for themselves” (Pain, 2009, p. 481), that we may challenge dominant ecol-
ogies of fear and give voice to the previously voiceless. However, how is
that to be done? How could I get access to those that are defined as
“others,” do them justice, and overcome widely shared fears?
Getting access to Palestinians seemed insurmountably difficult. While I
had reports from numerous Israeli and international nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) on the effects of the West Bank Barrier and closure
policies on local populations, they didn’t provide a “thick” enough descrip-
tion of life in the Palestinian Territories. Yet how was I to get access? Due
to the separation polices instigated by the Israeli government since the
second intifada after the year 2000, there are ever fewer cross-border social
and professional networks between Israel and the West Bank. However,
I had a few crucial links to international journalists and NGOs, which
critically facilitated my access to Palestinian professional networks.
Nonetheless, I still often had to challenge my own comfort zone and I
quickly learnt how difficult it is to build trust in a conflict region in which
navigating interactional and conversational contingencies is often more like
navigating a mine field. To be sure, one of my first Palestinian interviewees,
A’mar, after I happily and with the incessant enthusiasm and the naivete of
a new researcher to the region, told him that I was affiliated to an Israeli
university, sat me down in a conference room, drew intently on his cigar,
critically evaluating me from head to toe, and asked me “why should I talk
to you, you are working for the enemy!” Yet upon discovering that I was
also a Cornell researcher and a Swiss national (luck would have it that the
Swiss government funds a lot of development projects in Palestine), his
stance softened. And after many conversations and my incessant returns to
his bureau to express my interest and commitment to understanding the
Palestinian plight he, one day, showed me an empty office, equipped with
desks and computers, and generously told me “you are welcome here
anytime.”
Upon entering the Palestinian Territories regularly, it become readily
apparent that the West Bank was not where the “wild things are,” it was
also not “the heart of darkness,” but it was mainly populated by people
trying to live an ordinary life in an occupied land.^3 Once there, I realized
how valuable it was to have theembodiedexperience of being there; an
experience unfiltered by NGO’s publications, but the raw feel of having to
cross checkpoints, facing soldiers with their M16s, and being yelled at by
border guards. It was also crucial to hear the stories of a Palestinian profes-
sor whose house got searched in the middle of the night, and the agony of
a parent, whose son was enrolled in a West Jerusalem school and who went
to classes every morning by passing through the sewage system so as to
26 CHRISTINE LEUENBERGER