Baking at the Front Line, Sleeping with the Enemy: Reflections on Gender and Women's Peace Activism in Israel

TitleBaking at the Front Line, Sleeping with the Enemy: Reflections on Gender and Women's Peace Activism in Israel
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2011
AuthorsKotef, Hagar
JournalPolitics & Gender
Volume7
Issue4
Pagination551-572
Date Published12/2011
Abstract

The activists of Checkpoint Watch (CPW),  an all-women Israeli organization that opposes the Israeli checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli 1967 occupation more broadly, often assume traditional gender roles--most often the maternal role--that enable them to increase the efficacy of their presence at the checkpoints. In this article, the author analyzes this mobilization of gender to show that the effectiveness of the maternal forms of intervention at the local level carry undesired effects at the structural level. These appropriations of gender roles facilitate a misreading of the watchers' action, which depoliticizes their critique and eventually incorporates it to justify the perpetuation--even entrenchment--of the checkpoints. By suggesting different readings of this case and the case of Tali Fahima, a young Israeli woman who used her body as a human shield to protect the leader of a Palestinian military group, the author shows how the moment of co-optation--into both gender and national orders--opens new possibilities of resistance, or at least sets in motion new processes of resignification. [modified from the author]

URLhttps://eprints.soas.ac.uk/29869/1/div-class-title-baking-at-the-front-line-sleeping-with-the-enemy-reflections-on-gender-and-women-s-peace-activism-in-israel-div.pdf
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