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62. Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat)
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- 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.
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Palestine, and Arabia
63. Selections from the Press
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- 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, Palestine, and Arabia
64. Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy-16 February–15 May 2010
- Author:
- Michele K. Esposito
- Publication Date:
- 06-2010
- 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, Palestine, and Arabia
65. In the Ruins of Nahr al-Barid: Understanding the Meaning of the Camp
- Author:
- Adam Ramadan
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- The destruction of Nahr al-Barid camp in Lebanon in 2007 was a disaster for the 35,000 people for whom it had become home. To understand what was lost, this article explores what the refugee camp is and what it does, materially and imaginatively, for its residents. Drawing on the words of ordinary Palestinians from Nahr al-Barid and Rashidiyya camps, it describes how the camps are social, cultural, and political refuges from marginalization in exile. While the camps draw meaning from a particular Palestinian time-space that emphasizes displacement and transience, they have also become meaningful places in themselves. Consequently, the loss of Nahr al-Barid and the displacement of its society have been understood as a repetition of the foundational experience of the modern Palestinian nation: the Nakba. IN TRYING TO PORTRAY the disturbed and discontinuous nature of Palestinian existence, Edward Said wrote that Palestinians in exile do not really live, but “linger in nondescript places, neither here nor there.” From this perspective, life in exile is a kind of meaningless purgatory through which Palestinians must pass before the promised future return. Time is privileged over space, and the present comes to be seen as a temporary transition between a meaningful past and a hopeful future. In contrast to Said's claim, I would argue that the refugee camps in which so many Palestinians live are neither meaningless nor nondescript. They may be temporary spaces in which Palestinian refugees await their right to return, but they have nevertheless become imbued with meaning and significance over decades of Palestinian habitation and place making. As I argue in this essay, the meaning and importance of a camp is perhaps never clearer than when the camp is viewed through the prism of loss. Between May and October 2007, a new chapter was written in the story of the Palestinian people. Nahr al-Barid, a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon home to 35,000 people, was totally demolished first by a 104-day military conflict between two non-Palestinian sides, and then through the actions of the victorious Lebanese army: looting, arson, and vandalism. Nahr al-Barid's destruction resumed a sequence of erasure of Palestinian camps in Lebanon dating back over three decades to the destruction of Nabatiyya, Tal al-Za`atar, Dikwaneh, and Jisr al-Basha camps in the early years of the 1975–1990 civil war. The Palestinians of Nahr al-Barid were displaced to Biddawi camp and further afield, staying with friends, relatives, and acquaintances, or sheltering in garages, storerooms, and improvised shelters. With the camp destroyed and the Lebanese army refusing to allow people back, the prospect of a quick return faded into a prolonged and uncertain displacement. In order to understand what, besides buildings and property, was destroyed in Nahr al-Barid, it is necessary to ask what a refugee camp is and—more importantly—what it does, both materially and imaginatively, for its Palestinian residents. In this article, I explore how Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon act as social, cultural, and political refuges from marginalization in exile. I do this by looking at two camps: the destroyed Nahr al-Barid in the north and the still “thriving” Rashidiyya in the south. Using 128 semistructured, qualitative interviews conducted with residents of the two camps in 2007 and 2008, I show how the camps draw meaning from a particular Palestinian time-space, which emphasizes displacement and transience, while at the same time becoming meaningful places in themselves. In these interviews, I asked people about life in the camp, the advantages and disadvantages of living there, what the camp means to them, and prospects for the future. Rashidiyya and Nahr al-Barid are quite different places politically, economically, and socially, but my intention here is not a straight comparison between the two. Rather, I have juxtaposed opinions and quotations from residents of the two camps: the residents of Rashidiyya talking of what they have, those of Nahr al-Barid talking of what they have lost. My aim was to understand what the camps mean and do for Palestinian refugees living a marginalized existence in Lebanon. THE PRESENT AS TRANSIENT A refugee camp can be defined as a temporary humanitarian space, usually set up by international humanitarian agencies and designed to meet the basic human needs of displaced people, including shelter, protection, and short-term relief. Palestinian refugee camps have these basic functions, and Palestinians receive relief, welfare, and social services provided by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Palestinian political factions, and various Palestinian and international NGOs, charities, and other groups. In the course of six decades, however, the camps have developed into seemingly permanent features of the landscapes of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza. Over the years, the inhabitants themselves replaced their tents first with corrugated iron and then with brick and concrete, and the camps became like small cities. As the built environment was assembled into something more permanent, the slow accumulation of experiences and memories, births and deaths, built up a sense of place and meaning. Alongside the networks of formal institutional support, myriad informal social relations among camp individuals and families formed channels through which help and support are given and received. As much as the material fabric of buildings and streets, these relations between people and institutions constitute the space of the camp, creating a place of refuge from the bewildering disorientation and insecurity of exile.
- Political Geography:
- Arabia and Lebanon
66. Tamari: Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture
- Author:
- Ellen Fleischmann
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Salim Tamari, professor of sociology at Birzeit University and the director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, has produced an erudite, entertaining, and engrossing study of Palestinian society and culture. More than once in the text, he admiringly describes educator Khalil Sakakini's “crisp” writing in Arabic (p. 2). In this volume of essays, many of which have been previously published, Tamari often writes pretty “crisply” himself, honing in on themes that define Palestinian history, social fabric, and experience. He is concerned, above all, with modernity, and the elements that have contributed to the making of an “unfulfilled” (p. 3) Palestinian modernity. Situating Palestinian urban life, society, intelligentsia, and culture within an eastern Mediterranean context, he examines how Palestine fit into this milieu, yet, ultimately was “set[] apart,” due to its being “forcibly separated from that context” (p. 4) in 1917. Although most of the essays are historical or have a strong historical bent, they also include material on contemporary Palestinian society, integrating it within its historical background and tracing historical influences that have shaped contemporary phenomena. The book showcases a valuable and rich treasure trove of Palestinian historical and literary material, including personal memoirs and diaries produced by an interestingly diverse sample of Palestinian intellectuals from the late Ottoman period. Tamari, in collaboration with other scholars such as Issam Nassar, has performed a real service in recovering, publishing, and utilizing this material.
- Political Geography:
- Palestine, Arabia, and Jerusalem
67. Kattan: From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949
- Author:
- Diana Buttu
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Confict, 1891–1949, by Victor Kattan with foreword by Richard Falk. New York and London: Pluto Press, 2009. ix + 261 pages. References to p. 367. Select bibliography to p. 387. List of individuals to p. 395. Glossary to p. 402. Index to p. 416. $54.95 paper; $149.50 cloth.
- Topic:
- International Law
- Political Geography:
- New York and Arabia
68. Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat)
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- 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
69. Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy:16 May - 15 August 2010
- Author:
- Michele K. Esposito
- Publication Date:
- 09-2010
- 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.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, Israel, and Arabia
70. The Palestinians in Israel and Operation Cast Lead: A View from Haifa
- Author:
- Hisham Naffa'
- Publication Date:
- 05-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- A Few Hours After Israel launched its assault on the occupied Gaza Strip on Saturday, 27 December 2008, two large crowds of angry demonstrators set out from different points of the Galilee town of Nazareth, the “Capital of the Arabs in Israel.” Supporters of the Communist party and affiliated coalitions carried red banners along with Palestinian flags, while the Islamist demonstrators carried green banners interspersed with the national flag. Both loudly proclaimed their identification with Gaza and their rejection of Israel's military crimes against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Eventually the two demonstrations converged on Nazareth's main street at the very spot where, a few years earlier, a bitter controversy with sectarian overtones had raged over the Muslim shrine of Shihab al-Din, adjacent to the Basilica of the Annunciation. But on this evening in late December, when the two groups commingled, memories of ideological difference and controversy were swept aside by feelings of solidarity and common purpose. Leaders from the various parties took turns addressing the demonstration, and their message was the same as the shouts that went up from the crowd: “Stop the massacre against our people in Gaza!”
- Political Geography:
- Israel and Arabia
71. Proto-Zionist–Arab Encounters in Late Nineteenth-Century Palestine: Socioregional Dimensions
- Author:
- Yuval Ben-Bassat
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Based on rarely used documents from archives in Israel and Turkey, this article offers a new approach for the study of proto-Zionist-Arab relationships in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century. It foregrounds the regional and sociological dimensions of the encounters between the two populations through focus on the Judean colonies southeast of Jaffa. These colonies, located relatively close together, maintained a close-knit network of mutual exchanges and gradually crystallized into a "bloc." Using a bottom-up approach, the article explores the developing coordination between the colonies and its impact on their relationships with their Arab neighbors. By the early twentieth century, the author argues, a distinct sociocultural identity had developed in the colonies and the close cooperation had begun to take on a nationalist coloration. RELATIVELY LITTLE has been written about the daily relationships between Jewish colonists and the Arab rural population in Palestine during the early years of proto-Zionist colonization. Existing research focuses mainly on the ideological and political aspects of the encounter, with less attention paid to the actual interactions between the two populations in this formative period, designated in Zionist historiography as the "first 'aliyah" (1882-1903). Using a bottom-up sociohistorical approach, this article addresses these daily relations while focusing on the six "Judean colonies" (moshvot Yehudah) established southeast of Jaffa at the end of the nineteenth century. In classical Zionist historiography, the early encounters between the two populations are often portrayed as just another set of obstacles that the first colonists had to confront and overcome. However, the contextual background of their multidimensional relationships and the broader regional implications of these encounters are largely ignored. Hence, it is often stressed that while the problems confronting the colonies with regard to their Arab neighbors were similar (arising from cultural misunderstandings and disputes over natural resources such as water, land, and grazing rights), each colony dealt with them separately according to its best understanding, judgment, and ability. Some researchers even argue that a common pattern of interaction developed, from alienation in the beginning, through gradual reciprocal acceptance, to the development of friendly relationships. By contrast, I argue that despite the similarity of the challenges facing the Jewish colonists, their relationships with their Arab neighbors were neither uniform nor restricted to the local level. On the one hand, differences in the colonists' sociocultural backgrounds and in the colonies' physical conditions played a role in shaping these relationships. On the other hand, the Judean colonies, located relatively close together, maintained a close-knit network of mutual exchanges, cooperation, and coordination in various domains, and gradually crystallized into a "bloc"-a development that had implications for their relations with the local rural population. Hence, this study, in addition to briefly discussing the particularistic nature of the Judean colonies, explores in depth their common activity and its effects on Jewish-Arab relations. SOURCES AND METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES The bottom-up sociohistorical approach implemented in this research, which is grounded in a spatial analytical framework, makes possible a more nuanced analysis of early Jewish-Arab encounters and better accounts for their complex dynamics. This methodology, moreover, can serve as a model for examining Jewish-Arab relations in other regions in Palestine where Jewish colonization activity took place at the end of the nineteenth century as well as in later periods, especially given its tendency prior to 1948 to concentrate in specific regions. Arguably, this methodology can also be applied to the study of other cases of settlement in the Ottoman Empire. While a vast amount of primary material dealing with proto-Zionist colonization is available from the perspective of the Jewish colonists and Zionist organizations, it is a much harder task to trace the viewpoints of the Arab rural population. This stems from the destruction of hundreds of villages and the dispersal of their population during the 1948war, the lack of organized Palestinian national archives to date, and the fact that most of the rural population was illiterate and therefore left very little written documentation behind. Despite the methodological constraints created by basing a study primarily on proto-Zionist and Zionist sources, a careful reading against the grain makes possible a critical understanding of the experiences of both Arabs and Jews in Palestine at the time. Of particular importance are the understudied primary documents found in the local archives of five out of the six former first 'aliyah Judean colonies. These include materials such as logbooks, personal letters, receipts, contracts, maps, and pictures, which provide a unique firsthand account of the complexity and ambivalent nature of relations between the two groups. The logbooks of the colonies' managing committees, for example, provide detailed narratives of daily life in the colonies, particularly with regard to interactions with the neighboring Arab population. . . .
- Political Geography:
- Turkey, Israel, Palestine, and Arabia
72. Barack Obama and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- This section is intended to give readers an overview of President-elect Barack Obama's positions on the Middle East peace process as he begins his tenure. The baseline for gauging Obama's views may be his failed 2000 race for Congress. At that time he made statements viewed as pro-Palestinian because they urged the United States to take an "even-handed approach" toward Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. As an Illinois state senator, Obama had cultivated ties with Chicago's Arab American community, which was partly concentrated in his state senate district. He won a U.S. Senate seat in 2004 with significant support from Chicago's Lakeside liberals, who included leading Chicago Jewish Democrats. His position on the Arab-Israeli conflict remained an issue during the 2008 presidential race, however, and Obama made a point of laying out his positions at several points during the campaign, in contrast to his Republican challenger Sen. John McCain, who did not detail his positions.
- Topic:
- Security and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, Middle East, Arabia, and Chicago
73. Refugee Camps in the Palestinian and Sahrawi National Liberation Movements
- Author:
- Randa Farah
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Drawing on ethnographic field research, this analysis compares the evolution of refugee camps as incubators of political organization and repositories of collective memory for Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Sahrawi refugees of the Western Sahara. While recognizing the significant differences between the historical and geopolitical contexts of the two groups and their national movements (the PLO and Polisario, respectively), the author examines the Palestinian and Sahrawi projects of national consciousness formation and institution-building, concluding that Palestinian camps are "mapped" in relation to the past, while political organization in Sahrawi camps evidences a forward-looking vision. TO WHAT EXTENT do ideological and political structures affect the positioning of refugee camps in national space and shape the politics of identity and memory? Does the symbolism of camps change following radical shifts in official national politics? Are subjective factors irrelevant in such circumstances? Comparing the evolution of political leaderships in two different settings-Palestinian and Sahrawi refugee camps-can shed light on these questions. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Palestinian camps in Jordan (1995-2000 and 2007) and Sahrawi camps in Algeria (2005-2007), this article examines camps as venues refracting the structural dynamics, political contexts, and nationalist ideologies and praxis of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of al-Saqiat al-Hamra' and Rio de Oro (Polisario). It proposes that the contexts within which these organizations evolved have led to two different prototypes of polities and leaderships in exile, enabling the Polisario-but not the PLO-to transform refugee camps into incubators of new social and political institutions transportable to national territory upon repatriation. Given the complexity of the subject matter, this article will limit its discussion to the pivotal historical, structural, and subjective factors most useful for explaining the different political trajectories of Palestinian and Sahrawi camps. INITIAL COMPARISONS Whereas the Palestinian issue is well known, a brief overview of the history of the Sahrawi movement provides context for the argument that follows. As the Spanish government prepared to abandon its protectorate of Western Sahara in November 1975, it secretly signed an agreement with Morocco and Mauritania aimed at establishing a tripartite administration of the territory. Morocco and Mauritania had competing claims to the Western Sahara, a region bordered on the north by Morocco, the northeast by Algeria, the south and southeast by Mauritania, and the west by the Atlantic Ocean. Just as Spain was preparing to withdraw, Morocco and Mauritania invaded the territory. Morocco took control of the northern two-thirds of Western Sahara, which it renamed its southern (or "Saharan") provinces, while Mauritania seized control of the southern third. Meanwhile, the Polisario, established in 1973, won Algeria's backing for its independence struggle and set up its headquarters in Sahrawi refugee camps located in an isolated region of the southwestern Algerian desert near the town of Tindouf. The camps are also home to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the state-in-exile established by the Polisario in 1976. After Mauritania withdrew from the Western Sahara in 1979, Morocco extended its control to the territory Mauritania had claimed. In the 1980s, Morocco built a 2,700-kilometer-long sand and earthen wall (or "berm") that cuts diagonally through Western Sahara, extending from its northeast corner down to the southwest near the Mauritanian border. (See map.) The berm enables Morocco to control two-thirds of the areas richest in phosphate and minerals, as well as the Atlantic coast's fishing industry. On the eastern side of the berm is what the Polisario calls the "liberated" or "free" zone. No country recognizes Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara, which remains on the United Nations' list of non-self-governing territories. Hostilities between Morocco and the Polisario ended in 1991 with the establishment of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) in accordance with settlement proposals accepted in 1988 by Morocco and the Polisario. Both the PLO and the Polisario are Arab national liberation movements that, despite decades of struggle, have failed to fulfill their aspirations of self-determination long after most other national liberation struggles entered a postcolonial stage. It is worth noting that the Palestinian resistance inspired the Polisario, which drew parallels between the colonization of Western Sahara in the maghreb and Palestine in the mashreq. As Sahrawi refugees frequently pointed out to me, the resemblance between their flag and the Palestinian flag was intentional. . . .
- Topic:
- United Nations
- Political Geography:
- Palestine, Arabia, and Morocco
74. Bunton: Colonial Land Policies in Palestine, 1917–1936
- Author:
- Michael R. Fischbach
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Bunton: Colonial Land Policies in Palestine, 1917-1936 Reviewed by Michael R. Fischbach Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 9 (Winter 2009), p. 96 Recent Books Colonial Land Policies in Palestine, 1917-1936, by Martin Bunton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Historical Monographs. x + 204 pages. Select Bibliography top. 214. Index top. 217. $110.00 cloth.
- Topic:
- Development and Government
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Arabia
75. Winter 2008 Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 9, p. 228 compiled by Norbert Scholz
- Author:
- Norbert Scholz
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- 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.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Law
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Palestine, Arabia, and Jerusalem
76. From the Editor
- Author:
- Rashid I. Khalidi
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of JPS celebrates the work of the renowned anthropologist Rosemary Sayigh, a pioneer in the field of refugee studies and the first scholar to emphasize the signal importance of Palestinian refugees in the revival of Palestinian nationalism in the 1960s-notably in her pathbreaking Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, published thirty years ago. At the same time, Rosemary was one of the first researchers to examine issues of gender in Palestinian and Arab society, as her reliance on women as resources for her investigations revealed to her-and through her, to generations of readers- the crucial role played by women in the social and economic structure of Palestinian refugee camps and Palestinian political life.
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Palestine, and Arabia
77. A Tribute Long Overdue: Rosemary Sayigh and Palestinian Studies
- Author:
- Beshara Doumani and Mayssun Soukarieh
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Rosemary Sayigh-writer, activist, mentor, and ethical compass-has arguably made a greater impact on Palestinian studies than most scholars over the past generation. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon; women under occupation; oral history of the Nakba; gender and politics; memory and identity; culture and resistance; the political responsibility of the researcher-these are but some of the lines of inquiry she has pioneered. Starting with her classic book, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries; A People's History, published thirty years ago, she has become the unofficial mentor of large numbers of PhD students specializing in the above fields. "Unofficial" because, although she has been an indispensable resource for emerging scholars, she remains an outsider to institutions of higher education. She has never held a permanent academic position and was largely shunned by universities and research centers in Lebanon, the country where she has lived for more than fifty years. This special issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies (JPS) in honor of Rosemary Sayigh is richly deserved and long overdue.
- Topic:
- Politics
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Palestine, and Arabia
78. Kelly: Law, Violence, and Sovereignty among West Bank Palestinians
- Author:
- Samera Esmeir
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Little is written about Palestinian law and society, and Tobias Kelly's Law, Violence and Sovereignty among West Bank Palestinians comes as an ethnographic and theoretical contribution to this small and growing field. Focusing on the everyday application of the law and life of West Bank workers, Kelly, an anthropologist who has conducted long-term fieldwork in the occupied Palestinian territories, exposes the abstract nature of regimes of power. While these regimes are often understood as suspending the law and legitimizing violence, they emerge in Kelly's analysis as having created an intimate relationship between legal orders of rights and violence. The book focuses on legal practice, rather than legal doctrine, and inquires into how law, rights claims, and spaces of jurisdictions are mobilized in the village where Kelly conducted his fieldwork (given the fictional name of Bayt Hajjar). Instead of viewing rights talk as alien and imposed from above and reducing all frameworks of moral and political reference to that of the law, the book reveals the many meanings acquired by the law in its everyday coexistence with other significant relationships: "For the residents of Bayt Hajjar, rights claims do not emerge in an abstract legal universe, but are created in the context of ongoing, morally charged relationships, involving elements of village and national solidarity. The result is a profoundly ambivalent attitude to legal claims".
- Political Geography:
- Palestine, Arabia, United Nations, and Lebanon
79. Grabar: The Dome of the Rock
- Author:
- Finbarr Barry Flood
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- This short, engaging book represents half a century of reflection on what is at once the most familiar and enigmatic of Islamic monuments by its preeminent modern biographer. Combining formal analysis with epigraphic and textual exegesis, and drawing upon recent archaeological discoveries in and around Jerusalem, Oleg Grabar constructs a broad context for his diachronic account of the monument.
- Political Geography:
- Arabia
80. Holzman-Gazit: Land Expropriation in Israel: Law, Culture, and Society
- Author:
- Geremy Forman
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- Land Expropriation in Israel: Law, Culture and Society is one of the first monographs in a primarily article-based body of literature that examines the evolution of Israeli land law and its impact on Israeli society. Written by a leading Israeli legal historian and former independent academic advisor to the Israeli Interministerial Committee on Reform of Land Expropriation Law, the book is unique in that it does not focus on the state's mass appropriation of Arab-owned land over the years. Instead, it explores the history of land expropriation for "public purposes," a mechanism that has been applied to Israel's Jewish and Palestinian citizens alike, and which most scholars agree played a relatively minor role in appropriating Arab land. In this way, the book compels readers to view expropriation from Arabs and Jews as part of the same issue, an approach that ultimately sheds important new light on the subject.
- Political Geography:
- Israel and Arabia