Security and Suspicion
THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE
Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, Series Editor
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
Security and Suspicion
An Ethnography of Everyday Life in Israel
Juliana Ochs
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA · OXFORD
Copyright © 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104–4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ochs, Juliana.
Security and suspicion : an ethnography of everyday life in Israel / Juliana Ochs.
p. cm. — (The ethnography of political violence)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4291-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Terrorism—Israel—Psychological aspects. 2. Survival skills—Israel—Psychological aspects. 3. Terrorism—Israel—Prevention. 4. Arab-Israeli conflict—Influence. I. Title.
HV6433.I75O24 2010
| 363.32095694—dc22 | 2010017607 |
for Yaacob Dweck
Contents
Introduction: The Practice of Everyday Security
Chapter 1. A Genealogy of Israeli Security
Chapter 2. Senses of Security: Rebuilding Café Hillel
Chapter 3. Paḥad: Fear as Corporeal Politics
Chapter 4. Embodying Suspicion
Chapter 5. Projecting Security in the City
Chapter 6. On IKEA and Army Boots: The Domestication of Security
Chapter 7. Seeing, Walking, Securing: Tours of Israel’s Separation Wall
Epilogue: Real Fantasies of Security
Author’s Note
In transliterations from the Hebrew, I use h for “hay,” ḥ for “het,” and ts for “tsadi.” I use k for kaf, kh for khaf, and q for kuf. I use (ʿa) for “ayin” and (ʾa) for “alef” when necessary to separate consonants in the middle of a word. Prefixes are separated from the word with a hyphen. In cases where a conventional spelling differs from these guidelines, I follow the standard convention. In Arabic, I rely on conventional spelling. All quotations from individuals are my translation from the Hebrew, except when quoted by the media or when otherwise noted. The names and identifying details of individuals I interviewed and cite in this book have been changed.
Introduction: The Practice of Everyday Security
It was early February 2004, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had recently announced plans to remove all Israeli settlers from Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched armored raids in the Gaza Strip, killing numerous Hamas militants. A Palestinian police officer from Bethlehem killed eight Israelis in a suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus, for which al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility. Israelis and Palestinians were in the midst of a war for territory, sovereignty, and security fought through air strikes and gunfire, Qassam rockets and suicide bombs, curfews and land seizures. But in Holon, an industrial city outside Tel Aviv, in the home of Vered Malka, the war assumed a more intimate form.
The marriage of Vered’s niece Ronit in Jerusalem was only a week away, and Vered was dreading the trip. Vered, who immigrated to Israel from Egypt in 1956 and settled in Holon soon after, lived in a small attached house in close proximity to her nine siblings. All were terrified of this journey to Jerusalem, a drive of under an hour. It was not the navigation itself that made Vered uneasy, for she was a taxi driver who spent her days driving the streets of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. “What do you mean, why am I afraid? From the terrorists, from the rocks they throw, from the hijacking, from it all. I never felt good in Jerusalem.” To Vered and her family, Jerusalem had been off limits since the start of the second intifada in 2000. Jerusalem, to them, was a place of violence and danger, a place of bombings and precarious borders, and a place of Palestinians. Vered’s young granddaughters had never been to Israel’s capital, but Vered and her siblings were committed to attending the celebration and decided to put aside their fears, or at least to find a way around them. “I can’t not go,” Vered said. On the Friday afternoon of the wedding, wearing dresses and suits, energized but focused, the siblings and their spouses piled into four cars and drove from Holon to Jerusalem convoy-style, one car in front of the other, straight to Beit Shmuel, an event space overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem. “We went there and we returned, all together.”
Security for Vered was not about constructing walls or exchanging hostages, but rather about relying on familiarity to generate a sense of control and protection. Driving in procession kept Vered’s family members off and at a remove from buses, a common target of Palestinian suicide bombings and, even beyond that, surrounded each individual car with a familial buffer. The resultant protection was mobile and transient, shifting through space and time as they drove. Surrounded