Settling Hebron. Tamara Neuman

      Figure 4. Newer extension of Kiryat Arba encroaching on a Palestinian agricultural area, 2007. Photo by author.

      The settlement was a patchwork of enclaves separated by green spaces. Cyclone fences, topped with large coils of barbed wire, enclosed the settled places. I was struck by the circularity of the roads in an older section of the settlement—the main road went around the settlement circumference, and the other roads seemed to circle into the main road, giving one the illusion of going somewhere, but then not. One ended up at the point where one began. These internal loops eventually led to a choice of one of three exits: the main gate off the road (Route 60) to Jerusalem; the western one by which the hourly bus and cars traveled on an unpaved road through Palestinian residential areas to reach the Tomb of the Patriarchs; and a little used gate near an industrial zone, apparently accessed more frequently in the past by Palestinian laborers employed in the factories within the settlement. Since all settlements are cut off from the pulse of life that surrounds them, they mainly tend to have a static quality compared to either cities in Israel proper or the Palestinian towns and villages that immediately surround them. In the middle of the day, with many of Kiryat Arba’s residents away at work, the settlement felt like a ghost town. In the evenings and on weekends, people gathered together in public areas and the stark housing came to life.

      The bus, which arrived hourly from Jerusalem, turned out to be an important lifeline. Walking between neighborhoods wasn’t done because it required traversing Palestinian areas on foot. Most settlers either waited for the bus to get a two-minute ride to other settled sections or informally waved down a passing car. I once walked between these areas marking myself as a distinct outsider. A founding member of the settlement whom I had interviewed the day before saw me on the road and instantly stopped to give me a lift. I asked him about the patchwork character of the space, and his response was “Aren’t the vineyards nice?” My errors and inquiries were closed off by pleasantries. “So green,” he remarked. I had the sense of being in a small town where people took note of even slight transgressions. This attention to detail was coupled with a decided lack of seeing any Palestinians who lived across the fence. “I see them, but hardly see them,” one Kiryat Arba settler once remarked in passing. But residents of the settlement did keep an eye on me.

      Some settlers I spoke to remarked that they were relieved I was not simply another journalist passing through. Yet the small-town aspect of the settlement and the troubled times created an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia. Why did settlers speak with me? Perhaps it was the palpable monotony of daily life, the intent to convince an outsider of a religious point of view, or the hope of bringing a secular analyst into the fold. A synthesis of these experiences, together with my observations and formal interviews form the basis of what I present here as the dynamics of an ideological settler formation unfolding—one of seeing selectively, of using possibilities afforded by religious devotion to create resolute attachments, of legal gray zones, complicity with violence, and the search to recruit distant Jews. These aspects of the everyday deserve our attention because ideologically, emotionally, and even culturally an ideological settler view of the world is marked by its circumlocutions, erasures, as well as devotions, particularly in light of its detrimental impacts on the presence of an adjacent Palestinian population.

      Chapter Sequence

      The research has been conducted in short and long stints for a long period. I was neither well received nor shunned as a researcher, although I am grateful to those who sought to instruct me in religious and political matters in spite of our resounding differences. My informants believed that I had been brought to this study for a different purpose from the research interests I thought had motivated me, namely, that of fulfilling a Jewish destiny. Others took a more pragmatic approach and felt that it was worth making their point of view known to a researcher, particularly because of the hostilities they faced in the international context. I made few friends, and the friendships that did form were partial and guarded. Settlers often saw themselves as under siege and targets of government surveillance, and some found it easy to classify my research as part of wider aims to monitor their actions. Others, however, were taken by the novelty of a visiting anthropologist and, while hosting guests and family on holidays, would announce in earshot that an anthropologist was present.

      The chapters are arranged thematically and analytically with attention to the chronology of events as I encountered or recorded them. In sequencing the chapters as I do, a key concern has been to provide an understanding of the ways religious ideology gives rise to violence and to outline the legal and security background for it. I begin with spatial practices and later examine the Goldstein massacre in order to disrupt the immediate association between religion and violence that prevails in discussions of “fanaticism.” I also highlight adaptations within Judaism that take place, invocations of tradition that align with settler aims, as well as the entanglements of spatial and religious elements in daily settler life.

      The first chapter, “Orientations,” is composed of three perspectives on religious settlement that evoke the different populations living in Hebron (ideological settlers, soldiers, and Palestinian farmers), showing the ways their views coexist as separate but intersecting realities. In a settler tour, a guide points to the presence of Jewish origins in Palestinian areas by invoking the Bible while redirecting the gaze, renaming places, masking human toil, and inventing genealogies. This contrasts with the views of a religious Israeli soldier turned conscientious objector who has also served in the area and those of a Palestinian farmer living adjacent to the settlement. The soldier focuses on the way a religious settlers’ actions place the lives of fellow soldiers in danger and how the occupation skews a soldier’s “ethical” choices. A Palestinian farmer discusses how he and his family have been impacted by ongoing acts of settler violence and the ways this violence occurs in tandem with the military’s destruction of property, revealing a double subjugation. Though not all-encompassing, these points of view are intended to sketch out telling perspectives that one might readily encounter in Hebron’s complex social field.

      Chapter 2, “Between Legality and Illegality,” provides a brief historical overview of the claims and practices that formerly paved the way for ideological settlement to take hold. Emphasizing existing relationships between settlers, the military administration in Hebron, and officials in the Knesset, the chapter explores how the first ideological settlers to enter Hebron capitalized on what they deemed to be Jewish “origins” within the legal gray zone of the military occupation. It shows how they established their presence by getting military permission to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover and refusing to leave. In this case, Passover initially appears to be the common ground uniting settlers, soldiers, and elected officials. Once established in the area, however, settlers begin to use Jewish observance as a means of bypassing military and state authority, making their temporary status in Hebron permanent. Not only is the ambiguous legality of the occupation, its “state of exception,” relevant