2 - ‘You Can Do Nothing; He Is a Soldier with Gun, and He Is Controlling You’: The Masculinised Body under Occupation

Summary

Chapter II examines shifting notions of masculinised strength as they adapt in occupied Palestine, contesting notions of ‘masculinity in crisis’ so frequently applied to this context. Where it is nigh impossible to enact physical strength in the face of the military might of Israel, I explore the fluidity of emblems of masculine strength and prowess – arguing that hegemonic masculinities and patriarchies in Palestine are not fixed, but move in dynamic relation to the conditions of coloniality with which they intersect. Through the examination of sumud, mental strength and moral strength, this chapter therefore charts emergent narratives of strength and resistance in a setting in which bodily invasion by the occupying forces is an ever-present reality. As such, where the violence of militarised colonisation routinely undermines normative conceptions of ‘masculine excellence’, I examine masculinised ideals as negotiated, maintaining binary gendered categorisations that (re)establish the masculine as strength.