WHERE BULLETS SCRATCH THE BODY OF THE DEAD MAN AND MAKE HIM

ALIVE: ANTICOLONIAL RESISTANCE IN QALANDIA REFUGEE CAMP

Lesli ********

Honors Thesis

Politics Department, ******* College, April 14th 2013

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For Alaa

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View of the checkpoint (lights on left side), with Qalandia camp in the foreground

Photo by author

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Section I: The Camp is Strong

Rebar sprouts from the roofs of buildings, waiting for the next generation of refugees that

will push the camp skywards. With little room between them, the densely compacted buildings

define the ever-rising topography of Qalandia refugee camp. From any point within, the amber

glow from the checkpoint, the apartheid wall separating the West Bank from the rest of historic

Palestine, and the first hill of “inside” land are visible. Standing from the roof and looking

towards Jerusalem, my friend remarks that al-Aqsa, one of the three most important holy sites in

Islam, is only eighteen kilometers away. Of course, he can’t go there to pray. As a result of the

colonial apartheid system that actively attempts to displace Palestinians farther and farther away

from any of the expanding Israeli settlements, most of the younger generations of refugees have

never seen this important city.

Everyone will tell you that Qalandia is strong: the tight-knit community of over 20,000

people share one-square kilometer of land between the looming apartheid wall and one of the

many rapidly expanding illegal settlements, Kochav Ya’aqov. Established in 1949, the camp is

the first of several along the road that connects the highly militarized Kalandia1 checkpoint with

the city of Ramallah. At the first hint of trouble or cause to protest, the camp often closes the

road with stacks of burning tires, disrupting traffic around the checkpoint for hours at a time.

Sitting in the “Castle,” the name of one of the camp’s apartments that is humorously called “the

last free place in Palestine,” Hasan2 tells me that the Palestinian Liberation Authority (PLO) used

to call all camps qala’a, or castle, rather than “camp.”1 The strongholds of Palestinian resistance

1 The checkpoint will be referred to as “Kalandia,” and the camp will be referred to as “Qalandia.” Both share the same name in reality. 2 All names have been changed for the safety of the individuals and their families.

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throughout the past 65 years, this is a space of strength in both revolutionary ideology and

independently constructed political identities.

When I first arrived in the West Bank, I had with me a neatly typed proposal outlining

my research goal: to identify and discuss locations of non-violent resistance and collaborative

efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. I never would have predicted what my research would

ultimately entail just twelve months later.3 Whereas a more experienced ethnographer might

have had the expertise to begin with more informed questions that would ultimately guide her

research, this ethnography is intended to represent the culmination of a learning experience that

the camp opened up to me during 4 months of engagement, from May to August 2012 and

December to January 2013.

Hasan, who would ultimately become one of my closest friends and research assistant,

puzzled me with his insistence during our introduction that “the camp is strong.”2 How could this

be? I wondered. There are many graves in the camp’s cemetery marked with black, indicating

that the refugee had been killed at the hands of an Israeli soldier or settler. With Hasan’s help, we

asked many Qalandia refugees to help me understand this strength, and my research question

eventually unfolded into understanding how a Fanonian analysis may or may not be relevant

within this context. How might violence, understood as a productive force that is formative,

serve to politicize life? How might narratives of violence problematize the relevance of bare life

for understanding the lived experiences of Qalandia camp refugees? What is the relevance of

such conceptualizations when considered in relation to individual refugees’ ideas of resistance?

3 I could have pursued my original research question in villages such as Bil'in and Nabi Saleh, where local Palestinians, internationals, and Israelis have met every Friday for many years to protest the apartheid wall that has torn through their community. Subject to the IDF's unrelenting onslaught of tear gas, a disgusting chemical compound informally known as "stink," and the continual burning of olive groves as punishment for their unruly dedication, numerous villages form political community with activists from around the world. Their dedication to a worthy cause is admirable of research, respect, and far more media coverage than currently exists.

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What ensued were a collection of roughly twenty interviews, where Hasan and I “pushed on the

pain” to spark impassioned debates about the future of resistance in Qalandia. When is the camp

weak? Is the PA good for refugees? Where will we go after the camp, if Qalandia is not allowed

to be a refugee camp within the statehood? By asking these questions and opening a dialogue

centered on politicization in the camp, I hoped to be able to comprehend a political identity

formed in the midst of what was appearing to become an important triangulation between the

locally identified politics of vulnerability, dignity, and resistance. Strength, an idea that remains

abstract unless rooted within this conceptual triad that reflects very real political conditions, turns

out to be possible within a political imagination surrounding a cause, and a life that is only

possible within the imagined future. Whereas strength in a cause creates political possibilities,

the denial of political identities renders lives apolitical.

Importantly, the right of return serves as an important metric for politicization within

Qalandia. Prominently located within discussions surrounding strength, this particular cause is

intrinsically linked to violence. Both subject to and engaging with violence for the sake of a

homeland, the narratives that I had the opportunity to learn from highlighted an importantly

productive element of violence. As is suggested, “violence is formative; it shapes people’s

perceptions of who they are and what they are fighting for across space and time—a continual

dynamic that forges as well as affects identities.”3 Rather than advocating that violence can be

comprehended within the confines of a polished definition or rigid theoretical construction—

perhaps an impossible task4—this ethnography attempts to locate it as a creative energy that

destroys and forges political identities. By doing so, discussions of the camp’s vulnerability, of

Ahmad Najeeb,4 of statehood and the future, become part of a greater, more dynamic

4 Ahmad Najeeb, a 22-month-old refugee who lived in Qalandia, was killed in November of 2012 when an Israeli soldier threw a tear gas canister into the room that he was sleeping in. He burned to death.

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understanding of identity formation. Rather than perceiving of Qalandia as a space of

devastation, of refugees as bodies that are motionless and passively destroyed, interviews

indicated that resistance animates and creates political life: that politicized life in the camp

occurs through resisting conditions of vulnerability and creating dignified life. Much to my

surprise, dignity became one of the most frequently referred to concepts throughout my time in

Palestine, suggesting the term’s richness within this ethnographic moment. For many

respondents, ‘dignity and blood’ are the very basis of Palestinian political identity, and the

ultimate indication of political existence.

Depoliticized Life

Ever since Abu Mazen's5 election in 2005, the relationship between the camps and the

Palestinian Authority has shifted dramatically. Whereas the PA had formerly been utilized as a

military force against Israel during the Second Intifada under Yasser Arafat's command, Abu

Mazen's peace program and diplomatic relationship with Israel has led to alleged collaboration

between the two parties to arrest key resistance leaders, and to the co-management of arms and

uprisings in the West Bank. Most importantly, Abu Mazen's abandonment the right of return for

Palestinian refugees65 has set an explosive political stage in the camps. This new concessional

trajectory is most profoundly illustrated in Abu Mazen's recent "observer state status" victory in

5 President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. He is more commonly referred to by this name following local custom, which literally means “Father of Mazen,” who is his oldest son. 6 In an effort to reconsolidate power during negotiations with Israel, the PA willingly conceded to ‘forget’ about the Nakba, the mass exodus and genocide that occurred during 1947 and 1948 as Israel positioned itself to become the Jewish state.6 Sari Nusseibeh, the PA's diplomatic representative in Jerusalem, declared in 2002 that in the framework for a two-state solution, Palestinians couldn’t demand the return of refugees to homes inside the state of Israel because of the project’s lack of feasibility.6 More recently, PA president Mahmoud Abbas stated that "I visited Safed [his birthplace that is now within Israel] before once ... I want to see Safed. It's my right to see it, but not to live there."6 His abandonment of his right to return has triggered massive protests across the Occupied Territories and in the diaspora.

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the UN. Importantly, this move locks Palestine into its current, highly fragmented territorial

boundaries, representing a checkmate for most refugees who wish to return to their villages that

are now inside Israel. As one refugee from Qalandia noted during an interview, "the statehood

has left us digging in stone for the future."6

With the right of return being actively suppressed in favor of a Palestinian state based

on 1967 boundaries, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that has been

operating in the camp since 1949 is attempting to relieve itself of its position in the Occupied

Palestinian Territories (OPT). Importantly, this would erase the weighty political signifier that

legitimately identifies Qalandia as a refugee camp. As one friend in the camp described, "the

UNRWA is beginning to demand that refugees pay for electricity... and this sort of thing has

been happening for a long time, with UNRWA trying to escape and get out of the camps. But

they give proof for Palestinians that we are refugees... now we are citizens of this new ‘country,’

and the normal country is supposed to take care of her own people."7 As such, the PA and

UNRWA have demonstrated their commitment to erasing or naturalizing the political

significance of the refugee by attempting to bring them into the folds of this new, highly

problematic state, without recognizing the very basis of the refugee’s politicization within the

right of return.

This statehood and consequent depoliticization of the refugee allows for an important line

of interrogation. Many of my discussions with community members and stake holders in

Qalandia focused on the future of the right of return within this political context, with

conversation inevitably leading to impassioned debates about how Qalandia will never abandon

this key issue, and will ultimately resist both a Palestinian and Israeli government if the right of

return is sidelined. As such, Qalandia poses an abrupt breakage from Abu Mazen's peace

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program, and operates predominantly in opposition to the IDF, PA, and occasionally the

UNRWA. As will be demonstrated, the IDF, PA, and UNRWA often operate in such close

ideological proximity of each other, that I identify them collectively as a “colonial assemblage of

sovereign forces.” Fueled by the colonial context, all three depend upon the refugees’

depoliticization and are structurally incapable of confronting the right of return.

Whereas a return to relations of power, of being more than listless bodies that experience

violence enacted upon them, provide a line of escape from conditions depoliticization, neither

the PA nor UNRWA allow for the refugee's political identity to exist. As such, by capturing the

refugee’s ‘cause,’ the PA and UNRWA attempt to disrupt the triangulation of vulnerability,

dignity, and resistance, the basis of political life in the camp. According to one analysis that will

be examined, resistance in a scenario such as this must contest the sovereign ban itself, or the

imposed delineation between politically qualified and unqualified life. The PA, UNRWA, and of

course Israel’s dependence upon the depoliticized refugee, an instance of the sovereign ban,

means that these institutions are inadequate structures of resistance: engagement with them

remain within the realm of violence rather than creating space for agency through power

relations. As such, I argue that Qalandia cannot pursue the right of return, or the politicization of

their identity, with organizations that cannot recognize the politically qualified potential of the

refugee.

Although the colonial assemblage of sovereign forces (IDF, PA, UNRWA) actively

creates, maintains, and depends upon the disenfranchisement and depoliticization of the refugee,

conversations in the camp expose an important discourse that challenges the sovereign ban.

Interviewees were far from denying their imposed vulnerability—or as Giorgio Agamben would

describe, their condition of bare life within a legal space of exception. However, my companions

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interestingly underscored an inherent strength that is only possible with pain. Rather, strength

and dignity in this particular space of exception is presented as being predicated on collective

hardship, and the resulting violent resistance against the sovereign forces that function on the

basis of the sovereign ban. Without bare life and pain, there is no resistance, and only apolitical

weakness: a people without a cause.

As will be described in greater detail, this interaction between bare life and strength

through resistance poses a key theoretical friction. Importantly, strength is not typically grounded

on the prevalence of vulnerability within a space of exception. Agamben does not directly

engage with the revolutionary crisis, a point where Frantz Fanon's conceptualization of

anticolonial violence becomes indispensable. For Fanon, the continually increasing pressure of

the colonial situation inevitable ends with the violent confrontation and subsequent replacement

of one "species" over another, and the destruction of the colonial sector. Whereas strength is

denied in Agamben's bare life, Fanon's productive violence creates political possibilities on the

grave of what he calls wretchedness, and depends upon the worsening conditions inherent in

colonial apartheid systems to trigger a violent reaction.

As will be outlined in the following sections, sovereignty must be understood and

critiqued within a context of overlapping and interacting actors that manage depoliticized life. As

previously described, each of these actors rely upon the depoliticized (non)refugee. Contrary to

popular belief, the PA does not provide an invaluable restoration of politically qualified life, and

instead maintains a condition of "colonial peace" in order to retain political legitimacy in the

eyes of international stakeholders and negotiators. As such, the PA does not offer a return to

power relations or a departure from bare life because of its function within the colonial

assemblage. Instead, the restoration of qualified life and political community through resistance

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recreate power relations. Circling their villages and waiting for their return, Qalandia engages in

a struggle that rejects the sovereign ban by mobilizing on the very condition of ‘wretchedness’ as

the starting point for resistance and political community. What becomes of this resistance is,

according to Palestinian novelist and philosopher Ghassan Kanafani, the creation of the

Palestinian, and the mobilization of national development into a forward trajectory. "Man is a

cause," Kanafani asserts: qualified life is created on the basis of a cause, of the struggle for

relations of power and political qualification.

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7 Map available from B’teslam, a human rights organization based in Israel.

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Section II: Violent Assemblages

If you were to walk to the front gate of the camp and take a shared taxi away from

Kalandia checkpoint, you would be able to witness a radical transformation as you enter an area

that the PA has tenuous control over. As opposed to the camp, which remains under Israeli

military occupation in Area C, the PA maintains streets in Area A through regular municipality

services like garbage pick-up. Continuing down this road, you would soon find yourself being

politely kicked out of the taxi onto shara’a el-Quds (Jerusalem Street), or more sarcastically

known as the “Statehood Street” due to the new cosmetic measures that have occurred since Abu

Mazen’s most recent return from the UN General Assembly. Teaming with development projects

and services that are staffed almost entirely by international development workers, Ramallah is

currently viewed as the ‘safe’ Palestinian city where you can find the new, mostly foreign

Palestinian bourgeoisie class, most of the only nightclubs and bars, and coffee shops with French

names serving Americanos and lattes. Welcome to Ramallah, the city with a history of extremes:

yesterday’s ghost town or today’s international hub, Ramallah represents a physical location of

multiple intersecting sovereign forces. As such, understanding how sovereignty functions in this

unique geopolitical context is essential.

As a result of the Oslo Accords, the OPT were transformed into a fragmented space of

separate yet overlapping arrangements of violence. In the West Bank, looking out over a valley

is enough to locate Areas A, B, and C. Predominantly within the bounds of one splotch on a map

representing "PA territory" in Area A, Ramallah rubs against other zones of differing juridical

relations. Area B, which indicates that the area is subject to joint custody between Israel and the

PA, and Area C, complete Israeli military control, appear in distinct, color-coded spaces on

maps. Although these spaces have separate legal and political functions, the lines and colors

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dividing them are smudged; illegal settlements eat away at all areas, indiscriminate of zones;

travel across the West Bank, although subject to checkpoints, curfews, forbidden spaces, and

road blocks, means that bodies flow in fits and spurts through some juridical boundaries; the IDF

and PA, oftentimes operating together in recent years, may transgress their legal spaces by

entering an area that they are technically prohibited from operating in. Although the camp

represents what Agamben calls ‘localization,’8 or a spatially delineated space of exception, the

sovereign ban is maintained and reinforced in Qalandia through its distribution across three

fields: the IDF, the PA, and UNRWA. As such, the IDF is far from being the only sovereign

actor that wields violence with bare life at its defining center.

The topography of Qalandia's juridical relationship with Israel is intrinsically linked with

this spatial arrangement: marked into Area C, the camp functions within a space of exception

punctuated by aggressive military rule. Since refugee camps have historically been locations of

resistance, retaining power over these particular spaces remained a top priority when sovereign

power came to be spatially distributed between the newly created PA and the IDF. Area C's legal

landscape—or lack thereof— means that the IDF may effectively destroy life without legal

repercussions, arrest camp residents and children and place them in administrative detention

without trial, demolish homes, and torture. As Agamben describes, "it is the sovereign who,

insofar as he decides on the state of exception, has the power to decide which life may be killed

without the commission of homicide."9 In this "localization without order... the camp as

permanent space of exception,"10 the important question is not what can be done against life, but

what can't be.

Agamben demonstrates that as in homo sacer, the state of emergency is the inclusion of

life and necessity in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion. The law becomes able

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to actively separate ‘political’ beings (citizens) from ‘bare life’ (bodies), with the greater

significance being that bodies devoid of citizenship and political significance are disposable.

“Bare life,” or zoe as opposed to bios, politically-qualified life, is defined by the sovereign’s

law.11 Bare life refers to the life that is devoid of political significance (zoe), and exists without

legal qualification (bios). Law, or the state of exception, is then manipulated by the sovereign

ban in order make ‘bare life’ the subject of political control, endowing the sovereign with the

ultimate power over life and death. Worth noting, however, is that this power is more accurately

described as violence over life and non-life. As Judith Butler movingly notes, “violence against

those who are already not quite living [bios, unqualified life], that is, living in a state of

suspension between life and death, leaves a mark that is no mark.”12

Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin-Fat's distinction between sovereignty, power, and

violence is worth noting here. Beginning with Foucault's notion that power is diffuse rather than

centralized, and more accurately described as a relationship of power since "there are no

relations of power without resistances,"13 Edkins and Pin-Fat merge this conceptualization with

Agamben's state of exception. Although we may categorize Agamben's formulation of bare life

as being locked in a hierarchized mode of power, this mergence importantly demonstrates that

"sovereign power leads to a form of administration of bare life, exemplified in the concentration

camp, which can no longer usefully be regarded as a power relation,"14 but a relationship of

violence.15 Importantly, whereas Foucault views power relations as being predicated upon the

freedom and power to resist, Agamben maintains that life constituted within biopolitics cannot

be political life: “such a life is not possible within present forms of sovereign power and their

reliance on the division of forms of life from pure living itself.”16 This brings us towards

understanding sovereignty as being a relation of violence, and obligates us to refocus our modes

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of resistance to account for such relations. They suggest that resistance must contest the

sovereign ban, since "any other resistance always inevitably remains within this relationship of

violence. To move outside it (and return to a power relation), we need not only contest its right to

draw lines in particular spaces, but also resist the call to draw any lines of the sort sovereign

power demands."17 For Edkins and Pin-Fat, resisting these lines entails resisting the sovereign

ban by denying the very basis of power in the modern nation-state: the sovereign ban as creating

distinctions between political and bare life. In this political context, such considerations allow us

to understand why alliances between the camp and the assemblage are highly unlikely.

The Partnership for Peace

The quiet atmosphere of the West Bank is only periodically interrupted by violent

clashes, with Palestinians throwing rocks against armed Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint, arrests,

and frequent news of a prisoner who had been killed in the Israeli jails. This general state, which

one companion called the “fake peace without tanks or aircraft,”18 was often linked in interviews

to the production of apolitical, “normal”19 life that is more concerned with economic production

than political engagement with the right of return. As this particular young man argued,

“After the PA started to make fake peace, people began to have a normal lives that made

them weak… they started to build clubs, and they would forget about their homeland…

Internationals began to take over classes that would talk about the homeland, and replace

them with hip-hop dancing. This is normal, but in this situation, you shouldn’t destroy

this focus on the homeland.”20

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Fake peace is seen here as the product of multiple forces: namely, of the PA’s efforts to arrest all

major resistance leaders,21 and of the massive power inherent in international aid regimes. Of

course, these energies are criticized for their tendency to displace focus on the homeland. This

fake peace is a stark contrast from pre-peace process Palestine.

According to Jan Selby, peace processes are inter-elite political accommodations whose

aim is often not so much ‘peace’ as the reshaping of domestic hegemony and/or international

legitimacy.22 Whereas Israel previously engaged with Palestinians through a more aggressive

form of military colonial rule from 1967 to 19938, the global response to the First Intifada (1987-

1993) demonstrated the need for Israel to reshape its methods of colonial management in such a

way that would appear to foster Palestinian self-rule.23 Israel’s preference for a centralized

Palestinian political party, and the (exiled) PLO’s desperate grab for power after its

marginalization during the internally driven Intifada, culminated in the creation of the PA in

1993. The PA was established as an interim administrative body after the Oslo Accords in order

to assume the responsibilities previously managed by the Israeli military administration in less-

strategically key areas of the OPT until final status negotiations are ever concluded, an unlikely

prospect. The administrative responsibilities accorded to the PA are limited to civil matters and

internal security, and do not include external security or foreign affairs, including control over

imports and exports.24

This move hardly demonstrated a Palestinian victory. As Nev Gordon describes, “Oslo

was not an instrument of decolonization but rather a framework that changed the means of

Israel’s control in order to perpetuate the occupation. It constituted a move from direct military 8 Examples of this include the prohibition of wearing the kufiyeh, of including the mention of Palestine or the Nakba in schoolbooks, or flying the Palestinian flag. All mention of Palestinian identity was prohibited, and the Israeli military engaged in various phases of rule throughout this period. None of which, however, resembled the “self-rule” structure that has since been adopted since the Oslo Accords.

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rule over the Palestinians in the OPT to a more indirect or neocolonial form of domination.”25

Mandy Turner emphasizes that the formation of the PA merely “subcontracted some managerial

tasks to a non-sovereign quasi state, while Israel retained … control over key factors.” 26 This

colonial reach has evolved with frightening ease through the careful deployment of the PA’s

massive police force. Since Yasser Arafat’s death and the beginning of Abu Mazen’s peace

program, donors and UN agencies have put disproportionate effort into creating a PA security

service with one police officer to every 75 civilians.27 As a result of the international aid

complex that has evolved since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the PA’s survival

depends on the support of Israel, USAID, and other Western donors who support the ‘partners

for peace’ that the Oslo Accords supposedly stood for. The shifts in funding sources demonstrate

the increased international interest in the ‘partnership for peace’. Following the 1967 invasion

and occupation of the West Bank, several Arab states, USAID, and UNRWA28 provided funding

that eventually totaled a mere $178.74 million annually immediately prior to the signing of the

Oslo Accords in 1993.29 During the Oslo and Post-Oslo period, the face of the aid regime

changed dramatically as European and American sources increased. By 2010, international aid

had swelled to an incredible $2.52 billion USD, increasing exponentially under Abu Mazen’s

peace program.30 The PA thus has a vested interest, particularly in recent years, to police its own

population and subdue insurrection so that it may pursue the partnership for peace and the

international legitimacy that comes with it.

Most Palestinians, especially refugees in Qalandia, reject the PA and criticize it for

abandoning the roughly 8 million refugees and Palestine 'from the river to the sea' in favor of

preserving its position within the colonial assemblage. The PA thus plays an important role in

upholding ‘colonial peace’ in the West Bank. In Turner’s conceptualization, colonial peace refers

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to the imposed and regulated 'peace' within a colonized space that is supported by the local

governmental elite, which in this case would include stake holders within the PA, and in a less

obvious way, local bourgeois that benefit from the economic arrangement as will be discussed

later.31 Importantly, the PA’s position as the subcontracted police force within the Oslo

framework legitimizes the assemblage of colonial practices, since the PA, according to

prevailing international understanding, represents Palestinians.

Sovereign relations of violence that inevitably cross juridical boundaries emphasize how

the assemblages in the West Bank overlap for the explicit purpose of maintaining the sovereign

ban. For example, refugees in the camp once referred to Ramallah as "the ghost city" during the

Second Intifada when, despite the prohibition against IDF soldiers from entering Area A, Israeli

tanks and constant gunfire prevented Palestinians from leaving their homes. The IDF continually

invades Area A with small military parties for arrests and searches to this day. Smudging the

legal boundary in the other direction, a friend in the camp related an interesting event that

occurred on February 8th, 2013. At 1:00 in the morning, the PA shocked the camp by attacking

from the north in order recover a stolen Israeli car. Since the camp is in Area C and it is

prohibited for a PA officer to enter while wearing a uniform or on an official PA mission, such

an occurrence certainly signals the IDF's deployment of the PA and the overlapping of sovereign

violence. The car, which belonged to the Israeli Minister of Transportation, was destroyed during

the hour-long clashes between camp residents and the PA. By 6:30 am, the PA was reportedly

trapped inside the camp, yelling on loud speakers and demanding that they be permitted to

leave.32 As one friend described, “Qalandia is the most difficult factor in the PA’s statehood

equation,” and this event provides a "good message to the PA for what will happen to them if

they attack the camp."33 Such events motivate negative sentiments about the PA, explaining

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another friend's argument that "the PA is just Israel's son. They are Israeli soldiers speaking

Arabic."34 Although each of the three members of this colonial assemblage operate in different,

overlapping realms, they all share an important connection as functions of violence in support of

the sovereign ban.

Sari Hanafi identifies the camp as a bio-political space that has created categories for

those suffering from humanitarian crises with the effect of depoliticizing them by focusing

exclusively on caring for basic life needs. He writes, “refugees are transformed into bodies to be

fed and sheltered while being deprived of their political existence… By classifying people as

victims, the basis of humanitarian action is shifted from rights to welfare,”35 which creates a

disciplinary system revolving around the "care, cure, and control" of refugees living within the

boundaries of a refugee camp.36 He demonstrates that throughout the history of refugee

organizations in the OPT, missions have been limited to concern for humanitarian and social

issues while failing to examine the political conditions that caused and maintain the very

humanitarian issues they take issue with. Agamben takes a similar position, positing that as a

result of the organization’s apolitical character, “these organizations and individual states prove

themselves, despite their solemn invocations of the ‘sacred and inalienable’ rights of man,

absolutely incapable of resolving the problem and even of confronting it adequately.”37 During

one of many meetings in Qalandia between camp leaders and a delegation from an international

NGO, a French woman persistently asked a young woman from the camp what “her biggest

dream” for herself was. The young woman responded that, like all refugees, she wants to see the

ocean and go to her village. The French woman was taken aback, and tried asking the question

again, hoping for a response that might involve education or marketable job skills. “I want to see

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the ocean,” the woman repeated.38 In Qalandia’s case, NGOs can only ignore the most politically

located concern: right of return.

Although the camp might have become the biopolitical nomos of the modern nation-state

according to an Agambien analysis, engagement with a juridical zone of indistinction such as

Qalandia is far from unnecessary. During another interview, a camp leader presented a rare

glimpse into the camp’s vulnerability. Describing a condition that is eerily reminiscent of

Agamben’s bare life, he explained, “you should understand that this piece of the Palestinian

community, the refugees, they are the ones who are homeless, who felt the pain of the First and

Second Intifada. If there is any conflict, we are the people who are the sheep that become

sacrificed, who get harmed and are the most damaged in the Palestinian issue itself. Refugees

lack all rights, we are the most easily destroyed."39 Yet despite this experienced vulnerability,

Qalandia embodies an inherent strength that has only been possible within the geopolitical

context of statelessness and military occupation. Rather than exemplify bare life as is commonly

associated with statelessness, Qalandia actively contests any description that would associate the

Palestinian refugee with helplessness by transforming such a condition into a moment of

revolutionary departure. Importantly, the UNRWA and PA do not offer a return to power

relations as Edkins and Pin-Fat would advocate for, since their governance is formulated on the

basis of the sovereign ban.

Within this situation of externally seized and defined sovereignty, bare life is unable to

adequately encapsulate the locally lived experiences of Qalandia refugees. Several camp-

identified conceptions of strength suggest that this particular urban space deterritorializes a

typically state-monopolized logic of violence and political community, and ultimately lays claim

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on the very essence of political being that bare life would necessarily exclude. Sipping from their

small cups of thick, bitter Arabic coffee, two older men who had much more of a history than

they were willing to admit sat talking with each other about the statehood and refugees. One of

them sighed and looked over at me, explaining "the refugee lacks all rights, and is the most

easily sacrificed."40 Qalandia camp refugees have a history of vulnerability: and as countless

friends and respondents suggested, "there is no real hope for the refugee with this statehood

process. There will be no big changes for the average Palestinian because Abbas got a chair at

the UN… But if this Palestinian Authority keeps going for these agreements, the refugee will be

the one to make the sacrifice."41 Yet despite—or because of— this condition of vulnerability,

Qalandia has historically been a location of intense political action. As the old men finished their

cups of coffee, one ended the conversation soulfully. "We have lost our homes, we have lost

everything..."42 his voice trailed off. "We have nothing to lose. If we want one thing, it is to have

our villages back. Why are we strong? We join the resistance and resist. We don't leave like they

want us to."

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Section III: Political Community

“In front of the camp there was a gate. You know, where Ahmad drives his car through to come inside. The Israeli soldiers would block this gate and close it as a punishment for the camp. Every week, they would call and give us a speech, and all the men were supposed to go. They would call all the men to the playground at the gate, saying just mahjal (playground), and make them stand over there, get a stamp, and listen to the soldiers. And in the night, when they were attacking all of the houses, if they didn’t find a stamp on the man’s hand, they would arrest him.”43

The gate was torn down long ago, but this memory from the First Intifada still resonates

with Hasan, a twenty-something year old refugee who trusts no one—with good reason. Arrested

five times beginning when he was just twelve years old, Hasan recognizes that even his castle is

not impervious to soldiers and spies, who may simply break through the door to take him in the

dead of night. Like Hasan, every refugee in the camp is easily located within the tangles of

alleyways and growing apartment buildings, and the space is subject to constant invasion without

warning. As Hasan’s story indicates, the IDF may close off and sequester the area from the

surrounding neighborhoods entirely, gaining ultimate control over bodies as manifest in both the

physical closing of space and the imposed obligation of the lineup.

Qalandia's story does not end at the gate, at the sovereign ban or homo sacer. After

describing how his father would have to go to the gate with the rest of the men in the camp,

Hasan paused and thought bitterly for a moment. "Those who have been in this situation," he

began, "do you think that he is going to be smiling on an Israeli's face? They put the hate inside

of us. We should share some."44 This interaction of oppression and reaction between the camp

and Israel falls in line with a Fanonian analysis. As Fanon would argue, the daily violence of the

occupying Israeli military forces, apartheid, poverty, and the quasi-colonial PA police are

23

energies that never cease in shaping the potential resistance of the colonized, towards expression

and release. This expression of the colonized is, according to Fanon, an inevitable process that is

built into the colonial framework. As he describes, "decolonization is the encounter between two

congenially antagonistic forces that in fact owe their singularity to the kind of reification secreted

and nurtured by the colonial situation... It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to

fabricate the colonized subject."45

Although Fanon does not directly engage with Agamben’s understanding of bare life, his

focus on systems of racial apartheid and their inevitable production of the colonized subject

underscores an important precondition of inhumanity. He describes the colonist's and the

colonized sector, saying, "the colonist's sector is a sated, slugish sector, its belly is permanently

full of good things. The colonist's sector is a white folks' sector, a sector of foreigners. The

colonized sector... is a disreputable place inhabited by disreputable people. You are born

anywhere, anyhow. You die anywhere, from anything... the colonized's sector is a sector that

crouches and cowers, a sector on its knees."46 Divided and subject to a metric based on race, the

colonized subjects become what Fanon titles his text: Les Damnés de la Terre, the Wretched of

the Earth. Born into and dying in the colonized world, the colonized subject is unworthy of

humanity: "in his endeavors at description and finding the right word, the colonist refers

constantly to the bestiary."47 Importantly, Fanon characterizes this relationship as Manichean

rather than dialectical. This difference is essential for Fanon, since the Manichean divide

between the colonized and colonizer makes reciprocity impossible, and denies dialectical

movement towards mutual recognition.48 Compromise is a fruitless exercise for Fanon: instead,

when the wretched "discover their humanity,” the colonized subject is impelled to “sharpen their

weapons to secure its victory,"49 in order to make a triumphant claim that will topple the colonial

24

world. Most importantly for Fanon's conceptualization, though, is how such destruction heralds

an inevitably creative force. As he describes, "decolonization is truly the creation of new men."50

Far from embodying bare life, Fanon's wretched of the earth engage in the production of a new

political subject.

Framing and justifying resistance within the context of the occupation’s conditions was

not an uncommon response to my questions. In another interview with a friend living in the

camp, he remarked,

"At the end, Israel's actions make us resist. This is good! Israel isn't soft with us, because

however harsh Israel is with us, it makes us remember that our land is over there, and we

want it back. And if we forget for a short time, it's enough to go to the graveyard and look

at all of our family and friends in the camp, the kids that were killed for a homeland that

we must keep fighting for."51

As this quote suggests, martyrdom9 and the destruction of bare life necessarily elicits a response

from the camp. For example, Hasan described the camp’s old routine every Friday during the

Second Intifada. Many families in the camp used to go to visit and care for the families of

martyrs and imprisoned refugees.52 Importantly, responses to martyrdom in the camp take the

form of collective community action: and in doing so, bare life becomes transformed into

politically qualified life, a life of value that exists as such only outside of the assemblage’s

sovereign framework that creates the sovereign ban. As one interviewee described, “the oil for

the camp during the Second Intifada was the martyrs, who had been killed from all the times that

9 Contrary to popular belief, martyrdom is not limited to the sanctification of the lives of suicide bombers, or shuhada. Rather, martyrs in this political context are those who were killed by Israel. For instance, many of the martyrs’ graves in Qalandia’s cemetery are for young children below the age of 15. Importantly, it is more correct to refer to those who have died at the hands of Israel as having been “martyred” rather than “killed” according to local terminology.

25

the Israelis got inside out houses and destroyed them.”53 As one woman described, “you still live

in your small space. You’re still a refugee, and everyone sees everybody else in his or her

condition, and they talk about how the camp was attacked the night before, the martyrs here.

These things keep you alert, not blind like the people tend to be when they don’t live in the

camp.”54

Far from embodying bare life or the wretched of the earth, the camp represents a space of

strength through community and resistance according to numerous ethnographic narratives. In

the night immediately following the incident with the PA and the stolen Israeli car, Hasan called

me to say that many Israeli soldiers came into the camp and entered thirteen homes to make

arrests. However, as Hasan proudly described, none of the soldiers had even been able to leave

the homes of the Palestinians they had seized, because of the roughly one hundred Palestinians

that surrounded each home, throwing stones. “Not a single Palestinian was taken from their

house that day,” Hasan glowed. I smiled as he unknowingly referenced Shakespeare to make a

highly insightful point. “To be or not to be, this was what the camp had to decide. And we chose

‘to be’ that night.”55 To be, in this case, is to exist: to exist with dignity, in a condition that is far

from embodying the muselmann, the “staggering corpse, a bundle of physical functions in its last

convulsions.”56 Whereas the ultimate, unresisting bare life “no longer had room in his

consciousness for the contrasts good or bad, noble or base,”57 moving together in groups, hurling

stones to protect the community from arrests, and taking action for a cause transforms bare life

into an active force. Whereas there is no possibility for action, community, and dignity in the

Lager, resistance politicizes and denies the very basis of bare life. As a friend describes, “we

were dying under the tanks in the war, and honestly, we were happy. Palestine was built by

dignity and blood, yes, we built our own history on blood because we don’t surrender and we

26

don’t give up. This is our homeland and our home.”58 What ultimately distinguishes the wretched

from the muselmann is this potential in the future, the possibility for dignity that is available in

the space of resistance. Importantly, the refugees’ status as the wretched places them within a

certain revolutionary category as juxtaposed with the non-refugee.

The peasantry occupies a particularly revolutionary position for Fanon, since they “have

nothing to lose and everything to gain.”59 As one friend in Qalandia described, “we are

something, we can say no and defend ourselves.”60 He links this existence, the ability ‘to be’

with the very condition that rendered him as the wretched of the earth. “How can we do this?” he

asked. “By the same result that Israel has produced: because when we no longer fear death, we

are strong from the inside.”61 As such, the camp represents the absolute wretched: whereas the

“colonial bourgeoisie” become the mediators and engage in nonviolence and compromise

“precisely because they have always been careful not to break ties with colonialism,”62 the basis

of their prosperity, Fanon’s wretched have no strength or possibility without action.

Interestingly, many respondents throughout the camp related this politicized strength to only

those who experience the worst conditions.

Many refugees in the camp argued that the “Ramallah bourgeoisie” are paradoxically

weak as a result of their general security and comfort in comparison with life in the camp. As

one young man described, “this better life creates different people with a new feeling, and makes

them weaker and weaker, until they get to a point where they are now. Maybe Israel will try to

destroy Al-Aqsa mosque, and they will not do anything.”63 Although they are far from

experiencing the same vulnerability as they would in the camp, Ramallah is frequently criticized

for its inhabitants’ weakness in political identity and consciousness. During a walk around the

downtown, Hasan asked me “how long has it been since anyone died in Ramallah? When was

27

the last time they heard gunfire there?”64 Hasan stopped talking long enough to give some young

local guys a long, accusing glower before continuing. “When you are in Ramallah, you don’t feel

like you are under occupation… you feel like you are free. Even internationals say that Rukab

Street looks like France, with how they put the cobblestones. It’s a copy. This is how they

prepare the statehood. They decorate it and make it feel like a state.”65 Whereas weakness is

conveyed as ‘sleeping,’ or a lack of political consciousness, respondents frequently argued that

dignity in the camp was only possible in conditions of ‘wakefulness’ regarding occupation, and

the subsequent resistance. This vigilance, according to one comment from a group interview with

past fighters, comes from a “different form of knowledge that can’t be learned in school or in a

job. This knowledge from the reality of the street hasn’t died in the camp, and that’s why we still

resist.”66 This knowledge is only possible for the wretched, or the refugee, since they recognize

that although Ramallah may have the aesthetics of statehood for now, they have never benefited

from that false comfort. For those who experience ‘the reality,’ for those who are ‘awake,’

Ramallah is not their village and cannot possibly provide a dignified future.

During one of my few conversations with a fellow expat, the individual was shocked to

hear that the statehood bid was not viewed with universal support in all of the West Bank. At my

remark that my refugee friends don't want to give up their villages like Abu Mazen is so eager to

do, he responded by arguing that such a dream of return is unrealistic and impossible, necessarily

classifying my refugee friends as irrational. When relating this story during an interview, the

refugee's response surprised me. "I don't think we will stop fighting, because there is no justice

for the refugee," he began. "But, there will never actually be justice. But an idiot like me? I don't

understand this, and I want my village back."67 Such a comment rendered the international's

opinion entirely irrelevant, since the likelihood of success does not even factor into the man's

28

decision to resist. Instead, what we see is an incredibly revolutionary force, with his muscles

"always tense," always stimulated by symbols of colonialism that beckon the colonized to “get

ready to do the right thing.”68 As Fanon describes, "these men, forced off the family land... circle

the towns tirelessly, hoping that one day or another they will be let in. It is among these masses,

in the people of the shanty towns and in the lumpenproletariat that... constitute one of the most

spontaneously and radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people."69 Visiting Nakba

websites that show collapsing stone buildings and olive trees from the homeland, Hasan and

other refugees in Qalandia circle their villages. "Look at me, and look at these kids," Hasan

gestured towards Alaa, Heba, and my other young English students. "It's impossible to clean this

idea from the refugee who grew up in the alleys, eating and drinking from the shit inside this

camp. This is what you grow up with. And this is why you won't forget, because you taste these

painful things."70 Although it may be 'unrealistic' to imagine a day when they can return, the

dignity that is only made possible by this fierce pursuit underscores the necessity of this struggle.

29

Section IV: To Feel Strong Again

And my father once said a man without a homeland will have no grave in the earth. And he

forbade me to leave.

--"The Dupes," film adapted from Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun

Somebody shouts the name of a dead twelve-year-old boy, and the sound of bullets fired

into the sky follow. Hundreds of men wearing the amorphous clothing of the resistance stand

around the black headstones of martyrs, AK-47s poised in the air. "It is good for the kids to see

this and open their eyes, to see that it is good to be a fighter, to know that there is strength and

dignity in the camp," one friend explains. Such a show of arms, only a five-minute walk from the

heavily militarized Israeli checkpoint, had not been seen since 2007. For many of my young

English students, this was their first time seeing any of the roughly one thousand secret fighters

in the camp. Organized into cells and always ready for action, Hasan described that before the

resistance quieted in 2007, there was a routine in the camp: throwing stones in the morning, and

shooting at the checkpoint during the night.71 Qalandia was strong in resistance at this time, and

well known for it: Al-A'mari, a camp farther down the road towards Ramallah, would often send

fighters to Qalandia for hiding.72 But the shooting stopped in 2007, until this show of force on

January 1st, 2013, in celebration of the political party Fateh's anniversary.73 To be reminded of

the potential for resistance was important for many respondents: as one described, "the bullets

are enough to scratch the bodies of the dead man and make him alive,"74 to renew the energy of

the refugees who, although still alive, many not feel dignified and fully human.

Dignity, or karameh, is a conceptually rich cornerstone of Palestinian activism and

resistance literature. Consequently, interviews with Qalandia refugees frequently returned to

30

dignity, and how it is inextricably tied to survival, steadfastness (samud), and resistance

(mqawama). One companion noted the complicated relationship between dignity and pain,

saying "we want to live in calm, since fighting is pain. But fighting is also dignity, and fighting

means survival at the same time as pain."75 Although resistance frequently heralds more attacks

and continued pain in the camp, fighting is conceptualized as the only means for survival.

Another interviewee noted during a group interview "in the end, this is the reality. There is no

hope, there is no solution except for fighting. We disappear, or they disappear. How many times

was Palestine about to be deleted, but it wasn't? Why not? Because we keep fighting."76 A

product of the camp and statelessness, Ghasan Kanafani is distinctly aware that flight from

resistance and pain does not provide an escape from the refugee's precariousness: without a

nationalist cause, there is no possibility for the future, no survival.

Kanafani, a Palestinian novelist and political leader of the Popular Front for the

Liberation of Palestine, was born in Akka, Palestine, before the Nakba forced his family into

exile. Growing up as a refugee between the lines of political qualification that would have

granted his family protection, Kanafani was inspired to write novellas and short stories about the

right of return and Palestinian political consciousness before his assassination in Beirut at the age

of thirty-six. Two of his most well-known novellas, Men in the Sun (1963) and Returning to

Haifa (1969) frame the progression of how Kanafani conceptualizes political consciousness and

dignity. Importantly, political consciousness is intrinsically tied to a nationalist cause, and

departure from this cause, or as Muhammad Siddiq suggests, "the attempt to escape one's fate by

physically running away from it"77 will inevitably fail and end in lonely pain. Whereas the three

men of Men in the Sun die an apolitical death separated from their community, the camp's "pain"

31

associated with fighting is dignified within the context of political community, of a collective

cause.

Men in the Sun dramatizes the futility of three Palestinian men's quest for a new home, a

new future, and, ultimately, a new identity by fleeing to Kuwait. A smuggler, also Palestinian,

unites these three characters by offering to take them for a lower fee, hiding them in the infernal

depths of his empty water tank at checkpoints. Although the trick works at the first checkpoint,

he is delayed for a few extra moments at the second and by the time he returns to the truck and

drives away to a hidden place to let them out, the smuggler opens the tank to discover that the

three men had cooked to death. Unable to distinguish one corpse from another, he dumps them

into a trash heap on the outskirts of Kuwait, but not before emptying the three men's pockets.

Naked and possessionless, the three corpses are as poor and anonymous in death as they had

been in life.

Too afraid to even bang on the sides of the water tank as they perished, the characters of

Men in the Sun highlight a bitter irony: had the three men dared to be in the sun rather than

hidden from it, they would not have died such a meaningless death.78 Like the rest of Kanafani's

narratives that are set outside of Palestine, Men in the Sun highlights the extreme precariousness

of the refugee. As Siddiq asserts, "lack of accurate political consciousness moves the three

characters of this novel to seek individually a solution to their essentially collective national

problem."79 For Kanafani, then, it would seem that a future is only possible with what Edkins

and Pin-Fat would identity as a return to power relations: not a line of flight into yet another

relation of violence, another zone of indistinction, but a community's impassioned refusal of such

a delineation.

32

As the three men of Men in the Sun attempt to escape farther away from their

community's cause, they ultimately die a meaningless death that does not even qualify them for

place in the earth to be buried in a dignified way. Dignity in the colonial context, according to

Fanon, has no relation to a universal philosophy, but to what land represents. He describes that

"for a colonized people, the most essential value, because it is the most meaningful, is first and

foremost the land: the land, which must provide bread and, naturally, dignity. But this dignity

has nothing to do with 'human' dignity. The colonized subject has never heard of such an

ideal."80 Under conditions of not even racial, but species-based apartheid, Fanon asserts that "the

famous dictum which states that all men are equal will find its illustration in the colonies only

when the colonized subject states he is equal to the colonist."81 This affirmation of dignity, of

humanness, produces an anticolonial violence that, according to Hussein Bulhan, is a kind of

"self rehabilitation of the oppressed [which] begins in directly confronting the source of

dehumanization."82 This rehabilitation is expressed through violence according to Fanon, and by

these means it challenges the symbols and structures of colonialism and "the colonized become

more than a mere thing or animal."83 This appeal to dignity, to be more than the anonymous

corpses on a trash pile, is based on something tangible and real: the land, which according to

Kanafani, is the only future.

Kanfani reintroduces a problematic question for Palestinian liberation philosophy in his

novella Returning to Haifa that ultimately attempts to ground the right of return in a forwards

national trajectory. Asking the reader on numerous occasions, 'what is a homeland?' Kanafani

"dispels the romantic sentimental definitions implicit in the Palestinians' quest for return to their

homeland"84 by linking the right of return with dignity and the future, rather than memories and

physical objects from the past. The story begins with Sai'd and Safiyya, a married couple who

33

had fled Haifa and were separated from their infant son, Khaldun, in the chaos that ensued during

the Jewish military bombardment in 1948. Returning to their old home 20 years later in search of

news regarding their son, an elderly Israeli woman who had kept their home exactly as she found

it ushers them inside. In a startling turn of events, it is revealed that the woman and her late

husband had adopted Khaldun, renamed him Dov, and raised him as their only child. Dressed in

Israeli military fatigues, Dov is asked if he would like to remain with his Jewish adoptive

mother, or return with his birth parents to a refugee camp near Ramallah. Dov asserts that no

matter his origins, "in the final analysis, man is a cause" and that his cause has developed and

thus coincides with his Israeli military and political identity.85 For Sai'd, who represents a rather

apolitical figure having previously threatened to abandon his younger son Khalid were he to join

the resistance, Dov's remark heralds an epiphany regarding the central thematic question of much

of Kanafani's literature: what is the homeland, and why is it significant to a cause, and the future

of Palestinian political identity?

Although the house is in the exact condition that the couple had left it, Sai'd realizes that

the Palestine he so desperately wants to return to must not be conceptualized within the confines

of a memory or illusion that are unable to adequately inspire political action. The most scathing

critique of Sai'ds cowardice and misplaced political consciousness comes from Dov himself. He

rants,

"You should have never stopped trying to return. You say that too was impossible?

Twenty years have passed, sir! ...What did you do during that time to reclaim your son? If

I were you I would've borne arms for that. Is there any stronger motive? ... Don't tell me

you spent twenty years crying! Tears won't bring back the missing or the lost... That's

what you tell me now? Is this your dull, worn-out weapon?"86

34

Listening to Dov, Sai'd realizes that "attachment to material objects, under whatever

circumstances, is bound to remain marginal to any serious attempt at an answer... and blood

relations fair no better."87 Instead, Sai'd readily embraces Dov's claim that 'man is a cause,' and

considers the concept's universal applicability. Consequently, his own political consciousness is

shaken.

Back in Ramallah, Sai'd and Saffiya had temporarily left behind their second son, Khalid.

Unlike the other protagonists in the narrative, Khalid was born in the diaspora after 1948.

Importantly, he had been impatient to join the armed resistance, but had been prevented from

doing so by his father who naturally had an emotional investment of his son's wellbeing.

However, after the encounter with Dov in Haifa, Sai'd dramatically shifts towards eagerly hoping

that Khalid had joined the fidayeen during his parents' absence. Khaled is representative of the

present and future generations of Palestinians born in the diaspora, who have likely never seen

their homeland yet are charged with the task of pursuing its liberation. As Siddiq demonstrates,

"because he lacked correct political consciousness and lived by defunct notions, Sai'd could

never translate his personal grievances into effective political actions. By contrast, his son

Khalid, who has no direct experience of Haifa, and consequently no emotional or sentimental

attachment to it, can commit himself to meaningful political action precisely because he

possesses political consciousness."88 Importantly, Dov's generalization that 'man is a cause'

renders irrelevant "the apparent contradiction in Khalid's commitment to fight his way back to a

homeland that he has never personally known.89 Rather, as Kanafani himself describes, Palestine

is a memory of dust in the past, a futile search that only "uncovers more dust."90 And yet, the

generation of refugees who have never seen Palestine, who do not have the memories of "dust,"

believe that "Palestine is something worthy of a man bearing arms for, dying for... for [them], the

35

homeland is the future," it is a cause that defines man, that creates a man.91 For Kanafani,

resistance is where Palestine begins, since there were no Palestinians before the cause. Armed

resistance is especially intrinsic to the creation of the political being and Palestinian political

consciousness as Kanafani sees it. Returning to Haifa very clearly demonstrates not only the

unavoidable impulse to bear arms in order to regain dignity that is trapped in the future, in the

political potential of a future homeland, but also the dignity of a national identity that must

inevitably develop through such action.

Whereas pain experienced in the lonely depths of a smothering water tank is isolating and

ultimately apolitical, pain, when located within a political community, is presented as a part of

reestablishing dignity and politically qualified life. The three refugees' flight from their cause

fails to reestablish a future based on a political requalification of their precarious lives, and their

death leaves no mark: in the cases of the young martyrs in Qalandia's cemetery who were shot

down with live bullets while throwing stones, their connection with political community means

that their tragic demise, unlike the three refugees, is within the conceptual framework of

qualified life, life that is dignified and "not easily stood upon." Dignity, then, is intrinsically

linked with community-based experiences. In one interview, a friend described that,

"We should have some dignity and respect for ourselves. We should stop crying on the

TV and fight for our homeland. Sure, if you talk about Palestine from the river to the sea,

it is impossible. In reality, we have nothing to fight them, and there will be pain. In the

end, the only thing that makes us strong is our small community, and how we live in a

small space together. This is the only strength in the West Bank."92

36

Choosing "to be," and pronouncing that the refugee can "say no and defend [them]selves"

represents a community-based approach to reclaiming dignity, and with it, challenging the

premises of the sovereign ban. Whereas the muselmann is by definition incapable of dignity,

resistance, or distinguishing between good and evil, the collective cause as centered around the

right of return provides a basis for political qualification through the structurally inevitable

community of the wretched. Although many companions in the camp noted that pain is an

inevitable part of resistance, and consequently, the production of political life, perhaps the very

possibility of perceivable pain indicates the camp's departure from bare life. Whereas the three

refugees in Men in the Sun experience pain in anonymous isolation, unknown to the world, pain

as survival in Qalandia necessarily implies that pain is knowable, understandable, and part of a

community's process of realizing dignity. Left on the trash heaps in the desert, the three men

experience a pain that is so cut off from the world, from a community that would qualify their

lives, that their lives and pain never occurred.

"When things like the war in Gaza happen," Hasan began. "the missiles make us feel the

change and make us remember the dignity of the Second Intifada."93 Hasan had been very

frustrated with the lack of resistance in the camp ever since 2007, when Abu Mazen's peace

program came into action. "This makes them wake up, the rockets that fell down," Hasan

continued. "The people in Jerusalem, they were whistling to the rockets as they fell down, even

though they were falling down near their heads. But they were happy because they began to

experience dignity again,"94 he explained. As a result of Iranian-trained Hamas members in the

Gaza strip, for the first time Hamas was able to build and send rockets as far as Israeli

settlements in Jerusalem, an area that is also populated by Palestinians. But according to Hasan's

description, as well as my Jerusalemite friends' responses to my fearful text messages during

37

Operation Pillar of Cloud in November of 2012, the renewed feeling of strength outweighed the

potential pain. "We would go to the roofs to see the rockets, just like how we did when Iraq sent

missiles to bomb Israel," another friend remembered. "Something happened, something enough

to breath the oxygen and feel strong again."95

Something happens—an important moment of revitalizing strength within the previous

conditions of vulnerability. Watching wobbling Palestinian rockets, trapping the invading IDF or

PA forces, throwing stones, or firing upon Kalandia checkpoint, Qalandia confronts bare life and

brings pain into the folds of political community. Within this moment of intersection between

vulnerability, resistance, and dignity, strength in the imagined future becomes the very basis of

political community. The cause, the right of return and decolonization, heralds a national

identity, strength, and the confrontation of dehumanization in the colonial context. Qalandia

exists in a constant confrontation with an assemblage that actively attempts to undermine the

goals and means of the struggle for return. The camp’s endurance, its failure to capitulate in the

face of Israeli and Palestinian repression suggests that existing juridical structures are inadequate

for the task of depoliticizing this politically energetic space. The camp is strong.

38

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Notes

1 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Unrecorded interview. Qalandia camp, Palestine, June 20, 2012. 2 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Unrecorded interview. Qalandia camp, Palestine, May 31, 2012. 3 Robben Nordstrom, and Antonius Carolyn, "The Anthropology and Ethnography of Violence and Sociopolitical Conflict," Fieldwork Under Fire, ed. Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C.G.M. Robben (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1995), 4. 4 Ibid., 4. 5 Mandy Turner, "Completing the Circle: Peacebuilding as Colonial Practice in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," International Peacekeeping , 19, no. 4 (2012): 492-507, 493. 6 Sami Haddad. Interview by author. Unrecorded dialogue within group interaction. Qalandia Camp, Palestine, December 15, 2012. 7 Nor Ahmed. Interview by author. Digital recording. Ramallah, Palestine, December 30, 2012. 8 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998), 99. 9 Giorgio Agamben, 83. 10 Ibid., 99. 11 Ibid.,78. 12Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, (London;New York: Verso, 2004), 36. 13Jenny Edkins, and Veronique Pin-Fat, "Life, Power, Resistance," Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics, ed. Jenny Edkins, Veronique Pin-Fat, and Michael J Shapiro (New York: Routledge , 2004), 3. 14 Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin-Fat, 4. 15 Ibid., 8. 16 Ibid., 7. 17 Ibid., 13. 18 Mahmoud Abdel. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 12, 2013. 19 Mahmoud Abdel. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Jan Selby, "The Political Economy of Peace Processes," Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding , ed. Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper, and Mandy Turner (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2011), 11-29, 13. 23 Mandy Turner, 500. 24 Robert Rothstein, After the Peace: Resistance and Reconciliation, (Boulder: Rienner Publishers , 1999), 63. 25 Nev Gordon, Israel's Occupation, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 170. 26 Mandy Turner, 495. 27 Ibid.

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28 Shir Hever, The Political Economy of Israel's Occupation: Repression Beyond Exploitation, (London: Pluto, 2010), 100. 29 Turner, 497. 30 Statistics from OECD aid database (at: http://stats.oecd.org/qwids/)

31 Mandy Turner, 493. 32 Mohmad Abdel. Interview by author. Skype conversation, Feb 8, 2013. 33 Mohmad Abdel. Interview by author. Follow-up interview via Skype, March 1, 2013. 34 Abdel Qasim. Group interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 31, 2012. 35 Sari Hanafi, "Palestinian Refugee Camps in the Palestinian Territory: Territory of Exception and Locus of Resistance ," The Power of Inclusive Exclusion, ed. Adi Ophir, Michal Givoni, Sari Hanafi (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2009), 503. 36 Sari Hanafi, 504. 37 Giorgio Agamben, 78. 38 Noor Hussein. Interview by author. Observation of group meeting. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Aug 8, 2012. 39 Ahmad Awad and Mohamed Mousa. Group interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 26, 2012. 40 Ahmad Awad and Mohamed Mousa. Follow-up group interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 31, 2012. 41 Najeh Hadad, Yousif Khalil, and Ahmad Jaber. Group interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 26, 2012. 42 Ibid. 43 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 31, 2012. 44 Ibid. 45 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, (New York: Grove Press, 2004). 46 Frantz Fanon, 4. 47 Ibid., 7. 48 Hussein Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression , (New York: Plenium Press, 1985), 140. 49 Frantz Fanon, 8. 50 Ibid., 2. 51 Motasem Hamid. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 30, 2012. 52 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Unrecorded conversation. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 1, 2013. 53 Rashid Shareef. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 23, 2012. 54 Fatima Amin. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine. Jan 4, 2013. 55 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine. Feb 9, 2013. 56 Adriana Cavarero , Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, trans. William McCuaig, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 34.

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57 Ibid. 58 Noor Ahmed. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 2, 2012. 59 Frantz Fanon, 23. 60 Motasem Hamid. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 4, 2013. 61 Ibid. 62 Frantz Fanon, 24. 63 Ahmad Awad. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 30, 2012. 64 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 4, 2013. 65 Ibid. 66 Najeh Aziz and Hamza Khatib. Group interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 3, 2013. 67 Ahmad Awad. 68 Frantz Fanon, 16. 69 Frantz Fanon, 81. 70 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 30, 2012. 71 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Dec 20, 2012. 72 Event observation by author. No digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 1, 2013. 73 Ibid. 74 Hasan Ali, Dec 30, 2012. 75 Motasem Hamid. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 6, 2013. 76 Ahmad Awad and Rashid Shareef. Group interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 4, 2013. 77 Muhammad Siddiq, Man is a Cause: Political Consciousness and the Fiction of Ghassan Kanafani, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), 8. 78 Muhammad Siddiq, 13. 79 Ibid., 87. 80 Frantz Fanon, 9. 81 Ibid., 9. 82 Hussein Bulhan, 52. 83 Frantz Fanon, 53. 84 Muhammad Siddiq, 50. 85 Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories, trans. Barbara Harlow and Karen E. Riley, (Boulder: Lynne Reiner, 2000), 181. 86 Ghassan Kanafani, 185. 87 Muhammad Siddiq, 52. 88 Ibid., 59. 89 Ibid. 90 Ghassan Kanafani, 187. 91 Ibid. 92 Rashid Shareef. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 5, 2013. 93 Hasan Ali. Interview by author. Digital recording. Qalandia camp, Palestine, Jan 9, 2013. 94 Ibid. 95 Ahmad Awad and Rashid Shareef.