by cultures of violence, we may gauge how these conditions can impact
local communities. Last but not least, the dangerous field reminds us that:
“as we observe we participate and when we do so in the midst of violence,
we become part and parcel of it. It is a humbling professional experience,
one that obfuscates our critical lens long after we have left the field”
(Kovats-Bernat, 2002, p. 217). And as Christopher Kovats-Bernat writes so
pointedly, it is “only through lived witnessing that comes from submersion
in the violence...that we are able to experience the dangerous field in a
meaningful way and write anthropology from and of it” (Kovats-Bernat,
2002 , p. 213).
BEING A NEUTRAL, YET A “CAPTURED,” PARTISAN
Finally, if doing research may no longer assure distance and objectivity,
but may entail entanglement and involvement, and research can become
entwined with local capacity-building, how are we to think about the poli-
tics of research? Does socially engaged research, which may have become
personal, inevitable mean that the researcher becomes a partisan? When it
comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is astonishing that mostly every-
one seems to feel entitled to have very strong opinions about the matter.
Protagonists readily pass judgments on either side and show their partisan
support based on often little or misleading information. Moreover, the pol-
itics surrounding the conflict has become so taken-for-granted, polarized,
and hardened that it is virtually impossible to approach issues apart from
their political fossilization.^5 Given the highly politicized nature of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is it possible to remain neutral? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of staying neutral in a conflict-ridden zone?
In an environment where the pressure to be partisan is so great, is it feasi-
ble to escape the trap of being political?
Humanitarian agencies have long recognized that in situations of con-
flict,a “neutral and impartial stance” has a strategic and operational value:
it provides a basis for action, helps gain access, and reduces security risks
(Shetty, 2007).The claim to neutrality also has rhetorical and political
purposes: it gives research greater legitimacy, makes it easier to obtain
information, and enables researchers to be witnesses to both sides in a
conflict. Indeed: “The irony...is that the guise of neutrality is one of the
best ways to be an effective partisan...An active partisan ...has less
credibility than an apparently independent and neutral person” (Scott,
Knowledge-Making and its Politics in Conflict Regions 35