Geographies of Life and Belonging in Palestine: the Practices of Retrieving the Incarcerated Dead

这个研究项目探讨了巴勒斯坦人反对死亡和囚禁政治的行动和经历。自1967年以来，以色列一直扣留巴勒斯坦人的尸体，并将其埋葬在隐蔽但臭名昭著的“数字墓地”中大量没有标记的坟墓中。这种监禁死者的现象是以色列殖民国家长期控制和暴力的一部分。然而，巴勒斯坦人通过纪念和寻回死者的活动，在这里开辟了生活和归属的地域。本项目采用民族志多方法战略，并与基层社区团体、法律和倡导组织以及巴勒斯坦国家行为体合作，将对这些死亡政治争论进行全面细致的描述。该项目的总体目标是关注巴勒斯坦人的声音、行动和主张，这些声音、行动和主张通常在大规模和亲密的占领暴力中被模糊和未充分研究。就土著居民尸体的意义、待遇和影响展开辩论，对于促进更广泛地认识到定居者殖民主义根深蒂固的、密切的和广泛的暴力行为，具有越来越重要的意义。因此，该项目将以非学术小册子（阿拉伯语和英语）和在苏格兰和巴勒斯坦的小规模展览的形式产生两种创造性产出，面向公众观众并参与更广泛的辩论。这是一项重要而及时的研究，追踪了土著社区在政治暴力背景下的日常生活地理和归属感。

This research project explores the actions and experiences of Palestinians contesting a politics of death and captivity. Since 1967, Israel has withheld and interred Palestinian dead bodies in mass unmarked graves in the covert yet infamous 'cemeteries of numbers'. This phenomenon of incarcerating the dead is part of a long trajectory of control and violence by the Israeli settler state. Within this, however, Palestinians carve out geographies of life and belonging through their practices of memorialising and retrieving the dead. Applying an ethnographic multi-method strategy and engaging with grassroots community groups, legal and advocacy organisations and Palestinian state actors, this project will build a comprehensive and nuanced account of these contestations to the politics of death. The overall aim of the project is to focus on Palestinian voices, actions and claims which are routinely obscured and understudied within the vast and intimate violence of occupation.Opening up debates on the meaning, treatment and impact of indigenous dead bodies is increasingly relevant for fostering recognition of the deep-rooted, intimate and vast violence of settler colonialism more broadly. As such, this project will produce two creative outputs in the form of a non-academic booklet (in Arabic and English) and small-scale exhibition in Scotland and Palestine, reaching public audiences and engaging with wider debates. This is an important and timely study tracing the everyday geographies of life and belonging cultivated by indigenous communities within contexts of political violence.