Walking paths of future loss

This article provides an account of anticipatory violence as experienced while walking with Palestinian walking groups in the everyday spaces of the rural West Bank. While the act of walking in Palestine is often framed as a way of tracing former sites of Palestinian life and memory, this article explores the spatial logics of anticipation: how specific forms of anticipatory violence are encountered, 'managed' and sometimes resisted through walking. The discussion draws on my fieldwork in the Ramallah area with local walking groups in 2019. Through ethnographic vignettes and interviews with group organizers, the article focuses on the 'encounter before the encounter' and the 'if/when' dynamics that enable Israel's appropriation of Palestinian land through tacit signs of gradual expansion and annexation. The article proposes the notion of 'haunting futures' to describe the pervasiveness of anticipatory violence and posits walking with others as an approach to exploring the futural logics of land appropriation and violent atmospheres in a settler colonial context. Ultimately, walking is understood as a means of accessing the intricate interplay between subtle and extreme forms of violence that sever Palestinians' connection to the land.