Settler-Indigeneity in the West Bank

Rachel Z. Feldman, Ian McGonigle, Rachel Z. Feldman, Ian McGonigle

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780228018797
• eBook ISBN: 9780228019541
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Since Israel conquered the West Bank, formerly held by Jordan, in 1967, over 400,000 settlers have moved into the territory. In recent years, Israeli settler organizations and allied American-Jewish lobbyists have responded to international condemnation of the occupation by mobilizing narratives of indigeneity, claiming sovereign and divine rights to the land.

Settler-Indigeneity in the West Bank asks what Israeli settlers mean when they say they are indigenous; how settler indigeneity is felt, performed, and mediated; and what the implications of indigeneity claims are on the international stage. Building on foundational scholarship that has come out of post-colonial and indigeneity studies, the volume theorizes settler-indigeneity as a cultural phenomenon and product of transnational settler-colonial histories, while also interrogating the dialectic of "settler" and "indigenous" to illustrate their co-constitution. Considering agriculture, clothing, food, language, and religious practices, the chapters explore how feelings of indigeneity are fashioned and how these feelings continue to transform the landscape of the West Bank.

Offering a series of original ethnographic accounts of these cultures and communities, Settler-Indigeneity in the West Bank intimately documents and discusses the processes of settler-nativization in conversation with a variety of related literature in anthropology, cultural studies, Israel studies, religious studies, and settler-colonial studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 “Women from the Tribe of Judah”: Gendering “Settler-Indigeneity” in an International West Bank Seminary
• 3 Soulful Soil and Colonial Quality: Organic Farming in the West Bank
• 4 “We Came Back”: Winemaking as Storied Performativity
• 5 Indigeneity after Destruction: Religious Zionist Settlers in Halutza
• 6 Negotiating Indigeneity in Hebron: Criminality, Tourism, and Liberal Settler Colonialism
• 7 Dangerous Mimicry in the West Bank
• 8 When Does a Settler Become a Native? (With Apologies to Mamdani)
• Contributors
• Index