Researcher & political anthropologist. Contested spaces, cooperative peacebuilding, the long view. alongerview.substack.comhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mukbw7qpa22hBanksy's 2007 Bethlehem show included Ayed Arafah — the artist whose murals stood in Aida camp, minutes away, unvisited. The gallery could absorb the artist. The itinerary couldn't absorb the camp. Final essay in the Aida series: https://alongerview.substack.com/p/around-the-corner-from-banksy02 Sep 2026 15:48 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mukbw7qpa22hhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mtvy5i3d222eNew essay on Substack - An Archive of Last Resort - and the photographs are available in an online public archive, so every claim in it is verifiable. https://alongerview.substack.com/p/an-archive-of-last-resort25 Aug 2026 14:00 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mtvy5i3d222ehttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mtvxzxdfw22eThe wall does not sort the way a registry sorts. Villages destroyed in 1948, villages still standing, two cities, one place painted in rubble and the next painted whole. Someone made those decisions panel by panel.25 Aug 2026 13:58 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mtvxzxdfw22ehttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mtvxyp3trc2eTwenty-four villages painted on courtyard walls in Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem. I photographed them in six and a half minutes on an August morning in 2009 and did not understand what I was looking at for years.25 Aug 2026 13:57 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mtvxyp3trc2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3msy4uu65r224This week Washington moved again to redefine who counts as a Palestinian refugee. The essay — on a claim written down in three places at once: a wall, a ring of keys, a UN archive: https://alongerview.substack.com/p/forever-refugeehood13 Aug 2026 17:05 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3msy4uu65r224https://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3msy4tnv4lk24The gallery keeps an index: refugee camps named on one side, villages on the other, a painted strand of barbed wire running the wall's length.13 Aug 2026 17:04 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3msy4tnv4lk24https://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3msy4q6rlak24Aida refugee camp, 2009. Artists painted twenty-four murals, each naming a village of origin in Arabic and English — Ellar, al-Walaja, Zakariyya — places most of them have never been permitted to visit.13 Aug 2026 17:02 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3msy4q6rlak24https://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mq6whlxyg22jNavigation apps read as convenience tech. In the West Bank they're political infrastructure: an undisclosed barrier you discover only by crossing it — the app guides you on one side, goes silent on the other. On routing software and separation: https://alongerview.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-enforces-the-separation?r=10wag409 Jul 2026 05:43 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mq6whlxyg22jhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mpj5d6wpwk2mIn Yerevan this week. Israel recognized the Armenian genocide and the Armenians around me didn’t mention it. The facts of 1915 were settled a century ago — what changed is the politics. Recognition isn’t settled by what happened. It’s allocated by what it serves. https://substack.com/@robertsauders/note/c-285316432?r=10wag4&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action30 Jun 2026 13:47 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpj5d6wpwk2mhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mpi74liyq222Twenty years ago I walked Hebron's Old City — the emptied markets, the welded doors, a shrine split down the middle. This month Israel moved to strip the last Palestinian authority over it. Here's what the walk taught me about what separation built: https://alongerview.substack.com/p/complete-separation?r=10wag430 Jun 2026 04:47 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpi74liyq222https://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3ml4urk55kc2tTwo incidents, two days apart, same city. The anthropologist's instinct wants both to mean something about their communities. That instinct is the problem. New piece on what fieldwork actually teaches you about the gap between a single moment and a pattern. https://alongerview.substack.com/p/sufganiyot-and-sharmuta05 May 2026 19:02 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml4urk55kc2thttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mkkjj3sb4k2jThe barrier at Rachel's Tomb wasn't built to protect a population. It was built to protect a claim — one manufactured by a political decision that created the security problem it then cited as justification. The sequence has repeated across the West Bank. https://alongerview.substack.com/p/what-the-wall-was-built-to-protect28 Apr 2026 11:52 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkkjj3sb4k2jhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mjmj5ezpgs2yThis is how the map gets redrawn without redrawing the map — in languages chosen by the people who set the signs, not the people who ride the buses. 3/3 alongerview.substack.com/p/barrier https://alongerview.substack.com/p/barrier16 Apr 2026 13:26 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjmj5ezpgs2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mjmj4a26fc2yDecember 2025: same terminal. Modern, orderly, transformed. Then a bus passes. Display scrolling — Arabic, Hebrew, English. I catch the English: Barrier. Not a place. A structure. Declared temporary. Ruled illegal by the ICJ. Now a destination. 2/316 Apr 2026 13:25 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjmj4a26fc2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mjmj36m2as2yIn 2005, buses from East Jerusalem's Nablus Road terminal ran to places: Qalandia, Ramallah, Ar-Ram — names that accumulated meaning because people used them to mark where they lived, worked, went to school. 1/316 Apr 2026 13:24 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjmj36m2as2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mjj2ytq3y22tIf the Greater Israel project depends on petroleum remaining the basis of power, grids that no longer run on oil transit weakens the project. Clean energy is the counter-strategy. 3/3 theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/13/benjamin-netanyahu-middle-east-greater-israel https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/13/benjamin-netanyahu-middle-east-greater-israel15 Apr 2026 04:35 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjj2ytq3y22thttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mjj2jbxbd22tNetanyahu's pipeline vision — oil & gas from the Arabian Peninsula to Israeli ports — is a bid to become the central transit node. Control the transit & you don't need to occupy the territory. The Hormuz closure just proved what that control is worth: when the strait closes, the world convulses. 2/315 Apr 2026 04:26 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjj2jbxbd22thttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mjj2cchoqc2tDaniel Levy argues in the Guardian that Greater Israel is a geopolitical power project built on hard dependency — not just territory. He's right. But the dependency architecture is even more specifically about transit node control than his piece makes explicit. 1/315 Apr 2026 04:22 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjj2cchoqc2thttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3miyc57jrok26An Israeli man in Hod HaSharon, thinking about leaving. A Palestinian woman in al-Bireh, who cannot. "Good, he should go." Not with malice. Not with heat. With the precision of someone who has watched someone else hold an option she will never have. https://alongerview.substack.com/p/good-he-should-go08 Apr 2026 12:27 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3miyc57jrok26https://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3miwhusb7yc2rCheckpoints don't disappear when conditions improve. They go dormant. That's not how security works. It's how control works. (3 of 3)07 Apr 2026 19:04 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3miwhusb7yc2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3miwhubr7is2rI've been moving through them since 2004. The pattern is consistent. Restrictions ease under external pressure, then reset. The 2009–2011 Quartet period was a genuine improvement. Then the pressure lifted and the infrastructure reactivated. (2 of 3)07 Apr 2026 19:04 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3miwhubr7is2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3miwhtfp2c22rWHO classifies checkpoint obstruction of ambulances as attacks on healthcare. The latest OCHA West Bank report documents ten such incidents in four weeks. (1 of 3) ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-report-27-march-2026 https://ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-report-27-march-202607 Apr 2026 19:04 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3miwhtfp2c22rhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mieafdpjjc2u"He wasn't asking for peace. Just quiet." New piece at A Longer View explores an Israeli man's exhaustion after October 7th, and the asymmetry at the center of the conflict — who gets to want quiet, and who has never had the option. alongerview.substack.com/p/just-quiet https://alongerview.substack.com/p/just-quiet31 Mar 2026 13:03 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mieafdpjjc2uhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mhss6itbl22yHurva Square, Jerusalem, December 2025. A community fully at ease — no vigilance, no justification required. Then the banner on the perimeter: "Make Gaza Jewish Again." Writing from close enough to see clearly and outside enough to still notice: https://alongerview.substack.com/p/the-dream-and-the-cost24 Mar 2026 14:33 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhss6itbl22yhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mhbdw4jvwc2nJaffa Road, Jerusalem, 2009. Three marks on a construction sign: a Gilad Shalit sticker. "Jewish for Palestine." An Action Antifasciste emblem. Three voices, none speaking to each other. Writing from close enough to see clearly, outside enough to still notice https://alongerview.substack.com/p/jaffa-street-worksite-signage-detours17 Mar 2026 16:02 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhbdw4jvwc2nhttps://bsky.app/profile/sauders.bsky.social/post/3mgq3a2i5rk2lI went back to Jerusalem and Ramallah last December for the first time in a decade. Google Maps warned me I was entering a dangerous area. Waze agreed. I kept driving. New writing at A Longer View — Ramallah, December 2025: https://open.substack.com/pub/alongerview/p/coming-back?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web10 Mar 2026 19:12 +0000at://did:plc:cysuhanij2a4eoh25upshzqt/app.bsky.feed.post/3mgq3a2i5rk2l