Paper short abstract:

Political violence has a profound effect on communities, remembering these events helps in forging community identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on issues surrounding identity constructs based on the experience of political violence in West Bank Palestine. Acts of political violence are exceptionally personal to the individual actors involved, but also serve as a shared symbol of the common antagonism endured by the larger community. This paper looks at how the experience of violence as an everyday reality and occurrence shapes the perception of individuals in terms of how they relate to their community, and how recreations of violent events are circulated in the community and used to define a common identity. Through performances, poetry, and the retelling of stories of violence, Palestinian communities maintain a common identity through a perceived common heritage. By looking at the ways in which political violence is used to create narratives of oppression and resistance in isolated communities in the West Bank, this aims to address how depictions of violence as symbols work as mechanism for maintaining community cohesion.