Summary

Storytelling can transform power relations. It is an optimistic act which presumes solidarity between teller and listener and breaks down isolation. Storytelling is also an activist endeavour because it is an opportunity to remake the world and imagine what might have been (Solinger et al, 2008; Senehi, 2009).

This chapter explores the transformative potential of stories that are told and recorded by Palestinians living in the South Hebron Hills.

The chapter begins by showing the inadequacy of international law to protect the Palestinian population of the South Hebron Hills from dispossession by state-backed Jewish settlers, who are turning an area of high plateaux, slopes and valleys, seasonal pasture and bountiful springs into a militarised place of danger to human and non-human life. The chapter then explains the Palestinian experience of progressive and violent dispossession, displacement and fragmentation before introducing the collection of stories which are at the heart of the chapter. These stories were recorded during 2018–19 by Palestinians aged 18–30 living in the South Hebron Hills as part of an externally funded programme to protect cultural heritage in countries affected by conflict. From more than 100 hours of recordings, two interviews are considered more closely. The stories demonstrate how the dialogue between the tellers of the stories and the listeners encompasses both the pessimism related to the ongoing dispersal and dispossession of the Palestinian population and the optimism which comes from constructing community through collective action and solidarity across differences of age, gender, location and nationality.

In the final section, the author analyses the relationship between the external funding and management of the project and the people of the South Hebron Hills. In conclusion, she reflects on her own position as a researcher based in a UK university and how the stories being told in the South Hebron Hills relate to stories being told by other people in other places who also experience the militarisation of borders, the confiscation of land, and the brutalisation and incarceration of bodies.

Setting the scene

Historical context

The South Hebron Hills fold down from the elevated West Bank to the more arid Naqab desert. Proof that this land has supported people who have both cultivated crops and practised pastoralism can be found in the aerial photographs taken at 15,000 feet by the Royal Air Force in 1945.