“The strong do what they can and the weak suff er what they must”: Palestinian families under


occupation Gwyn Daniel


T ucydides’ words two millennia ago still resonate, despite


wishing we had found bet er ways of constraining the strong and empowering the weak. From nation states to global capitalism – those with the power to expand and protect their interests do so by controlling others, through hegemonic narratives, and by demeaning or disregarding those without power. T ey protect their own security by creating conditions of insecurity and uncertainty in others. Power imbalances produce connecting pat erns and processes


such as these. T is paper focuses on the asymmetry of power between Israel and Palestine but systemic therapists working in other situations both within the UK and elsewhere may identify similar dynamics. In our fi eld, we are familiar with addressing issues of power, but there is further scope for exploring the specifi c eff ects of gross imbalances of power and extreme inequality. Systemic approaches are particularly suited to linking up levels and exploring connecting pat erns. I argue that paying at ention to the macro political level involves ‘unpacking’ the workings of oppression and the way oppression insinuates itself into the heart of intimate relationships. Although I make brief reference to therapeutic responses,


the systemic focus of this paper lies in these linkages between the political context, its techniques of power, and its impact on daily life. T is means that politics runs through the paper. Some people may think this ‘un-systemic’ or one-sided but I am using systemic thinking as a tool for political analysis. From this perspective, ‘even-handedness’ is ethically inappropriate in situations of gross inequity and injustice. T is is not of course to deny that the situation involves emotional costs to Israeli society or that many brave and outspoken Israeli citizens protest against their government’s actions. It does and they do. My own focus on Palestine stems partly from my personal connections to the region, my visits to mental health professionals there, but also from awareness of the UK government’s historic responsibility and its current collusion with Israel’s human-rights abuses. I have learnt from Palestinian professionals that, unless the


eff ects of prolonged military occupation, violence and oppression on everyday life are addressed, there is simply no ethical space to discuss emotional struggles for individuals or within families. For example, to work with family violence is impossible without addressing the violations visited upon their communities. Algerian psychiatrist Franz Fanon (1963) and Palestinian


intellectual Edward Said (1978) have addressed the ways that colonial oppression works on the psyche and their work has inspired me. Michel Foucault is bet er known in our fi eld and his concept of bio-power is developed by Palestinian academic Nadera


48


Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2015) to analyse how Israel’s control over Palestinians intrudes into every aspect of their life cycle from birth to death. Additionally, feminism, in exploring the links between personal and political, macro and micro, highlights how both power and resistance are made visible in daily acts of living. Briefl y, the macro context is that since 1948 when Palestinians,


expelled from or fl eeing their homes, were refused their legal right to return, their dispossession has been ongoing. In the West Bank, under military occupation since 1967 with continuing land and resource appropriation and set lement building, Israel controls virtually every aspect of Palestinian lives. In Gaza where set lements were withdrawn, the population is under siege, subjected to regular military bombardment from which citizens cannot fl ee. T e eff ects are material: lives lost, bodies maimed, land stolen, homes demolished, economic development stifl ed, and movement of people restricted. T ey are also psychological. Extreme imbalances of power


operate in insidious and frequently unnoticed ways on the powerless. To expose these eff ects requires ‘digging down’ into the myriad ways that oppression acts on self ood and relationships. Restrictions on individual development and disruptions to family and community connections result from repressive power. But they are also, in Foucault’s sense, constitutive, transforming the abnormal into an everyday ‘norm’ within which life simply has to be lived.


‘Othering’ and undermining the psyche Fanon argued that set ler colonial societies, to justify their


domination and expansion, dehumanise the colonised and degrade their subjectivity. Palestinians are inevitably ‘othered’ within a state defi ning itself through Jewish identity. ‘Othering’ language includes such terms as ‘demographic threat,’ ‘security risk’ and ‘terrorist’. At empts – violent or non-violent – at resistance are responded


to as an ‘existential threat’ and met with violence. Indeed, Palestinians’ very presence in public space is oſt en deemed intimidating. T e ‘ideal’ Palestinian body seems to be one that disappears through exile, incarceration or death. T e ‘ideal’ Palestinian psyche does not threaten the oppressors’ conscience. T e late Palestinian psychotherapist Adib Jarrar commented: “we must be the only occupied people in the world whose job it is to help the occupiers feel good about themselves” (personal communication 2016). T e narrative successive Israeli governments present to the world:


a beleaguered people, constantly under threat, whose army – ‘the most moral in the world’ – uses lethal force with great reluctance,


Context 164, August 2019


“The strong do what they can and the weak suff er what they must”: Palestinian families under occupation


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76