1,720,991 research outputs found
Pappe Ilan, La guerre de 1948 en Palestine : aux origines du conflit israélo-arabe
No full textLemire Vincent. Pappe Ilan, La guerre de 1948 en Palestine : aux origines du conflit israélo-arabe. In: Vingtième Siècle, revue d'histoire, n°69, janvier-mars 2001. D'un siècle l'autre. pp. 216-217
The Israeli Nationality Law – A Blueprint for a 21st Century Settler Colonial State
Full text linkThe author argues that the ‘New’ Israeli Nationality Law is, despite its name, a natural, almost inevitable, product of the Zionist project in Palestine. Besides representing Zionist ideology, the law is part of a long-term attempt by the Israeli government to adjust Zionism to present-day realities and solve the so-called ‘demographic problem’ of the Jewish State
Hamas' political transformation and engagement, 2003-2013
Full text linkThis thesis aims to explore the process of Hamas’ political transformation and engagement between 2003 and 2013 as well as the implications of the transition. In general, conventional scholarship research on Hamas and its transition in politics focuses either on the discussion of its tendency to violence or on its orientation towards moderation. However, both analyses fail to capture the essence of Hamas’ political transition over the ten years under discussion. This thesis argues that Hamas’ transition is interrelated with its perception of resistance. That is to say, Hamas’ transition aimed to keep its resistance work intact.
Hamas believed that because of its Zionist ideology, Israel would continue to occupy and colonize at Palestinians’ expense. Furthermore, past negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel had not helped Palestinians but on the contrary, had intensified the Israeli occupation. Therefore, nothing but resistance would restore Palestinians’ rights and defend them against Israel’s aggression. Ever since its inception in 1987, resistance has been Hamas’ only strategy and its means to end the Israeli occupation. It is worth noting that Hamas sophisticated the concept of resistance into a ‘resistance project’ from 2003 onwards, and then enforced it after taking over Gaza in June 2007; and for Hamas, the elements of resistance are comprehensive. In order to end Israeli occupation, armed struggle is its major tactic but this includes: the necessity of the national unity of Palestinians, the need for substantial support from the Arab and Muslim states and the understanding of the West. This thesis argues that as long as the Israeli occupation is in place, it is inevitable that Hamas’ engagement in politics will be irreversible and its work on resistance will continue, irrespective of the circumstances. However, it might appear in a different form
Israel/Palestine: A Critical Textbook Analysis of the Question’s History in Anglophone Universities
Full text linkThe Israel/Palestine question, and its resonance for international peace and security, has turned into a central interest of the modern world. It also raises much controversy in the academic community. The Western support for Israel, a key factor in Israel’s survival, is a significant feature of this issue. It has been revealed, through preceding studies, that Western policies towards Israel, foreign human rights policy for instance, are biased. The West appears biased, also, in what it produces about the question. Western products in the cinema and the mass media examined in this regard.
How knowledge produced in the West is influenced by the pro-Israeli environment has been an academic concern. No empirical investigation, at the same time, has been made into how academic knowledge at university level treats the Israel/Palestine question. The popular belief about the scientific and impartial characteristics of Western knowledge has probably contributed to such a state of affairs.
A sample of the most popular college level textbooks on the history of the Israel/Palestine question has been selected, through an extensive survey, to represent relevant Western knowledge. The selected textbooks have been analysed through a method of ‘Historical Narrative Analysis’ against a Zionist/pro-Israeli structure of Israel’s history.
The immediate context of the histories produced, the relevant historians and their background, are analysed to answer the second part of the key question of the research: ‘How the knowledge of history of the Israel/Palestine question is presented in Western academia, and why it has been presented in that particular way’.
The results of the first analysis, a textbook analysis, support the claim that textbook knowledge on the question is mainly pro-Israeli in bias. In relation to the question “why”, the analysis offers the ‘Jewish pro-Israeli producer’ as the main factor that can explain that bias in the products. Another factor is identified in this analysis as well; the relevant knowledge has been produced in a certain, American or Israeli, national and educational environment
Mis-Stating Palestine: A critical analysis of Fayyadism and the Palestinian Authority’s agenda 2007-11
Full text linkAbstract: Mis-Stating Palestine
This thesis presents a diagnostic of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) post-2007 political and economic agenda from bottom-up seeking to analyse the impact on Palestinian society. It focuses on the two key questions:
(a) How did Palestinians in the West Bank experience the political and economic effects of the PA’s agenda during the period 2007-2011?
(b) what were the consequences of the PA’s agenda (2007-11) for the way in which power is manifest and distributed within the West Bank?
In addressing these questions, in the first instance this thesis makes a clear distinction between the impact of the PA’s post-2007 agenda in a material sense and the rhetorical narrative that accompanied it.
Second, it presents the results of the research that was undertaken in a cross-section of Palestinian society, which used the different conditions within the West Bank as a result of geographical fragmentation as a key variable. (This included research in four different sites in the Nablus region; the city centre, Balata refugee camp and two villages in areas ‘B’ and ‘C’.) It was found that, while there was some evidence of popular consent towards the PA’s agenda, this is tied more closely to the PA returning in its role as a provider of basic services than to genuine belief in the legitimacy of the PA’s agenda.
Third, it analyses the impact of these agenda on the power dynamics in the contemporary West Bank and concludes that, when judged against a meaningful standard of progress – such as concrete evidence of increasing Palestinian control over their own political and economic activity – the PA’s agenda has been deleterious. In particular, the impact of the post-2007 agenda has replicated many of the flaws that were present during the Oslo period (1993-99), though it has also extended some of those defects further and added new elements to the list of Palestinian concerns. The core contribution of this thesis is to challenge the prevalence of top-down external analyses and to lay the groundwork for further bottom-up analyses of the Palestinian political and economic agency in the future
History from Below: Writing a People's History of Palestine
No full textThe accompanying publications for this thesis are available to read in the University's Main Library. References are as follows:
My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story. (London: Pluto Press, 2010). ISBN 978-0-7453-2881-2;
The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle. (London: Pluto Press, 2006). ISBN 0-7453-2547-5;
Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion. (Seattle: Cune Press, 2003). ISBN 1-885942-34-6.This submission for PhD by Publication includes three studies designed to reflect the popular view of ordinary Palestinians regarding events and politics in Palestine throughout modern history. They aim to primarily provide a ‘history from below’ political discourse of the Palestinian people. While the studies do not purport to determine with certainty the exact dynamics that propel Palestinian politics and society - as in where political power ultimately lies - they attempt to present a long-dormant argument that sees ‘history from below’ as an indispensable platform providing essential insight into Palestinian history to explain present political currents.
Over the course of 11 years, I conducted three studies which resulted in the publication of the following volumes: The first work, Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion (2003) is centered on the events that surrounded the Israeli siege, invasion and subsequent violence in and around the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jenin in April 2002. The study includes forty two eyewitness accounts, collected from people who witnessed the violence and were affected by it, were recorded and positioned to create a clear and unified narrative. The reality that the refugees portrayed in these accounts was mostly inconsistent with the official Israeli narrative of the violent events that occurred in the refugee camp, on one hand, and that were provided by the Palestinian Authority (PA) or factions, on the other. The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (2006) shows the impact of the Israeli military policies used against revolting Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and the popular response to these policies during the first five years of the Second Palestinian Intifada (2000-2005). The results of the study also demonstrate the inconsistencies between the views and practices held by the official political representation of Palestinians, and the popular view, as demonstrated in the discernible collective behavior of ordinary Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories. In My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (2010) my research pursues the roots of the current situation in the Gaza Strip – that of siege, political deadlock and violence. The study traces the lives of selected refugees before the Nakba - the Catastrophe of 1947-48 - back in Palestine during the British Mandate in the 1920s and just before the Zionist colonial project went into full swing.
In the three studies, the central argument is that historical and political events are best explained through non-elitist actors, who although at times lack political representation and platform, are capable of influencing, if not shaping the course of history, thus the present situation on the ground. The studies also indicate that such notions as popular resistance, collective memory and steadfastness (sumud in Arabic) are not mere idealistic and sentimental values, but notions with tangible and decipherable impact on past events and present realities. The central argument endeavors to demonstrate that although the Palestinian people are divided into various collectives, they are united by a common sense of identity and an undeclared political discourse, and they have historically proven to be a viable political actor that has influenced, affected, or, in some instances, deeply altered political realities.
To examine my thesis, my paper will be reviewing several theoretical notions of historiography including the Great Man Theory, which uses an elitist approach to understanding the formation and conversion of history. The Great Man Theory argues that single individuals of importance have made decisions that drive the outcomes of history. This notion is challenged by Group Theories which argue that history is shaped by the outcome of competing interest groups belonging to socio-economic elites, and that multidimensional forces often shape political realities. Furthermore, I examine a third theoretical approach that of ‘history from below’, which argues that history is scarcely shaped by ‘great men’ or socio-economic elites. Such historiography rarely contends with how history is formed; instead, it is mostly concerned with attempting to reconstruct the flow of history. It does so through deconstructing largely collective phenomena that are believed to be responsible for shaping current political movements. I attempt, through these volumes, to present a flow of Palestinian history based on the ‘history from below’ approach. The following paper will attempt to explain the logic behind my choice.
Rise of the Partisans: America's Escalating Mediation Bias Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Full text linkPublications:
'The Truth About Camp David' (ISBN: 978-1-56025-623-6)
'The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road?' (ISBN: 978-1-84391-353-5).
Both publications for this doctoral thesis are available to readers through our Main Library.This submission for PhD by Publication includes two studies I conducted during 8 years of dedicated field research examining the US role in mediating the Arab-Israeli conflict. These studies developed from my collection of in-depth oral testimonies and were buttressed by my recovery and examination of troves of original documents that had been previously denied any public, much less academic, scrutiny. The scope of this qualitative research and my political and historical analysis of it resulted in two published books that chronicle the unsuccessful American efforts to negotiate Arab-Israeli peace agreements during the presidencies of William Clinton, George W. Bush, and the first term of Barack Obama. In order of publication, they are The Truth About Camp David (New York: Nation Books, 2004) and The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road? (London: Hesperus Press, 2011).
The original academic contribution of both works was the presentation of new empirical evidence to advance understanding of how heavily biased American mediation severely damaged this diplomatic undertaking. Despite being a solidly pro-Israel country, the United States had previously been able to achieve some notable mediation successes when it made efforts to adopt an “even-handed” approach. Yet in the period covered by both my books, I demonstrated how top American mediators—comprised of mostly pro-Israel partisans—dismissed any pretext of impartiality, and in most instances even escalated their mediation bias. This behavior has exacerbated the Arab-Israeli conflict and made the stated aim of a comprehensive peace a very distant prospect.
The Truth About Camp David was intended as a first rough draft of history. The title references the famous summit convened by President Clinton in July 2000 that failed to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the overarching US-led “peace process” around it which contributed to the outbreak of the Second Intifada. The book also details the effort to conclude an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement at Geneva just months before, which also failed. My research advanced the thesis that both the Geneva and Camp David summits were historic miscarriages of diplomacy by my presentation of granular insider accounts revealing the intensity of American mediation bias. I also exposed the general disorganization of its negotiating team, a dysfunction that was largely unknown to the public prior to my book’s release.
My primary purpose in writing The Truth About Camp David was thus to enable its reinterpretation by making public new evidence about this watershed moment and the period surrounding it. Relying primarily on oral history, I interviewed US, Arab, Israeli and European officials who were first-hand participants to collect their personal narratives. I sought to identify discrepancies in their accounts, and attempted to reconcile them through further interviews, document interrogation, and my own analysis. A key challenge of The Truth About Camp David was thus to weave a thread through the various testimonies and present, as best as I could, a coherent historical narrative. Following that, my aim was to have it reviewed and discussed among credible scholars and the foreign policy community. The testimonies within The Truth About Camp David directly challenged the official narrative and prevailing media orthodoxy at the time of Palestinian blame and Syrian intransigence. As a result, it helped reframe both political debate and academic scholarship concerning this crucial period of American diplomatic intervention. In 2006, The Truth About Camp David was translated into Arabic, giving its contents even greater reach.
My 2011 book “The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road?” continued my earlier line of inquiry and was largely based on documents given to me the year prior, referred to as “The Palestine Papers,” the largest leak of confidential negotiating records in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Published in full by Al Jazeera Media Network, and in limited partnership with the UK’s Guardian newspaper, the content of the files generated headlines around the world from January 24-27, 2011. My additional research for The Palestine Papers was released in May 2011 as an anthology of select papers with my accompanying qualitative analysis and interpretation rather than a stylistic mediation critique. My aim in writing “The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road?” publication was to reach beyond Al Jazeera and Guardian audiences and equip interested scholars, practitioners, and skeptics with essential highlights from the papers as well as an analytical framework to put them into context.
My research for The Palestine Papers sought to help reconcile the intervening gap of negotiating history from Truth About Camp David, following the trajectory of how Israelis and Palestinians alike had grown even more conditioned to expect if not rely upon biased American mediation that excessively tilts toward Israel. The Palestine Papers also catalogues for the first time the dynamics that enabled US negotiators to escalate its role from being the self-appointed judge of Palestinian negotiating behavior during the talks (in the Camp David 2000 era) to the unilateral “juror” of its final-status positions (evidenced by the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama).
A supplemental essay included in this submission analyzes an earlier diplomatic era to advance my thesis of how far US mediation bias has traveled since America assumed the principal negotiator role of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the early 1970’s. Indeed, based on the overarching narrative that evolve from both those publications and this essay, it is entirely predictable to see how America’s mediation posture has matured into the era of extreme pro-Israel bias that now characterizes the approach of the Trump Administration.
I will interpret this collective diplomatic history using a range of multidisciplinary academic theories addressing biased mediation in international conflict resolution. Then, by drawing on the scholarship from my previous books, I will assess and critique the theoretical benefits of employing biased mediators in conflict resolution—as some prominent scholars have advocated for. By taking a fresh look at earlier Arab-Israeli negotiations led by Henry Kissinger under President’s Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, I am able to make even greater contrast to that very limited era when biased American mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict appeared to yield limited success. The process of applying the scholarship of others against the knowledge created from my own published works enable me to demonstrate in this essay that the present day American negotiating bias toward Israel largely exceeds what the normative scholarship on mediation bias envisaged
Orientalism and Imperialism: Protestant Missionary Narratives of the 'Other' in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Kurdistan.
Full text linkThrough an examination of the letters, reports and published writings of the missionaries of two distinctive Protestant missions active in the Kurdish region during the nineteenth century, this thesis explores the Orientalist and imperialist qualities of missionary knowledge production. It demonstrates the diversity of Protestant missionary thought on the subject of the Orient and the individual nature of missionary knowledge production during this period. Equally importantly the study allows for a critical examination of the Orientalist critique in the context of missionary activity and a contextualised assessment of missionary complicity with imperialism.
The findings of the study show that the Orientalism of the Anglican ‘Assyrian Mission’ and that of the American Presbyterian ‘West Persia Mission’ share common characteristics but, importantly, diverge diametrically in the meanings ascribed to the differences perceived to separate ‘Oriental’ from ‘Occidental’. This diversity in the representative style of the two missions can be linked to their opposed objectives in relation to proselytisation and thus suggests that their knowledge production was not solely determined by Orientalist discourse but also influenced by other discursive factors. Given Edward Said’s recognition of the diversity of the phenomenon of Orientalism it is therefore of great value to attempt to map some of this vast and divergent terrain of ideas. My thesis thus suggests that a meaningful division can be made within the Orientalist discourse between expressions of an Orientalism of essential difference and that of an Orientalism of circumstantial difference.
Concerning imperialism, the study argues that, although these missionaries can be considered imperialists in an unwitting and indirect sense, care needs to be taken in the application of this label. My argument is that association with and contribution to textual attitudes which promote ideas of ontological or cultural superiority are a very different activity to conscious engagement in projects of imperial expansion; and that this needs to be recognised. Furthermore the standard model of a political metropolitan center determining the fate of its activities in the periphery is reversed in the case of these missionaries, where religious concerns drove engagement against political interests.Centre for Kurdish Studie
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