Walking Through Walls: The Invisible War

Volume 2|Issue 8| Spring 2015 |Theme of the Issue

Abstract

​This paper presents the implications of modern urban warfare through ethnographic research of the Palestinian lived experience of the 2002 Israeli invasion Edjteyah. It is a scholarly attempt to document, investigate, and analyze the community’s response to Israel’s new military strategy of “walking through walls” as invisible urban warfare. This article connects the community experience in the old town of Nablus with the broader experience of warfare and political uncertainty. It is structured in three parts. The first discusses “walking through walls” as a modern warfare strategy, the second presents the methodology to capture the consequences of war with a case study of suspended everyday life, and the third narrates the participants’ “making-do” emergent tactics to counter the oppressor’s strategies. Following an analysis that encompasses qualitative ethnography and storytelling, it provides an interdisciplinary perspective of people’s temporal, spatial, and behavioral aftermath based on the participants’ narrations and experiences. In conclusion, the colonial power’s extended contemporary war delays any long-term planning, development, and sovereignty statehood by suspending the Palestinians’ everyday life.

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Assistant Professor at the Department of Architectural Engineering, United Arab Emirates University.

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