I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Lisa Vinebaum 2 Body of the Nation - Corporeality, Territory, Performance: Palestine and Israel Lisa Vinebaum Goldsmiths, University of London Submitted for the PhD in Art Abstract The thesis is rooted in the study of the complicated relationships between the body and territory - and by extension, the body and the nation - in Palestine and Israel. This framework allows me to elaborate a more detailed study of the Palestinian suicide bomber, considered in relation to the occupation of Palestinian-inhabited territory in the West Bank and Gaza. I draw on examples from visual culture in which the deceased suicide bomber is commemorated as a martyr, in this way presenting an idealized image of the Palestinian nation. I argue that there is a relationship between territory, the "body" of the nation, and the body of the suicide bomber/martyr, and one in which ideals of self­ sacrifice and resistance are performed by the martyr. In so doing I theorize the performance of martyrdom, the staging of the self as a martyr by the suicide bomber to be, as a type of subject formation under occupation, and as the enactment of a resistant subjectivity. This study asserts that the actions of the Palestinian suicide bomber are intentional and linked to territorial encroachment on Palestinian lands. In so doing it positions itself in opposition to a majority of the research literature on the subject. This research makes an innovative contribution to the study of Palestinian martyrdom by removing the suicide bomber from its primary field of study in the West, terrorism and security studies, and situating it within the realm performance studies. It proposes new understandings of the Palestinian suicide bomber, considered in terms of corporeality, performance, intentionality and subjectivity. 3 Additionally the thesis considers performance as a research methodology. The elaboration of my theoretical propositions emerged in part through performance, the staging of myself in a mimetic attempt to put myself in the place of the Palestinian martyr. Through performance I "act out" material under consideration in the thesis while also positioning myself in relation to it. In this way I insert myself into the thesis as a critical and positioned subject. The notion of the positioned subject is also central to the practice el"ement, where I use performance to position myself outside of mainstream North American Jewish identity. I perform various Others of my own Jewish identity, in this way asserting a resistant subjectivity. 4 Table of Contents Introduction 7 Chapter 1 18 The Palestinian body and Palestinian land: resistance and self-sacrifice, for Palestine the istishhadi in context Chapter 2 49 The ideal Jewish body and the ideal Jewish land: Jewish spatial practices and territorial control in Palestine and Israel Chapter 3 III The Palestinian body, the corporeal effects of Occupation, and the body of the martyr Chapter 4 165 Theorizing the performance of Palestinian martyrdom: intentionality, performance, and sUbjectivity under occupation Chapter 5 228 Performance as research and practice Conclusion 265 List of images and their sources 273 Bibliography 276 List of works presented on the enclosed DVDs 308 Documentation of studio work is presented on two (2) DVDs included with the thesis 5 List of visual material in the thesis The Homa Umigdal settlements and their 74 locations Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel and 84 priority areas for new Jewish settlements Settlement construction under successive 97 Israeli governments, 1967-2008 Jewish settlements in the West Bank, 2002 99 Territorial divisions as per the Oslo II 103 Agreement signed in 1995 The West Bank After Oslo: Control and 115 Separation Commemorative poster for Bamas martyr 156 Reem al-Riyashi Commemorative poster for Bamas martyr 159 Bassem Takruri Still images from the film The Night Porter 234 After Lucia (self-portrait) 245 Self-portrait as an Islamic suicide bomber/martyr 248 Self-portrait as a Christian Fundamentalist 250 cheerleader Patriot Acts (self-portrait) 252 6 Introduction This research is centrally concerned with relationships between the body and territory - and by extension, the body and the nation - in Palestine and Israel. It is also centrally concerned with the phenomenon of the Palestinian suicide bomber, and it uses a study of the relationships between the body and territory in Palestine and Israel as a larger theoretical framework of analysis within which to consider the Palestinian suicide bomber. In the case of the latter nation, Israel, "The national territory becomes equivalent to the personal body" (Weiss 2002-b p.38). The Jewish national territory - the state of Israel - and the Jewish personal body evolved and continue to evolve in a mutually constitutive relationship: the Zionist settlers to Palestine reconfigured the body of the European Diaspora Jew as a rooted, healthy, strong and powerful body, in Palestine. And they simultaneously reconfigured "empty" land (Troen 2003, Alon 1971, Shulman 1979, Avneri 1984) in Palestine into Jewish land - land that in 1948 became the state of Israel. The former nation, Palestine, has not yet succeeded in creating a national territory in internationally recognized terms, that is, of the nation state. What's more, much of the land that might constitute a Palestinian state now belongs to or is occupied by another nation, Israel. Consequently, the Palestinian national territory cannot be said to be equivalent to the personal body. Nonetheless, relationships between the Palestinian body and territory may be established. Notably, the Palestinian body has been invoked 7 as a metaphor, in cultural representations and political discourse, for the Palestinian nationi for the Palestinian homeland lost in 1948 with the creation of Israeli and for a desired Palestinian state. The body has also been central to Palestinian resistance to Jewish territorial encroachment (that is, by Jews onto Palestinian lands) and occupationl. This study considers the Palestinian body in a relationship to Jewish encroachment onto Palestinian territory, and as a locus of resistance in the struggle to reclaim this land as national territory for a sovereign Palestinian state. Because territory in historic Palestine lies at the center of two competing claims to it as national territory, it may be considered contested territory. Since the turn of the 20th century, and since 1948 in particular, only one nation Israel - has succeeded in asserting control over this territory. Accordingly, this research pays particular attention to the spatial practices - notably settlement construction - used by the Zionist settlers to Palestine, and after 1948 by Israelis, to assert control over land in palestine and to wrest it away from Palestinians. The thesis also considers Palestinian resistance to these practices, from the early part of the 20th century to the present. In particular, it connects Israeli spatial practices in the West Bank and Gaza to the exploding body of the Palestinian suicide bomber, deployed as a weapon of resistance since 1993. 1 The problematics of the term "Jewish" in this context are discussed on page 50. 8 The latter half of the thesis focuses on the Palestinian suicide bomber or istishhadi, one who sacrifices her or his life in an act of suicide bombing or martyrdom operation. I do not in any way condone Palestinian acts of suicide bombing. However I do seek to theorize them differently than a majority of the research literature consulted. The present study proposes new understandings of the istishhadi, considered in terms of corporeality, performance, intentionality and SUbjectivity - and in a relationship to a history of Jewish control asserted over Palestinian inhabited territory extending back to the arrival of the first Zionist settlers to Palestine in the 1880s. Chapter 1 explores relationships - some metaphorical and some not - between the Palestinian body and territory in historic Palestine between approximately 1920 and 1993. It examines the body as a metaphor for the loss of the homeland after 1948. It also considers the body as a locus of Palestinian resistance going back to the 1920s. This chapter examines male bodies associated with Palestinian resistance but also, self-sacrifice for the land and for the nation of Palestine: the martyr of the 1920s and 1930s, the fida'i (guerilla fighter) of the 1960s and 1970s, and the shab (young man) of the first intifada from 1987 to 1993. This chapter sets the stage for my analysis of the istishhadi in the latter half of the thesis, for it locates the Palestinian suicide bomber within a larger historical trajectory of Palestinian resistance and self-sacrifice in response to Jewish encroachment onto Palestinian lands. Chapter 2 focuses on the reinvention of the European Jewish body in historic Palestine and by extension, in a 9 relationship to control asserted by Jews over territory there. This chapter weaves together scholarship from two separate but highly theorized fields: investigations into the Jewish body, and the study of Jewish spatial practices in historic Palestine - later Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It examines notions of the ideal (strong and powerful) Jewish body together with notions of the ideal (uniquely Jewish) Jewish land at various points since the 1880s. It connects both of these ideals to spatial practices, notably the construction of separate and exclusively Jewish settlements, used to