A careful examination of Palestinian service work in Israeli settlements and of everyday settler-Palestinian contact demonstrates how these encounters play a key role in normalizing the presence and dominance of settlers in the occupied West Bank. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at a settlement supermarket, this article shows that Palestinians are called upon to perform customer service in a setting where they are not only subjugated but are also coerced to help create the ultranationalist climate of their occupiers’ holidays. In addition to being compelled to normalize Israeli dominance, Palestinian workers are also the object of a seemingly contradictory orientation, one that favors not having Palestinians around at all. The article thus weighs in on the broader contemporary significance of Palestinian labor for the settler-colonial logics of Zionism.
