Content Type: Journal Article / Publishing Institution: Institute for Palestine Studies / Political Geography:

101. Mapping the Nakba

Author:: Ilan Pappé
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In its first edition published in 2004, The Atlas of Palestine was already an essential item in the library of anyone seriously interested in the history of Palestine. At nearly 700 pages (almost 300 more than the earlier edition), the 2010 edition contains valuable information available nowhere else on 1,600 towns and villages, 16,000 landmarks, 30,000 place names, and much more. If I emphasize the richness of this car tographic representation of Palestine's modern history, it is because this Atlas is the strongest rebuttal yet of the Zionist cartographic representation of the country's history, exemplified in publications such as Martin Gilbert's Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Oxford University Press, 1993) and the various other atlases produced by Israeli geographers over the years. It challenges those projects both as a meta-narrative of Palestine's history and as a detailed project that rescues the native population from the invisibility to which they are condemned by Gilbert and others. In other words, this huge volume is a detailed refutation of the attempt to erase the Palestinians from the history of Palestine.
Political Geography:: Palestine

102. Staying Human Amidst Inhumanity

Author:: Edda Manga
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Vittorio Arrigoni (1975–2011) was an Italian journalist and peace activist who lived and reported from Gaza for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto from 2008 until his death in April 2011. His book contains a day-by-day inside account of Operation Cast Lead, Israel's three-week military assault on the besieged and densely populated Strip
Political Geography:: Italy

103. The Meaning of Memorialization

Author:: Rosemary Sayigh
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Rochelle Davis tells us that she took ten years to research and write Palestinian Village Histories. For a Western scholar to have read and analyzed 112 of the 120 village histories published, as well as interviewed many of the authors, is in itself a rare achievement. If we add to this a range of scholarship that takes in the literature on memory, identity, postmodern anthropology, and Arab, Islamic, and Western historiography and textual criticism, we can only admire a tour de force. Davis's object of study is not the villages that the books memorialize but what their memorialization means, why this process began at a specific moment (the mid-1980s), how the books were produced, by whom and for what audiences, how they are read and responded to, and what power relations they reflect. While challenging dominant Zionist narratives, the village histories, she writes, also express "Palestinian men's authoritative perspectives within dominant definitions of what constitutes history . . . attempts at the ascendancy of certain families within local social structures; and . . . the pervasive and silencing presence of certain social values".
Political Geography:: Palestine and Arabia

104. Occupation, Fear, and State Discourse

Author:: Rahela Mizrahi
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In Israel, “fear and suspicion not only permeate political rhetoric,” writes Ochs, “but also condition how people see, the way they move, and the way they relate to Palestinians” (book cover). Indeed, her study bears out her argument that “everyday security practices create exceptional states of civilian alertness that perpetuate—rather than mitigate— national fear and ongoing violence” (book cover).
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

105. It Only Takes One to Tango

Author:: Moshe Behar
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Think of a prominent Arab-Jewish scholar who had published dozens of books about themes pertaining to the modern history of his native Middle East (for example Murad Farag or Avra-ham Elmaleh). Imagine further that al-though he did not have a command of Latin, English, French, or German, our heuristic Arab-Jewish author proceeded to write a book about the his-tory of Western European Jewry during the past fourteen centuries, titling it In Jesus' House: A History of Jews in Christian Lands. Would academic presses be likely to entertain publication of such a work? Would scholars of Western European Jewry be likely to view such a text favorably or as being authoritative? These were my first thoughts after reading Sir Martin Gilbert's staggeringly ambitious book, aiming to survey the history of Jews from Morocco to Afghanistan, notwithstanding his lack of Arabic, Persian, or Ottoman Turkish.
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Arabia, and Germany

106. Uncovering Jerusalem

Author:: Mick Dumper
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The short sixty-three years of Ayyubid rule in Jerusalem between 1187 and 1250 left few architectural and monumental traces, yet its impact on the city has been quite remarkable. Not only did the foundations of Mamluk Jerusalem lie in the construction work of the Ayyubids, as one of the contributors to Ayyubid Jerusalem, Mahmoud Hawari, concludes, but it was also a period in which the centrality of Jerusalem in Islam was reestablished. The Kurdish general and founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, Salahed Din, while basing himself in Egypt, made the liberation of Jerusalem a pious duty and the prime goal of his life's work. Reference to the contemporary revival of jihadi rhetoric around Jerusalem may be stretching too far the parallels that are suggested by this period, but it nevertheless pro-vides a rich context for understanding the power of the city in the imaginations of believers, as a range of Muslim leaders from the Hashemites to Shaykh Ra'ed Salah of Umm al-Fahm will attest. As interesting as this dimension is, we should not overlook the solid postliberation work undertaken by Salah ed-Din and his successors to consolidate the Muslim presence in the city through building works, endowments (waqfs), and incentives for migration. Both geography and the competing claims of other faiths appear to make this a never-ending task in Jerusalem.
Political Geography:: Egypt

107. Hizballah's Evolving Identity

Author:: Mouannes Hojairi
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: One of the notable elements missing from the literature on Hizballah's structure and military might is an in depth analysis of the party's inner mechanisms of identity formation. The process of generating identity and ideology from within the party has been largely ignored in favor of analysis of the party's performance and interaction within the regional politics of the Middle East, and within the Lebanese political system.
Political Geography:: Middle East

108. Refugee Culture

Author:: Steven Salaita
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In Ethnic Identity of Palestinian Immigrants in the United States, Faida N. Abu-Ghazaleh does much to fill crucial gaps in the scholarship of Arab American communities, in particular the study of Palestinians in the United States. This sort of title, one focused on the cultural politics of Palestinian Americans, remains rare despite an increased emphasis among scholars on various practices of the Palestinian diaspora. This book is a welcome addition to the small corpus of scholarship that exists at present.
Political Geography:: United States, America, Palestine, and Arabia

109. High Technology and Palestinian Nationalism

Author:: Magid Shihade
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In Palestine Online, Aouragh dis-cusses the use of Internet technology among Palestinians based on fieldwork in three different locations: Palestine in 2001–02, among Palestinian refugees in Jordan in 2003, and in Lebanon in 2003–04 (p. 30). Along with participant observations, she interviewed academ-ics, Internet café customers and own-ers, and some of those who lead the implementation of new technologies in Palestine.
Political Geography:: Palestine

110. Cartoons from al-Hayat

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.
Political Geography:: Israel and Arabia

111. Selections from the Press

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section includes articles and news items, mainly from Israeli but also from international press sources, that provide insightful or illuminating perspectives on events, developments, or trends in Israel and the occupied territories not readily available in the mainstream U.S. media.
Political Geography:: United States

112. Photos from the Quarter

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This small sample of photos, selected from hundreds viewed by JPS , aims to convey a sense of the situation on the ground in the occupied territories during the quarter.

113. Update on Conflict and Diplomacy

Author:: Michele Esposito
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The Quarterly Update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and the future of the peace process. More than 100 print, wire, television, and online sources providing U.S., Israeli, Arab, and international independent and government coverage of unfolding events are surveyed to compile the Quarterly Update. The most relevant sources are cited in JPS's Chronology section, which tracks events day by day.
Political Geography:: United States, Israel, and Arabia

114. Settlement Monitor

Author:: Geoffrey Aronson
Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section covers items—reprinted articles, statistics, and maps—pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report ), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material.
Political Geography:: Washington, Middle East, and Israel

115. UN-Appointed Palmer Commission, Report on the Gaza Flotilla incident, New York, July 2011 (excerpts).

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: On 2 August 2010, in response to the continuing fallout over Israel's 31 May 2010 attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza that resulted in the death of nine Turkish citizens, the UN Secretary formally established a panel of inquiry into the incident. The six-vessel flotilla, led by the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara and heading toward Gaza with the stated intention of breaking Israel's siege, was boarded by Israeli forces some seventy-two nautical miles out to sea. The incident further strained Israeli-Turkish relations, which had deteriorated sharply over Israel's Operation Cast Lead in 2008–9.
Political Geography:: New York and United Nations

116. Middle East Quartet, Statement Urging the Resumption of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, New York, 23 September 2011

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: With the approach of the annual UN General Assembly (UNGA) session and the Palestinians not yet completely de- cided on whether to go ahead with a bid for full membership in the world body, the U.S. in late August 2011 stepped up efforts to avert the move. These included pressure on the Palestinians to accept a proposal by the Middle East Quartet (the U.S., EU, Russia, and the UN) to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talk in lieu of their statehood bid. U.S. envoys pre- sented several formulas, but the Pales- tinians found them insufficient and not serious, and said that even if a viable proposal were presented, the statehood bid would proceed (see Quarterly Update in this issue for details). The U.S. urged its Quartet partners to issue a statement on reviving talks nonetheless, believing it would give the U.S. leverage to argue that an alternative to the statehood bid still existed through negotiations, and that until all negotiating prospects were exhausted unilateral Palestinian steps should be opposed.
Political Geography:: Russia, United States, Europe, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and United Nations

117. Richard J. Goldstone, "Israel and the Apartheid Slander," New York Times, 31 October 2011.

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Judge Goldstone, who led the UN - commissioned investigation into allegations of war crimes committed during Israel's winter 2008–9 operation in Gaza (see Special Doc. File in JPS 154) and later, in a much-publicized move, repudiated one of the commission's major findings (see Doc. A1 in JPS 160), elicited further controversy with his op-ed in the New York Times defending Israel against accusations of apartheid. The op-ed was occasioned by the third session of the Russell Tribunal on Pales- tine (an “international people's tribunal” created by activists to promote peace and justice in the Middle East and funded by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation), scheduled to begin on 4 November in Cape Town, South Africa, which was to focus on the question of whether Israel's practices with regard to the Palestinians constitute apartheid differences (see un- der “Other” in this issue's Quarterly Up- date). See the first item in the “Selections from the Press” in this issue for reactions to the Goldstone op-ed.
Political Geography:: New York, Israel, South Africa, and United Nations

118. UN Security Council, Report of the Committee on the Admission of New Members Concerning Palestine's Application for Membership to the UN , New York, 11 November 2011.

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The UN Committee on the Admission of New Members, comprising representatives of the fifteen serving members of the UN Security Council (UNSC), considered the Palestinian application at a number of meetings between 28 September and 8 November, the date it completed its final report. In addition to the five permanent members (the U.S., France, Great Britain, Russia, and China), the rotating members during this period were Bosnia, Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, Germany, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, and South Africa. The report was formally accepted by the UNSC on 11 November.
Political Geography:: Britain, Africa, China, New York, Bosnia, Middle East, India, France, Brazil, Colombia, Palestine, Germany, United Nations, Nigeria, and Portugal

119. State of Palestine, Application for Admission to Membership in the UN and Accompanying Letters, Ramallah, 23 September 2011

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The Palestinian application for admission to the United Nations, addressed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, consisted of three elements: a covering letter, the letter of application, and an appended declaration affirming that the State of Palestine accepts the obligations contained in the UN Charter, as required by the rules of procedure for both the Security Council and General Assembly. All three documents were signed by Mahmud Abbas in his dual capacities as president of the State of Palestine and chairman of the PLO Executive Committee, and the text of the latter two documents explicitly identifies the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The letter of application further specifies that the application is made “consistent with the rights of the Palestinian refugees.” This reference, and the emphasis on the PLO's status as the Palestinians' sole legitimate representative, were reportedly prompted by concerns that recognition of statehood could affect the rights of diaspora Palestinians and especially the refugees. The three documents submit- ted by the Palestinians were forwarded by the secretary-general with a covering letter to the serving president of the Security Council, Lebanese ambassador to the UN Nawaf Salam, who in turn conveyed all four items to all members of the Security Council as document S/2011/592 dated 23 September 2011. The documents were taken from the website of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations at http://www.un.int/wcm/content/site/ palestine.
Political Geography:: Palestine and United Nations

120. Palestinian Pres. Mahmud Abbas, Address to the UN General Assembly on the Occasion of Palestine's Application for UN Membership, New York, 23 September 2011 (excerpts)

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: President Abbas's speech, which ended with the announcement that an application for membership in the United Nations had just been filed, consisted primarily of a comprehensive overview of the Palestinian position, past efforts, and current situation and included a clear statement of purpose, goals, and conditions for renewed negotiations. Addressing relentless settlement expansion and Israel's refusal to commit to terms of reference as called for by international law and UN resolutions, he stated frankly that it was "no longer possible to redress the issue of blockage of the horizon of the peace talks with the same means . . . that have been repeatedly tried and proven unsuccessful" and declared that negotiations were futile "without clear parameters and in the absence of credibility and a specific timetable," and in the continuing presence of an entrenched occupation that "continues to change the demography of our country in order to . . . alter the borders." Abbas was greeted enthusiastically upon his return home on 25 September by thousands of Palestinians who praised his actions at the UN General Assembly session as an assertion of Palestinian rights and principles, even while being skeptical that they would result in substantive change. The speech, delivered in Arabic, was taken from the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department.
Political Geography:: Palestine and United Nations

121. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Address to the UN General Assembly on the Occasion of Palestine's Application for UN Membership, New York, 23 September 2011 (excerpts).

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech, which followed Palestinian pres. Mahmud Abbas's, was sharply critical of the United Nations, and emphasized Israel's unflagging efforts to reach a just peace in the face of multifold threats, the most recent and gravest being Islamist fanaticism. Though reiterating his often-expressed hope that the Palestinians will become a partner in peace and finally recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the speech was vague on specific reasons (beyond Palestinian intransigence) for the stalled negotiations. When Netanyahu took the podium following a standing ovation for Abbas, a number of delegates left the assembly hall, prompting him to state: "I did not come here to win applause. I came here to speak the truth." The speech was taken from the Israeli Prime Minister's.
Political Geography:: New York, Israel, Palestine, and United Nations

122. U.S. Ambassador to Jordan David Hale, Confidential Memo on the Debate in Jordan Concerning the Palestinian Right of Return, Amman, 5 February 2008.

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This confidential memo to Secy. of State Condoleezza Rice and the State Department's Near East Affairs Bureau was published by WikiLeaks on 30 August 2011, sparking controversy in Jordan for revealing the tensions between Jordanians of East Bank and Palestinian origin and the extent to which many Palestinian and Jordanian figures assume that the right of return has become unattainable. Titled "The Right of Return: What It Means in Jordan," the analysis was written by then-ambassador David Hale, currently the Obama administration's special envoy to the Middle East peace process. It summarizes the views of various Jordanians (East Bankers and Palestinians) regarding the Palestinian refugee population in the kingdom, and their concerns regarding Israeli-Palestinian final status. It has been described as "the best single short treatment of the topic in any language, drawing out the many tensions and nuances around the issue." The text was taken from the WikiLeaks website at www.wikileaks.org.
Political Geography:: United States, Middle East, and Palestine

123. U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, Address to the UN General Assembly, New York, 21 September 2011 (excerpts).

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Much of President Obama's speech was taken up with surveying the year's progress with regard to ending conflicts and realizing democracy and human rights (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Arab Spring). His remarks on the Israel-Palestine conflict, reproduced below, were less optimistic, and contrasted with his UN General Assembly address of September 2010, which gave a nod to the Palestinian demand for a settlement moratorium with tentative support. In this year's address, the burden of responsibility seemed to lie squarely with the Palestinians, leading some critics to speak of a "final capitulation to the Israeli position." The text of Obama's speech was distributed by the White House press office.
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, New York, Israel, Palestine, Arabia, United Nations, and South Sudan

124. State Department, Briefing in the Wake of UNESCO's Approval of Full Palestinian Membership, Washington, 3 November 2011 (excerpts).

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The 31 October vote of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO) general assembly approving by a wide margin the Palestinian request for full membership in the organization (as opposed to observer status) was the starting point for the Palestine-related segment of the State Department's daily press briefing. Spokesperson Victoria Nuland was hammered on the U.S. defunding of UNESCO and progress on the peace process. The transcript was distributed by the State Department.
Political Geography:: United States, Washington, Palestine, and United Nations

125. Former U.S. Officials Robert D. Blackwell and Walter B. Slocombe, "Israel: A Strategic Asset for the U.S.," Jerusalem Post, 3 November 2011 (excerpts).

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Veteran U.S. foreign policy experts Robert Blackwell (a former senior State Department official and National Security Council aide) and Walter Slocombe (a former Pentagon official) wrote the following feature piece in the Jerusalem Post at a time when regional instability generated by the Arab Spring revived debate over whether Israel was a strategic asset or liability to the United States. The authors argue for maintaining the U.S. - Israel special relationship not only on the grounds of "shared values and morality" but also because of the benefits derived from bilateral security coordination. The excerpts below highlight the deep military and intelligence ties existing between Israel and the United States.
Political Geography:: United States, Israel, and Arabia

126. Bibliography of Periodical Literature

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section lists articles and reviews of books relevant to Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Entries are classified under the following headings: Reference and General; History (through 1948) and Geography; Palestinian Politics and Society; Jerusalem; Israeli Politics, Society, and Zionism; Arab and Middle Eastern Politics; International Relations; Law; Military; Economy, Society, and Education; Literature, Arts, and Culture; Book Reviews; and Reports Received.
Political Geography:: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

127. JPS Responds to CAMERA's Call for Accuracy: Ben-Gurion and the Arab Transfer

Publication Date:: 01-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In November 2011, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) alerted us to an erroneous citation in an article by Ilan Pappé published in the autumn 2006 issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies under the title "The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." In that article, Dr. Pappé combined sections from several chapters of the manuscript that was soon to become his The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , published in 2006 by One World Press of Oxford, England.
Political Geography:: America, Middle East, Palestine, Arabia, and England

128. Reflections on a Lifetime of Engagement with Zionism, the Palestine Question, and American Empire: An Interview with Noam Chomsky

Author:: Mouin Rabbani
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: What is perhaps most striking about Noam Chomsky is his consistency. Over the course of more than half a century of political activism, accompanied by a ceaseless output of books and articles as well as innumerable talks and interviews, he has-to the best of my knowledge-never changed his mind on a significant issue. This is all the more impressive when considering the astounding range of his political interests, which span the globe geographically as well as thematically.
Political Geography:: America and Palestine

129. From the Editor

Author:: Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: THIS ISSUE OF the Journal of Palestine Studies goes to press between May 15 and June 7 2012, the sixty-fourth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba and the forty-fifth anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. The lives of every Palestinian, and of many others, have been indelibly marked by these two seminal sets of events, which changed the course of the history of Palestine and the entire Middle East. These two markers of loss have defined many of the concerns of the Journal over its more than forty years of publication. During this time, it has been part of a broad effort to redefine the understanding of the meaning and valence of these two milestones.
Political Geography:: Middle East, Palestine, and Sinai Peninsula

130. Western Interests, Israeli Unilateralism, and the Two-State Solution

Author:: Neve Gordon and Yinon Cohen
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This essay analyzes the impact of Israeli unilateralism-specifically that of its settlement project-on the two-state solution. After exploring the relationship between unilateralism and power, the authors show, inter alia, that in-migration has accounted for about half the settlement growth since the international embrace of the land-for- peace formula in 1991, that the level of in-migration does not fluctuate according to government composition (right or left), and that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have spurred rather than inhibited settlement expansion. The essay is framed by a contrast with the Palestinian bid for full UN membership, rejected as unilateralism by the Western powers but in fact aimed at undercutting Israeli unilateralism and creating the conditions for meaningful negotiations.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and United Nations

131. Liminal Loyalties: Ottomanism and Palestinian Responses to the Turkish War of Independence, 1919 -22

Author:: Awad Halabi
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The imposition of British rule in Palestine following World War I did not immediately supplant one imperial system with another or Ottoman identities with national ones. Examining Palestinian responses to the Turkish war of independence, this article argues that the 1917-22 period should be seen as a "liminal" era suspended between imperial systems. Both Kemalists and Palestinians employed a discourse of loyalty to the Ottoman dynasty, Muslim identity, and resistance to European rule to frame their goals. It was only after the creation of the Turkish Republic and the promulgation of the British Mandate, the author argues, that nationalist identities displaced Ottoman ones for both Turks and Palestinians.
Political Geography:: Europe, Turkey, and Palestine

132. Compounding Vulnerability: Impacts of Climate Change on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank

Author:: Michael Mason, Mark Zeitoun, and Ziad Mimi
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Coping with (and adapting to) climatological hazards is commonly understood in intergovernmental and aid agency for a as a purely technical matter. This article examines the UN Development Programme's stakeholder consultations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to challenge the donor-driven technical-managerial framing of Palestinian climate vulnerability by showing how Israeli occupation practices exacerbate environmental stresses. While emphasizing the importance of social, economic, and political contexts in shaping populations' responses to climate change in general, the authors demonstrate the multiple ways in which the occupation specifically compounds hazards reveals it as constitutive of Palestinian climate vulnerability.
Political Geography:: Israel and United Nations

133. The Origins of Hamas: Militant Legacy or Israeli Tool?

Author:: Jean-Pierre Filiu
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Since its creation in 1987, Hamas has been at the forefront of armed resistance in the occupied Palestinian territories. While the movement itself claims an unbroken militancy in Palestine dating back to 1935, others credit post-1967 maneuvers of Israeli Intelligence for its establishment. This article, in assessing these opposing narratives and offering its own interpretation, delves into the historical foundations of Hamas starting with the establishment in 1946 of the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (the mother organization) and ending with its emergence as a distinct entity at the outbreak of the first intifada. Particular emphasis is given to the Brotherhood's pre-1987 record of militancy in the Strip, and on the complicated and intertwining relationship between the Brotherhood and Fatah.
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

134. Reconceptualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Key Paradigm Shifts

Author:: Sara Roy
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In the near 20 years since the Oslo peace process began, Palestinians have suffered losses-socially, economically and politically-arguably not seen since 1948. This altered reality has, in recent years, been shaped by critical paradigm shifts in the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is understood and addressed. These shifts, particularly with regard to international acceptance of Palestine's territorial fragmentation, the imperative of ending Israel's occupation, the de facto annexation of West Bank lands to Israel, and the transformation of Palestinians into a humanitarian issue-have redefined the way the world views the conflict, diminishing the possibility of a political resolution.
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

135. Nationalism, History, and the 1948 War

Author:: Weldon C. Matthews
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Efrat Ben-Ze'ev has produced a brief but thought-provoking response to the literature on the 1948 Palestine war that is bound by the parameters of official and academic nationalist narratives. Implicit in her book is a critique of the historical method that synthesizes textual and oral evidence to understand 1948 as the culmination of the Zionist project or the failure of the Palestinian Arab nationalist enterprise and seeks to assign culpability for the creation of the conflict to either of the nationalist movements. The production of these narratives deploys individuals' memories of 1948 as evidence, and those individuals' identities are consequently defined in terms of the nationalist narratives. Such a methodology obscures the instability of memory and the processes of reproducing it.
Political Geography:: Palestine and Arabia

136. Unearthing Ottoman Palestine

Author:: Dana Sajdi
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This collection brings together thirteen essays by established senior Ottomanists such as Butrus Abu-Manneh and younger scholars of Palestine such as Johann Büssow and Michelle Campos. The chapters cover various aspects of late Ottoman Palestine in the years between the Young Turk Revolt of 1908 and the final dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War.
Political Geography:: Palestine

137. Colonialism and Christianity in the Mandate Period

Author:: Anthony O'Mahony
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The period of the British Mandate rule in Palestine is of great significance for the modern history of Christianity in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, because it represents an important transition point between the end of four centuries of Ottoman rule and the formation of the modern states of Israel and Jordan. It is surprising, however, that while the importance of the Mandate for the Christian churches is often noted, it has to date been an understudied area. Hence Laura Robson's book Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine is especially welcome.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Jordan

138. Memory Narratives and Palestinian Women

Author:: Anaheed Al-Hardan
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Yitzhak Rabin was better known for his early role in the so-called peace process rather than for his role in the aerial bombardment, massacre, and expulsion of the people of al-Lydd and al-Ramlah in July 1948. The few families that survived and remained came under Israeli military rule. Fatima Kassam's book is an exploration of the life narratives of twenty of those women who remained in their natal towns of al-Lydd and al-Ramlah or sought refuge in towns from other destroyed localities.
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

139. Debating Israel's Palestinian Minority

Author:: Nimer Sultany
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: These two books, The Palestinians in Israel: The Conflict Within by Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman and Arab Minority Nationalism in Israel: The Politics of Indigeneity by Amal Jamal, centralize the question of the status of the Palestinian minority inside Israel. Both books agree that minority members are granted an inferior second-class citizenship. This question is not merely consequential to the prospects of peace and reconciliation in the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinian national movement over the West Bank and Gaza. Rather, its ramifications extend to the character of the state of Israel independently of the peace process. In order to address this question, a significant change should occur. The books offer different perspectives regarding the nature of this change.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

140. Militarism and Israeli Society

Author:: Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The space between the military and society in Israel is the arena of a multifaceted and complicated relationship between the military and the civil sectors. As one of the contributors in Militarism and Israeli Society, Amir Bar- Or, declares: "Complexity is [a] key feature in civil-military relations in Israel" (p. 259). Militarism and Israeli Society is a collective attempt to understand this complexity. From the historian's point of view, the key strength of the book is its understanding of the way the space between Israel's civilian and military spheres changes-in scope and in nature-over time.
Political Geography:: Israel and France

141. Counter-State Zionism and Political Zionism

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Reviewed work(s): Nation and History: Israeli Historiography between Zionism and Post-Zionism, by Yoav Gelber. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011.
Topic:: History
Political Geography:: Israel

142. Counter-State Zionism and Political Zionism

Author:: Ephraim Nimni
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Zionism: One or many? Obsolete? Irreconcilably divided? Ethnocentric? Is there a Zionism compatible with nondiscrimination of Palestinians? These two books, Nation and History: Israeli Historiography between Zionism and Post-Zionism by Yoav Gelber and Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn by Noam Pianko, present opposite points of view, one backward looking and abortive, the other forward looking, expressing hope for change. Both are grounded in historical discussions with considerable relevance to the present. Both draw legitimacy by adhering to a Zionist dream. The two opposing dreams, however, negate each other.
Topic:: Security and Politics
Political Geography:: United States, Israel, Soviet Union, Palestine, and Arabia

143. Arab Views

Author:: Habib Haddad
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli con!ict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. The cartoons are by Habib Haddad. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

144. Selections from the Press

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section includes articles and news items, mainly from Israeli but also from international press sources, that provide insightful or illuminating perspectives on events, developments, or trends in Israel and the occupied territories not readily available in the mainstream U.S. media.
Topic:: Security, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, and Islam
Political Geography:: United States and Ireland

145. Photos from the Quarter

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This small sample of photos, selected from hundreds viewed by JPS, aims to convey a sense of the situation on the ground in the occupied territories during the quarter.
Political Geography:: United Nations

146. Update on Conflict and Diplomacy

Author:: Michele K. Eposito
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The Quarterly Update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and the future of the peace process. More than 100 print, wire, television, and online sources providing U.S., Israeli, Arab, and international independent and government coverage of unfolding events are surveyed to compile the Quarterly Update. The most relevant sources are cited in JPS's Chronology section, which tracks events day by day.
Political Geography:: Russia, United States, Israel, and Arabia

147. Settlement Monitor

Author:: Geoffrey Aronson
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section covers items-reprinted articles, statistics, and maps-pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material.
Political Geography:: Washington, Middle East, Israel, and Egypt

148. A1. European Members of UN Security Council, Joint Statement on Jerusalem, New York, 20 December 2011

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: "We have just heard a brie!ng from Mr Fernandez-Taranco about the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories. One of the themes that emerged was the severely damaging effect that increased settlement construction and settler violence is having on the ground and on the prospects of a return to negotiations. The UK, France, Germany, and Portugal are dismayed by these wholly negative developments.
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: United States, United Kingdom, Israel, South Africa, and Brazil

149. A2. European Union, Internal Report on "Area C and Palestinian State Building," Brussels, January 2012 (excerpts)

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In accordance with the Oslo Agreement the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem consists of three areas: . Area A (18% of territory, 55% of population) under Palestinian civil and security control. . Area B (20% of territory, 41% of population) under Palestinian civil and shared Israeli-Palestinian civil and security control. . Area C (62% of territory, 5.8% of population) under full Israeli security control and almost full Israeli civilian control.
Political Geography:: Europe, Israel, and Palestine

150. A3. EU Heads of Mission, Report on East Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 10 February 2012 (excerpts)

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Like the European Union (EU) report on Area C (Doc A2 above), this report was prepared for internal EU use and leaked, in this case to the British newspaper The Guardian. Prepared by the heads of mission of the EU member states in Jerusalem, it was approved by Brussels headquarters on 12 February. (A third internal EU document, on Israel's Arab minority, was prepared by the European embassies in Israel during the quarter, but not leaked in full. For a description, see Barak Ravid, "Secret EU paper aims to tackle Israel's treatment of Arab minority" in the "Selections from the Press" section.)
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: Europe, Israel, and Arabia

151. B. B'Tselem , "Three Years since Operation Cast Lead: Israeli Military Utterly Failed to Investigate Itself," Jerusalem, 19 January 2012.

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The document below was published by the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B'Tselem, on 19 January. Though in the wake of Operation Cast Lead the Israel Defense Forces insisted that an independent investigation of its activities was unnecessary, the B'Tselem report details the failure of the Israeli military to investigate either policy choices or the conduct of the forces in the !eld in particular cases three years after the operation. The footnotes have been omitted for space. The document was obtained from http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20120118_3_ years_after_cast_lead.
Political Geography:: Israel and United Nations

152. C. Khaled Elgindy, "The Middle East Quartet: A Post-Mortem," Washington, D.C., February 2012 (excerpts)

Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: It has been ten years since the four most powerful players in the Middle East peace process-the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations-came together under the diplomatic umbrella known as the Quartet. Formed in response to the outbreak of the second intifada in late 2000 and the collapse of peace negotiations a few months later, the Quartet appeared ideally suited for dealing with the seemingly intractable con!ict between Israelis and Palestinians. Its small but powerful membership allowed it to act swiftly and decisively, while its informal structure gave it the !exibility needed to navigate crises and adapt to changing developments on the ground.
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: Russia, United States, Europe, Washington, Middle East, and United Nations

153. Bibliography of Periodical Literature

Author:: Norbert Scholz
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section lists articles and reviews of books relevant to Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Entries are classified under the following headings: Reference and General; History (through 1948) and Geography; Palestinian Politics and Society; Jerusalem; Israeli Politics, Society, and Zionism; Arab and Middle Eastern Politics; International Relations; Law; Military; Economy, Society, and Education; Literature, Arts, and Culture; Book Reviews; and Reports Received.
Political Geography:: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

154. Chronology

Author:: Michele K. Esposito
Publication Date:: 05-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This is part 113 of a chronology begun in Journal of Palestine Studies (JPS) 13, no. 3 (Spring 1984). Chronology dates reflect North American Eastern Standard Time. For a more comprehensive overview of regional and international developments related to the peace process, see the Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy in JPS 163.
Topic:: Security
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and North America

155. From the Editor

Author:: Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: As this issue went to press, prospective Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered himself of a glaring series of gaffes and insults about the Palestinians in a speech in Jerusalem whose level of pandering led even some of the mainstream media to wince, and the Daily Show (31 July 2012) to gleefully exploit his blunders. Romney grossly misstated the per capita GDP of both Palestinians and Israelis (a strange misstep for a candidate whose claim to fame is his business acumen), and ascribed the yawning economic gap between them to “culture” and the hand of Providence. But his failure to mention forty-five years of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as a factor holding the Palestinians back economically is lamentably not anomalous for an American politician. Romney is only one among many engaged in a dizzying race to the bottom when it comes to pandering to the most extreme Israeli positions and denigrating the Palestinians. Ignoring the elephant in the room, whether it is the occupation, or the failure of a so-called “peace process” to deliver peace for more than two decades, is par for the course in American political campaigns where Palestine is concerned.
Topic:: Culture
Political Geography:: America, Israel, Palestine, and Jerusalem

156. Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's Siege

Author:: Nicolas Pelham
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This article traces the extraordinary development of Gaza's tunnel phenomenon over the past decade in response to Israel's economic asphyxiation of the small coastal enclave. It focuses on the period since Hamas's 2007 takeover of the Strip, which saw the industry's transformation from a clandestine, makeshift operation into a major commercial enterprise, regulated, taxed, and bureaucratized. In addition to describing the particulars of the tunnel complex, the article explores its impact on Gaza's socioeconomic hierarchy, strategic orientation, and Islamist rule. The larger geopolitical context, especially with regard to Israel, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Nile Valley, is also discussed. The author argues that contrary to the intentions of its architects, the siege precipitated the reconfiguration of Gaza's economy and enabled its rulers to circumvent the worst effects of the blockade.
Political Geography:: Israel and Gaza

157. The Politics of International Aid to the Gaza Strip

Author:: Tamer Qarmout and Daniel Beland
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: International aid to the Palestinian Authority is conditioned in part on democratization and good governance. However, since Hamas' victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections and its takeover of the Gaza Strip, aid agencies have supported the international boycott of the Hamas government. This article argues that aid agencies, by operating in Gaza while boycotting its government, subvert their mandates and serve the political interests of donors and the PA rather than the humanitarian and development needs of Gazans. As a consequence, assistance has, inadvertently and unintentionally, increased Gazans' dependence on humanitarian aid, impeded economic development, and enabled Israel to maintain its occupation and the blockade of Gaza.
Political Geography:: Palestine and Gaza

158. Israel, the Palestinians, and the 2012 Republican Primaries: Fantasy Politics on Display

Author:: Lawrence Davidson
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This essay looks at the 2012 Republican primaries through the lens of "localism" and how candidates and lobbies manipulate for their own purposes the ignorance of their voting constituencies on issues not relevant to their everyday lives. After a discussion of the wider process, the piece focuses on the eight leading candidates in the presidential primary race with regard to Israel and Palestine, with an overview of their positions and advisers. It ends with some reflections on the consequences of the peculiarly American mix of localism, national politics, and special interest groups.
Topic:: Politics
Political Geography:: America, Israel, and Palestine

159. Two Portraits in Resistance: Abu 'Umar and Mahjub 'Umar

Author:: Jehan Helou and Elias Khoury
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The word "Palestinian" today, at least in the realm of politics, almost automatically attaches itself to the word "Authority." This calls forth images of an entity that in fact has no sovereignty, no real jurisdiction, painfully limited authority, and precious little dignity, dwarfed as it is by its Israeli and U.S. overseers and patrons. In such circumstances, it may be difficult to recall that there was a time when the word "Palestine" spontaneously evoked another word, "Resistance," and a far different set of associations.

160. Not Just a Soccer Game: Colonialism and Conflict among Palestinians in Israel

Author:: Grant Aubrey Farred
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Magid Shihade's Not Just a Soccer Game: Colonialism and Conflict among Palestinians in Israel turns on a "small" incident. On 11 April 1981, a football ("soccer") match took place between teams from Kafr Yassif (predominantly Christian) and Julis (predominantly Druze), two Arab villages in Galilee, Israel. "During the match,"fighting broke out between the rival supporters, causing injuries, and one fan from each village was killed (p. 2). Despite an early promise of a negotiated resolution, the Julis leadership later refused to engage in sulha(reconcilation) so that a hudna(truce) might be achieved. Eventually, "aggressors from Julis" attacked Kafr Yassif-causing considerable damage to the village-while "police forces .stood watching the violence unfold and did not intervene" (p. 6). Calls for an independent investigation were ignored, and eventually the Israeli government absolved the tactics of its police force, at once angering the Kafr Yassif com-munity and affirming their view that the Israeli state supported the Druze, in no small measure because of their conscription into the Israeli army.
Political Geography:: Israel

161. My Life in the PLO: The Inside Story of the Palestinian Struggle

Author:: As'ad Abukhalil
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The memoirs of Shafiq al-Hout are the story of the Palestinian national movement in the twentieth century. Al-Hout lived a long life and was at the center of the Palestinian political struggle. He used to tell George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that he was a communist (in his youth) when everyone around him was an Arab nationalist, then he became an Arab nationalist (in the 1960s) when everyone around him became a communist. During those political transformations, al-Hout remained a progressive and loud voice for Palestinian struggle.
Political Geography:: Palestine and Arabia

162. 'This Time We Went Too Far': Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (Revised and Expanded)

Author:: Sara Roy
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Palestinian life in Gaza and the West Bank is defined by Israel's oppressive occupation, and this will not change until the occupation ends. Yet, after more than two and a half decades of research and writing on Israeli-Palestinian issues, I remain stunned by the lack of attention, indeed aversion, to context as an explanatory variable. By stripping issues and events of their current and historical framework, many scholars have failed to address the human dimensions of the occupation, which are central to understanding political, economic, and social behavior among Palestinians. Instead, dominant and essentialzing conceptualizations of the conflict that ignore Palestinian suffering and the reasons for it are constantly produced and reproduced despite their failure to illuminate or resolve. And in Palestine specifically these defining and recycled paradigms are further characterized by a willingness to legitimize Israel's occupation as long as there is no accepted agreement to end it. Even the word "occupation" seems to have been expunged from the lexicon of the conflict as irrelevant and obsolete.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

163. Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector

Author:: Nubar Hovsepian
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Sara Roy's new book on the relationship between the social and political spheres in Gaza is meticulously researched and clearly written. As always, Roy manages to give voice and agency to Palestinians individually and collectively. Roy combines scholarly rigor and moral clarity to examine and challenge "the conventional frame that defines Hamas only as a terrorist organization". She avoids simple binaries of religious versus secular. Instead, she identifies the role of Islamic-inspired organizations in creating civic space that promotes civism to cement and consolidate society, economy, and polity. But she quickly warns that the Islamist movement in Gaza is not homogeneous, but rather highly variegated. The social institutions in Gaza did not so much seek to widen their religious congregations as to create "civic communities" through incremental reform couched in a cultural and universal discourse that is not limited by religious terms.
Political Geography:: Palestine and Gaza

164. The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel

Author:: Magid Shihade
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In his latest work, Pappé attempts to bring attention to the history of the Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel, an ignored group that "has been dubbed traitors both by the Palestinian movement in the 1950s and by current Israeli political forces". For Pappé, theirs is a story of almost impossible navigation in a sea of "[Zionist] colonialism, [Jewish] chauvinist nationalism, [Jewish] fanatic religiosity and international indifference," and a history of "discrimination and dispossession but also of self-assertiveness and steadfastness". According to Pappé, it is important to study the '48 Palestinians because "it is only through a history of the Palestinian minority of Israel that one can examine the extent to which the long-lived Zionist and Israeli desire for [Jewish] ethnic supremacy and exclusivity" explains the Israeli position vis-à-vis all Palestinians.
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

165. Unsettling Gaza: Secular Liberalism, Radical Religion, and the Israeli Settlement Project

Author:: Gil Anidjar
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Some binary oppositions-the stuff of much scholarly work way back when-remain difficult to undo. These days we may think more readily in terms of exception or emergency, but the underlying logic, the deictic (or denunciatory) procedure, persists. Now is the moment to act. Or it was all happening then. Over there is where the problem lies. If only these people stopped making trouble. A concomitant, and equally pervasive, habit of thought has to do with the conviction that, if not a god, the plural will save us now. A strange response to "essentialism," and no doubt a symptom of its "unfinished project," we think ourselves safer in the vicinity of the many than in that of the one. There is a Right and there is a Left. There is liberalism and there is religiosity. And there is a profusion of modernities, countless capitalisms, and very many kinds of colonialisms.
Political Geography:: Israel and Gaza

166. Rethinking Israeli Space: Periphery and Identity

Author:: Nasser Abourahme
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: To say that Zionism is an acutely spatial project is to run the risk of stating the obvious. It is not only-as is any other settler-colonial enterprise-irreducibly territorial, but also politically mechanized largely through architecture. "Facts on the ground" remain its modus operandi, and cement probably its most devastating weapon. With this in mind it is perhaps not surprising that some of the most trenchant Israeli critiques of the Zionist project have come from geographers and urbanists (E. Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation [London: Verso, 2007]; O. Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006]) trying to parse the relationship between logic and form.
Political Geography:: Israel and London

167. Israel's Dead Soul

Author:: Matthew Abraham
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In Israel's Dead Soul, Steven Salaita skillfully examines the many lamentations over the state of Israel's soul, exploring what these lamentations reveal about the integrity of intellectual debates about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Adding to Salaita's already impressive list of books (Anti-Arab Racism in the U.S.A., Holy Land in Transit, and Uncultured Wars), Israel's Dead Soul exposes the problematic tendency among Israel's liberal defenders to justify Israeli military adventurism by anguishing over Israel's supposed existential predicament.
Political Geography:: United States and Israel

168. Preparing the Mothers of Tomorrow: Education and Islam in Mandate Palestine

Author:: Andrea L. Stanton
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Ela Greenberg's first book is a gracefully written work of scholarship that highlights an important but overlooked aspect of Mandate Palestinian history: girls' education. With a deftly woven, richly sourced text that brings together gender, religion, social class, nationalism, and politics, she presents the history of girls' education in Mandate Palestine as a key lens through which to read some of the era's most critical issues.
Political Geography:: Palestine

169. Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat)

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.
Political Geography:: Arabia

170. Selections from the Press

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Nowhere is the relationship between environmental protection and social justice displayed more clearly than between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The Israeli government takes great care to guarantee that its citizens enjoy the benefits of a clean and comfortable environment. The opposite is true in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, over which Israel has maintained ultimate control for almost 45 years. There, Israel has instituted an exploitative regime that disregards the needs of the local population and ignores the occupier's responsibility as a custodian of the environment as stipulated by the Geneva Conventions. This is particularly evident in how Israel distributes water, permits the environmentally destructive behavior of Israeli settlers and prevents Palestinian development on the land it directly controls.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

171. Photos from the Quarter

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This small sample of photos, selected from hundreds viewed by JPS, aims to convey a sense of the situation on the ground in the occupied territories during the quarter.
Political Geography:: Palestine, Gaza, and Syria

172. Update on Conflict and Diplomacy

Author:: Michele K. Esposito
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The Quarterly Update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and the future of the peace process. More than 100 print, wire, television, and online sources providing U.S., Israeli, Arab, and international independent and government coverage of unfolding events are surveyed to compile the Quarterly Update. The most relevant sources are cited in JPS's Chronology section, which tracks events day by day. JPS Chronologies are archived on the JPS web site at www.palestine-studies.org.
Political Geography:: United States, Israel, and Arabia

173. Settlement Monitor

Author:: Geoffrey Aronson
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section covers items-reprinted articles, statistics, and maps-pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material.
Political Geography:: Washington, Middle East, and Gaza

174. Congressional Monitor

Author:: Paul James Costic
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: CongressionalMonitor.org, the companion site to this JPS section, provides in-depth analysis of the bills and resolutions listed here. Published annually, the Congressional Monitor summarizes all bills and resolutions pertinent to Palestine, Israel, or the broader Arab-Israeli conflict introduced during the previous session of Congress. It is part of a wider project of the Institute for Palestine Studies that includes the Congressional Monitor Database (CongressionalMonitor.org).The database contains all relevant legislation from 2001 to the present (the 107th Congress through the 112th Congress) and is updated on an ongoing basis. The monitor identifies major legislative themes related to the Palestine issue as well as initiators of specific legislation, their priorities, the range of their concerns, and their attitudes toward the regional actors. Material in this compilation is drawn from www.thomas.loc.gov, the official legislative site of the Library of Congress, which includes a detailed primer on the legislative process entitled "How Our Laws Are Made."
Political Geography:: Palestine and Arabia

175. A1. International Crisis Group, Report on Israel's Arab Minority and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Nazareth/Jerusalem/Ramallah/Brussels, 14 March 2012 (excerpts).

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: For over six decades, Israel's Palestinian citizens have had a unique experience: they are a Palestinian national minority in a Jewish state locked in conflict with its Arab neighbors but they also constitute an Israeli minority enjoying the benefits of citizenship in a state that prizes democracy. This has translated into ambivalent relations with both the state of Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and beyond. They feel solidarity with their brethren elsewhere, yet many Arabs study in Israeli universities, work side-by-side with Jews, and speak Hebrew fluently-a degree of familiarity that has only made the discrimination and alienation from which they suffer seem more acute and demands for equality more insistent.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

176. A2. International Criminal Court, Response to the Government of Palestine's Request to Become a Party to the Rome Statute, The Hague, 3 April 2012.

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In January 2009, in the wake of Israel's Operation Cast Lead (OCL) against Gaza, the Palestinian Authority (PA) wrote to the International Criminal Court (ICC) formally acknowledging the ICC's jurisdiction over the occupied territories and asking to become a signatory to the ICC's founding treaty, the Rome Statute. The purpose was twofold: to lay the procedural groundwork to be able to request an international war crimes tribunal to investigate Israeli actions during OCL; and to build the case for international recognition of Palestinian statehood. The wording of the Rome Statute is such that only states may join and submit appeals to the ICC.
Political Geography:: Palestine and Italy

177. B. Palestinian Pres. Mahmud Abbas, Letter to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Ramallah, 14 April 2012.

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Reports that Palestinian Authority Pres. Mahmud Abbas was drafting a letter to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu with the aim of breaking the diplomatic stalemate began circulating in mid-March 2012. Delayed by assorted diplomatic and other considerations (see Quarterly Update in this issue for details), the letter was finally delivered to Netanyahu by Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat on 17 April. The letter was not released, but a draft, reproduced below, was leaked to the press and published in The Times of Israel on 15 April. Netanyahu sent a written response to Abbas on 12 May, which reportedly reiterated the call for an immediate resumption of talks, without preconditions. The Abbas letter was taken from the Times of Israel website at www.timeso!srael.com.
Political Geography:: Palestine

178. C1. Naftali Bennett, "The Israel Stability Initiative," February 2012.

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This "proposed solution" to the conflict was first circulated in late February 2012 to Israel's political and military elites, who reportedly (Jerusalem Post 2/23) gave it "high praise." Its author, a self-made multimillionaire and a "rising star" in the religious-Zionist-nationalist right, was Netanyahu's chief of staff (2006-8), and for two years (until January 2012) head of the YESHA settlers council. Bennett is also founder and head of the extra-parliamentary movement My Israel. The Israel Stability Initiative is posted on the One State Israel website at www.onestateisrael.com.
Political Geography:: Israel

179. C2. Ami Ayalon, Orni Petruschka, and Gilead Sher, Call for Israel to Adopt "Constructive Unilateralism" toward the Palestinians, New York Times, 24 April 2012.

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Former lead Israeli peace negotiator Gilead Sher, former Israeli Security Agency head Ami Ayalon, and Israeli entrepreneur Orni Petruschka (organizers of a new group called Blue White Future) made the following proposal in a New York Times op-ed titled "Peace without Partners." While most of the steps recommended by the authors are already being undertaken by the Netanyahu government or have previously been discussed among Israelis in the course of the peace process, the initiative is notable for openly labeling them as unilateral steps to determine final status and urging the Israeli imposition of a solution "regardless of whether the Palestinians leaders have agreed." The op-ed appeared online on 23 April, and in print the following day. The op-ed was obtained from the New York Times website at www.nytimes.com.
Political Geography:: New York and Israel

180. D1. U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, Remarks at the AIPAC Conference, Washington, 4 March 2012 (excerpts)

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Every time I come to AIPAC, I'm especially impressed to see so many young people here. . . . You carry with you an extraordinary legacy of more than six decades of friendship between the United States and Israel. . . . And for inspiration, you can look to the man who preceded me on this stage, who's being honored at this conference-my friend, President Shimon Peres.
Political Geography:: Washington and Israel

181. D2. Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, Remarks at Annual AIPAC Conference, Washington, 6 March 2012 (excerpts).

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Below are excerpts from former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's address to the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington on 6 March 2012 (the same day as the Super Tuesday primary voting). Romney did not attend the conference but spoke via video link from the campaign trail. The full transcript can be obtained from the AIPAC website at www.aipac.org. This year, we are gathering at a dangerous time for Israel and for America. Not since the dark days of 1967 and 1973 has the Middle East faced peril as it does today. This is a critical moment. America must not-and, if I am President, it will not-fail this defining test of history.
Political Geography:: America and Washington

182. Bibliography of Periodical Literature

Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section lists articles and reviews of books relevant to Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Entries are classified under the following headings: Reference and General; History (through 1948) and Geography; Palestinian Politics and Society; Jerusalem; Israeli Politics, Society, and Zionism; Arab and Middle Eastern Politics; International Relations; Law; Military; Economy, Society, and Education; Literature, Arts, and Culture; Book Reviews; and Reports Received.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

183. Chronology

Author:: Michele K. Esposito
Publication Date:: 08-2012
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This is part 114 of a chronology begun in Journal of Palestine Studies ( JPS) 13, no. 3 (Spring 1984). Chronology dates reflect North American Eastern Standard Time. For a more comprehensive overview of regional and international developments related to the peace process, see the Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy in JPS 164.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and North America

184. From the Editor

Author:: Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: No abstract is available.
Political Geography:: Palestine

185. Salvage or Plunder? Israel's "Collection" of Private Palestinian Libraries in West Jerusalem

Author:: Gish Amit
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: No abstract is available.
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Jerusalem

186. Israeli Supreme Court Doctrine and the Battle over Arab Land in Galilee: A Vertical Assessment

Author:: Geremy Forman
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In the mid-1950s, the overwhelmingly Arab central Galilee became the first regional focus of Israeli land-claiming in the context of state efforts to Judaize the region. This article examines the land-related judicial doctrines adopted by the Israeli Supreme Court through the early 1960s that facilitated this endeavor. While previous academic work on the evolution of these doctrines depicts a “horizontal” process proceeding from one SC precedent to another, this article employs a “vertical” approach that focuses on the role of litigant argument and lower-court rulings. The main finding is that in these disputes, SC justices did not merely rule in favor of the state, but consistently adopted the legal arguments advanced by the state, transforming them into SC doctrine and the law of the land. IN THE LATE 1950s, the central Galilee became the site of a judicial battle over land rights between the Israeli government and the region's Palestinian inhabitants. The thousands of legal disputes were products of the ongoing struggle between Jews and Arabs over land in the country that began under Ottoman rule and intensified during the British Mandate over Palestine. With the flight and expulsion of much of the country's Arab population and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the struggle was transformed into one between the new Jewish state and its Palestinian minority, with Israeli officials using state-held land to intensify Jewish control and state law to expand beyond recognition the stock of land available for this purpose. A pivotal component of Israeli law that enabled the state to increase its landholdings, first in the Galilee and subsequently in other regions, was the land-related judicial doctrines institutionalized by the Israeli Supreme Court (SC) in the early 1960s, just as the judicial struggle over land in the Galilee was reaching its height. These doctrines expanded the legal definition of state land employed during land-title settlement and limited the ability of private claimants to acquire title, thereby strengthening the hand of the government at the expense of local residents. Because the lion's share of unregistered land in Israel was located in predominantly Arab areas, and because most land registered in the name of the state during the process was designated for Jewish settlement, these doctrines must be understood as having helped provide the territorial foundations for Judaization and shape Jewish-Arab ethnonational geographies of power in the young country. Although these doctrines' histories have been explored elsewhere, this article examines their evolution from a different perspective. Instead of approaching the doctrines primarily as SC creations and following their evolution “horizontally,” from one SC precedent to another as most legal scholars do, I focus on the origins of the fundamental principles by investigating the sources of the key ideas advanced by the authoring justices. This line of inquiry is particularly relevant, because a major point of contention in the writings of Israeli legal scholars has been the degree to which these justices were influenced by state interests and Zionist ideology, an arguably futile debate considering the absence of documentary evidence regarding the justices' inner thoughts and motivations at the time. However, by expanding exploration “vertically” beyond legal scholarship's traditional focus on upper-court rulings and incorporating the lower courts into our analysis, we gain a relatively clear understanding of where justices got their ideas. Although this vertical approach makes intuitive sense, I was nonetheless surprised by the consistency of my findings. In each doctrine examined for this article—the admissibility of aerial photographs, the “50-percent rule,” and the tripartite changes regarding Mewat land—lower-court rulings were by far the most important source of the arguments advanced by the authoring justices. And these rulings, in turn, most often replicated the arguments of Israeli state attorneys. In this way, doctrines evolved not only horizontally from one SC ruling to another, but also (and, in most cases, primarily) vertically, between the lower court (in this case, the Haifa District Court) and the SC. Moreover, while focusing on the horizontal evolution of these doctrines based on SC rulings alone may leave the sources of justices' ideas shrouded and unclear, exploring their vertical evolution based on lower-court and SC archives reveals a clear flow of doctrinal components from initial litigant arguments before the lower courts to the institutionalization of binding judicial doctrine. A vertical approach to the evolution of judicial doctrine has far-reaching implications for our understanding of Israeli executive-branch influence on the land-related judicial doctrines of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In contrast to previous scholarship, which concentrates on the degree to which doctrines favored state claims, factors motivating justices' rulings, and SC interventions, this approach focuses on the role of litigant argument and lower-court rulings in doctrine evolution. My main finding is that, in these disputes, SC justices did not simply rule in favor of the state but rather consistently adopted the legal arguments advanced by the state, transforming them into SC doctrine and the law of the land. The State of Israel v. the Palestinians of the Galilee: “Playing for Rules” during the Special Land Settlement Operation By the mid-1950s, the overwhelmingly Arab central Galilee had become the focal point of the Jewish-Arab struggle over land and the first regional focus of Israeli state land-claiming. There were two reasons for this. First, the area was almost all Palestinian in population and land ownership and had not been allocated to the proposed Jewish state by the 1947 UN partition plan. Although the Galilee (like most Arab areas of the country) remained under military rule between 1948 and 1966, many Israeli officials still regarded the demographic and sociospatial conditions there as a threat to Israeli security and sovereignty. It was in this context that efforts to “Judaize the Galilee” through Jewish settlement began in the early 1950s. Second, the region had not yet undergone settlement of title, or “land settlement”—a comprehensive system of survey, mapping, private and state land-claiming, and land registration initiated by the Mandate government and adopted by Israel in 1948. According to the terms of the system, this meant that the state's recognition of ownership rights in the region had not yet been finalized. From the outset, securing title of state-owned land to ensure sufficient territory for Judaization of the Galilee was a major Israeli concern. To this end, government agencies embarked on a systematic campaign of state land-claiming in the region. The land claimed by the state in the Galilee fell into two general categories: 1) privately owned Palestinian land expropriated en masse in the wake of the 1948 war, claimed by the Custodian of Absentee Property (CAP) and the Development Authority; and 2) “unassigned state land,” a term used by state authorities to refer to various types of land to which bare title was held by the state and to which individuals were unable to establish private rights to the satisfaction of the authorities. Israeli officials were troubled by the incomplete nature of the Galilee land registries and their belief that, since 1948, Galilee Arabs had “seized” large areas of state land. In 1954, these officials began calling on the government to accelerate Galilee land settlement to clarify the situation.
Political Geography:: Israel and Arabia

187. Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Discourse on the Right of Return, 1948–59

Author:: Maha Nassar
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This article traces the evolving discourse on the "right of refugee return"among the Palestinian citizens of Israel during the first decade of Israeli statehood, with emphasis on the role of the local Arabic press in shaping and reflecting that discourse. More particularly, it focuses on al-Ittihad, the organ of the communist party (MAKI), which paid the greatest attention to the refugee issue. In tracing the party's shift from a humanistic/anti-imperialist stance on the issue to one emphasizing the refugees' inalienable right to return, the article sheds light on MAKI's political strategy vis-à-vis the Palestinian minority. It also illustrates the political vibrancy in the early years of the community, generally viewed simplistically in terms of a pre-1967 quiescence and post-1967 politicization. In late autumn 1959, Saliba Khamis, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Communist Party (ha-Miflagah ha-Komunist ha-Yisra'ilit-MAKI) central committee, wrote an essay in the party's Arabic-language newspaper, al-Ittihad (The Union), reviewing the ongoing attempts to compensate and resettle Palestinian refugees outside Israel. In his view, such offers would never succeed because of "the vigilance of the refugees themselves and their strong insistence on their right to return to their country." Khamis's invocation of "rights" (huquq) permeated his analysis, appearing fourteen times in his half-page essay.# His comments also reflected a shift in thinking of many Palestinian MAKI leaders during the first decade of Israeli statehood. As the only legal non-Zionist party during the 1950s, MAKI was the political home for many Palestinian citizens of Israel who held Arab nationalist beliefs but had no other outlet for political expression. Like its predecessor, the Palestine Communist Party (PCP), MAKI's platform stressed internationalism and Arab-Jewish brotherhood, though disagreements over the party's attitude toward Arab and Jewish nationalism occasionally led to tensions within the party. In 1944, Arab leaders broke away from the PCP to form the National Liberation League (NLL), which had a closer affinity to Arab nationalist positions. Although the Jewish and Arab branches reunited in 1948 to form MAKI, such disputes once again led to the party's split in 1965 into the predominantly Jewish MAKI and largely Arab RAKAH parties. During the period under review, MAKI's Arab and Jewish leaders worked together to maintain an internationalist outlook while tailoring their political messages to appeal to their respective communities. Given the disproportionately large Arab makeup of the party, MAKI's Arab leaders used their party's publications to enhance their reputation as the champion of Israel's Palestinian minority and to convince readers to vote for MAKI in parliamentary elections. While we cannot know with certainty how widespread the views expressed in al-Ittihad actually were, a close review of the paper gives us insight into the political positions MAKI leaders believed would resonate in the Palestinian community, thus providing us with a useful lens through which to examine Palestinian political discourse in Israel during its early years. Reports and editorials that appeared in al-Ittihad throughout this period show how two threads in the discourse on return developed, crystallized, and ultimately converged. Initially, the few articles written on this subject were by party leaders with a strong pro-Soviet tilt and were aimed at convincing Israeli decision makers to allow refugees to return to their original homes and lands on humanistic and anti-imperialist grounds. However, by 1959, a host of regional and domestic factors led al-Ittihad to emphasize the collective and inalienable right of Palestinian refugees-both the "external" refugees mainly in the surrounding states and the "internal" refugees still in Israel but prevented from returning to their villages-to do so. These factors included mounting Palestinian calls for the right of return, which, coupled with growing Soviet support on the issue, gave MAKI some of the political cover it needed to take a stronger stance. At the same time, competition with the newly formed Arab nationalist group al-Ard and the leftist-Zionist party MAPAM for the political support of Palestinian Israelis, along with pressure from internal refugees themselves, further convinced MAKI's Arab leaders to emphasize the refugees' right of return-a position they have held ever since. This confluence of domestic and regional developments makes 1959 a useful endpoint for our discussion of MAKI's transformation. Understanding how and why these changes occurred not only gives us keen insight into the dynamics of Palestinian activism in Israel during this early period but also demonstrates that the direction of this activism was often bottom-up rather than top-down. Furthermore, it shows how al-Ittihad helped connect the geographically and politically isolated Palestinians in Israel to the rest of the Arab world, paving the way for a reunited Palestinian political entity in the post-1967 era. The refugee issue is one of the most contentious of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Palestinians have long argued they have a legal right to return to their homes in historic Palestine. This was based in part on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provision, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country," as well as on UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), which recognizes "that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property."Israel, however, has maintained that Palestinians do not have a legal right to return and that a solution to the refugee problem must be part of a broader peace agreement focused on the resettlement of refugees. While Israel did allow a few thousand refugees to be repatriated under family reunification provisions negotiated at the Lausanne conference in 1949, it has resisted pressures to accept large numbers of refugees since then. Much of what has been written on the Palestinian refugees has focused on the origins of the problem and their prospects for return. Studies of internal Palestinian refugees in Israel have outlined the mechanisms by which they were deprived of access to their lands and their own attempts to return. Less attention has been paid to how Palestinians in Israel viewed the refugee issue as a whole, especially during the early years of the state. One reason for this may be the fact that Palestinian citizens of Israel are often viewed as having been quiescent prior to 1967, whereas after 1967, exposure to Palestinians in the newly occupied territories and in exile led them to challenge government policies more forcefully. This was certainly true to some degree: the military government imposed on the community between 1948 and 1966, coupled with land confiscations, economic discrimination, and travel restrictions, greatly hindered any attempt at political mobilization during that period. Nonetheless, bisecting the political history of Palestinian Israelis into "pre-1967" and "post-1967" periods glosses over more nuanced developments within the community during the early years of the state. Among the aims of the present study is to determine when the concept of "right of return" became commonly used in MAKI's discourses on refugees.
Topic:: United Nations
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

188. Palestine in Egyptian Colloquial Poetry

Author:: Noha Radwan
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Shi'r al-'ammiyya is a poetry movement whose emergence in Egypt in the early 1950s coincided with the heyday of Nasser's revolution, when the Palestine question was a national concern. With numerous practitioners today, the movement has yielded a large corpus of colloquial poetry that has become a significant part of Egypt's cultural landscape. This article presents a historical survey of shi'r al-'ammiyya's best known poets—Fu'ad Haddad, Salah Jahin, and 'Abd al-Rahman al-Abnudi—and their poems on Palestine. Among the essay's aims is to dispel the common misconception that the use of colloquial Egyptian ('ammiyya denotes parochial rather than pan-Arab concerns, with the standard (fusha) Arabic seen as a signifier of pan-Arab identity. In an essay on the poetics of Arab nationalist literature, Palestinian scholar Yasir Suleiman recalled a scene from his childhood: I remember as a little boy going to see an Egyptian film about Jamila with my cousins in . . . Jerusalem in the late 1950s. The whole cinema was in tears and people spoke about Jamila's legendary courage and the barbarity of the French for weeks after that. The film helped make the struggle of the Algerian people 'real' and made us all feel 'Algerian.' When we related the story of the film to my mother, she said 'We are all in the same boat.' We all understood what she meant: Algeria is Palestine and Palestine is Algeria. As a tool of mobilization, the film was very successful indeed. < The film to which Suleiman is referring is Jamila al-Jaza'iriyya (Jamila The Algerian, 1958) by the Egyptian director Yusuf Chahine. That the movie was a “tool of mobilization” against the Zionist occupation of Palestine as well as against the French occupation of Algeria was not an accident, any more than was the choice of Egyptian colloquial, 'ammiyya, for the movie dialogue. There is no need to speculate about whether the Algerian people's struggle would have been any less “real” for the Jerusalem audience if Chahine had chosen to use the literary, fusha, register for his film, or about whether the Jerusalemites would have identified more with the “Algerians” had the actors spoken the Algerian dialect, impenetrable to Palestinians. It is enough to point out that the choice of the Egyptian colloquial seemed so “natural” that it did not even warrant mention by Suleiman, whose interest in the film lay in its emotive and political impact on a Palestinian audience. Chahine's Jamila spoke to the entire Arab audience from the “ocean to the gulf” in a language familiar to them from Egypt's robust cinema industry and radio, the period's most powerful tool of mass communication. As Albert Hourani wrote, This was the age of radio too. Radio sets were imported on a large scale in the 1940s and 1950s. By 1959 there were 850,000 in Egypt and half a million in Morocco, and each set might be listened to by dozens of people, in cafes or village squares. . . . Every government had its own radio station. . . . A large proportion of the programmes sent out by all stations—talks, music and plays—originated in Cairo, and they too spread a knowledge of Egypt and its ways of speech. . . . Certain Egyptian voices became familiar everywhere—that of the country's ruler, Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir, and that of the most famous of Egyptian singers, Umm Kulthum; when she sang, the whole Arab world listened. It was in this sociolinguistic milieu that shi'r al-'ammiyya al-misriyya, an Egyptian poetry movement, one of whose main characteristics is its use of colloquial Egyptian, emerged in the early 1950s. A Modern Movement and Its Antecedents Shi'r al-'ammiyya poets wrote on a variety of themes, but the poems analyzed in this article concern only the Zionist occupation of Palestine, its calamitous consequences, and Arab reaction to these events. These poems establish their authors' commitment to the Palestinian struggle for liberation and the role Egypt must assume in this struggle, a commitment taken here as signifying an embrace of a pan-Arabist political agenda. Any ostensible discrepancy between embracing a pan-Arabist agenda and the choice of the colloquial over the literary language hailed as a hallmark of Arab identity can be dispelled through knowledge of the special status enjoyed by the Egyptian colloquial since the 1940s. On the literary spectrum, it is important to note that shi'r al-'ammiyya is not an extension of earlier traditions or movements using colloquial verse. Rather, it is a modern movement that originated in the 1950s in the poetry of Fu'ad Haddad (1927–1985) and Salah Jahin (1930–1986), poets infused by the new poetic sensibilities of the wider movement of modern/modernist Arabic poetry of the late 1940s. Colloquial poetic expression has existed in multiple folkloric forms at least since the early Abbasid period in the ninth century, and many of these forms continue to enjoy wide popularity in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world. As will be seen below, the poets of shi'r al-'ammiyya at times engage these colloquial traditions, but as part of the engagement with tradition shared by modern/modernist Arabic poetry movements as a whole. In this respect, it is important to distinguish shi'r al-'ammiyya from two earlier movements of colloquial Egyptian verse that were part of the Egyptian cultural landscape at the time when shi'r al-'ammiyya's emerged. The first is a modern manifestation of the poetic genre zajal as practiced by Bayram al-Tunisi (1893–1961) and an earlier generation of zajal composers whose works were widely published between the mid-nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth century. The second is best represented by the poems of Louis 'Awad (1915–1994), an Oxford-educated Egyptian writer, critic, and professor of English literature in his collection Blutuland wa qasa'id ukhra (Plutoland and Other Poems), in which several of the poems are in the colloquial register. The zajal genre had been most popular during the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries in many parts of the Arab world and survives today, especially as a Lebanese folkloric tradition. In mid-nineteenth-century Egypt, zajal reemerged in a large number of popular newspapers. Its practitioners, known as zajjalun, were mostly urban and well versed in the literary register, but they found in zajal's colloquial register an effective medium of communication and mass mobilization in the service of social and political reform. Among the best known zajjalun of that period were 'Abdallah al-Nadim (1854–1896) and Ya'coub Sannu' (1839–1912). But it was in the hands of al-Tunisi that the Egyptian zajal, deployed in the service of social reform and the assertion of the Egyptian national character, reached an unprecedented degree of versatility and popularity. A number of al-Tunisi's zajals remain an important part of Egyptian popular culture. In contrast, Awad's poetry was part of a short-lived call by some Egyptian intellectuals to adopt the colloquial as a means to disengage Egyptian literature from the larger Arabic literary tradition and thus give it a distinctive and separate Egyptian national character. This went counter to the Arab nationalist identity then gaining ground, which insisted on the use of a common literary Arabic. Sati' al-Husri's (1880–1968) statement that “Every Arabic-speaking people is an Arab people” remains the most widely accepted definition of Arab identity. Al-Husri regarded the colloquial as divisive and called upon all Arab literati “to understand fully the umma's (nation's) need for a unified and unifying language and to hold on to fusha.” Resistance to this linguistic affiliation was fomented in Egypt by writers and intellectuals such as Salama Musa (1887–1958), who argued that “standard Arabic cannot serve as a medium of the national literature of Egypt and should therefore give way to a refined colloquial language.” 'Awad's call in his introduction to Blutuland for a break from Arabic poetics and the standard literary Arabic was a continuation of this ideological stance, but neither Awad's poetry nor his larger cause found much appeal with the Egyptian public.
Political Geography:: Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt

189. Why Can't the Palestinians Recognize the Jewish state?

Author:: Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Israel's relatively recent demand for recognition as a “Jewish state” or “homeland for the Jewish people” has important implications for the Palestinians (whether refugees, citizens of Israel, or residents of the occupied territories) with regard to their history, identity, rights, and future. This essay explores the moral and practical reasons why they cannot accede to this demand, or even accept Israel's self-definition as a matter of exclusive Israeli concern.
Political Geography:: Israel and Palestine

190. In Pursuit of My Ottoman Uncle: Reimagining the Middle East Region as One

Author:: Raja Shehadeh
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In April 2011, Raja Shehadeh visited the United States to promote the U.S. edition of his new book, A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle (OR Books, 2011). JPS heard several of his presentations, during which he read passages from his book and reflected on its genesis, major themes, and how writing it changed his thinking about the future of the region. In response to our request, he agreed to allow us to compile the typed notes for his various lectures into a single integrated essay, which he later edited and expanded with additional reflections and comments. A London-trained lawyer with numerous cases in Israel's military courts to his credit, Shehadeh first gained prominence as a human rights advocate and cofounder (in 1979) of al-Haq—the West Bank affiliate of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists and the first human rights organization in the occupied territories—and for his legal writings. He has written a number of memoirs, one of which—Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape—won the Orwell Prize, Britain's top award for political writing, in 2008. When I finished writing Palestinian Walks about the vanishing hills around Ramallah, I felt confined, both by the narrow territory of the West Bank and by a time frame that logically begins with the 1967 war. The West Bank was the arena of that book, yet the Palestine problem, my overriding concern, neither began there nor can its meaning be contained within the four decades of the post-1967 period. The Israelis have perfected the art of “maintained uncertainty,” which consists of repeatedly extending and then contracting, through an unpredictable combination of changing and selectively enforcing regulations and controls, the space in which Palestinians can maneuver. This exacts a heavy psychological toll, inducing a sense of perpetual temporariness. At the same time, the proliferation of settlements, bypasses, and roadblocks that Israel constructs has succeeded in convincing the occupied of the permanence of the fragmentation, as if a truly new geography had been put into place. It suits Israel to elude political resolution, to keep negotiating borders (or talking about negotiating borders) while counting on the resulting uncertainty to maintain the population's quiescence. I wanted to escape all this. I needed to travel in a wider area and to write, so to speak, on a larger canvas in terms of both space and time. One of my abiding interests, which was at the base of Palestinian Walks, is the relationship that exists between people and the landscape. I wanted to continue this exploration. I had always been fascinated by the Great Rift Valley, created by a fault in the geology of the earth that extends from the Taurus mountains in southern Anatolia all the way to Mozambique in central Africa, forming a series of smaller rift valleys along the way. In its eastern Mediterranean segment, the valleys and plains through which the Orontes, Litani, and Jordan rivers flow are part of that system, as are the mountains and hills that lie to either side. Thus our stretch of the Great Rift Valley runs from modern Turkey in the north through Syria, Lebanon, Palestine/Israel, and Jordan, all the way down to the tip of the Hijaz in modern-day Saudi Arabia—all lands once part of the Ottoman Empire. As early as the mid-1990s, when the disappointment of the Oslo process was becoming obvious, my thoughts had begun to turn to the past. I considered writing a book that looks at the relations between the Turks of Ottoman times and the other peoples and lands of the eastern Mediterranean. When I proposed the idea to my publisher, he said this would be not one book but three. But I kept thinking about how I could frame such material and make of it a coherent story. In the meantime, I discovered a memoir written by a great-great uncle of mine, Najib Nassar, an important historical figure of late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine, who was one of the first to publish a book in Arabic about the dangers of Zionism. Though he defined himself the same way any Palestinian, or Turk, or Syrian, or Jew would have defined himself at the time, as an Ottoman, his memoir recounts his “great escape” from the Ottoman police during World War I. His “escape” took him from Haifa through the Galilee and down the Jordan Valley and into the desert wilderness east of the Jordan River. As I read about him, I saw we had a number of things in common: a strong interest in agriculture, an affinity to people who live close to the land, and a preoccupation with a cause. He was also a writer whose writings advocated for that cause. The two ideas—the Great Rift Valley and my great-great uncle's story—coalesced when I began to look for a subject to write about after finishing Palestinian Walks. The result was A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle. It's a book about two journeys: the great escape of my great-great uncle from 1915 to 1917, which basically followed the Great Rift Valley, and my own modern-day explorations, starting out from Ramallah, of the places where he had been. And so it is also a book about two rifts—the Great Rift Valley that begins in Asia Minor and the “rift in time”—the century that separated our two journeys, and how the land has been transformed in the course of that century. More broadly, this book is my attempt to escape the confining reality of occupied Palestine, to free myself to see another reality beneath the present reality that tries to impose itself on our minds in every way, driving home its immutability. It seemed to me that it might be possible to emerge from the political despair that has become our lot by going back into the past and reimagining our region, concentrating on the Rift Valley and its physical integrity, and thinking how that continuity might one day return to reflect the political wholeness that the region once had. It was an act of imagination that I wanted to invite others to share, with the hope that they might come to see, like me, that the present is not permanent and that it is possible to rethink our land and what its future might look like.
Political Geography:: United States, Middle East, London, and Palestine

191. Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean

Author:: Keith W. Whitelam
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: No abstract is available.
Political Geography:: Palestine

192. The Political Economy of Aid in Palestine: Relief from Conflict or Development Delayed?

Author:: Sara Roy
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: No abstract is available.
Topic:: Political Economy
Political Geography:: Palestine

193. The Statehood of Palestine: International Law in the Middle East Conflict

Author:: Diana Buttu
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: No abstract is available.
Political Geography:: Middle East and Palestine

194. State of Siege

Author:: Jeffrey Sacks
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Reviewed work(s): State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish; Munir Akash; Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore DOI: 10.1525/jps.2011.XL.4.104

195. Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat)

Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.
Political Geography:: Israel and Arabia

196. Selections from the Press

Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section includes articles and news items, mainly from Israeli but also from international press sources, that provide insightful or illuminating perspectives on events, developments, or trends in Israel and the occupied territories not readily available in the mainstream U.S. media.
Political Geography:: Israel

197. Photos From the Quarter

Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This small sample of photos, selected from hundreds viewed by JPS, aims to convey a sense of the situation on the ground in the occupied territories during the quarter.

198. Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy

Author:: Michele K. Esposito
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The Quarterly Update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and the future of the peace process. More than 100 print, wire, television, and online sources providing U.S., Israeli, Arab, and international independent and government coverage of unfolding events are surveyed to compile the Quarterly Update. The most relevant sources are cited in JPS's Chronology section, which tracks events day by day. 16 February–15 May 2011
Topic:: Diplomacy
Political Geography:: Israel and Arabia

199. Settlement Monitor

Author:: Geoffrey Aronson
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: This section covers items—reprinted articles, statistics, and maps—pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material.
Political Geography:: Washington, Middle East, Jerusalem, and Gaza

200. Congressional Monitor

Author:: Paul James Costic
Publication Date:: 07-2011
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Published each year, the Congressional Monitor provides summaries of all relevant bills and resolutions (joint, concurrent, and simple) introduced during the previous session of Congress that mention, even briefly, Palestine, Israel, or the broader Arab- Israeli conflict. The Institute for Palestine Studies' Congressional Monitor Database (CongressionalMonitor.org ) contains all relevant legislation from 2001 to the present (the 107th Congress through the first session of the 111th Congress) and will be updated on an ongoing basis to include legislation prior to 2001 and after 2011. Material in this compilation was drawn from www.thomas.loc.gov, where readers can also find a detailed primer on the legislative process entitled “How Our Laws Are Made.” The 111th Congress, Second Session: 5 January–22 December 2010 Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 40, no. 4, p. 177
Political Geography:: Israel and Arabia

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS