in this article, i describe an inventive approach to reorganizing an existing qualitative dataset that documents violent events as a self-contained exchange between two hostile sides, to reveal a complex series of violent acts between actors with different capacities to cause harm. i draw on my experience of creating the west bank violence monitor, which was born out of a desire to broaden the post-october 7 attention brought upon the israeli occupation beyond gaza and to examine the different ways violence is enacted on, and resisted by, palestinians. the monitor reflects a new approach to quantifying and visualizing qualitative data, and a commitment to analyze the data in ways which are contextually-informed. findings from the data indicate when particular escalations in rates of violence occurred, the degree of asymmetry between palestinian and israeli actors, and the locations where violence most frequently occurs. it draws attention to lesser-observed forms of violence used by settler colonial regimes, that harm indigenous people and restrict their potential to live decent lives on their land.
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from the introduction
the months since 8 october 2023 have witnessed devastating violence and destruction in the gaza strip by the israeli military, which the international court of justice has declared a plausible genocide. this event has stimulated an unprecedented legal investigation into the policies of the israeli state, a process which requires the gathering of evidence. however, the genocide in gaza is not an isolated event; the nakba has since 1948 been an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing and colonization that seeks to uproot indigenous palestinians from their lands. the context of the ongoing nakba demands the documentation of such evidence beyond gaza.
