Israeli Discourse and the West Bank ─ Dialectics of Normalization and Estrangement

How can irregular political situations, which impact the lives of millions, become normalized? Specifically, within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how can 50 years of Israeli control over the Occupied Territories become accepted within Israeli society as a normal, possibly even banal phenomenon? Conversely, how can such a situation be estranged from daily reality, denied any relation to who "we" are? This volume explores these questions through the lens of two central discourses that dominate the Israeli debate regarding the future of the Occupied Territories: 1) Occupation Normalization Discourse, which portrays Israeli control of the territories as a "normal" part of life; 2) Occupation Estrangement Discourse, which portrays this situation as distant from Israeli reality. In addressing these discourses, the authors develop a new methodological tool, Dialectic Discourse Analysis, which examines discourse as a process of perpetual positing and synthesis of oppositions through the discursive construction, differentiation and mediation of self and other. Through this approach, the authors illustrate that these discourses are dialectically constituted in opposition to one another, feeding off one another, each enabling the other to exist. This dynamic has resulted in a fixed discourse, preventing any progress towards a synthesis of oppositions.

Elie Friedman is currently a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, an adjunct lecturer at Hadassah Academic College and Bar-Ilan University, and project manager at the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Dialogue, Netanya Academic College. He has recently published in Critical Discourse Studies and International Journal of Communication.

Dalia Gavriely-Nuri is an Associate Professor at Hadassah Academic College and a research fellow at the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace. Her last books: Israeli Peace Discourse (2015) (John Benjamins) and The Normalization of war in Israeli Discourse (2013) (Lexington Books).