Abstract
The current study examined the psychological experience of Palestinians who daily cross an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoint to reach their schools or places of employment. The study employed an interpretative phenomenological analysis of semi-structured interviews and drawings to capture a depth insight regarding the psychological meaning of crossing the Qalandia checkpoint on a daily basis among 20 adult participants (10 males, 10 females). Three themes emerged. The first theme described deep feelings of distress and desperation and included the categories of humiliation and dehumanization, non-existence, rage, and pessimism and helplessness. The second theme concentrated on the participants’ coping strategies of avoidance and dissociation, which usually characterize maladaptive trauma coping style, as well as exhibited aggressiveness toward their fellow community members, while the third theme described the social fragmentation of the Palestinians’ solidarity. Furthermore, three pictorial phenomena emerged from the participants’ drawings: squared restricted drawings, the use of multiple black tiny objects, and the use of split drawings. These phenomena supported and validated participants’ verbal expressions. We suggest understanding these findings in light of the term “social suffering.”
Highlights
Hundreds of millions of people around the world are affected by political conflicts that create widespread suffering, experiencing a wide range of psychological and mental symptoms (Veronese and Barola, 2018)
We focused on the inner psychological meaning of daily crossing the Qalandia checkpoint and looked for additional channels of expression
“If you blow your horn or even show that you are in a hurry, they [the soldiers] will catch you . . . He [the soldier] will yell at you, ‘Come! Pull over!’ . . . and they delay you.” (Sh., male, 33, driver) Other checkpoint crossers felt that the dehumanization went much further
Summary
Hundreds of millions of people around the world are affected by political conflicts that create widespread suffering, experiencing a wide range of psychological and mental symptoms (Veronese and Barola, 2018) One of these conflicts is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has existed for most of the past century and endures with no foreseeable resolution (McNeely et al, 2014). Estimates indicate that threequarters of the Palestinian population were dispossessed between 1947 and 1949 to neighboring Arab states, becoming refugees (Pappe, 2006; Rogan and Shlaim, 2007) This traumatic ejection, which is called by the Palestinians “the Nakba” (or catastrophe), is deep-rooted in the collective memory of the Palestinians and is still felt by third-generation refugees, especially those living in refugee camps (Baker and Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 1999)
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