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501. Crossroads and Contexts: Interviews on Archaeology in Gaza

Author:
Fareed Armaly, Marc-André Haldimann, Jawdat Khoudary, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, and Moain Sadeq
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
When the average newspaper reader thinks of Gaza, the images that come to mind are often of turmoil, violence, closure, poverty, and despair. There is another face of Gaza, however, that is seldom evoked—one that bespeaks an ancient heritage, archaeological wealth, openness to the world, and a determination to preserve the past. This is the face of Gaza put forward in a major archaeological exhibition entitled “Gaza—at the Crossroads of Civilizations,” recently held at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in the City of Geneva. Though largely uncovered by the international press (except by the Francophone media), the exhibition nonetheless has an importance well beyond its five-month run, because it represents only the first part of a unique, long-term project that could make a real difference for Gaza's future
Political Geography:
Geneva and Gaza

502. Norton: Hezbullah: A Short History

Author:
Rula Abisaab
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Hezbullah comes out of Augustus Richard Norton's long interest and pioneering accounts of the Shi`a of Lebanon, his many research trips to Lebanon, and his close contacts with Shi`i intellectuals and political figures. The book is a dynamic and multifaceted account of one of the most important parties in the modern Middle East—namely, Hizballah. The book examines Shi`i political history since the independence of Lebanon in 1943. Alienated by the Maronite-Sunni coalition that dominated the first Lebanese republic founded in 1943, many Shi`a turned to nationalist and leftist parties to effect a more equitable political system. Norton argues that it was not until the advent of Sayyid Musa al-Sadr that a sectarian identity started to emerge among the Shi`a. Norton, however, describes al-Sadr as “hardly a man of war” (p. 21), even though he had created the Shi`i resistance group Amal in 1975 as an armed militia and raised banners with slogans that glorified armed resistance such as “al-silah zinat al-rijal” (“arms are the ornament of men”).
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

503. Dumper: The Future for Palestinian Refugees: Toward Equity and Peace

Author:
Rosemary Sayigh
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
It has become a truism that the situation of the Palestinian refugees displaced during the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 constitutes one of the most difficult issues needing to be resolved if there is to be a lasting Israeli- Palestinian peace agreement. Another truism, one that has long held sway among politicians and academics alike, is that the Palestinian refugee problem represents a unique case. While it bears certain similarities to other refugee exoduses, the argument goes, the Palestinian case is so specific that it defies attempts to understand it in reference to other massive refugee exoduses brought about by war.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

504. Dabashi: Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema

Author:
Haim Bresheeth
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Dreams of a Nation combines nine authors and a lecture by Edward Said into the first anthology devoted to Palestinian cinema. As such, this is a most welcome publication on one of the world's smallest and (until recently) little-known national cinemas. That Palestinian cinema is without exception produced under conditions of brutal Israeli military occupation makes its significant achievements all the more impressive and certainly worth the volume at hand.
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

505. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Once again, Gaza dominates the news coming out of Palestine, where the aftershocks of Hamas's 2007 takeover continue to reverberate. With Hamas insisting on launching its rockets from the Strip, Israel's response has been predictable but brutal: almost daily armed incursions and one major operation. Of the more than 130 Palestinians killed this quarter (against four Israelis), the vast majority were Gazans, including many civilians. Meanwhile, the impact of the tightening siege and closure—the subject of growing international humanitarian concern—is taking its toll, slowly but surely driving the population to the breaking point. The centerpiece of the current JPS is also Gaza, but from a very different vantage point: Gaza's archeological wealth, and more particularly an unprecedentedly ambitious multi-stage archeological project launched with European and UNESCO backing. Astonishingly, few people in the United States—or for that matter the West Bank, underscoring the extent of separation between the two territories—have even heard of the project, despite the fact that it was inaugurated with a major exhibition showcasing Gaza's rich archaeological heritage that just closed at Geneva's Museum of Art and Archaeology. Thanks to Fareed Armaly, the exhibition's guest artist, JPS is the first to run his four fascinating interviews with the project's leading players. As Armaly himself notes, the importance of the interviews goes beyond Gaza, for they raise controversial issues confronting archaeology everywhere in the third world: development needs versus preserving the past, private interests versus public patrimony, methods of archaeological extraction, the role of poverty, pressures of urbanization, and so on. Also in this issue is an article addressing the economic dilemmas of a key segment of the Palestinian people: the 1.2 million who remain in Israel as citizens of the state. Economist Raja Khalidi, surveying the community after 60 years of failed integration, demonstrates how the Palestinian economies in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza are all part of a single Israeli-dominated economic regime. Starting from this position, he calls for a new economic paradigm capable of charting a course for Palestinian development based on restructuring relations between the two unequal economies along lines laid out in the economic annex to the 1947 partition plan. The issue also includes a review essay on Israel's other main disadvantaged (though far less so) community—the Mizrahim, or Jews of Middle Eastern origin—by Moshe Behar. Turning to less current subjects, anthropologist Sandy Sufian takes an unusual approach to history in her article analyzing political cartoons in Arabic and Hebrew newspapers during the great Palestinian Revolt of 1936–39 to show the use of body images to convey stereotypes of the adversary. Finally, returning to the archeological theme from a historical perspective, JPS is reprinting as a special document an article that appeared in Ha'Aretz on the destruction in 1948 by the Israeli army of sites important to Palestine's archaeology and history. These are casualties of war that often go overlooked.
Political Geography:
Geneva, United States, Europe, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

506. FROM THE EDITOR

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Sixty years ago the Zionist movement launched an all-out military offensive to establish a Jewish state in a country with a two-thirds Arab majority. Victories followed in quick succession as the well-organized,well-armed Haganah battled poorly coordinated Arab irregulars and local militias. On 18 April 1948, after the prelude of the Dayr Yasin massacre and the conquest of Arab villages in the Jerusalem corridor, the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Tiberias was captured and its entire Arab population bused to Transjordan. The attack against the Arab quarters of Haifa, Palestine's largest city, followed almost immediately; Haifa fell on 22 April. With the conquest of Arab Jaffa several weeks later, the fate of Palestine was sealed, and on 14 May 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed. This issue of JPS commemorates this first crucial phase of the 1948 war with two articles about those first key Zionist victories: Mustafa Abbasi's “The End of Arab Tiberias” and a reissue of Walid Khalidi's landmark 1959 article, “The Fall of Haifa,” with a new introduction and footnotes by the author. The two articles have different approaches, with Abbasi focusing especially on the background to the tragedy, tracing the deterioration of relations between Tiberias's Jewish and Palestinian communities, and Khalidi concentrating more on the immediate military and diplomatic background of the attack on Haifa and the progress of the battle itself. Both articles, however, highlight the extraordinary collusion between the Haganah and Britain, which in each case virtually turned the cities over to the Zionists. Sixty years after the Nakba, the political and physical fragmentation of what is left of Arab Palestine continues apace. The Palestinian national movement, meanwhile, is in tatters. The West Bank under the Palestinian Authority and Gaza under Hamas are totally cut off from one another. Gaza is under a draconian siege, facing a humanitarian disaster. With the PA leadership increasingly discredited by its cooperation with Israel, and internal Hamas leaders weakened by popular disapproval of their Gaza takeover, the need for reconciliation between the two has become urgent. Against this background, Hamas politbureau chief Khalid Mishal looms larger on the international stage. Mishal's extended interview with JPS, part I of which appears in the current issue, is thus particularly timely. While most interviews with the Hamas leader focus on the current situation, JPS has taken a longer view, foregrounding in particular his political formation, the influences that shaped him, and the founding of Hamas. The issue also contains the second installment of JPS's new Congressional Monitor, cataloguing all the initiatives pertaining to Israel and Palestine in the first session of the 110th U.S. Congress (January 2007 to January 2008). Once again, the cumulative impact of the initiatives is sobering, with little expected to change in the future. Finally, for the record, a special document file contains the main documents associated with the Annapolis Conference of November 2007.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, Jerusalem, and Gaza

507. ARTICLE: The End of Arab Tiberias: The Arabs of Tiberias and the Battle for the City in 1948

Author:
Mustafa Abbasi
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Tiberias was unique among Palestinian mixed cities for its unusually harmonious Arab-Jewish relations, even during periods of extreme tension like the 1936-39 Arab Revolt. Yet within hours of a brief battle in mid-April 1948, the town's entire Arab population was removed, mostly across the Transjordanian border, making Tiberias a wholly Jewish town overnight. In exploring how this took place, this article focuses on the Arab community's rigid social structure; the leadership's policy of safeguarding intercommunal relations at all costs, heightening local unpreparedness and isolating the town from the rest of Arab Palestine; the growing involvement of the local Jewish community with the Haganah's plans; and the British authorities' virtual abdication of responsibility as they began withdrawing their troops in the last month of the Mandate and as Plan Dalet was launched, engulfing the country in all-out war.
Topic:
Civil Society and War
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arabia

508. SPECIAL FEATURE: The Fall of Haifa Revisited

Author:
Walid Khalidi
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Almost fifty years ago, Walid Khalidi published "The Fall of Haifa" in the December 1959 issue of the now-defunct Middle East Forum. On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the fall of Haifa on 22 April 1948, a major landmark in the Palestine war, JPS is republishing the article, long unavailable, to which Professor Khalidi has added endnotes and an introduction.
Political Geography:
Middle East

509. INTERVIEW (PART I): Khalid Mishal: The Making of a Palestinian Islamic Leader

Author:
Mouin Rabbani
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Khalid Mishal (Abu Walid), a founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the head of its politbureau since 1996, has been the recognized head of the movement since the assassination of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin in spring 2004. Despite his considerable influence within the organization, at least dating back to the early 1990s, Mishal did not attract attention in the West until he survived Israel's botched assassination attempt in Amman in September 1997, which made headlines when King Hussein (with possible help from U.S. President Bill Clinton) compelled Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to provide the antidote to the poison with which he had been injected in broad daylight by Mossad agents disguised as Canadian tourists. Mishal's prominence has only increased following the Hamas victory in the January 2006 legislative elections in the occupied territories. Despite the U.S.-led campaign to isolate the Islamist movement internationally, Mishal has functioned as the main interlocutor with regional and international actors seeking direct or informal contact with the organization, as well as with the international media.
Political Geography:
United States and Israel

510. Enclave Micropolis: The Paradoxical Case of Ramallah/al-Bireh

Author:
Lisa Taraki
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Among the consequences of the consolidation of the Israeli closure regime have been the contraction of Palestinians' social worlds and the emergence of new forms of localism. Unlike the more parochial West Bank towns of Nablus, Hebron, and Jenin, Ramallah/al-Bireh has taken on many of the cosmopolitan aspects of larger metropoles-Beirut, Cairo, Tunis-because of a combination of historical influences, present-day migration patterns, and political realities. The result is a paradoxical "enclave city" whose sights are oftentimes more fixed on the global rather than the national level.
Topic:
Migration
Political Geography:
Cairo

511. Palestinian Weddings: Inventing Palestine in New Jersey

Author:
Randa Serhan
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
As the political situation of the Palestinians has changed, so too have the customs and practices of Palestinians in the Diaspora. Using Eric Hobsbawm's concept of "invented tradition" as a point of departure, this article explores the origins, functions, and implications of some of the elements-including dance, song, and costume-of Palestinian-American wedding celebrations in the New York/New Jersey/ Pennsylvania area, which since the first intifada have evolved into occasions for celebrating nationalist as well as communal identity.
Political Geography:
New York, America, Palestine, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey

512. Secrets and Lies: The Persecution of Muhammad Salah (Part I)

Author:
Michael E. Deutsch and Erica Thompson
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The case of Muhammad Salah, a Palestinian-American grocer and Chicago resident, is the longest-running terrorism case in the United States. He was brought to trial on terrorism-funding charges in October 2006 after a thirteen-year saga that began with his January 1993 arrest in Israel as the "world commander of Hamas" and that continued in the United States following his release from Israeli prison in late 1997. Though acquitted of all terrorism-related charges by a U.S. federal jury in Chicago in February 2007, Salah was convicted on a single count of obstruction of justice. In this exclusive report for JPS, Salah's lawyers recount the unfolding of this landmark and labyrinthine case, analyzing its legal underpinnings and implications. His prosecution served to advance new standards governing the admissibility of coerced confessions at trial and the use of secret evidence, while at the same time establishing new procedures for preventing the cross-examination of key witnesses and closing the courtroom to the press and public during crucial testimony. Even before his U.S. trial, his taped confession extracted under Shin Bet torture served as the linchpin of the U.S. government's investigation and prosecution of persons it suspected of providing material support for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. More broadly, the years covered by the case show the erosion of the rule of law in the United States, as well as the melding of the discourses, strategies, tactics, and aims of U.S. and Israeli law enforcement and intelligence bodies long before the post-9/11 launch of the "global war on terror." Part I of this two-part account lays the ground for the 2006-7 Chicago trial, covering the period of Salah's arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment in Israel and the investigations and legal proceedings against him upon his return. Part II will focus on the crafting of the case by the Justice Department under Pres. George W. Bush and the trial itself.
Topic:
Terrorism and War
Political Geography:
United States, Israel, and Chicago

513. A Hamas Perspective on the Movement's Evolving Role: An Interview with Khalid Mishal, Part II

Author:
Mouin Rabbani
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
In this second installment of his interview for JPS, Khalid Mishal, Hamas politburo chief since 1996 and head of the movement since the assassination of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin in 2004, continues his discussion of Hamas's evolution and strategy. Whereas the focus of part I was Mishal's personal background, political formation, and the founding of the movement, here Hamas's more recent history is foregrounded. From the unfolding conflict and troubled relations with Fatah since the mid-1990s, Mishal recounts the thinking behind the decision formally to integrate into the Palestinian political system born of Oslo by participating the 2006 legislative elections and joining the Palestinian Authority government. He also delves into the ongoing repercussions of these decisions, including the splits within the Palestinian movement culminating in Hamas's seizure of power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007. In the course of the more than three-hour interview, Mishal's straightforward manner is on display, as well as his willingness to be challenged on matters as sensitive as Hamas's suicide bombings and the targeting of Israeli civilians, the utility of armed resistance, and the morality of the struggle. Two themes underlying the interview were Mishal's preoccupation with the need to repair the intra-Palestinian split ("our greatest priority") and the devastating impact of the ongoing siege of the Gaza. Since our interview in early March 2008, two potentially significant developments with relevance to these concerns have taken place. On the internal Palestinian front, Mishal repeatedly emphasized the need for intra-Palestinian dialogue without preconditions, with all subjects on the table including controversial topics like early elections. A first step toward reconciliation was made on 24 March 2008, when Hamas and Fatah representatives signed the "Sana'a Declaration," negotiated in the Yemeni capital, which outlined points of consensus on various domestic issues including security and political institutions. Though the declaration quickly ran aground, with Fatah demanding that Hamas immediately cede control of Gaza before implementation of other aspects would be discussed, by June 2008, Hamas and Fatah were once again considering national unity talks on the basis of the Yemeni initiative. As for alleviating the extreme external pressures on the Hamas-led Gaza Strip, indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel mediated by Egypt produced a bilateral cease-fire that went into effect on 18 June. Though initially confined to Gaza, the understandings also call for a gradual reversal of the siege as well as renewed negotiations on a prisoner exchange, including the release of captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Hovering over both Hamas-Israel and Hamas-Fatah relations is Washington, which remains opposed to any deals through which the Palestinian Islamists can emerge from their enforced isolation. Yet whatever the ultimate success of either development, the reality is that Mishal and Hamas are increasingly central players in the intra-Palestinian, Israeli-Palestinian, and broader regional equations. Indeed, itwas Mishal, not Abbas, whose movement reached an agreement with Israel before the expiration of the Bush administration.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and Egypt

514. Review: Sa'di and Abu-Lughod: Nakba, 1948, and the Claims of Memory

Author:
Saleh Abdel Jawad
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The work of memory in all its forms-historical essays, personal reminiscences, legal testimonies, imaginative recreation-is not only difficult but inherently contradictory. On the one hand, memory posits "something real outside the person's subjectivities to be . . . re-called." Simultaneously, memory work requires a narrator equipped with the interpretive filters of gender, age, generation, political intentions, and so on, through whom the objective, exogenous "facticity" (as Lena Jayyusi calls it) is to be known. The work of memory, then, must address itself not only to questions of what happened, but to questions of how we know things, whose voices we have heard, and where the silences are located.
Political Geography:
Palestine

515. Review: Falk and Friel: Israel Palestine on Record and Dunsky: Pens and Swords

Author:
Cheryl Rubenberg
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East and Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict are two tour-de-force works devoted to an analysis of the U.S. media as it reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both present devastating critiques of the media in its pro-Israel bias, and both are extensively documented, reflecting analytical scholarship in the finest tradition.
Topic:
Human Rights and International Law
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

516. Review: Khalifeh: The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant

Author:
Hala Halim
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
In awarding Sahar Khalifeh's Sura wa ayquna wa 'ahdun qadim (2002) the American University in Cairo's 2006 Naguib Mahfouz Medal, the jury aptly lauded this "narrative of loss par excellence . . . [as] simultaneously historiciz[ing] for the current Palestinian struggle while summoning a whole array of the symbolic." From its very title, The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant divulges its biblical symbolism, which will be made to bear here further layers of political allusion. Ostensibly the story of a doomed love and the desperate pursuit of its traces decades later, this is a novel of "national allegory," as in Fredric Jameson's formulation.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Brazil, Palestine, and Jerusalem

517. Review: Masalha: The Bible and Zionism

Author:
Marc Chmiel
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Israel-Palestine, by Nur Masalha. New York and London: Zed Books, 2007. 321 pages. Notes to p. 335. Bibliography to p. 354. Index to p. 366. $126.00 cloth; $36.00 paper.
Political Geography:
New York, Israel, London, and Palestine

518. Review: Parsons: The Politics of the Palestinian Authority

Author:
Jamil Hilal
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to al-Aqsa, by Nigel Parsons. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. xxx + 319 pages. Appendices to p. 341. Notes to p. 394. Bibliography to p. 411. Index to p. 429. $95.00 cloth.
Political Geography:
Palestine

519. Review: Honig-Parnass and Haddad: Between the Lines

Author:
Elaine C. Hagopian
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. War on Terror, edited by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007. 335 pages. Notes on contributors to p. 341. Endnotes to p. 387. Index to p. 405. $17.00 paper.
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

520. Review: Auerbach and Sharkansky: Politics and Planning in the Holy City

Author:
Michael Dumper
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Politics and Planning in the Holy City, by Gedalia Auerbach and Ira Sharkansky. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2007. 127 pages. Appendix to p. 136. Index to p. 138. $39.95 cloth.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
New Jersey