The Politics of the Trail: Reflexive Mountain Biking along the Frontier of Jerusalem

Introduction. Mountain Biking in the Frontier of Jerusalem: An Exploration of External and Internal Landscapes of Conflict

18 Introduction Mountain Biking in the Frontier of Jerusalem An Exploration of External and Internal Landscapes of Conflict On Personal Stories and Subjective Writing: The Merits and Shortcomings of Using the Self as a Source of Political Knowledge and Interpretation This book is the story of my daily mountain bicycle rides along the northwestern frontier of Jerusalem, Israel. I ride, back and forth, from my home in Mevasseret Zion, a suburb of the capital city,1 to the Mt. Scopus campus of the Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, where I am a faculty member in the Department of International Relations (IR). It is usually a one-­ hour ride (if I don’t stop along the trail or deviate from the path—­ but I often do, thus prolonging the ride), totaling eleven kilometers in each direction. For the great part of the ride, I bike along the frontier between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.2 The mountain bicycle, with its high maneuverability, off-­road capabilities, and direct contact with the terrain (more on these aspects below), creates for me a unique sensory and bodily experience of connecting with the geographical space I cross every day. The bicycle also serves, literally, as a research tool that provides many opportunities to reach and observe places and spaces that are usually out of the daily ambit or interest of many Israelis. Yet despite the relative seclusion of Mountain Biking in the Frontier of Jerusalem / 19 parts of my trail, during the rides I also often interact with diverse people I meet along the trail and witness spaces and locations that are shaped and influenced by the Israeli-­Palestinian and the broader Israeli-­Arab conflict(s) (the“Masada” nuclear bunker is even related to the Israeli-­ Iranian conflict). In their turn, these people and places become atoms or elementary particles that make up this conflict.3 The bicycle ride is actually the story of my exposure to and exposure of these landscapes and human realities that are wrought by the conflict and that, in turn, reproduce it. I tell about my interplay with the landscape and the people that inhabit it or pass through it (the “exposure to” element) and about the process of understanding and giving meaning to these interactions (the “exposure of ” element in my journey). It is a story of revelation , reflection, and evaluation, and of personal transformation. An account of belonging and strangeness, of emotional closeness and distance, and mainly of confusion: the more I get to know the trail I ride on, the more I become perplexed about my personal road and the place where it takes me. The book is an invitation to readers to join me along the bike trails and share (but not necessarily accept or condone) my insights and feelings during the ride and its aftermath . I invite readers to open up to my experience and being, to get to know a piece of the“Israeli condition” through my experience. Hence, my relation is an offer of and request for companionship. Why would one want to read such a book, which is composed mainly of personal stories, experiences, and interpretations? Is companionship a legitimate goal in an academic book? And what does this “detailed account of so many trivial circumstances and insignificant happenings,” these“descriptions of ordinary travels, seeing, imagining, and remembering have to do with anything?”4 What will readers learn from such stories, and what is the general conceptual or theoretical lesson that can be drawn from them? After all, this is a subjective account, and, in addition, many factual aspects I discuss in the book, especially those related to the history of the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict, are already known to scholars of this quarrel.5 Nonetheless, I believe there are several reasons to read this book. First, my text is a form of ethnography, and as such, it literally provides a view from the field of the conflict in Israel and Palestine.My stories about places and people I meet along the trail are connected to each other not only by the fact that they take place along a continuous physical geographical route or space 20 / The Politics of the Trail but also because they run parallel to each other by being thick descriptions of various aspects of the culture of conflict that imbues the Israeli being.6 Thus,the stories could help in diagnosing this culture and plunging into it...