Either Sit or Learn a Sedentary Behaviour

In the course of the 1948 founding of Israel and the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Westbank the lifestyle of many people there has been changed dramatically. Many sedentary Palestinians were forced to leave their homes and many left for good to settle in our countries such as Jordan, but as well in Europe and in the Americas.

Sometimes Bedouins have taken their place, as they themselves were driven out of where they used to roam. This meant they had to partly give up their style of living from a half-nomadic to sedentary life. From the perspective of today one can see that these politics of expulsion and appropriation are far being over, they are continously exercised either in the Negev oder the Jordan Valley. In other instances Palestinians from other areas would take their place, so we can say that also the indiginous population was reshuffled in great amounts.

Being physically removed and not permitted access anymore to one's own former land is changing the life and the psyche. At the end it is not anymore a question of territory, it becomes very much a cultural war. The frontlines of this cultural war are blurry, but it is clear that Israel wants to end the nomadic culture of the Bedouins to claim their land. The result is that a so called modern life is enforced onto a populace to easen the land steal, only faster in speed and more brutally than the natural coarse of time would likely do. Theses photographs show interpretations of this clash.