Masculinity nostalgia: How war and occupation inspire a yearning for gender order

Abstract

This article investigates how war and occupation disrupt and produce new gender norms. It explores civilian masculinities and the ways in which masculinities are impacted by conflict and insecurity. Focusing on the West Bank, we argue that insecurity and occupation create the conditions for masculinity nostalgia, or a yearning for a set of gender norms and relations linked to fantasies of a secure, ‘traditional’ and ordered past. Masculinity nostalgia builds on conceptions of thwarted masculinity and the ways in which individuals are held accountable to gender norms. The article draws on interviews with Palestinians to highlight how masculinity nostalgia is associated with three particular identities: father, breadwinner and landowner. We demonstrate that Palestinian civilians lament the ways in which the occupation has impacted men’s ability to fulfil such archetypical identities, at the same time as they reaffirm the value and legitimacy of these identities. We argue that peace and security are often assumed to be dependent upon ‘the return’ of men to their presumed rightful places at the head of households and as economic providers. In turn, masculinity nostalgia emphasizes the ways in which yearnings for peace and security can be interwoven with yearnings for patriarchal gendered orders.

Keywords

Gender masculinity occupation security war

Introduction

The dynamics of war and occupation shape gender norms and have profound impacts on the ability of men and women to ‘fulfil’ or live up to these evolving gender norms. Any attempts to understand war and occupation should include an analysis of these fluctuating terrains of gender norms and performances. This article provides such an analysis, focusing on the occupation and conflicts in Israel and Palestine. Specifically, it explores how war and occupation have shaped gender expectations and performances for civilian men in the West Bank. Our central argument is that war and occupation create the conditions for masculinity nostalgia, or a yearning for a set of gender norms and relations linked to fantasies of a secure, traditional and ordered past. This masculinity nostalgia places pressure on men and also adds to men’s experience of victimhood and inadequacy in relation to the conflict. To support this argument, we build on conceptions of ‘thwarted masculinity’ (Moore, 1994) and being held ‘accountable’(West and Zimmerman, 1987) for particular gender performances. The analysis begins with a critical examination of how conflict, occupation and insecurity might impact gender norms and mechanisms of gender ‘accountability’. We then lay out our concept of masculinity nostalgia and place it in a wider theoretical context. From there, we detail our methodological approach and present our findings based on interviews with Palestinian civilians.

Masculinity nostalgia

Moore (1994: 151) defines thwarting in relation to gender as the ‘inability to sustain or properly take up a gendered subject position’. The concept of thwarted masculinity does not treat masculinity as a fixed ‘thing’ that one can or cannot do. Rather, thwarted masculinity presumes that gender is always performed against often unrealistic ideals. In turn, one’s gender performance is almost always characterized by inadequacies and ‘failures’. To understand thwarted masculinity, therefore, is to explore how individuals understand their gender against the ever-changing ideals of masculinity. Similarly, Candice West and Don Zimmerman (1987) argue that gender is performative and relational, in the sense that individuals are constantly producing and trying to live up to gender norms in order to meet the expectations of others. In short, individuals expect to be judged and ‘held accountable’ according to gender norms. During war, men may face particular pressures to live up to ‘the mythologized and fixed identities demanded in the military’ (Baaz and Stern, 2009: 505; Whitworth, 2004). Individuals, therefore, are held ‘hostage’ by the pressure to perform gender – particularly during war. West and Zimmerman use the term ‘accountable’ to characterize this relationship of producing gender and being constantly evaluated by one’s gender performance. They argue, ‘if we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce, and render legitimate the institutional arrangements that are based on sex category. If we fail to do gender appropriately, we as individuals – not the institutional arrangements – may be called to account’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987: 146). This constant monitoring and evaluation of one’s gender performance against impossible ideals and models takes on a unique intensity during war. Baaz and Stern (2009: 505) note that the persistent ‘failures’ of men to repeat or perform mythologized military identities can be ‘fraught with violence and suffering’.

Existing approaches to gender tend to focus on (a) the pressures to perform and ‘live up’ to existing (albeit fluid) gender expectations now or in the future or (b) the ways in which individuals are ‘held accountable’, or evaluated according to their current or past gender performances. Our research builds on this work by focusing on the ways in which individuals might yearn for gender norms and identities they associate with peace and a time ‘before’ war and insecurity. In particular, civilian men in the West Bank face an evolving set of gender pressures as a result of the conflict and occupation. Moreover, these men are aware of, and even nostalgic for, gender expectations and norms that are no longer possible for them to fulfil – and perhaps were never ‘realistic’ or possible to attain. We argue that war and conflict provide a ripe context for masculinity nostalgia, or longing for ideal types of masculinity that are linked both to the past and to security, power and order.

‘Nostalgia’ refers to a longing for bygone times, or for a set of relationships and experiences associated with the past. Nostalgia theorists note that nostalgia is not simply about looking back in time; rather, it can involve idealizing and mythologizing history (Ritivoi, 2002). In her analysis of war and nostalgia, Jennifer Delisle notes that nostalgia is ‘based on individual lived experience, but still may be influenced by elements of fantasy, the distortion of memory’ (Delisle, 2005: 17, emphasis in original). We argue that masculinity nostalgia mythologizes peace as a time of patriarchal power, authority and gender certainty. Masculinity nostalgia is both the yearning for an idealized, secure and peaceful time in which gender roles were presumed to have been clear and uncontested, and a quest to reclaim patriarchal power and authority. In contrast to the daily reminders that gender identities are measured against impossible ideals that one can never live up to, masculinity nostalgia looks to a supposed perfect, peaceful time when – finally – one could successfully perform masculinity.

Our notion of masculinity nostalgia builds on Megan MacKenzie’s (2012) work on conjugal order in post-conflict societies. MacKenzie argues that post-conflict literature and policies associate the ‘return to normal’ after war with a return to particular forms of patriarchal gendered order. She concludes that ‘the “order” that is implicit in notions of peace and stability depends upon multiple gender constructions’ (MacKenzie, 2012: 56). The concept of conjugal order, then, captures how notions of peace often assume, or rely on, gender norms, rules and identities. MacKenzie argues that there are varying understandings of peace and order, and that some conceptions of peace are exclusive and gendered. In similar ways to conjugal order, masculinity nostalgia associates peace with a ‘return’ to an idealized patriarchal order. Specifically, our interviews with Palestinians found that masculinity nostalgia tended to centre on a desire for a return to certain patriarchal gender orders that would restore ‘rightful’ power and authority men may feel they have lost as a result of the war and occupation. Our work is not intended to diminish or overlook the real and lived experiences of violence, humiliation and oppression that men associate with the occupation; however, it seeks to better understand how the desire for peace and a return to order can be intertwined with patriarchal ideals.

We explore this concept of masculinity nostalgia by drawing from research on the relationship between masculinity and Israeli/Palestinian history, participant observation while working with peacebuilding organizations in the West Bank, and extensive interviews with individuals engaged in peace activism in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Individuals working in the areas of peace activism were interviewed on the basis of their expert knowledge of the multiple impacts that the conflicts and occupation have had on civilians, including men.¹ The semi-structured interviews took place over the course of several weeks and focused on the impacts of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian gender configurations. The interviewees included one international and 13 male and female Palestinian peace activists and aid workers working across various organizations aimed at creating peace between Israel and Palestine based in urban centres of the West Bank. These individuals represent a particular perspective on the impacts of war based on their political views, their relatively privileged position within Palestinian society and their broad knowledge of social issues. In order to protect their identities, we do not identify the gender of the interviewees.² Despite the acknowledged limitations, we argue that the insights garnered over the course of extensive interviews contribute to a novel perspective on the relationship between the occupation and masculine identities in the West Bank.

Feminist critical discourse analysis is used to analyse the research and interviews. Feminist critical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary analytical approach that combines textual and social analysis (Lehtonen, 2007). This method places emphasis on explicit and implicit ways in which words, culture and ideology may be interconnected (Wodak and Meyer, 2009). Feminist critical discourse analysis is also an example of ‘analytical activism’ (Lazar, 2007: 145) in the sense that it aims to reveal the ways in which particular discourses reinforce or challenge the social construction of gender identities and unequal gender relations. In this vein, interviews with 14 peacebuilders are analysed with attention to the ways in which masculinity and masculinity nostalgia are constituted in an occupied Palestine. To this end, the analysis begins by contextualizing this research within broader examinations of masculinities, war and peace. This is followed by a brief historical overview of masculinities in Palestine and the links between male identity and nationalism. Subsequently, father, breadwinner and landowner masculinities are identified and explored in greater detail.

Men, masculinities and war

For decades, feminist international relations scholars have explored the links between gender and militarism and armed conflict (Cockburn, 2005; Cooke, 1993; Dolan, 2002; Elshtain, 1995; Enloe, 1989; Goldstein, 2003; Moran, 2010; Shepherd, 2008). Feminist studies have suggested that in times of armed conflict, gender relations and ideologies undergo a process of dramatic disruption and militarization in which expectations of men’s roles and traits become framed around soldiering and militancy (Goldstein, 2003; Handrahan, 2004; Moran, 2010). Although it may be easy to call to mind the characteristics of the ‘ideal’ or heroic soldier and warrior, it is important to remember here that there is no single hegemonic militarized masculinity (Connell, 2001). As Connell and Messerschmidt (2005: 839) remind us, hegemonic masculinity was always meant to be understood as a fluid and ever-changing set of ‘ideals, fantasies, and desires’ that may not ‘correspond closely to the lives of any actual men’. More recent studies have noted the range of ideals, fantasies and desires associated with militarized masculinities. For example, Claire Duncanson (2009) maps the ways that British peacekeepers redefine their understanding of ‘good’ and ‘strong’ soldiers on the basis of characteristics associated with peacekeeping rather than combat. Bevan and MacKenzie (2012: 510) explore ‘whether the police do indeed represent a less militarized and less hypermasculine institution’ than traditional militaries. Paul Higate (2003, 2007) and Aaron Belkin (2012) have done extensive work on the role of sexual assault, violence and subjugation in the production and evaluation of military masculinities – particularly for American service members.

Although there is a rich and growing literature on masculinities and war, there remains little understanding of how non-combatant civilian men and civilian masculinities are impacted by war, conflict, occupation and militarization.³ Consequently, male civilians inhabit an ambiguous position in the masculinities literature. Of particular relevance to this article is the lack of published research on Palestinian masculinities and Palestinian men’s experiences of the ongoing conflict with Israel. In turn, existing analysis of militarized masculinities remains limited, as does our broader understanding of the effects of war and occupation on individuals and communities.

Palestinian masculinities through war and occupation

Before exploring specific articulations of masculinity nostalgia by Palestinian men, this section outlines the interconnections between Israeli–Palestinian history and Palestinian narratives of masculinity. This analysis illustrates the multiple forms of masculinity associated with men in Palestine, strengthening the argument that masculine identities are fluid, evolving and political rather than ahistorical and static.

One of the earliest accountings of Palestinian masculinity identified in historical documents centres around the concept of sharaf (roughly meaning ‘honour’). Prior to the first Jewish Aliyah (meaning ‘ascent’ in Hebrew, referring to modern Jewish immigration) to Ottoman Palestine in 1882 (Peretz, 1996: 109), historic conceptions of Palestinian masculinity were intricate, and largely revolved around sharaf. While sharaf is a difficult concept to translate into English, it has been described as ‘the sum of all moral virtues that gives a man a right to higher social status’ (Lang, 2005: 110). Sharaf is highly dependent on an individual’s social reputation concerning his perceived morality and integrity, but is also tightly intertwined with the notion of family honour, particularly that of female family members (Lang, 2005).

Surges in Jewish immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s led to increased tensions between Palestinian and Jewish populations; the result was, among other things, a rejuvenation and reformation of Palestinian national and gender identities. Perceptions of masculinity at this time became deeply interrelated with mounting Palestinian nationalist sentiment, which had been growing with intensity in response to these shifting demographics. During this period there was also evidence of a discursive ‘feminization of the land’ within Palestinian nationalist rhetoric (Katz, 1996: 88). A new ideal of masculinity within Palestinian society shaped by the changing political circumstances emerged, whereby the ultimate male was the one who fought to protect his land. ‘Death by the sword’ became a symbol of heroic Palestinian masculinity, in which men died to protect their land and sharaf not only from land grabs but also from the modern temptations the Jews were thought to have brought with them from Europe (Katz, 1996).

The period between 1947 and 1948 is sometimes called Al-Nakba (meaning ‘the Catastrophe’ in Arabic). This refers to the vast exodus of Palestinians from their homes to Arab-controlled areas in Palestine and surrounding states. Much of the poetry and political analysis at this time used rape as a metaphor for the land seizures, implicitly linking men’s failure to prevent the loss of territory to their inability to protect ‘their’ women. The result was that nationalist discourse switched from advancing symbols of heroic masculinity to those of a defeated masculinity (Amireh, 2003). Amireh (2003: 753) explains:

For generations of Palestinians, especially the men, Palestinian nationalism was experienced as humiliation. According to this narrative, the Palestinian male fails to possess the land; the homeland in this narrative is a female body possessed by others. This metaphor of the loss of Palestine as rape, which has been a constant in the Palestinian and wider Arab political nationalist discourse, signifies the loss of Palestine as loss of female virginity but also of male virility, since the virile actor now is the rapist/enemy.

With the further loss of territory, Palestinian masculinity began to be delinked from narratives of territorial protection and instead attached to men’s role as fathers. ‘Palestinianness’ became linked to a father’s reproductive relationship with his children. In his detailed analysis of the gendered nature of Palestinian nationalism, Massad (1995: 472) describes how ‘being born to a Palestinian father’ became strongly linked to perceptions of ‘Palestinianness’, thereby linking paternity with masculinity and nationalism:

Territory was replaced by paternity. The disqualification of the land as mother in her national reproductive role … does not deny that the land, as mother, can produce children, but rather that, since the rape, it can no longer be relied upon to reproduce legitimate Palestinian children. Within this metaphoric schema, women clearly cannot be agents of nationality.

In sum, the events of 1947 not only symbolized the loss of the Palestinian homeland, but also signified a major shift from nationalized images of heroic masculinity towards a dominant ‘melancholic male-centred narrative’ of humiliation (Hochberg, 2010: 587).

The First Intifada – from 1987 to 1993 – also had profound effects on Palestinian masculinities. Once it began, a symbolic ‘rite of passage’, or ‘ritual of resistance’, emerged, whereby Palestinian men were seen to acquire manhood and respect through violent engagement with Israeli soldiers (Peteet, 1994: 32–33). Contrary to what one might expect, this ritualized achievement of manhood did not necessitate violence on the part of Palestinian youths; rather, the defining element was the violence directed towards the adolescent himself. Palestinian males who had been subject to violence at the hands of Israelis – be it through prison interrogations, being shot or via hand-to-hand combat with soldiers or settlers – were considered to be undergoing a transition into manhood (Peteet, 2000). As Peteet (1994: 38) explains, ‘a representation created [by Israelis] with the intent of humiliating [had] been reversed into one of honour, manhood and moral superiority…. Marks on the body, though certainly unwanted, signal[ed] a resistant, masculine subjectivity and agency’.

While during the First Intifada the symbol of male resistance was the stone-throwing adolescent with his keffiyeh (traditional Arab headdress) disguising his face, the male prototype of the Second Intifada was the ‘martyr’. Martyrs in Palestinian communities are those killed or sacrificed as active participants of the Palestinian resistance, or as innocent victims of Israeli attacks (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2003). Although women and girls are also memorialized as martyrs, the popular, archetypical martyrs are boys and men (Hasso, 2005). The escalation of violent and often fatal Israeli responses to stone throwing and demonstrations in the Second Intifada (Allen, 2006), along with the spread of suicide bombing as a tactic of Palestinian resistance groups, raised the bar on what epitomized sacrifice and heroism for the national struggle. In contrast to Peteet’s (2000) discussion of young Palestinian males being beaten and/or imprisoned and returning to their neighbourhoods as heroes, the new heroes of the second uprising returned home in coffins and were honoured in mass public funerals or on ‘posters plastered on the walls of refugee camps and urban main streets’ (Johnson and Kuttab, 2001: 9). It remains unclear when exactly the Second Intifada ended, and indeed its impacts on life in the West Bank are ongoing.

Palestinian expressions of masculinity nostalgia

Moving from the past to the present, the following sections point to some of the ongoing impacts of the occupation in relation to Palestinian notions of masculinity. Our interviews with peacekeepers often centred on the ways that interviewees understood the effects of the ‘security barrier’ or wall, the continued loss of territory, and the economic effects of occupation. Throughout our interviews, masculinity was consistently referred to in relation to three main roles men typically play in Palestinian society: fathers, landowners and breadwinners. The following sections explore these roles and the ways in which masculinity nostalgia is articulated against and through them.

Fatherhood

This section outlines the ways in which interviewees conveyed their understanding of gender norms and pressures associated with fatherhood and masculinity. Interviewees showed a consistent nostalgia for the ways in which fatherhood could be performed pre-occupation and the stability and peace associated with men’s perceived natural role as fathers. Fatherhood plays a prominent role in social power configurations in Palestinian communities. The family is the key arena in which Palestinian patriarchy takes its form; therefore, fathers – as the presumed patriarchal heads of the family – are bestowed with an immense amount of respect and gender status in Palestinian society (Mitchell, 2010). In everyday discourse, it is often considered proper etiquette to refer to a man using his status as a father. The symbolic use of fatherhood to represent social authority was further made explicit in the following interview:

the father in the family, in his family and as a son … this man is … is responsible, he is really responsible for a lot of stuff. He is responsible for all the life responsibilities that he was given by God you know, not only by God but the community, being responsible for you know … securing and offering security to his family. (Interview, June 2010)

The significance of paternal authority may be a result of the particular occupation context. Mitchell (2010: 5) explains: ‘in the absence of a Palestinian state, Palestinian households, families and kinship structures are arguably the most important social institution’. In sum, characterizations of Palestinian masculinities are often deeply rooted in ideals of fatherhood (Monterescu, 2007; Peteet, 2000).

During our research, perhaps the most dominant theme within interviews and general conversations about masculinity and the occupation was that of ‘failed fatherhood’. Johnson and Kuttab (2001: 10) use the term ‘crisis in paternity’ to describe the constant pressure of Palestinian fathers to fulfil social obligations – including income generation, physical protection and ownership of land. These social obligations are incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to fulfil in an occupation setting, yet several interviews convey masculinity nostalgia for ideals of Palestinian fatherhood. They link manhood to nostalgic expressions of fatherhood; however, they also consistently acknowledge the ways in which the everyday realities of the occupation diminished or crushed men’s ability to ‘live up to’ ideals of fatherhood.

A strong infrastructure of segregation exists between the Palestinian and Israeli communities. For many Palestinians, checkpoints are the main forum in which they interact with Israelis. Palestinians largely see these checkpoints as a symbol and mechanism of their oppression. Thus, in many ways, checkpoints represent real and symbolic sites of struggle between ‘the oppressed’ and the infrastructure of their oppression, making interactions at checkpoints highly evocative and political encounters. Depending on the gender and familial status of the Palestinian confronting the checkpoint, the social meanings ascribed to negative interactions with soldiers during these encounters alter dramatically. Interviewees argued that, for fathers, such encounters are particularly humiliating.

One interviewee provided a poignant example of an unnamed father’s battle to maintain the expectation of fatherly authority at a checkpoint. The interviewee described a situation that occurred ‘in Hebron at the checkpoint’ where a father ‘was with his kids … and [Israeli soldiers] asked him to take off all his clothes and he refused to do. So they shoot him in front of his kids…. Yes, he was shooted [sic] and killed … because he want to protect his image in front of his son’ (Interview, June 2010). In this narrative, a father is situated at a symbolic crossroads where he struggles between the pressure to maintain a particular image expected of him as a father and the requirements placed on him at the checkpoint.

Certainly the regular experiences at checkpoints, including being stripped, verbally demeaned and given orders, and having to ask permission to move from place to place, seem to be designed to be humiliating, frustrating and intimidating for all Palestinians. However, interviewees map the particular ways that checkpoints target fathers and both humiliate and are seen to diminish men’s ability to perform their expected roles as fathers. Interviewees spoke directly to the ways in which men believed they were ‘held accountable’ or faced challenges to their gendered identity at these checkpoints. For example, one interviewee, a father himself, explained that

you feel that, OK you can take the humiliation if you are on your own, but you don’t want your family or your wife to … see that humiliation or … it affects your ego, it affects your dignity. So you know how it is so especially for men here. They feel very proud about their dignity and think maybe macho or something…. To destroy the dignity especially of men by even having young girls, female soldiers interrogate you and sometimes humiliate you at checkpoints. (Interview, June 2010)

Given that family members are often with their father at checkpoints, the family becomes the audience to altercations between fathers and soldiers at checkpoints. The interviewee quoted here suggested that a father’s family witnessing his maltreatment at a checkpoint accentuates his feelings of humiliation, thereby impacting his ‘ego’. The interviewee also noted that having a younger female soldier interrogate a father disrupts multiple gender norms and adds to the feelings of public humiliation for Palestinian fathers. This same interviewee asserted that at checkpoints ‘the masculinity will be touched’, as the incident is not only witnessed but also shows that the man in question is unable to ‘help in protecting his father or his son [or other family members] from the Israeli soldiers’.

This reference to the ‘touching’ of paternal masculinity underscores the immense amount of pressure for men to perform fatherhood in an idealized way, not only to their families but also to a wider audience. Men inevitably are unable to fulfil such romanticized characterizations of fatherhood. The interviewee points out that it is the public witnessing of this failure at checkpoints that is particularly humiliating. Moreover, the fact that there are witnesses – including a man’s children – makes the encounter deeply emasculating. Emphasizing the significance of witnesses to this struggle to perform an idealized version of fatherhood, another interviewee claimed that at least for men in Israeli prisons ‘no one will see how he was treated in … indignity’ (Interview, June 2010). These comments can be linked to the broader literature focused on ‘humiliation’ in conflict contexts and its deeply personal and sociopolitical impacts on the individual being impacted. Paul Saurette (2006: 508) summarizes:

if humiliation is to be deeply felt … there needs to be a normative standard of judgement and aspiration that is deeply embedded and accepted … by a given community. For only if both the ‘humiliatee’ and an observing … public share an intense respect for a commonsense standard can the public [act of shame] immediately inspire a deep emotion of humiliation that is powerful enough to transform their self-perceptions.

In the case of Palestinian fatherhood, encounters at checkpoints represent public challenges and humiliation because they directly contest the ability of Palestinian men to live up to cultural ideals of fatherhood.

Overall, interviewees tended to describe occupation, and in particular the experience of men at checkpoints, as being deeply emasculating. Checkpoint encounters are seen to diminish and distance men from an ideal of male fatherhood. As Naaman (2006: 175) contends, men can ‘interpret the humiliation as feminization. They are questioned, searched, ordered around, and in general have little control over their agency. Since they associate lack of power with the feminine position, they feel doubly humiliated’. One interviewee reiterated this, claiming that for a father to be ‘treated badly, let’s say, and inhumanely by the Israeli soldiers in front of his family, I think this affects the … his personality, and it makes him like … a weak person, who can’t even say that I am a man who can defend themselves’ (Interview, June 2010). Respondents used consistent expressions to convey this theme of fathers being ‘crushed’ (Interview, June 2010) or becoming ‘powerless’ (Interview, June 2010). Clearly, the experience of all Palestinians at checkpoints can be frustrating, humiliating, violent and unsettling. However, these articulations of ‘failed’ fatherhood directly reference normative ideals described earlier of fathers as powerful and as the guardians and protectors of their families. These interviews suggest that checkpoints are disempowering and oppressive for individuals not only because of the daily violent and humiliating processes, but also because of how these acts are witnessed and interpreted by their families and communities. Men’s sense of thwarted masculinity depends on a commitment to, and nostalgia for, a particular articulation of patriarchal fatherhood. This fatherhood nostalgia links security to men’s status as the head of household and presumes that fathers should sit at the top of the patriarchal hierarchy and should not be insulted, given orders or seen in a negative light by their families.

No man’s land: Landownership and masculinity in the West Bank

An additional theme encountered within interviews and in general observations in the West Bank was that of the strong associations made between idealized Palestinian masculinity and landownership. The role that landownership plays in constructions of hegemonic masculinities internationally has been highlighted in recent years in research such as Caitríona Ní Laoire’s (2005) study of agricultural masculinities in Ireland and Shelly Grabe’s (2010) examination of the links between increased women’s landownership and shifting gender relations. In the Palestinian context, however, the attention paid to questions of landownership and gender has remained focused largely on Palestinian women (Farha, 2000; Moors, 1995, 1996; Rubenberg, 2001), with little scholarship dedicated to questions of property and male identity. The relationship between landownership and masculinities becomes particularly important in the occupation context, owing to the ongoing seizure of Palestinian land by Israel and the resulting dispossession of families and refugees.

Interviewees consistently expressed masculinity nostalgia, which linked a man’s identity and status with his capacity to maintain control over his land. One interviewee described the importance of landowner masculinities in the following way:

in the end of the day, the element of authority should be in the family. [It] should be in, like, how much also you own, and how much you protect what is yours, you know? And basically [protection of land] definitely has an impact on the role played by males … like protect[ing] what is theirs. (Interview, June 2010)

Control over land was continually connected with narratives of a man’s authority within his family and men’s ability to provide for their families. Another interviewee summarized this relationship:

in general, there is this high expectation that men … should provide for the good life. That you are able to pay the bills, but also that you have a home, house, land…. So also that when you are being disowned by whatever means, that when they take your land, that also they take part of your body, part of your life. It is therefore the [19]48 Al-Nakba is sometimes for Westerners difficult to understand the depth of the level of disownership. It is really that your life collapses. (Interview, June 2010)

The correlation between protecting one’s land and familial authority becomes clearer when situated within broader historical nationalist discourses. For example, writing on early Palestinian nationalism in the 1900s, Turki claimed that ‘to Palestinians, no phrase is more familiar – perhaps one should call it a metaphrase – than “ardi-‘irdi”’ (Fawaz Turki quoted in Katz, 1996: 88). Ardi-‘irdi translates from Arabic as ‘my land is my womenfolk’, but as Katz (1996: 88) elucidates, ‘[as] understood by Palestinians, the phrase reads, “my land is my nobility … my being what I am”’. Katz (1996: 87) goes on to explain, ‘the Palestinian Arab patriarch, whether peasant or poet, was supposed to defend his ard and his ‘ird, his land and his women’s sexual integrity’. In turn, landownership is intertwined with notions of sexual purity, and men’s protection and ownership of land is equally intertwined with their ability to protect and maintain their power in relation to women.

Maintaining control of one’s land in the context of increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine became part of a man’s claim to the ideals of sharaf (‘honour’), which, as described earlier, revolved around a man’s ability to protect and maintain the honour of ‘his’ womenfolk (Katz, 1996). This protection was likewise understood as extending to the defence of one’s own land and the greater ‘lady Palestine’. As a famous Palestinian poet and martyr, Abd al-Rahim Mahmud, exclaimed: ‘I will guard my land with my sword so that all will know that I am a man!’ (quoted in Katz, 1996: 87). This suggests an emerging form of hegemonic masculinity within Palestinian society, whereby the ultimate male was the one who fought to protect his ‘ard and his ‘ird: a masculinity that is understood through this discursive link between landownership and the protection of a feminized land. Thus, frustration at the loss of land due to the occupation seemed always to be woven through masculinity nostalgia for a time when men had control and authority over both land and women.

There is ample evidence that land seizures and the occupation of territory are practices that create insecurity and distress for Palestinians. Interviewees alluded to the loss of territory as deeply psychological and painful experiences for all Palestinians, but particularly for men. One interviewee recalled the experiences of male refugees who lost their land and the impacts of dispossession on individual men:

The issue of powerlessness goes very, very deep. In a context like the refugees [sic] … you know they lost their land, they lost also their status. You know the story of the refugees … who are stiffened and frozen in the camp after they lost their land and felt as if they were nothing. (Interview, June 2010)

These descriptions of feelings of powerlessness, frustration and weakness highlight the considerable discrepancies between normative ideals of landownership, masculinity and men’s lived realities. While the entire family – men, women, boys and girls alike – are equally dispossessed, there seems to be an added pressure on men, upon whose shoulders the responsibilities of provision of shelter, income and security is believed to lie.

Such divergence between the social expectations of men and their lived realities, especially within the growing crisis in Palestinian landownership, causes anguish for men, their families and the surrounding community. One interviewee explains:

Many men depend on their land. And the wall divided their land. So now there is a shortage of their land … now they can’t plant their land what they want … and buy it to other people [sic]. Now there is no land for them…. So they become more aggressive. It affects [him] psychologically. He maybe … he come aware, I don’t know … he shout his fears to others, at others. Shouting, or sometimes hitting, or preventing the daughters to attend school or university, or lectures. (Interview, June 2010)

This interviewee points to the ways in which the dispossession of land impacts a man’s capacity for income generation as well as men’s status in society. The interviewee suggests that men who suffer dispossession might react by employing violence and exerting control over the movement and life choices of their female family members. This trend resonates with ardi-‘irdi nationalist narratives, which allude to the intimate discursive relationship between land and women within the framework of hegemonic Palestinian masculinity. The rhetorical association between land and women as the symbolic foundations of Palestinian sharaf-based masculinity can translate into a situation where loss of one results in the need to prove domination over the other. It seems that masculinity nostalgia and the inability of men to perform certain ideals of a dominant masculinity may cause men to ‘overperform’ or overcompensate their performance of dominant masculinity in other areas of their lives.

Interviews also highlighted divergent and perhaps contradictory themes regarding the behaviour of men in response to threats of land dispossession. One respondent, who worked with West Bank farmers facing land disputes with the Israeli government, suggested that male and female landowners reacted differently to such situations on the basis of gendered social expectations. They suggested that female landowners were often more active in fighting dispossession owing to their role in the family as educators and carers of children. In this sense, working to protect one’s land became a family initiative led by the woman. The respondent further contrasted this with the role of men in these situations:

if you have a father who wants to protect, or who wants for instance to stop doing their work – because it is a full-time job to stand for their land, it is a full time job. So the father has to stop working, earning money, and focus on the land. And this way, like, the family would not approve his behaviour. (Interview, June 2010)

This interviewee suggests that men are often preoccupied with working long hours and are therefore unable to dedicate their time and attention to fighting land dispossession. Moreover, it was suggested that, in contrast to their female counterparts, male landowners often stand down ‘usually because … men feel, like, helpless in front of Israeli occupation. Rather than [become] embarrass[ed], they do not want to look weak so they withdraw’. In turn, men who fear losing face and appearing weak if they fight for their land and lose instead choose non-action to save themselves the embarrassment of failure.

Landownership has featured throughout Palestinian nationalist discourses as a key element of Palestinian masculinity. Narratives of men’s ‘rightful’ place as landowners and heads of households constitute a form of masculinity nostalgia that characterizes pre-occupation as a time when men naturally controlled both their land and women. This is an example of the ways in which nostalgia can reconstruct the past in sentimental and gendered ways. To be sure, the loss of land is real and devastating for many Palestinians. Interviewees demonstrate that loss of land is inextricably tied to feelings of inadequacy and inability to perform normative ideals of masculine authority. Linking land to masculinity reaffirms and reconstructs ideals of men’s historic power and authority and presumes that a return of land requires, or will result in, men’s ability to perform this ideal masculinity. Thus, security, order and peace are linked to men’s control of land, women and the family.

Unemployed breadwinners: Palestinian masculinities and unemployment

A lack of men’s employment opportunities and income-generation prospects constituted a third theme in discussions about civilian masculinities and the occupation in Palestine. This breadwinner discourse echoes the first two discursive themes of fatherhood and landownership in several ways. First, breadwinner discourses were anchored to a particular ideal of men’s traditional or ‘rightful’ place in the family and in the national economy. Second, breadwinner discourses associated economic security and prosperity with men’s ability to fulfil the breadwinner role. Finally, Palestinian men are held accountable against an impossible model of men as breadwinners in much the same way as they are held accountable against the models of fatherhood and landownership. As with fatherhood and landownership, ‘breadwinner’ is a particularly difficult model to perform in an occupation setting. According to a number of studies on the topic, and evident throughout the discussions with Palestinian peacebuilders, the gendered division of labour in the West Bank has been adjusting to the socio-economic realities of life under occupation. Owing to the tightening of labour restrictions on Palestinians from the West Bank working in Israel, and the worsening of the West Bank economy itself, many men are no longer guaranteed full-time employment and thereby lose claim to their socially prescribed status as breadwinners (Mitchell, 2010; World Bank, 2010; Yaish, 2009). These findings echo international research on the impacts of shifting economic and employment realities on men’s gender identities in different settings (see Dolan, 2002; Barker, 2005).

Historically, there has been a strong gendered division of labour in Palestine. As with many places around the world, ‘breadwinner’ and ‘economic provider’ are more readily associated with men in Palestine. Women, by contrast, often shoulder the bulk of reproductive, child rearing and unpaid domestic labour (World Bank, 2010). Research shows that this male breadwinner discourse is somewhat illusory when one considers the informal economic activities that women have customarily carried out to supplement male income generation. In other words, men’s ‘rightful’ and ‘traditional’ status as breadwinner and economic provider has always relied – at least in part – on mythology and ignoring practical realities (Mitchell, 2010; Tucker, 1985). That said, the economic picture in Palestine is complex, and Palestinian men have had intense and context-specific economic expectations and pressures placed on them. For example, prior to 2000, many families depended on the relatively high wages that men were able to earn as labourers in Israel compared to the concurrent weakness of female manufacturing work within the West Bank (Mitchell, 2010). In the past, the high wages associated with labour in Israel allowed many families to rely on a single income, thereby boosting the male-provider role within Palestinian society (Mitchell, 2010). One interviewee summarized traditional gender labour relations in the West Bank: ‘here, it is the sole responsibility of men to provide for their family. . . . Here people expect that a father should provide everything’ (Interview, June 2010).

The changing nature of the occupation and the Israeli settlement-checkpoint infrastructure has added layers of pressure when it comes to men’s capacity to live up to breadwinner ideals. For example, one respondent explained:

You know men that work in Israel, for example, they get up very early in the morning in order to reach their work, you know, in Israel, let’s say in Jerusalem … and sometimes it is very difficult as well to obtain permission in order to go to Israel. So the only income for … their families is to work in Israel. So when they are unable to go or when they face … such difficulties … it will be quite hard on the family as well. (Interview, June 2010)

Owing to the growing weaknesses of the West Bank economy, employment is becoming increasingly inaccessible to many Palestinian men, as many of the interviewees suggested. As a consequence, the male-breadwinner model has become an even more out-of-touch ideal. However, as will be shown, this traditional male-breadwinner metanarrative remained prevalent in discussions of men and masculinities in Palestine. Breadwinner masculinity is often talked about in nostalgic ways; interviewees noted the everyday challenges that the occupation presents to men trying to fulfil this role at the same time as they seemed nostalgic for the model of a strong male breadwinner. In other words, there is masculinity nostalgia for the very norms and identities that make men feel inadequate or emasculated.

When discussing men and their breadwinner status, themes of ‘men’s retreat’ and ‘idle men’ emerged. ‘Idle men’ is a term most often used by international organizations and aid agencies to describe cohorts of unemployed men in a variety of contexts, not just limited to that of the West Bank (MacKenzie, 2012). The assumption implicit in the use of the term ‘idle men’ is that unemployed men who are not part of a traditional family structure are social problems and may be more prone to violence or unrest (Arko-Cobbah, 2011). Ann Whitehead (2013) has examined the ‘idle man’ or ‘lazy man’ discourse in depictions of men in African agricultural contexts in international development literature and policies. Whitehead links ‘idle men’ discourses to colonial narratives; she suggests they represent a significant oversimplification of men’s economic realities by overlooking their unpaid activities and overshadowing the realities of the economic circumstances they face. In the context of our interviews, unemployed – ‘idle’ – men were discussed as remaining at home, on the streets or just generally ‘hanging around’. An interviewee explains:

in the occupation, many men they don’t work, so they sit at home … they don’t have much money, or any money for the family. So what should they do? There will be tension … smoking all the time. They say ‘it helps me to express myself when I smoke’. Many men said so. But it is wrong, of course. (Interview, June 2010)

Rather than depicting ‘idle men’ as a security threat, these characterizations of men focus on the emotional experiences and turmoil of unemployed men. Men are depicted here as anxious owing to their incapability to provide for their families. Another interviewee reiterates this point:

there is a high percentage of youth, of shabab [‘young men’], who are not working or who are unemployed, and they are, like, frustrated from life, and they just sitting on the streets, or spending time with other colleagues or other shabab … and suffering the bad economy situation of his family, he will smoke…. Because there is no, let’s say, places for them and no choices for them to go and spend in, for example, youthful clubs. (Interview, June 2010)

Such statements reconstruct the relationship between being ‘idle’ and masculinity as one of frustration and suffering. Interviewees also framed men staying at home as a social shift that disrupts norms of where men and women should be during the day. As discussed, work carried out in the home has historically been considered a woman’s responsibility, and by extension the home is seen as the ‘woman’s sphere’. The earlier quotation referencing men staying at home signals a failure of men to fulfil their expected roles, since men are traditionally associated with the public sphere or being ‘out there’ (Willott and Griffin, 1997: 115).

Palestinian men face the constant external pressure of being held accountable to a breadwinner model. At the same time, they articulate an internal sense of failure in relation to their thwarted ability to perform this model. The following quote illustrates the external process by which men are held accountable to gender norms in Palestine:

[unemployment] erodes the authority of the man I think. . . . So when at times when he cannot provide for the family, he is unemployed, or that you know he is in prison … so then you have the conflict between what he is supposed to be like a powerful person in the family, also an authoritative person in the family, and what he is in practice, being humiliated. (Interview, June 2010)

Interviewees also noted the internal pressures men place on themselves in relation to their ability to provide for their families. Two interviewees discussed the feelings men grapple with when they lose their breadwinner status: ‘[they have a] feeling of hopelessness that there is nothing in his hand to do’ (Interview, June 2010), and ‘shabab who are not working or who are unemployed … they are like frustrated from life’ (Interview, June 2010). Here, the narrative revolves around men’s inner turmoil and feelings of helplessness and discouragement at their inability to earn a living. Mitchell (2010: 42) argues that the unwavering gender expectations surrounding men as breadwinners often cause men to internalize ‘their inability to provide adequately for their households as personal failure … [which] depoliticizes the structural effects of decades of colonization and colonial practices on the Palestinian economy’.

Despite the changing economic conditions referred to earlier, as well as the increasing economic struggles faced by most Palestinian men, the gender narratives surrounding men as breadwinners remain fixed. According to one peace activist, even in such an extreme economic setting as that of the occupation, men who are incapable of getting work still stand to lose their masculinized authority and face humiliation in the eyes of their families. This underlines the power of gendered expectations even in an extreme period of social stress such as that of the occupation. Our interviews echo existing critical research on ‘idle’ men, which finds men nostalgic for a time when they could fulfil their presumed rightful economic position in society. These men internalize blame for their ‘failures’ to live up to a particular gender role, even if the role was – by nature – impossible to fulfil.

Another important subtheme in discussions about breadwinners linked frustrations associated with unemployment to domestic violence. References to unemployment and economic hardship were commonly followed by allusions to family violence and/or male aggression within the community, as the following quote illustrates:

the fathers, they are so much under pressure because they have to bring food for the family. And most of the times, when they are not allowed to go to work, you know, and they couldn’t bring money and they couldn’t support their families, they are very angry. And … and the problem is … sometimes they are … bring out the angry [sic] towards the mother and towards the children. . . . So if they ask for something, or they need something, he will be angry and sometimes aggressive too. This is what we mainly see, in our work. Fathers are really under pressure, that even they don’t have any way to help. (Interview, June 2010)

This quotation echoes a number of themes referred to in this section thus far. It implies that men’s powerlessness to gain adequate employment has resulted in a ‘crisis of breadwinner model masculinity’ that has been accompanied by male domestic and community violence (Ikeda, 2007: 113). As Johnson and Kuttab (2001: 11) note, ‘the crisis of the male breadwinner is a gendered crisis and a family crisis’. One interviewee reiterates this idea: ‘[unemployment] creates reactions on the side of the man, I think. Sometimes they want to reinstall their authority, and then violence can be one means of that’. While it was beyond the scope of this research to analyse in depth the particularities of violence against women and children in the West Bank, the connections made between masculinity nostalgia, unemployment and domestic violence are important to note.

The phenomenon of violence against women in conflict settings has received increasing attention over the last few decades; however, there remains a need for more research into the experiences of individual men during war and occupation to gain a deeper understanding as to why they may resort to violence. Describing male violence as a reaction to or expression of frustration reiterates Dolan’s (2002: 57) suggestion that violence is not necessarily a masculine quality, but rather an outcome of men being unable to live up to hegemonic models of masculinity. In other words, men may exert domestic or other forms of violence as a reaction against their perceived inability ‘to live up to their ideas of “successful” manhood’ (Jewkes, 2002: 1424). This approach to understanding violence is not an attempt to justify or explain away violence within families; rather, it is a call to look at the ways in which myths of male authority are interwoven with aspirations for peace and security. Violence, from this perspective, represents both an expression of power and dominance and simultaneously an expression of masculinity nostalgia, disempowerment and male vulnerability. In times of war and occupation, masculinity nostalgia is linked to both a yearning for peace and a yearning for power, status and gender norms that give men power and status in society. In fact, masculinity nostalgia blurs the lines between these two types of desires, and therefore the struggle for peace, security and order becomes a struggle to ‘return’ men to a supremacy status in the home and in the nation.

Conclusions

War and occupation have altered the economic and political environment in the West Bank. Checkpoints, significant changes in industry and economic relations, as well as migration and displacement have all drastically altered daily life for Palestinians. This research shows that these fluctuations in daily life impact the capacity of men and women to perform and live up to gender norms and ideals. In particular, men are finding it increasingly difficult to perform masculine models of fatherhood, landownership and being breadwinners. The impact of these shifts is twofold: it becomes ever more impossible to perform models of masculinity at the same time as there are continued expressions of masculinity nostalgia for these very models of masculinity. In other words, there is a lamenting of one’s inability to perform masculine ideals coupled with a yearning for these very ideals. This phenomenon of thwarted masculinity and being held accountable is not entirely unique. What is unique here is the way in which masculinity nostalgia associates peace, security and the ‘return to normal’ with men’s ability to reclaim their presumed rightful place in society. This ‘rightful place’ is understood as a time and place where men are in control of both the domestic and the national sphere as the ultimate benefactors of patriarchy. Therefore, masculinity nostalgia emphasizes the ways that yearnings for peace and security can be interwoven with yearnings for patriarchal gendered orders.

The broader outcome of this research is to demonstrate that the Palestinians we interviewed strongly associated peace, order and stability with patriarchy. ‘War’ has been interrogated as the potential time and place for oppressive gender norms. By contrast, there has been little attention to the ways in which ‘peace’ might also be understood in relation to gendered assumptions. For Palestinians, many of the hardships and trials of the occupation were understood, at least in part, through the ways in which they disrupted gender norms. Security and peace, therefore, were associated with a romanticized ‘return to normal’ that included men as heads of the household, economic breadwinners, primary decisionmakers and sovereigns of the family. Masculinity nostalgia therefore involves the yearning for gender roles that are assumed to be ‘the solution’ to current forms of insecurity. Implicit in these interviews was the impression that peace depends on some sort of return to these idealized past gender arrangements. Given this association between peace and patriarchy, we encourage future researchers not to assume that peace is a benign and neutral concept. The struggle for peace will always be fraught if it is dependent on, or intertwined with, a commitment to restoring oppressive gender norms.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the interviewees who took part in this research and the host organizations in the West Bank for their generous cooperation. They would also like to thank the editors and team at Security Dialogue and the anonymous reviewers for their extensive and thoughtful comments.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Megan MacKenzie is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her research centres on myths associated with war and the ways in which these myths sustain war. Specific projects have focused on women in combat and post-conflict reconstruction. Her most recent book is Beyond the Band of Brothers: The US Military and the Myth that Women Can’t Fight (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Email: mackenzie@sydney.edu.au

Alana Foster works in offender rehabilitation with the Department of Corrections in Wellington, New Zealand. Before taking on this role, she completed her Master’s degree in development studies at Victoria University of Wellington. She spent several weeks working with peace organizations in the West Bank as part of her graduate work. Email: alanafay.foster@gmail.com

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