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Paper short abstract

Through analysis of recurring narratives of building a playground, the study uncovers underlying relational dynamics among Palestinian builders, international donors, and Israeli ICA, and raises ethical questions about the trace evidence in ethnographic research within such contested contexts.

Paper long abstract

Studying Palestinian planning practices in the West Bank, Palestine, required long-term oversight of the development of planning proposals for communities in Area C. However, staying in the occupied territories was neither feasible under Israeli administrative control nor the best way to understand the administrative life of Palestinian spatial planning proposals. Between 2017 and 2020, I arrived in the West Bank as a tourist and returned 7 times.

With each return, I observed that Palestinian planners’ stories about their past and present projects varied. Many narratives included omissions that I could access through the layering of ethnographic anecdotes recorded during my repeated visits. Over time, I gained the ability to map the archives, anecdotes, and fragments of participant observation.

In the paper, I explore the playground anecdote that reappeared in many settings: in the offices of a Palestinian planning NGO, the offices of EU officials in Jerusalem, the offices of MDLF, a project implementation body in Ramallah, and in conversations with ACTED officers in Ramallah.

My instinct to record and write about the unusual and uncanny reappearance of the same phrase, “We Build a Playground”, led to uncovering uncomfortable relational dynamics among Palestinian builders, the donor community, and the Israeli Civil Administration.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as broadly described by Palestinian scholars, has little space for spatial strategies that would not be appropriated and converted into modes of oppression by Israel. I reveal what a trace in such an ethnographic context could uncover and ask whether it should be ethically pursued.