Occupied Intimacies: The implications of occupation for intimate relationships in the Palestinian Territories

This qualitative study examines how the Israeli occupation affects and interferes with Palestinian intimate relationships in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The research material consists of semi-structured interviews with female students and graduates conducted during a short period of fieldwork in the West Bank in September 2016. The thesis shows that Israeli mechanisms of control, such as restricted mobility and differentiation of ID cards, interfere with the women interviewees’ choice of marital partners. It examines how the unpredictability of checkpoints, border crossings, and imprisonment affect Palestinian women’s abilities to plan their social lives. The thesis explores also how the idea of sumud, a responsibility of staying in the land, has led to Palestinian self-restrictions on migration. Furthermore, it shows that the informants’ everyday resistance to occupation can be contradictory and is always highly entangled with kinship ties and personal aspirations. The thesis aims to broaden the theoretical perspectives on intimacy, and move beyond the European and American context to explore the reshaping of intimate relationships in a situation of occupation. I develop for the purpose of the thesis the concept ‘occupied intimacies’, that seek to shed light on how the mechanisms of control connected to occupation interfere with occupied subjects’ intimate relationships. Moreover, it highlights how the same subjects find ways to resist the occupation. I suggest also that the concept ‘occupied intimacies’ may offer fruitful angles to analyse cases beyond that of Israel-Palestine.