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Paper short abstract

What does it mean for a Palestinian to work for an Israeli development project? Based on ethnographic research conducted in Jerusalem, this paper explores the relations between resistance and collaboration with the Israeli occupying state among different generations of Palestinian Jerusalemites

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the entanglements of 'resistance' and 'collaboration' by examining the daily experiences of Palestinian workers employed by an Israeli development project that targets Jerusalem's Palestinian neighbourhoods.

Often criticised for enabling, producing, maintaining or normalising Israel's occupation, these young professionals who consciously accept such fraught positions operate in a dangerous zone marked by accusations of complicity with the Occupation. How do they deal with such accusations of complicity, often voiced within their immediate social circles? How do they carry it? And how do they navigate a social position that confronts them with competing and contradictory demands and expectations?

Discussing the ways in which younger generations of Palestinian Jerusalemites view the entanglements of different political struggles (for national/gender/economic liberation), the paper confronts the question of of complicity with systems of power across generations in the context of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba. Essentially, it attends to the question of complicity from the perspectives of those who struggle under coercive conditions of Occupation and who develop their own approaches towards the kind of opportunities that exist in moments of (imposed) social transformation.