Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine

In the South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta) of the Occupied Palestinian Territories there are a 32 small Palestinian farmer and Bedouin communities living and working on their land from which the Israeli state and settlers seek to expel them. To support the local civil resistance numerous actors (Palestinian, Israeli and international) have sought to protect the civilian population from the acts of violence by settlers and state in which their crops, livestock, dwellings and lives have been targeted. This research seeks to analyse how the indigenous community in Palestine protect itself in such asymmetry of power relation and how the knowledge, local structures and wisdom of the local communities been utilised in self-protection and Sumūd? The research examines the interventions, motives, and challenges faced by external unarmed civilian actors to support the local communities in their attempts to create safer spaces within which they can continue to maintain their livelihoods, hold on to their land and way of life. The research explores the extent to which ‘divisions of labour’ emerged between the different actors and the symbiotic relationship between the local and the “outsiders”. Finally, The research examines how intensified repression—including the criminalisation of solidarity and the genocidal war on Gaza has reshaped everyday resistance in the West Bank. As international access shrinks and authoritarian practices expand, community-based protection increasingly becomes both a strategy of endurance and a site of political rearticulation. By situating UCP within settler colonial governance and the dynamics of co- resistance, this research contributes to Resistance Studies by theorising protection as a relational, place-based, and justice-oriented practice. It advances debates on how movements sustain collective survival under systemic domination and how solidarities can be reimagined amid escalating repression.