ABSTRACT
To the person wearing a uniform, taking on the role of a soldier implies a continued balance between, on the one hand, the individual and personal, and on the other, the collective and institutional. To conscripts in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this dilemma is all too familiar. This is, above all, tied to the complexities involving the Jewish settlers in the West Bank. “Settlement protection” is therefore a central task for IDF’s personnel in the West Bank. The IDF’s mission includes an obligation to protect and safeguard Israeli citizens, which in the West Bank implies protecting the settlers. However, due to the rise in Jewish settlers’ attacks on IDF soldiers, the relationship between the settlers and the IDF soldiers is tense and conflictual, at times also fragile. The soldiers are faced with a dilemma: Who do you defend and ultimately 57find it worth risking your life for? In other words, who constitutes “we”, in contrast to the adversary that the “we” are up against? This article develops the argument that the soldiers struggle with a discrepancy between, on the one hand, the institutional categorizations of who constitutes “we”, and the soldiers’ individual sentiments and experiences. The Jewish settlers challenge the formal categorizations and thereby also challenge the soldiers’ ability to perform their military duties.
