This ethnographic study takes a unique approach to one of the most contentious issues in the Middle East—the Israeli settlement project. The book’s work intercedes in the conflict between religiously motivated Jewish settlers and their liberal and secular opponents and asks the reader to suspend judgment just long enough to gain fresh insight. The book shows that the intense antagonism between these groups disguises their fundamental similarities and reveals the social and cultural work achieved through a politics of mutual denunciation. While previous studies have examined settlers and other ... More

This ethnographic study takes a unique approach to one of the most contentious issues in the Middle East—the Israeli settlement project. The book’s work intercedes in the conflict between religiously motivated Jewish settlers and their liberal and secular opponents and asks the reader to suspend judgment just long enough to gain fresh insight. The book shows that the intense antagonism between these groups disguises their fundamental similarities and reveals the social and cultural work achieved through a politics of mutual denunciation. While previous studies have examined settlers and other so-called fundamentalists in Israel, this is the first to place radical, right-wing settlers and their left-wing and secular opposition in a single analytical frame, moving between places and across borders, carrying stories, questions, and insights from one side to the other. Based on fieldwork in the settlements of the Gaza Strip and surrounding communities during the year prior to the Israeli withdrawal, the book presents unique ethnographic data and poses controversial questions about the contentious issue of settlement in Israeli-occupied territories in ways that move beyond the usual categories of politics, religion, and culture. It critically examines how religiously motivated settlers think about living with Palestinians, express theological uncertainty, and imagine the future beyond the confines of territorial nationalism. Attending to the complexities of different ways of being Israeli, the book holds up a mirror in which both the liberal Left and the radical Right find themselves reflected in the face of the other. With theoretical implications stretching far beyond the boundaries of Israel/Palestine, the book’s findings shed fresh light on politics, identity among Israelis, and the troubling conflicts in Israel/Palestine and provide both challenges and insight to broader questions at the interface between religiosity and formations of the secular.