When ‘Yes’ Means No: Understanding Infiltration as Refusal of Cultural Heritage Research in Palestine

ABSTRACT This paper reconceptualises Palestinian infiltration—historically associated with clandestine border‐crossing after the 1948 Nakba—as a contemporary mode of research refusal within heritage research conducted under settler‐colonial conditions. Bringing scholarship on Palestinian infiltration into dialogue with literature on refusal, it argues that participation in heritage research projects can operate as camouflaged consent: a strategic ‘yes’ that masks critique, counters extraction, and pursues partial reclamations of land‐based knowledge. Empirically, the analysis draws on qualitative interviews conducted in 2024–2025 with Palestinians who have participated in heritage research projects and with non‐Palestinian researchers employed within such projects in Palestine/Israel. The findings show that when access to land, archives, permits, and excavation sites is structured through settler‐state institutions and external academic infrastructures, some Palestinians engage tactically from within to navigate and contest these epistemic border regimes. Infiltration is enacted through three interconnected mechanisms: (1) strategic observation of research practices and their implications; (2) access to restricted sites, materials, and information; and (3) subtle disruption, including re‐routing objects, narratives and research trajectories away from institutional capture. While not equated with decolonisation in its fullest sense, infiltration is theorised as a situated decolonial practice that emerges where restitution and return remain structurally foreclosed yet where Indigenous relations to land and heritage are actively defended and regenerated. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ethical and institutional implications of these findings for heritage research, arguing for reconfigurations to research practices so that Indigenous participation is not made contingent on infiltration as a condition of agency.