip and surrounding communities during the year prior to the Israeli withdrawal, Unsettling Gaza poses controversial questions about the settlement of Israeli occupied territories in ways that move beyond the usual categories of politics, religion, and culture. The book critically examines how religiously-motivated settlers think about living with Palestinians, how they express theological uncertainty, and how they imagine the future beyond the confines of territorial nationalism. This is the first study to place radical, right-wing settlers and their left-wing and secular opposition in the same analytic frame. Dalsheim shows that the intense antagonism between these groups disguises fundamental similarities. Her analysis reveals the social and cultural work achieved through a politics of mutual denunciation. With theoretical implications stretching far beyond the boundaries of Israel/Palestine, Unsettling Gaza's counter-intuitive findings shed fresh light on politics and identity among Israelis and the troubling conflicts in Israel/Palestine, as well as providing challenges and insight into the broader questions that exist at the interface between religiosity and formations of the secular.

Contenu

Fundamentally Settlers? 2. Disturbing Doubling: Antagonizing Settlers and History in the Present 3. Producing Absence and Habits of Blinding Vision 4. Disciplining Doubt: Expressing Uncertainty in Gush Katif 5. Twice Removed: Mizrahim in Gush Katif 6. The Danger of Redemption: Messianic Visions and the Potential for Nonviolence 7. Unimaginable Futures: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Thinking Past Territorial Nationalism 8. On Disturbing Categories 9. On Demonized Muslims and Vilified Jews Notes Bibliography Index