7. Dismantling the Image of the Palestinian Homosexual: Exploring the Role of Alqaws

Authors:
  • GHGhaith Hilal
    Ghaith Hilal
  • HMHaneen Maikey
    Haneen Maikey
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Abstract
The Zionist colonization of Palestine holds at its premise racial, sexual, and gendered discourses through which colonial power is exercised. It is through the production and creation of certain types of knowledge and specific domains of truth that the colonial regime perpetuates and reinforces its mechanisms and modes of governments on the colonizers, making them internalize a certain conduct. This paper seeks to understand the means through which the Zionist colonial regime influences the production of specific objects of knowledge: sexuality and the image of the homosexual in Palestine. It wants to pinpoint the ways through which its power hinges on the bodies and desires of the colonized and, specifically, how the image of homosexuals came to be perceived and understood in determined ways within the Palestinian context and throughout its recent history.