WUNRN
East Jerusalem - YWCA
17/11/2010
In Ramallah on October 28, 2010, the YWCA of
Palestine, under the Patronage of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, launched Dr.
Nadera’s new study (commissioned by the YWCA and funded by Dan Church Aid –
DCA) which highlights the challenging, if not unnatural, daily lives of
Palestinians living in Jerusalem. The voices heard in Dr. Nadera’s study this
time are continuously expressing the sense of feeling strangled and being
trapped by internal and external forces. Hence the title of the study:
“Military Occupation, Trauma and the Violence of Exclusion: Trapped bodies and
lives.”
Representatives from the civil society, women’s
organisations, ministries and public sectors eagerly attended Dr. Nadera’s
compelling presentation, and intently participated in the discussion that
followed, voicing concerns on what is happening to
The study has been completed at a very significant
time for
With direct quotations gathered in interviews
conducted for the study, young Palestinian voices of men and women from
One thing is for sure: Dr. Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian could surely get the 65+ participants at the workshop study fully immersed in her moving, yet somewhat frightening presentation. She persistently asks that we all think of the effect of Israeli spatial policy – the geopolitics – which is a way of “controlling our spaces; ghettoising us in small enclaves,” and of the outcomes that happen out of “changing geography in order to change history.” Moreover, she elaborates on the politics of everydayness; penning Michael Foucault’s terminology of biopower and biopolitics (in the application and impact of political power on all aspects of human life), and goes as far as considering how in the midst of this racial discrimination, ideas and practices associated with the economics of life and death – or “necropolitics”, which work through Zionist economics and start to dominate the equations of life and death.
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Note: In 2007, Dr. Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian, through
World Vision and in coordination with the YWCA of Palestine, published the
study “Facing the Wall: Palestinian Children and Adolescents Speak about the
Israeli Separation Wall” which showcased the heavy price Palestinian
adolescents have to face, both for being Palestinians and also for living in
the shadow of the Wall. The recurring words of the Palestinian teenagers in
that study were “divider”, “apartheid,” “snake,” “dangerous disease;” all of
which were revolved around the symbolic as well as physical reality of the
Wall; a nightmare creeping into the dreams of Palestinians. _________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian is the director of the
Gender Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel and a senior lecturer at the Faculty
of Law, Institute of Criminology and the School of Social Work and Public
Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her study “Military Occupation,
Trauma and the Violence of Exclusion: Trapped Bodies and Lives” is available at
the YWCA of