Lived Resistance Against the War on Palestinian Children

I will present the key points of the recently published edited volume Lived Resistance Against the War on Palestinian Children (2024). Despite the increasing volume of scholarship that shows children as political actors, prior to this book, a cohesive framework was lacking that would more fully examine and express children’s relationship with political power. Rather than simply hitching children’s resistance to standard theories of resistance, we need to meet children on their own terms. Through the case study of Palestinian children, this book theorize children’s resistance as an embodied experience called lived resistance. A critical aspect of the study of lived resistance is not just documenting what children do but specifically how scholars approach the topic of children’s resistance. We must account for the vessel (i.e., the body in flesh and mind) through which such resistance generates and operates. This book examines Palestinian children’s art and media, imprisonment, parenting experiences, bereavement, neoliberalism, refugee camps, and protest movements as aspects of their collective and individual political power. Through these outlets, the book shows consistencies and contends that these children’s relationship to political power operates from an inclusive model of citizenship and is social justice oriented, symbolically oriented, and contingently based.