The Politics of Birth and the Intimacies of Violence Against Palestinian Women in Occupied East Jerusalem

Abstract

Focusing on the embodiment of violence against pregnant women, this paper borrows from Palestinian women’s own words and descriptions
to reveal intimate aspects of aggression against and surveillance over their bodies and lives. The paper examines both the
effects of violence on young mothers and their community and the denial of violence by the settler colonial state. I emphasize
the structural regime that exacerbates such aggression, as well as women’s agency in subverting the system of oppression.
The paper concludes by stressing that surveillance embedded in Israeli biopolitical measures and geopolitical constraints
inscribe severe violence over birthing Palestinian women. Such violence invades the public and intimate spaces of women’s
homes, bodies and minds, leaving them trapped in a vicious maze.

Full text

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD).
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
THE POLITICS OF BIRTH AND THE INTIMACIES OF VIOLENCE
AGAINST PALESTINIAN WOMEN IN OCCUPIED EAST
JERUSALEM
NS-K*
Focusing on the embodiment of violence against pregnant women, this paper borrows from
Palestinian women’s own words and descriptions to reveal intimate aspects of aggression against
and surveillance over their bodies and lives. The paper examines both the effects of violence on
young mothers and their community and the denial of violence by the settler colonial state. Iempha-
size the structural regime that exacerbates such aggression, as well as women’s agency in subverting
the system of oppression. The paper concludes by stressing that surveillance embedded in Israeli
biopolitical measures and geopolitical constraints inscribe severe violence over birthing Palestinian
women. Such violence invades the public and intimate spaces of women’s homes, bodies and minds,
leaving them trapped in a vicious maze.
Keywords: gender, violence, birth, biopolitics, settler colonialism
Introduction
The politics of birth offer a critical yet underexplored site from which to examine the
embodied aspects of gender violence for women living in conict zones and colonial
contexts. In this paper, I investigate the Israeli state’s geopolitical, biopolitical and
sociolegal policies and practices that violate Palestinian women’s rights with regard to
experiences of pregnancy and childbirth in occupied East Jerusalem (oEJ). Gendered
violence enacted against birthing women’s bodies and lives, as well as those of their chil-
dren and the broader Palestinian society, is embedded in a wider system of structural
dispossession. Iargue that such policies and practices must be considered in themselves
a form of gendered violence.
Feminists in Western countries have high lighted unequal gender relations as a prim ary
factor shaping the prevalence of violence against women (e.g. Wilson 1983; Chesney-
Lind 2006; Stanko 2007; Walklate 2008), centring on crimes such as rape, domestic
violence, pornography, prostitution and incest, among others. Within criminological
analyses, the gendered relations in both the public and private spheres constructed
a clear ‘culture of control’ (Garland 2001) that ‘otherized’ some groups, including
women. Yet such analyses rarely account for the additional criminalities facing women
who belong to otherized religious, ethnic or racial groups (Crenshaw 1991; Harris
1993; Abu-Lughod 2002). Critical legal scholars, including non-Western feminists, have
pointed to the paucity of research focused on revealing the intimacy and severity of
such violence against women, particularly those surviving racialized and settler colonial
*Nadera Sha lhoub- Kevorkian, Law rence D. Biele Chair in Law, School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Inst itute of
Crim inology, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew Univer sity of Jerusalem, Mt . Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel; nadera@sh-ke.com.
doi:10.1093/bjc/azv0 35 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL
Page 1 of 20
British Journal of Criminology Advance Access published May 20, 2015
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

domination (Volpp 2000; Razack 2002; Smith 2005; Shalhoub -Kevorkian 2009) or fac-
ing violence in conict zones (Enloe 2000; De Mel 2007; Visweswaran 2013).
This paper examines one aspect of such understudied criminalities against women:
violence against pregnant and birthing women in the context of settler colonialism.
Ianalyse the testimonies of Palestinian women in oEJ and the meanings they ascribe to
pregnancy and childbirth. Iexplore Palestinian women’s particular experiences, under-
standings and practices on multiple dimensions—including physical, spatial, politi-
cal, social and psychological—to reveal the effects of political violence with its logic
of elimination on women’s birthing bodies (as per Wolfe 20 06; Shalhoub-Kevorkian
2009). Israeli settler colonialism is structured through biopolitical violence (Zureik
etal. 2010), which includes control over the native’s demography, women’s reproductiv-
ity and body politics (Kanaaneh 2002). As Andrea Smith notes, ‘Native women, whose
ability to reproduce continues to stand in the way of the continuing conquest of Native
lands, [endanger] the continued success of colonization’ (2005: 79). By extension,
Palestinian women’s reproductive capabilities, including their experiences with preg-
nancy and childbirth, are implicated in Israel’s colonial settlement project.
Background: Gender, Violence and Birthing inoEJ
Gender violence is intimately connected to the sociopolitical context in which it takes
place (De Mel 2007; Visweswaran 2013). Feminist scholars have noted that gender vio-
lence takes many forms, but all are embedded in larger structures of power and vio-
lence and shaped by cultural meanings of race, class, nation and family. Understanding
gender violence requires looking both at the intimate details of family life and at the
geopolitical considerations of power and warfare (Enloe 2000; Merry-Engle 2009:
51–2). While violence in intimate relationships often increases in times of war, interper-
sonal violence cannot be understood in abstraction from structural violence, embed-
ded in broader systems of power such as racism, occupation and colonialism (Stoler
1995; 2002; Volpp 2000; Abu-Lughod 2002).
Despite feminist attempts to situate violence against women in relation to structural
violence and power, Western conceptualizations continue to analyse such violence as
the product of inherently violent patriarchal culture in detachment from larger systems
of power such as race and colonialism (Harris 1993; Volpp 2000, cited in Shalhoub-
Kevorkian 2009: 48). Culturalizing and securitizing accounts of gender violence help
to authorize structural (racialized and colonial) violence against ‘otherized’ women.
As A bu-Lughod (20 02) explains, the reication of culture and cultural difference has
contributed to justications for US military intervention in Afghanistan in terms of
liberating Afghan women, which in itself comprises a form of colonial feminism.
This study does not examine interpersonal violence in the realm of the domestic
sphere, but rather looks to the violence perpetrated against women’s bodies by colo-
nial state and military agents, both linked to hegemonic understandings of masculin-
ity and patriarchal power (e.g. Razack 2004; Merry-Engle 2009: 335). While feminist
criminology has made great strides in centring the experiences of women and girls
in relation to victimization, crime and justice, embracing an intersectional analysis of
violence against women as well as a feminist methodology and epistemology, there is
still much work to be done. As Chesney-Lind and Morash note, feminist criminology
must not only expand its focus to the ‘powerful and oppressors’ rather than merely
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 2 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

‘studying down’ (2013: 295); it must also help expand understandings of violence and
violations against women and girls as human rights issues. My approach to the politics
of childbirth in oEJ builds on recent interventions in the eld of feminist criminology
while also embracing the insights offered by critical studies of race and settler colonial-
ism. Ianalyse the experiences of pregnant and birthing women in oEJ as a bottom-up
approach to investigating Israeli state criminality. That is, my examination of state and
military violence against pregnant and birthing Palestinian women, members of an
indigenous population, is a bottom-up approach that ‘reads’ state power from the wom-
en’s own voices while showing how inscribing pain over women’s birthing bodies aims
to enhance the colonial machinery of power. My reading takes feminist criminological
analyses one step further to suggest that to challenge the limits of justice, personal and
intimate violence against women should be structurally examined both at the local and
global level, as suggested by Perera and Razack (2014).
I situate my theorization of the politics of childbirth in oEJ within this interlock-
ing approach of violence against women under militarized colonial settlement regimes
of control, considering the demographic biopolitical (Shragai 2010), geopolitical
(Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2010) and violent legalized control over Palestinians in the city
(Shalhoub-Kevorkian and Daher-Nashif 2013). When Israel unlawfully occupied and
annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it imposed a legal status on Palestinian Jerusalemites
separate from that of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Palestinians
were assigned ‘permanent residency’, colloquially known as the ‘Jerusalem ID’, legally
situating the indigenous population as ‘foreigners’, if not invaders. Unlike citizenship,
permanent residency can be revoked at any time, does not allow the unconditional
right to unite with other family members and is not passed on to children. The state’s
policy of ‘demographic balance’ denes a ratio of 28 per cent Palestinians and 72
per cent Israeli Jews as an ofcial objective in Jerusalem (Shragai 2010). Thus, since
1967, Israel has sought to decrease the Palestinian population in Jerusalem through
a policy of forced population transfer, which has included revoking the residency sta-
tus of at least 14,200 Palestinians, denying Palestinians building permits, demolishing
Palestinian homes and denying Palestinian newborns birth certicates. Situated as for-
eigners/invaders in their own native lands, a demographically undesirable population,
and the reproducers of Palestinians, Palestinian women (and their unborn or newborn
children) are made especially vulnerable by such policies.
Childbirth in Colonial Contexts and ConictZones
Women’s experiences with childbirth are shaped by a variety of social and political
factors. Alongside discriminatory violence and race, theorists have identied colonial-
ism as a factor in differing childbirth experiences (e.g. Jasen 1997; Hunt 1999; Moft
2004). Jasen (19 97), for instance, explores the relationship between race, culture and
colonial thinking in Northern Canada. Considering how beliefs in racial thinking and
the distinction between the ‘civilized’ West and ‘savage’ natives write themselves on the
bodies of women, she analyses perceptions of Aboriginal women regarding childbirth
throughout the 20th century. Notably, Jasen’s (19 97) study shows how women are sub-
jected to interlocking ideologies of gender, colonialism and race and how dominant
beliefs and hegemonic ways of thinking are capable of affecting women’s experiences
of childbirth in materialways.
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 3 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

In contrast to the relative breadth of research on childbirth in Western contexts, lit-
erature exploring the politics, practices and experiences of childbirth in conict zones
is rather scarce and is heavily swayed towards public health, policy and medical discipli-
nary perspectives. In particular, the issue of maternal mortality features prominently
in the existing literature on birth in conict zones—and certainly not without substan-
tial cause. As a number of reports have shown, more women living in conict zones
die of preventable diseases, malnutrition and childbirth complications than they do
from direct violence or brutality (e.g. Bunde-Birouste etal. 2004; McGinn etal. 2004;
Takou r i 20 04; Kim and Fernandez 2009). Moreover, maternal mortality rates increase
in situations of conict in particular, especially in their more intense phases (Petchesky
2008). In the war zones of Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, for instance, maternal mor-
tality rates are among the highest in the world, at 2,100 per 100,000 births (Human
Rights Watch 2009) and 1,800 per 100,000, respectively (WHOSIS 2009). In contrast,
Sri Lanka, for example, has a maternal mortality rate of 39 per 100,000 births (UNICEF
2008) and Jammu/Kashmir has a rate of 5.2 per 100,000 births (Das etal. 2009).
Researchers have identied a number of reasons for maternal mortality and poor
childbirth outcomes in conict zones, including: the general disruption and deteriora-
tion of basic health and reproductive care systems (Cottingham etal. 2007; Pederson
2009); a lack of health-care professionals, especially in times of serious conict when
some are forced to abandon their work (Petchesky 20 08); the targeting of health infra-
structure during civil wars and conicts (Kim and Fernandez 2009); the effects of
trauma and violence on women’s overall health (Rehn 2002) and the lack of basic, fun-
damental health conditions such as clean water and sanitation (McGinn etal. 2004).
Furthermore, the mobility of women is greatly affected by conict situations. Notably,
women’s mobility in general is lower than that of men, due to their responsibility for
children, the elderly and disabled relatives, as well as societal restrictions upon travel
without male accompaniment (Macklin 2004; Al-Ali 2010).
In settler colonial contexts, control over women’s bodies and reproductive capaci-
ties are intimately connected to ethno-national imaginings, eliminatory policies (Wolfe
2006) and state biopolitics (Foucault 2003). As Yuval-Davis and Anthias (1989) have
suggested, women’s supposedly ‘natural’ role as mothers is appropriated by ethno-
nationalist projects, with women seen rst and foremost as the biological reproducers
of members of ethnic and national collectivities and as the reproducers of the bounda-
ries between different ethnic and national groups (see also Yuval-Davis 1993). In the
context of Israel/Palestine, nationalist framings of reproduction and the idea of wom-
en’s bodies as vessels of population growth that must be controlled (e.g. Kanaaneh
2002) have framed the Palestinian woman’s womb as a weapon that must be curtailed,
urging us to consider the role of biopolitical surveillance in examining the politics
of birth in oEJ. Demographic control, or the management of population size, move-
ment and economies, is centrally implicated in biopolitical calculations. Such analysis
includes the production of laws and policies that result in ‘legal displacement, uproot-
ing, and erasure of entire communities’ (Zureik etal. 2010). Palestinian women’s birth-
ing bodies thus represent a largely unexplored yet critical site for reading the practices
of biopolitical surveillance and thereby illuminating colonial state violence.
Certainly, the signicance of spatiality (and the consequences of spatial arrangement
on time) in understanding childbirth and childbirth complications is a matter that has
been alluded to in a number of conict zones, such as in Pakistan (Dawn.com 2009)
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 4 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

and Kashmir (Khanday 2005). However, the impairment of movement through the geo-
political structure of space has been noted most substantially in Palestine (Giacaman
etal. 2005; Giacaman etal. 2006). As a number of authors have shown, the intricate and
complex system of military checkpoints and closures throughout the occupied West
Bank has signicantly affected women’s experiences of childbirth. Military occupation
not only renders journeys to medical centres exceedingly difcult but also, in some
instances, results in women being forced to give birth at checkpoints (see Giacaman
etal. 2005; Kitzinger 2005; Round Up 2005; Giacaman etal. 2006; Long 2006; Abdul-
Rahim etal. 2009). For example, between 2000 and 2002, 52 women gave birth and
19 women and 29 newborns died in military checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian
Territories (Erturk 2005).
In the available literature on childbirth in conict zones, women’s greater sense of
well-being is generally conceptualized as being tied to feelings of empowerment and
control in the birthing process. As many researchers exploring conict in regions such
as Eastern Europe and Africa have noted, women in such areas must not only contend
with complications in childbirth but also experience a loss of control and power of
negotiation over sexual and reproductive decision making largely due to the conditions
in which they nd themselves (see Brownmiller 1993; Theweleit 1993; Olujic 1998).
TheStudy
The present study applied a multi-methodological approach to develop and discuss the
ndings, which include both qualitative and quantitative data analyses. For the quan-
titative data analyses, Ideveloped a questionnaire that was piloted and validated. For
the qualitative data analyses, Iused participatory rapid appraisal—particularly, semi-
structured interviews, in order to gain in-depth information. The ndings are based on
the analyses of two sets ofdata:
(1) Twenty-two stories of births in Jerusalem related through interviews, which track the details
of Palestinian mothers’ coping with birthing. Ipersonally conducted 11 interviews;
two research assistants conducted the remaining interviews. Twelve of the inter-
views were conducted in the hospitals and following the mothers’ deliveries, while
the remainder were interviewed in their homes in the rst 18months after giving
birth. We collected these narrations from June 2011 through September 2012. The
new mothers interviewed live in various sites in Jerusalem (such as refugee camps,
neighbourhoods and the Old City and surrounding city area). The interviewees
were between the ages of 19 and 32years old. The aim of the interview was to
enable us to learn from and comprehend their stories of birthing. Thus, Isought
to illuminate, for example, their modes of coping with the details of birth, means
of reaching the hospitals and mechanisms of attaining approval to pass specic
spaces and localities, such as checkpoints and military blockages, during birth
and soliciting the assistance of family members, community leadership and other
sources of support. Ultimately, Iintended to uncover these women’s perspectives
on the existing formal and informal networks that aid individuals throughout
their birthing process.
(2) Statistical analyses of 118 questionnaires completed by Palestinian birthing mothers
between February and August 2012. The questions were constructed based on
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 5 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

in-depth interviews and the issues raised there. In addition, the questionnaire was
shared with two experts, one of whom is a gynaecologist who examines women,
sexuality and reproductive rights in the Middle East and the second who is a femi-
nist Palestinian public health expert. Ialso conducted two pilot studies to make
sure the questions were well-worded in Arabic, clear and acceptable to women
respondents. The Cronbach alpha coefcient of reliability was computed to check
the internal validity and reliability of the questionnaire, resulting in a Cronbach
alpha coefcient of 0.89.
Data collection was conducted in three Palestinian hospitals that are located in oEJ.
Women lled out the questionnaire during the rst ve days after their delivery. Three
research assistants who live in various localities in oEJ administered the questionnaires.
All interviewees and/or their spouses reside in Jerusalem. They were either born in
Jerusalem or the surrounding area or lived there for over 20years. Interviewing women
from the various localities enabled me to explore the ways in which communities create
new spaces and manners of dealing with the hardships facing them and their families
during birth. The interviews also revealed the importance of social support, commu-
nity assistance and psychosocial interventions based on the resources available to com-
munities in a specic geographical area at a specic time. Hence, Iexamined time and
space as additional variables that allowed me to map the various techniques, strategies
and spheres of comfort.
Notably, considering the potentially traumatic nature of the research topic for the
interviewees, in the interviews my research team and I emphasized the reciprocal
nature of the research relationship (I myself am a therapist by training). Iencouraged
women to stay in contact with me after the interview, so that Icould offer them support
and ensure they had not been caused any psychological harm by sharing their experi-
ence. Ialso informed them of various community resources that could be used in times
of crisis.
While condentiality is always an issue in such sensitive research, it is paramount in a
militarized location like Jerusalem. Due to security concerns and my own commitments
to the interviewees, Idecided to share less than half of the interviews in this article.
Ikeep some cases purely condential and away from any readers’ knowledge so as to
prevent the disclosure of inner societal modes of coping, fearing that such disclosure
will end up jeopardizing families’, communities’ and individuals’ safety. Even those
voices and quotations that were collected and approved for publication by interviewees
but—to my knowledge—carried ethical problems and/or potential security dangers or
ramications (as stated above) were not used. Moreover, to protect women’s condenti-
ality, the names used throughout this paper are pseudonyms.
In addition to security concerns, being a therapist as well as a local Palestinian
helped in opening spaces of discussions and dialogues related to traumas and anxie-
ties. For instance, in some cases when new mothers discussed their dreams and fear of
losing their babies due to the Israeli spatial restrictions or about the authorities’ refusal
to grant their newborns a Jerusalemite ID, the fears raised and agonies expressed
required that Imaintain contact with the mother, help her identify potential resources
for continued support and for some interviewees follow-up personally with her in her
own home. In drawing on my own positionality as a Palestinian researcher and thera-
pist and situating the project within a bottom-up approach that examines state power
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 6 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

through the testimonies of Palestinian women, Ibuild upon a feminist criminological
methodology (e.g. Chesney-Lind and Morash 2013).
Findings
Research ndings are divided into two of the various themes emanating from the inter-
views and data collected. The rst section centres the geopolitical/spatial dimensions
of the politics of birth. The second focuses on birthing mothers’ physical health condi-
tions, as well as the Israeli authorities’ biopolitical and demographic control. This sec-
tion also draws out the psychosocial effects of militarization and violence on birthing
women’s bodies as they manifest in Palestinian women’s dreams. The legal (or ‘ille-
gal’) status of oEJ residents and the construction of Palestinians as dangerous security
threats are an overarching subject that affects both the spatial and the psychosocial
components discussed in the following section.
Pregnancy under the constraint of militarized space andtime
The difculties associated with navigating militarized spaces shaped Palestinian wom-
en’s experiences with pregnancy and childbirth, exacerbating respondent’s frustrations
and prompting them to narrate their experiences in tears, loud voices, angered body
language and harsh words. The narratives shared revealed that the struggle and con-
trol over their time when giving birth and their spaces when trying to reach their birth-
ing hospitals greatly affected their health and life conditions.
Over half of the sample (54.7 per cent) reported that their movement was restricted
during pregnancy; these women feared obstacles such as road blocks and health risks
resulting from political violence such as inhaling tear gas or being forced to wait stand-
ing in the sun or in the cold for hours to be granted passage. A mere 12.3 per cent
explained that they restricted their own movements due to health-related reasons.
When asked to elaborate about the forces restricting their movements, respondents
pointed to political factors. Leading among these are military checkpoints (69.2 per
cent) and issues related to Jerusalemite ID cards (16.9 per cent). In addition, almost
half of our respondents explained that they were delayed in reaching medical treat-
ment or visiting physicians due to political hardships (accessibility issues or fear of
being exposed to political violence).
Our inquiries into the reason behind their choice of hospital for the birth revealed that
one-third (32 per cent) of respondents chose the hospital closest to their mother’s place
of residence and 22 per cent based on recommendations of relatives and friends. The
surprising result was that 20 per cent of our sample reported that they chose the hospital
because the staff speaks Arabic and that language was an important factor for them. In
addition, almost one-fth of the mothers explained that getting a Jerusalem resident
card for their newborns was also the reason behind their choice (19 per cent), and a
similar percentage noted psychological comfort. Furthermore, 43 per cent of our sample
reported they were unable to access adequate medical treatment during pregnancy and
attributed deprivation of medical treatment primarily to spatio-political violence.
When elaborating on the experience of having a child in Jerusalem, the most promi-
nent factors that affected women’s responses were social problems and hardships facing
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 7 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

them due to being separated from and deprived of their families (for geopolitical
reasons) (35.7 per cent) and political problems (i.e. the issuing of identity cards, the
renewal of Jerusalem residency and the military checkpoints). Notably, however, the
majority of the responses (64.3 per cent) were related to economic problems, although
over 80 per cent of mothers reported suffering from political violence during their
pregnancy.
For example, one of the common concerns expressed was that an unplanned early
birth in an area excluded from the Israeli-dened municipal boundaries of Jerusalem
would have resulted in their newborns being denied residency status. Interviewees
stressed that they were forced to restrict their own movement during the nine months
of pregnancy as a consequence, which resulted in various adverse psychological effects
such as feeling afraid and suffocated, sudden crying, extreme irritability and a sense of
being left alone. Moreover, interviewees also attributed to this self-restriction various
physical health problems such as elevated blood glucose and pressure, among other
syndromes. Twenty-nine-year-old Aida shared the following:
The past three days were the worst days of my life... having the baby under such stress, needing to
catch a bus while experiencing the pain of severe contractions, knowing that Imight have the baby
on the bus.... Ihad contractions, bad ones; Iwas dying of fear, pain, ru o’b [terror]... real terror... hold-
ing on to my bag... as if the bag can carry the pain, crying my body in silence, wanting to go back to
my house.... to have the baby there... but then, the baby would end up without an ID, undocumented,
unsecured, displaced... m’shatateh [displaced] throughout her life.... Ireally had the worst days of my
life.... Iwas giving birth, but living death at the same time... and Istopped myself from giving birth....
hanging onto my bag, squeezing it, promising my unborn to reach the hospital, and have her in
Jerusalem, b’il Quds ya habibti, b’il Quds [in Jerusalem my love, in Jerusalem].
Aida’s story, and her insistence on giving birth in Jerusalem to ensure her child would
have a Jerusalemite ID, underscores the violent geopolitical aspects of birthing women’s
experiences in oEJ. Yet her insistence on making it to a Jerusalem hospital illustrates
her power to challenge the maze of geopolitical violence. Aida’s husband’s inability
to accompany her to the hospital in Jerusalem where she gave birth due to military
restrictions further illustrates the control of space and time and the fragmentation of
Palestinian families by the occupying military regime. In her ownwords:
Do you know any pregnant woman who needs to cross checkpoints, ride a bus, leave her kids alone
at the mercy of soldiers throwing tear gas bombs, under their majassat el muraqabeh [surveillance
devices] that are surrounding our area... to make sure the new baby is born in Jerusalem... for only
if she is born here can she survive their terror; otherwise, she will be dead... yes, dead... like all those
who are unable to reach their homes... like all those who are deprived of even seeing their beloved
ones, just like when you are physically dead.... My sister can’t come to Jerusalem... my sister can’t come
visit my sick father in her own house.... Iwill never do this to my own children.... You might think Iam
crazy... but it is better to take the bus, wait at the checkpoints, be humiliated on the way, be threat-
ened by their ries, be worried and scared... it is better to go through all this than to end up having
a child who is undocumented, unrecognized, and most of all deprived of his family, his support, his
eizwi [extended community’s support].... What do Ifeel? Ifeel tired, happy, sad, terrorized by their
policies and threats... but Ialso feel like Idid it.
Aida’s words reect how her militarized space and controlled and dominated time
inscribed pain over her birthing body. Her severe anxieties, both as a woman on the
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 8 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

verge of giving birth and also after giving birth, viciously invaded her psyche, tortured
her birthing body and created a social geography of horror. Situating Aida and her
newborn in a geography of fear and within an archaeology of constant uncertainty,
turned time and space into a tool of oppression and demonization of the colonized.
Such demonization is also reected in the voice of 29-year-old Hannan, a member of
the research team, who shared her own ordeal:
My daughter was born 17months ago, and Istill dream that Ilost her while at the checkpoint. Istill
wake up crying, wondering whether I would be denied entry to the hospital, and I still await my
mother who was not able to join me when Iwas giving birth. Ilive the trauma of childbirth every
time Isee a pregnant woman and tell myself that Ido not want to have more kids, Ido not want to go
through that same feeling and experience again.
The social geography of horror inscribed on the psyche of birthing women
shaped Hannan’s words and reactions. The anxiety she exhibited while sharing
her ordeal, as well as her insistence on being involved in the study to speak up and
share her dreams, revealed discriminatory spatial arrangements and temporal
control, as well as grave traumatic effects on women’s lives and bodies long after
they givebirth.
The various modes of subverting the system to give birth to a child with a birth
certicate and an acknowledged residency status were apparent in all the descriptions
and stories that interviewees shared. Women’s agency was always mixed with a colonial
inscription of pain caused by spatial restrictions and military checkpoints. This dual-
ity of agency accompanied by suffering was apparent in 24-year-old Layal’s description
of standing at a checkpoint for three hours prior to giving birth, awaiting the Israeli
soldiers’ decision whether to allow her to pass. As she explained, her space of birth, of
giving life, was fused with the space and time ofdeath:
I stood there, about to give birth, with so much pain, totally confused, holding my body fearing it will
explode, fearing my water will break, so sad, heavy sadness, but not one tear drop, saddened about
my situation, our conditions, Iwas about to give birth, as if about to die.
The fusion between agency, resistance, life and death in her birthing body was heavily
affected by her marginality as a Palestinian woman, where her freedom of movement,
safety, security and ability to access the hospital was severely restricted by a brutal colo-
nial administration of space. Layla further explained the impact of the Israeli geopoliti-
cal machinery of blockages and spatial haunting at the military checkpoints:
Throughout my pregnancy, Ihad such scary dreams of not being able to pass the checkpoints, so
Icarried all the papers with me, all the time. Ihave a Jerusalemite ID, but we live outside the check-
point [borders] because we could not nd an affordable place to live, and because the Old City is
not safe for pregnant women anymore. This is my rst child, and Idid not want him to live in terror
as Ilived my entire life.
Layal explained to me that she carried documentation that proves that she pays water
and electricity, as well as papers that prove that she lives beyond the Israeli military
checkpoint but in an area that is legally considered Jerusalem. She also stated that she
did all she could to combat her nightmares of losing her baby at the checkpoint as a
result of her inability to prove her Jerusalem residency because she lacked the necessary
Israeli documentation.
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 9 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

Layal’s voice, like those of other women interviewed for this study, reects every-
day life in a colonized city and reveals how space is affected by Israeli policies and
bureaucracies, the intense sense of living under the constant surveillance of the
colonial administrators and the effect of constant anxiety on women’s psychological
state of mind and even their dreams. The soldiers at the checkpoints had the power
to decide whether Layal could live her birthing experience or, in her words, ‘die her
birthing experience’ (‘rah a3eesh wiladti, walla rah amoot wiladti’). Her need to protect
her child from the daily terror she herself experienced as a child and youth growing
up in the Old City of Jerusalem forced her to look for new secure spaces outside the
checkpoint, but resulted in her suffering at the checkpoint while in labour, trying
to enter the city to give birth. Waiting at the checkpoint for three hours rendered
her an outsider and an ‘unwanted entity’ that needs a permit to reach the hospi-
tal. Layal and the other mothers interviewed for this study shared with me their
feelings that the system had positioned them as less than human, or as 20 -year-old
Hiam explained: ‘another kind of humans’. Their voices revealed the way Israel’s
spatial mechanisms of control, as in the checkpoint in Layal’s case, produced them
as unrecognized, unwanted and animalistic. Their voices revealed how the system
regulates them bio-politically and spatio-temporally, by dening them as security
threats that can be violated, controlled, erased and uprooted through sociolegal
mechanisms of Israeli control.
Women’s narratives consistently highlighted the gendered aspects of spatio-temporal
control and violence. Their time (mainly when in pain, in need of health care or dur-
ing birth) and their space (including the home space) were cast in a different manner.
Exploring their immobility, the control over their territoriality and the fears stem-
ming from the importance of their minutes and hours—both as women and mainly
as pregnant women—produced new social arrangements of family roles, spaces of
mobility, accessibility and temporalities and reproduced gendered differences and gen-
dered stereotypes. All interviewees explained that being pregnant and giving birth
in Jerusalem inicts heavy gendered tolls on the birthing mother. The interviewees
repeatedly described attending to the needs of the newborn child as a scary issue, for
it necessitates facing and overcoming fear: fearing the Israeli authority, fearing facing
punitive measures if caught in the wrong place and time and fearing arrest. Twenty-
eight-year-old Salwa, for example, discussed the fact that she needed to drive herself to
the hospital while having contractions, fearing that if her husband (who does not have
a Jerusalemite ID) is caught driving the car, he will be deported, and as she stressed:
‘I wanted him by me’. Moreover, 21-year-old Mona explained that she was arrested and
handcuffed on her way to the health clinic, and Alia gave numerous examples of need-
ing to change her plans fearing being caught in a space lled with violence and tear gas
bombs. As 26 -year-old Haifa explained,
When Iwas in my eighth month, they blocked our area from all angles. They threw gas in our street,
even on our house and neighborhood, although they noticed that Iam pregnant. Iapproached them
and asked them to have some mercy, and not to throw tear gas. The soldiers and the border police
did not even want to listen to me, and while Iwas standing by them begging, explaining that there are
young kids, babies, and the child Iam carrying in my belly, they took the tear gas bomb and threw it
at a group of young kids from our area. Idid not know whether to run home fast or stay by them, but
Iwas quickly ordered to go home. Irefused and rushed to the butcher next to my house, asked for an
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 10 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

onion, and started smelling it to prevent the gas from affecting the baby. You know, with and without
the tear gas bombs, we are suffocated here in Ras el Amood [a neighborhood in oEJ].
Haifa’s account supports Layal’s. Her Palestinian identity turned her body’s need for
protection and her unborn child’s need for a secure and protective cocoon into a front
line for political struggle and power games. These experiences were also reected by
22-year-old Hiam’s narrative:
I was walking with my sister-in-law. Both of us were pregnant, barely managing to climb the hill,
when the border patrol passed in their jeep. The moment they noticed us, they circled back and
threw three tear gas bombs on us. When we both started running and screaming, “Why, why did you
asphyxiate us, why tear gas?” they started laughing and kept on driving.
Women also stressed that the family’s roles changed due to military violence; hus-
bands and not the extended family members became their primary source of support.
They also stressed their fears of the family’s own internal patriarchal restrictions and
emasculating colonial hardships, including men’s inability to attend to women’s needs
when in birth or to offer support and help in times of crises. Twenty-ve-year-old Maysa
explained: ‘My brother-in-law was screaming at me, out of his own frustration that he
won’t be able to drive me to the hospital, as he might be arrested by the Israelis… he felt
that his hands were tied, as he could not help me’. All interviewees discussed in detail
the hardships imposed by the Israeli bureaucracies, including regulations on register-
ing their babies, as well as language barriers affecting access to medical help and their
ability to ll out ofcial forms, read medical or legal papers, write, request and claim
their rights as new mothers. Women’s colonized time and space proved to profoundly
impact their world and bodily experiences.
Hiam, Layal, and Haifa’s pregnant bodies and lives, their gender and sexuality,
as pregnant women—as ‘reproducers of Palestinians’, in Hiam’s words—in addition
to internal patriarchal and familial hardships, turned them into objects vulnera-
ble to violation, torture and attacks. Israel’s biopolitical positioning of Palestinian
women as symbols of their nation allowed military forces positioned in the area
to torture, attack and violate them, as Hiam experienced. Yet interviewed women’s
stories pointed not only to the everydayness of their suffering but also to the eve-
rydayness of innovating new strategies, reverting to unmediated forms of actions,
including dreams of escaping their connement and challenging their oppressors.
They shared with me the fact that they started learning the Hebrew language to
speak back, they searched for human rights organizations that could assist them
legally and managed to nd women’s organizations that could assist in case the
family and immediate community fails. Fanon’s analysis of negritude holds a similar
account, explaining that the colonized’s reactions to colonial time and space are dif-
cult to avoid, to the degree that it can ‘normalize the pathological’, leading to an
impasse in the quest for decolonization and liberation (1967: 17–8). In the present
case study, the everydayness and intimacy of colonial administration pushed women
to seek new strategies to survive cruelty. Yet their agency, self-education and solicita-
tion of help were always faced with the severity of the violent settler colonial system.
As the voices quoted above portray, Israel’s geopolitical, biopolitical and necropoliti-
cal policies are ultimately tied to Israel’s maintenance of sovereignty through legal,
spatial and political means.
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 11 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

Physical and psychosocialhealth
As illustrated in the previous narratives, birthing mothers’ health conditions are inevi-
tably shaped by the geopolitics of birth in oEJ, which centrally implicate temporal and
spatial power. The geopolitical aspects of control affect women’s bodies and health con-
ditions in various ways. Strikingly, questions in the questionnaire regarding respond-
ents’ health conditions before giving birth revealed that almost one-third (30.6 per
cent) of the sample reported that they had previously had a miscarriage for reasons
beyond their control. One young interviewee, Rawdah, shared with me that two of her
friends had miscarriages. One of them was prevented by the military authorities from
boarding a bus and stood on her feet in very cold weather. She had caught a bad cold,
which resulted in her losing her baby. Her other friend, Salmah, saw soldiers running
after her cousin, shooting and trying to catch him. She ran after them; she feared that
they would shoot her cousin and wanted to help him run away. She ran hard for over ten
minutes and had her child prematurely, in the 30th week. Her newborn never madeit.
While 50 per cent of the women explained that miscarriage occurred due to per-
sonal medical reasons, 18.8 per cent stated that miscarriage occurred for unknown
reasons. The remainder attributed their miscarriage to socio-medical reasons, such as
being deprived of contact with family (due to the political situation) and being unable
to participate in important family gatherings such as funerals or a sibling’s wedding
(due to the closure and checkpoints). This tremendous rift affected their health, espe-
cially their mental health. Only 3 per cent stated that they chose to have an abortion
rather than carry toterm.
As Table1 demonstrates (below), our data revealed a signicant association between
pregnant women’s exposure to spatial violence and the need to have an abortion for
reasons out of their control (i.e. not for medical reasons or ‘negligence’). The hypoth-
esis was tested using the chi-square test for the two variables (exposure to spatial vio-
lence during pregnancy and abortion for reasons beyond your control).
The chi-square analysis shows that the calculated signicance is 0.07. This means
that there is a statistically signicant relationship at alpha 0.1 between exposure to
political violence during pregnancy and abortion for reasons beyond the respondent’s
control (χ2(1, 60)=3.39, p=0.07).
Premature delivery was another issue raised, attributed in multiple narratives to the
conditions of navigating militarized spaces. Interviewees described crossing military
checkpoints to reach the health clinic through use of their sibling’s IDs or removing
their veil when in the streets based on fear of being arrested or harassed by Israeli
T1 Exposure to violence during pregnancy and abortion for reasons beyond your control (cross
tabulation)
Exposure to violence during pregnancy During this pregnancy, were you
exposed to abortion for reasons
beyond your control?
Tot a l
Yes No
Tear gas inhalation 13.3% (n=8) 13.3% (n=8) 26.7% (n=16)
Overcome checkpoints or trafc detours 18.3% (n=11) 55.0% (n=33) 73.3% (n=44)
Tot a l 31.7% (n=19) 68. 3% (n=41) 100% (n=60)
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 12 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

soldiers. Such factors affected women’s health, and four women attributed their prema-
ture births to fear of being caught ‘sneaking in’ against the colonizer’s regulations. In
one of the cases, Marwa drove a car without a license to help her younger sister reach
the hospital when she went into labour. She explained that they both decided not to
wait for their husbands to come up with a solution, and instead took the car, removed
their veils, applied make up and were able to pass without being stopped or caught.
The testimonies clearly reveal that women’s ability to navigate militarized spaces
affected access to medical care. Twenty-one-year-old Ghaida, who was interviewed two
days after having her rst son, explained that when she attempted to reach her doctor
after discovering some blood spots, she was delayed at the checkpoint. After waiting for
hours, the authorities denied her entry, stating that she did not have the right permit.
They treated me like a criminal; they prevented me from reaching the hospital when Iwas in dire
need just to see a doctor and make sure Iwas not losing my son…. All this while Iwas alone, for my
mother could not get a permit and my husband was already in Jerusalem waiting for me at the hospi-
tal…. Iended up sneaking in like a thief, and had no other choice but to take a taxi to help me reach
the hospital without any delay…. Imade it, and my baby is healthy…. but why this torture, why can’t
Ibe treated as a human being, why can’t Ihave my baby under normal conditions and not under such
horror, why am Iperceived to be a criminal? Aterrorist?
Ghaida’s gendered body and sexuality as a pregnant woman were tools in the hands
of the soldiers to inscribe their power. She was forced to spend money and take dan-
gerous paths to subvert the system that disciplined and punished her. Her status of
being ‘legal’ and ‘approved’ was interrogated to frame her as an unwanted, deviant or
criminal other. The control over her time and life worked to privilege the soldiers, de-
privilege her and torture her during and following birth. Her identity as an uprooted
Palestinian was used to further uproot her not only from her nation, community and
family but also from her own body when trying to givebirth.
Ghaida’s story also evidences the extent to which inscriptions of colonial power over
women’s birthing bodies are accomplished through ‘legal’ means. The Israeli state’s
interest in controlling women’s time and spaces, including their freedom of movement
when trying to reach their doctors or the hospital in Jerusalem, is directly motivated by
the biopolitical project of preventing Palestinian birth in Jerusalem. Twenty-six-year-
old Mary’s narrative provided a similar account. She explained that because she does
not have a Jerusalemite ID, and given the authorities’ power to deport her and thus
prevent her from giving birth to her child in Jerusalem, she feared moving from her
neighbourhood in Wadi al-Joz to her parents’ home in Sheikh Jarrah. As a result, she
became trapped in her own home, ‘suffocated’ by her immobility and by her fear of the
soldiers and the nearby settlers who inhabited her home space. In herwords:
I see the settler children and women walking with the strollers in our streets and neighborhood, set-
tlers who do not even speak Hebrew, but got their IDs because they are Jews, while Iam dying in my
prison. They turned my pregnancy into a nightmare, they made me a prisoner in my own home….
And now, with my baby, my fear has exacerbated, so Istay home with the kids most of the time. When
my husband comes home from work, Itake all my anger and frustration out on him.
Mary’s encounter, her situation of externally imposed house arrest and her fears, which
were caused in large part by the state’s policies of refusing to grant her a Jerusalemite
ID, resulted in her being violent against her children and anxious all the time. By
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 13 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

contrast, she witnessed Israeli Jewish immigrant women living in Jerusalem being
allowed to move freely wherever they wished and enjoying protection and security from
the state. Mary and her family were denied these basic rights. The state’s construc-
tion of Mary as a ‘threatening’ entity turned her into a military target who should
legitimately be attacked and suffocated, even as she took shelter in her own home.
By restricting her movement under the guise of her lack of ofcial residency status,
‘security reasoning’ imprisoned her and eliminated her from the public sphere. Such
reasoning also restricted her mobility (as all other women interviewed explained) to
access healthcare.
The narratives shared by Ghaida and Mary illustrate the extent to which Israeli
inscription of power over Palestinian women’s birthing bodies is deeply entangled with
the biopolitical strategies embedded in Israel’s legal mechanisms of control. The latter
include the Citizenship Law (which controls the ID and permit system, family reunica-
tion and freedom of movement) and demographic policy that constructs Palestinians as
a ‘demographic threat’. Israel’s biopolitical concerns with maintaining a Jewish demo-
graphic advantage in the land-space of Jerusalem reconstitute Palestinian women’s
birthing bodies as security threats, as they are producers of Palestinians. The Israeli
State’s control over the ability of Palestinian women to give birth in Jerusalem, retain
a status of residence and ensure their newborns are granted a birth certicate invades
women’s daily movements and social and psychological conditions.
Surveillance over pregnant women’s bodies and lives in oEJ and continuous exposure
to political violence penetrated these women’s consciousness to the extent of inltrat-
ing dreams. Out of 118 questionnaire respondents, 66 shared with us their repeated
nightmares of losing their babies, having a stillbirth, having disabled children, having
to face soldiers at the checkpoints while pregnant, fears of losing their homes due to
demolitions while having the baby and having their identity cards and lands cons-
cated, among otherfears.
When reecting upon political hardships faced during their pregnancy, the major-
ity of the respondents (61.9 per cent) noted that they did not have Jerusalem residency
cards, and around 36 per cent stated that they had already led family reunication
claims. Furthermore, 69.5 per cent could not register their children for identity cards.
When asked whether they believe that checkpoints affected the ability of their families
to visit and support them during childbirth, 78.4 per cent afrmed that checkpoint
procedures comprised a major impediment for visitors. Indeed, all respondents but
four reported that they were exposed to tear gas inhalation during pregnancy (25 per
cent) or that they needed to struggle to overcome checkpoints and go through trafc
detours due to political violence (69.2 per cent). One interviewee, 24-year-old Lama,
explained that her Jerusalemite ID and those of her family were revoked and her family
reunication process was halted. Since she was a nurse at a hospital, she was able to use
the hospital ambulance to cross the checkpoint and reach the hospital to have her baby
in Jerusalem. Yet the events around her birth were still traumatic. In her words, during
an interview conducted at the hospital four days following the birth of herchild:
My pregnancy was lled with severe anxieties, fear, and depression... always constrained.... I was
thinking about each and every act, always trapped...to the degree [that Iwas] dreaming about being
tied with wires... you know the wires the Jews put on the checkpoints, those lled with edgy ends
[barbed wire].... that was my dream.... being tied with wires around my face... even inside my body,
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 14 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

preventing my lungs and heart from working....The night before Ihad my baby—I had him four weeks
prematurely—I was on duty in the hospital.... Iclosed my eyes to rest... and [then came thoughts of
the barbed wire]... the inability to breathe... and so much anxiety... then Istarted feeling pain....
Icalled the doctors, and my husband, and they ordered the ambulance for me. At the checkpoint
they questioned my pain... do you think they count us as humans? To question my pain, when Iam
wet... all wet... and they can see it... my water broke, the baby is drying up.... They just look at us... they
have stopped [thinking of] us as humans... we are all imprisoned... we were held at the checkpoint
without anyone even looking us in the face, talking to us... they did not talk, touch or look at us... as
if we are animals.... Even the hospital here is like a prison, look at all the women around you... each
one has a story... we are all persecuted prisoners.
Her words call attention to the way surveillance is generally understood as a mate-
rial issue, executed for instance through the technology of the ‘checkpoint’. Her story
exposes the constant fear associated with the ever-shifting dynamics of material surveil-
lance alongside the emotional residue of that daily experience with fear, which seeps
into the very mind and body of the subject. As Mbembe (2003) has written in his dis-
cussion of necropolitics, settler colonial thinking and logic determines who will live,
what kind of dreams are possible for the colonized and what kinds of limitations can
and should be placed on any ostensible agency, as deemed by the colonizer. Palestinian
women’s dreams expose the colonial appropriation of psychological space.
Discussion
Studies of pregnant and birthing women worldwide point to the importance of health,
basic economic well-being and social and psychological support as main factors affect-
ing women’s welfare. Yet the particular conditions of Palestinian women in oEJ demand
that we also include in this assessment factors such as militarization, biopolitical ide-
ologies and sociolegal modes of eviction as crimes against women. Similar to studies
conducted in South Africa and in states vested in population control (Ginsberg and
Rapp 1991; Kaufman 2000; Kanaaneh 2002; Remennick 2008), the data collected in
this study reveal the everydayness and intimacy of violence against birthing women. It
indicates that Israel’s biopolitics, especially the production, maintenance and control
of ‘undesirable’ populations, reconstitutes the Palestinian woman’s birthing body as a
security threat that should be made to disappear (as per Smith 2006). This conceptual-
ization suggests that the inscription of power over women’s birthing bodies—by means
of restricting their freedom of movement, subjecting them to checkpoints, preventing
them from having their babies in a safe and secure manner, denying them access to
hospitals, disputing their status as legal entities (by refusing to give their newborns
resident IDs) and other reproductive policies—constitutes a biopolitical and geopoliti-
cal maze of violence against women. The study suggests that Israeli control over the
medical services in oEJ expresses biopolitical leanings with regard to state policy in
that it enables closer monitoring of actual demographics (e.g. Jasen 1997; Giacaman
etal. 2005). The ‘political arithmetic’ (in the words of Kanaaneh 2002) facilitated by
the medicalization of childbirth can result in a walled-in cycle of violence, technologies
and techniques that reproduce settler colonial dispossession.
Beyond assessing the consequences of militarization for health, the need exists to
show how the conceptions of childbirth as portrayed by my respondents are constructed
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 15 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

through militarized frameworks, insofar as the health services offered to them are
heavily intertwined with the structures of conict and violence (as per Loyd 2009;
Bhu ngalia 2010). The spatial and temporal restrictions imposed on birthing women as
well as the heavily militarized bureaucracies of population control in oEJ support the
notion that surveillance over Palestinian women’s birthing bodies is embedded and
advanced through prevailing geopolitical and biopolitical imaginings of the spaces of
both war and health.
Israel’s biopolitical control and militarization is a form of structural intimate vio-
lence with direct, intentional consequences for women’s birthing bodies, lives and well-
being. This form of control constructs different categories of birthing conditions for
women while representing them as dangerous and uncounted others. The language of
‘security’ and ‘dangerousness’ produces women, their unborn and newborns and their
families as unwanted, demonized, ‘threatening’ entities, which authorizes and permits
violence against them. Gendering the biopolitical and necropolitical violence against
women in the colonial spatial organization results in women’s double suffering, as the
colonial spatio-temporal arrangement reinforces patriarchal connement, domestic-
ity and gender divisions. However, this study shows that the gendered contradictions
of colonial abuses were unable to fully deny women’s anticolonial struggles. Women
claimed the city, and their rights to give birth in zones of life rather the zones of death
conned by the colonizers. Women’s narratives of crossing the borders between zones
of death to zones of life required them to leave their homes, nd new ways to subvert
colonial oppression and become more visible agents of liberation. The re-appropria-
tion of colonial space meant not only confronting the colonizers but also overcoming
social and cultural taboos; women’s mode of unveiling to pass through a heavily milita-
rized area, using their siblings’ IDs to cross a checkpoint and driving without an Israeli
license to reach the hospital while in pain all serve to re-establish a gendered revo-
lutionary resistance. Women’s revolutionary dialectic of their bodies, time and space
articulated in the everydayness of their struggle lays the foundation for anti-oppressive
gendered relations. The creation of global and local moral communities to resist and
deny colonizers’ impunity and to indiscriminately recognize violence against women
as unacceptable is a major function of feminist criminology (Perera and Razack 2014).
Conclusion
This paper has sought to reveal the intimate, embodied aspects of settler colonial state
violence and criminality against birthing and pregnant women in oEJ. It suggests that
violence against the birthing journey invades women’s spaces, time, bodies and psyches
through militarized control of their legal status, movement and ability to reach medical
facilities and care. The intimacy and everydayness of such cruelty penetrated even the
most hidden zones: women’s dream spaces. The interlocking effect of pregnancy and
birth, geopolitics and the biopolitical control of life and the state’s settler colonial ide-
ology create new spaces of criminality and violence against women that should be fur-
ther researched and challenged. My analysis of Palestinian women’s navigation of the
colonial machinery of violence during the period of pregnancy and birth demonstrates
the profound need to situate state violence against women as a form of criminality that
should be rigorously examined by feminist criminologists and argues that only by creat-
ing moral communities could feminists block the reproduction of such violence.
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 16 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

Funding
This work was supported by the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) -
Jerusalem through the NGO Development Center
Acknowledgements
This study would not have been possible without the heartfelt contributions of many
individuals. In particular, I would like to thank: all the birthing Palestinian women who
agreed to be interviewed for this study and shared very personal and intimate details;
the hospitals’ administrations and their staffs for allowing me to collect the data and
consult with them on various stages of the study; my very insightful eld workers, attor-
ney Riham Abu Jaber, feminist activist, Aida Isawi, and social worker Layal Souri. I
am also very grateful for all the work and support of the Y WCA staff, mainly Mrs. May
Amireh, Ms. Hanan Kamar, Ms. Mira Rizek, and Ms. Sandrine Amer for enabling me
to carry out this study with all its complexity. A special thank you goes to Kate Rouhana
and Sarah Ihmoud for their editorial counsel and insightful comments.
R
A-L, L. (2002), ‘Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological
Reections on Cultural Relativism and its Others’, American Anthropologist, 104:
783–90.
A-R, H. F., A-R, N. M. E., and W, L. (2009), ‘Cesarean Section
Deliveries in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt): An Analysis of the 2006 Palestinian
Family Health Survey’, Health Policy, 93: 151–6.
A-A, N. (2010), ‘The War on Terror and Women’s Rights in Iraq’, in A. Robben, ed.,
Iraq at a Distance: What Anthropologists Can Teach Us About the War, 57–97. University of
Pennsylvania Press.
B, L. (2010), ‘A Liminal Territory: Gaza, Executive Discretion, and Sanctions
Turned Humanitarian’, Geojournal, 75: 357.
B, S. (1993), ‘Making Female Bodies the Battleeld: Alas for Women, There is
Nothing Unprecedented about Mass Rape in War’, Newsweek, 4 January, 37.
B-B, A., E, M., G, N., H, M., S, D., W , E.,
and Z, A. (2004), Health and Peace-Building: Securing the Future. The University of New
South Wales Health and Conict Project, the School of Public Health and Community
Medicine.
C-L, M. (2006), ‘Patriarchy, Crime and Justice: Feminist Criminology in an Era
of Backlash’, Feminist Criminology, 1: 6–26.
C-L, M. and M, M. (2013), ‘Transformative Feminist Criminology:
ACritical Re-thinking of a Discipline’, Critical Criminology, 21: 287–304.
C, J., G-M, C., and W, C. (2007), ‘Sexual and Reproductive
Health in Conict Areas: The Imperative to Address Violence Against Women’, BJOG,
113: 301–3.
C, K. (1991), ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and
Violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43: 1241–99.
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 17 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

D, N. P., S, U., and P, R. (2009), ‘Emerging Causes and Determinants of Maternal
Mortality in India: Based on Large-Scale Surveys Since the 1990s’, available online at
http://iussp2009.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=90577.
DAWN.COM (2009), ‘Pregnant Women Face Risks in Conict Zones’, 28 August, available
online at http://www.dawn.com/w ps/wcm/connect/dawn- content-librar y/dawn/news/
pakistan/provinces/03-pregnant-women-face-risks-in-conict-zone-ss-06.
D M, N. (2007), Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory and Narrative in the Armed
Conict. Sage Publications.
E, C. (2000), Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. University
of California Press.
E, Y. (2005), Missio n to Occupied Palestinian Territor y, UN Country R eport (E/CN.4/2005/72/
Add. 4). United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights.
F, F. (1967), Black Skin, White Masks, trans. C. L. Markmann. Grove.
F, M. (2003), Society Must be Defended. Allen Lane.
G, D. (2001), The Culture of Control. Polity.
G, R., A-R, N. M.E., and W, L. (2006), ‘The Limitations on Choice:
Palestinian Women’s Childbirth Location, Dissatisfaction with the Place of Birth and
Deter mina nt s’, European Journal of Public Health, 17: 86–91.
G, R., W, L., A-R, H., and W, L. (2005), ‘The Politics of Childbirth
in the Context of Conict: Policies or De facto Fractices?’, Health Policy, 72: 129–39.
G, F. and R, R. (1991), ‘The Politics of Reproduction’, Annual Review of
Anthropology, 20: 311–43.
H, C. (1993), ‘Whiteness as Property’, Harvard Law Review, 106: 1710–69.
Human Rights Watch (2009), ‘World Report 2009: Sierra Leone’, UNHCR Refworld, avail-
able online at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/49705f9246.html.
H, N. R. (1999), A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalisation, and Mobility in the Congo.
Duke University Press.
J, P. (1997), ‘Race, Colonization and Childbirth’, Social History of Medicine, 10: 383–400.
K, R. (2002), Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel. University
of California Press.
K, C. E. (2000), ‘Reproductive Control in Apartheid South Africa’, Population
Studies, 541: 105–14.
K, Z. (2005), Negotiating Reproductive Healthcare Needs in a Conict Situation in the
Kashmir Valley. Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies.
K, G. J. and F, M. D. (2009), ‘The Nexus Between Health and Security: ACase-
based Approach to Evaluating Health Conditions and Delivery in Conict Zones’,
3D Security Initiative, available online at http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/
documents/3D_NexusBetweenHealthAndSecurity.pdf.
K, S. (2005), ‘Letter from Europe: Birth, Military Occupation, and Patriarchy’,
Birth, 32: 232–4.
L, J. C. (2006), ‘Border Anxiety in Israel/Palestine’, Antipode, 38: 107–27.
L, J. M. (2009), ‘“A Microscopic Insurgent”: Militarization, Health and Critical
Geographies of Violence’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 99: 863–73.
M, A. (2004), ‘Like Oil and Water, with a Match: Militarized Commerce, Armed
Conict, and Human Security in Sudan’, in W. Giles and J. Hyndman, eds, Sites of Violence:
Gender and Conict Zones, 75–107. University of California Press.
M, A. (2003), ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture, 15: 11–40.
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 18 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

MG, T., C, S., P, S., and M, M. (2004), Reproductive Health for Conict-
Affected People: Policies, Research and Programmes. Humanitarian Practice Network.
M-E, S. (2009), Gender Violence: ACultural Perspective. Wiley-Blackwell.
M, P. N. (2004), ‘Colonization: A Health Determinant for Pregnant Dobrib Women’,
Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 15: 323–330.
O, M. B. (1998), ‘Embodiment of Terror: Gendered Violence in Peacetime and
Wartime in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 12: 31–50.
P, J. (2009), Health and Conict: AReview of the Links. Fafo.
P, R. P. (2008), ‘Conict and Crisis Settings: Promoting Sexual and Reproductive
R i ghts’, Reproductive Health Matters, 16: 4–9.
P, S. A.,  R, S. (2014), ‘Introduction: At the Limits of Justice’, in S. Razack
and S. Perera, eds., At the Limits of Justice: Women of Colour on Terror, 1–14. University of
Toronto Press.
R, S. (ed.) (20 0 2), Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. University
of Toronto Press.
R, S. (2 004), Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the
New Imperialism. University of Toronto Press.
R, E. (2002), ‘War and Women’s Health’, in E. Rehn and E. J. Sirleaf, eds, Women,
War, Peace: The Independent Experts’ Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conict on Women
and Women’s Role in Peace-Building, Progress of the World’s Women, Vol. One, 31–46.
UNIFEM.
R, L. (2008), ‘Contested Motherhood in an Ethnic State: Voices from an Israeli
Postpartum Ward’, Ethnicities, 8: 199–226.
Round Up (2005), ‘Childbirth in the Palestinian West Bank’, Reproductive Health Matters, 13:
193 – 4.
S, N. (2010), ‘Demography, Geopolitics, and the Future of Israel’s Capital:
Jerusalem’s Proposed Master Plan’, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, available online
at http://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Jerusalem-Master-Plan.pdf.
S-K, N. (2009), Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conict Zones:
APalestinian Case-Study. Cambridge University Press.
—— (2010), Military Occupation, Trauma and the Violence of Exclusion: Trapped Bodies and Lives.
Young Women’s Christian Association – Palestine.
S-K, N. and D-N, S. (2013), ‘Femicide and Colonization
between the Politics of Exclusion and the Culture of Control’, Violence against Women, 19:
295–315.
S, A. (2005), Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. South End Press.
—— (2006), ‘Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking
Women of Color Organizing’, in INCITE! Women of Color against Violence, ed., Color of
Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, 66–73. South End Press.
S, E. A. (2007), ‘From Academia to Policy Making: Changing Police Responses to
Violence against Women’, Theoretical Criminology, 11: 209–19.
S, A. L. (2 0 02), Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial
Rule. University of California Press.
—— (1995), Race and the Education of Desire. Duke University Press.
T, M. S. (2004), ‘Reproductive Health: Issues of Maternal Morbidity and Mortality’,
The Internet Journal of Health, 3: 1528 –8315.
THE POL ITIC S OF BIRTH A ND THE INT IMACIES OF VIOLENCE
Page 19 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from

T, K. (1993), ‘The Bomb’s Womb and the Gender of War (War Goes on Preventing
Women from Becoming the Mothers of Invention)’, in M. Cooke and A. Wollacott, eds,
Gendering War Talk, 283–315. Princeton University Press.
UNICEF (2008), Progress for Children: AReport Card on Maternal Mortality. UNICEF.
V, K. (ed.) (2013) Everyday Occupations: Experiencing Militarism in South Asia and
the Middle East. University of Pennsylvania Press.
V, L. (2000), ‘Blaming Culture for Bad Behavior’, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities,
12: 89–116.
W    , S. (2008), ‘What is to Be Done about Violence against Women? Gender,
Violence, Cosmopolitanism and the Law’, British Journal of Criminology, 48: 39–54.
WHOSIS (2009), ‘Afghanistan’, World Health Organization Statistical Information System,
available online at http://w w w.who.int/whosis/en/.
W, E. (1983), What Is to Be Done About Violence Against Women? Penguin.
W, P. (2006), ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide
Research, 8: 387–409.
Y-D, N. (1993), ‘Gender and Nation’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16: 621–32.
Y-D, N. and A, F. (1989), Women-Nation-State. Macmillan Press.
Z, E., L, D., and A-L, Y. (eds) (2010), Surveillance and Control in Israel/
Palestine: Population, Territory and Power. Taylor and Francis.
SHALHOUB -K EVOR KIA N
Page 20 of 20
by guest on May 21, 2015http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from