Bodies, Buses and Permits: Palestinians Navigating Care

Authors

  • Rana Sharif Department of Gender Studies, UCLA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.109

Keywords:

healthcare, necropolitics, gender, occupation, boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)

Abstract

All Palestinian bodies, male and female, are subject to and targeted by the occupying state. Drawing on participatory observation conducted in the West Bank, this essay focuses on how gender and occupation intersect in men’s access to care and seeks to realign feminist practice to examine the ways in which all bodies are subject to the intersections of gender, race, class and power. It shows the lived realities of Palestinian everyday life that are occluded when one considers only the “legal formalities” Israel has put in place, which seem to allow for access to certain spaces for sick bodies, but in fact hinder or deny every attempt to do so.  Finally, I conclude with some reflections on how the current Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is one means of addressing the forms of power exercised over Palestinian bodies living under occupation.

Author Biography

Rana Sharif, Department of Gender Studies, UCLA

PhD Candidate in the Department of Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation research examines cultural and visual (re)productions of pregnancy and birth in the West Bank, Palestine. In her examination she interrogates what such images indicate about everyday life under military occupation while also asking, in what ways do women challenge, resist and produce their own cultural and visual images?

Published

2014-05-02

How to Cite

Sharif, R. (2014). Bodies, Buses and Permits: Palestinians Navigating Care. Feminists@law, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.22024/UniKent/03/fal.109

Issue

Section

BDS as a Feminist Issue