Community Care in Palestine: When Grief and Politics Meet in the Body

Abstract

This intimate reflection of time spent in the West Bank, Palestine, during the summer months of 2023 reiterates the intrinsically personal nature of ethnographic research. As a tangent from my main research focus, this piece explores a turbulent 24 hours whereby a family member died at home in the UK and a member of the Palestinian community was arrested by the occupation. This period also coincided with a dark milestone that by July, 2023 had surpassed previous years as the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank due to Israeli violence since the UN records began in 2005. My background as a dance practitioner provided me with heightened somatic awareness which played a central role in how I observed my body’s physical reactions to grief, shock, fear, sadness and this political landscape. Despite the pain from these solemn scenarios, my time in Palestine was shaped by such joy. Beyond enjoying the surroundings, I experienced intense emotional elevation through the continuous warmth, embrace and comradery of the dance network whom I was with. A seed of appreciation was sown during my initial encounters which deepened when I received so much support from the community through these difficult times and continued to blossom. This reflective journey through pain and care shows how my interactions with this locale, and therefore my research, is uniquely individual to my experience and the nature of this Palestinian community during this specific time. Such juxtapositions of the worst and the best of humanity extend beyond this discussion and shed light on communal activist movements, which are currently serving as fundamental inspiration and support for millions of advocates worldwide, during a significantly challenging period for Palestinians and those who support Palestine during the final months of 2023.