Abstract
This paper examines the relations of narratives, spatial representation and identities, focusing on the Israeli-Jewish settlers committed to “activist Messianism” and settling in the heart of the West Bank. Research questions consider how settlers narrate about their co-religionists or family members killed in the West Bank and their deaths; what meanings they give to the dead/deaths; how they represent those dead/deaths in space; and how the narratives on the dead/deaths and their spatial representations formulate, compose and mold the collective identities of the living.
This paper analyzes and categorizes the narratives of the activist Messianist settlers and the contents of monuments and graves built in and around their settlements. This paper shows the ways in which the narratives and spatial representations of the dead/deaths interact with the ideology of the activist Messianism, functioning to strengthen the legitimization of settling in the West Bank and often strengthening their ideological and religious convictions. This research also reveals the ways in which the combinations of the experiences and practices in frontiers and the religious-political ideology of activist Messianism create the “Other” and sharpen the national boundary between “the Jews” and “the Arabs”, formulating and reproducing the collective identity of the activist Messianists.
