Everyday Coherence Under Unequal Protection: Arab Bedouin Mothers in Unrecognized Villages in Southern Israel During the Israel-Iran War

Armed conflict is often treated as a temporary disruption, yet for structurally marginalized populations, insecurity may be an enduring feature of everyday life. This study examines how Arab Bedouin mothers living in unrecognized villages in southern Israel produced Sense of Coherence (SOC) during the Israel-Iran war under conditions of chronic threat and unequal state protection. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews, it explores how comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness were enacted through gendered domestic and communicative practices. The findings identify three central processes: mediating information and uncertainty, organizing household responses to threat, and sustaining care, belonging, and moral commitment. The study offers a contextually grounded extension of the salutogenic model by showing how coherence is produced through everyday practices embedded in geographic and political inequality. It highlights the role of maternal communication and domestic labor in sustaining family life amid chronic uncertainty, unequal protection, and slow violence within everyday domestic life itself.