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Begin New Search Topic War Content Type Journal Article

411. 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

412. Individual Liability of Private Military Personnel under International Criminal Law

Author:
Chia Lehnardt
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The article examines the present status of private military personnel under international criminal law. Perpetrators of international crimes are frequently integrated into a hierarchically structured collective, such as an army or police force. The system of order and obedience essential to the functioning of these entities, the existence of which underlies a number of principles of international criminal law, cannot be simply presumed to exist within a private military company (PMC) or between a PMC and the hiring state. As a consequence, the private nature of the company may become an issue, particularly when one considers the capacity of their personnel to commit war crimes or to incur superior or command responsibility. The article also considers problems of implementation and jurisdiction and touches briefly on the question of corporate criminal responsibility of the PMC itself. It will be argued that, in theory, international criminal law can be an efficient part of the legal regime governing the use and conduct of private military companies, although many of the legal issues discussed remain to be tested.
Topic:
War

413. 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

414. 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

415. A2. British MP Michael Ancram, Essay Comparing the Northern Ireland and Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts, March 2008 (excerpts)

Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
As minister of state in the Northern Ireland Office in 1994, Michael Ancram was the first British minister to meet with Sinn Fin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 25 years, overseeing talks between Sinn Fein and the British government that began the peace process that ultimately resulted in the decommissioning of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 2005 and the formal implementation of power-sharing in 2007. This essay, entitled "The Middle East Peace Process: The Case for Jaw-Jaw not War-War," first appeared in Accord (Issue 19), Conciliation Resources, March 2008 and was circulated by Conflicts Forum. The full text is available online at www.conflictsforum.org.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Ireland

416. The Renaissance of Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency: Examining Twenty-First Century Insurgencies and Government Responses

Author:
John J. Le Beau
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Insurgency and counterinsurgency as types of warfare are currently subject to considerable attention due to the nature of the high-profile struggles underway in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is prudent to note that neither insurgency nor the strategy and tactics required to combat it represent new phenomena. A large body of experience and literature from the twentieth century and earlier exists that addresses both sides of the insurgent struggle. Some characteristics of insurgencies are largely immutable, since insurgency is ultimately a form of warfare that is adopted when a combatant has limited resources and limited choices for how to fight against a more powerful adversary. Today as in the past, these characteristics include employment of small-unit attacks, ambushes, assassinations, propaganda activity, and the development of covert infrastructure. Nevertheless, the primary insurgencies active in the twenty-first century are marked by important differences from earlier struggles, particularly in the areas of motivation and inspiration. Rather than being quintessentially political and interested in local or national grievances, many contemporary insurgencies are at their core linked to a particular interpretation of Islam. Thus, these insurgencies represent a war of religion, not of politics, economics, or ethnicity. Islamist insurgencies are likely to be uncompromising and averse to negotiation, absolutist and pan-national in their goals, and willing to justify the mass slaughter of non-combatants who do not share their religious vision.
Topic:
Islam, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Saudi Arabia

417. Does One Right Make a Realist? Conservatism, Neoconservatism, and Isolationism in the Foreign Policy Ideology of American Elites

Author:
Brian C. Rathbun
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
American society, it is now frequently stated, is more politically polarized than at any time in recent memory, and a prominent front in the ideological battle between left and right is foreign policy. Most notable is, of course, the war in Iraq, but divisions between Republicans and Democrats over the proper definition of the national interest have been a feature of the post-Cold War era since its inception. Democrats and the left direct most of their ire at the neoconservatives who, they argue, have masterminded America's grand strategy since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. This partisan conflict, a genuine ideological difference, has somewhat distracted from divisions within the right. Neoconservatives have also faced significant criticism from other factions within the Republican Party. Condemnation from both traditional conservatives and isolationists has been as strident and vicious as that of the left. This raises the question of whether there is any common set of fundamentals that defines the right's foreign policy in the United States, and if not, why these subgroups are considered to be on the same side of the political spectrum.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
America

418. The Trouble With Congo

Author:
Séverine Autesserre
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Although the war in Congo officially ended in 2003, two million people have died since. One of the reasons is that the international community's peacekeeping efforts there have not focused on the local grievances in eastern Congo, especially those over land, that are fueling much of the broader tensions. Until they do, the nation's security and that of the wider Great Lakes region will remain uncertain.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Democratic Republic of the Congo

419. Recollections of the Nakba through a Teenager's Eyes

Author:
Muhammad Hallaj
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Recollections of the Nakba through a Teenager's Eyes Muhammad Hallaj Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 2008), p. 66Palestinian Voices Muhammad Hallaj, a political scientist specializing in Palestinian affairs and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was born in Qalqilya, Palestine, in 1932. After earning his doctorate from the University of Florida in 1966, he taught at Florida's Jacksonville University and then at the University of Jordan in Amman. Hallaj returned to the West Bank in 1975, where he served as dean of social sciences and later as academic vice president of Birzeit University before becoming the first director of the Council for Higher Education in the West Bank and Gaza. While taking a leave to go to Harvard University as a visiting scholar in 1983, Hallaj was denied a visa to return to the West Bank. Among the positions he has held since then have been editor of Palestine Perspectives (1983-1991), member (and subsequent head) of the Palestinian delegation on Refugees to the multilateral peace talks following the Madrid conference (1991-1993), and executive director of the Palestine Center and the Jerusalem Fund. At the request of JPS, Dr. Hallaj shared his memories of the 1948 war and its aftermath, which he experienced as a high school student in Jaffa, and then in Qalqilya and Tulkarm.
Topic:
United Nations and War
Political Geography:
Palestine

420. Hochberg: In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination

Author:
Haim Bresheeth
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Hochberg: In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination Reviewed by Haim BresheethJournal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 2008), p. 90Recent Books In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination, by Gil Z. Hochberg. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. xiii + 141 pages. Notes to p. 165. Bibliography to p. 183. Index to p. 192. $35.00 cloth. Haim Bresheeth, professor of media and cultural studies at the University of East London, is co-editor of "The Conflict and Contemporary Visual Culture in Palestine Israel," Third Text 20, nos. 3-4, Oct. 2006; Cinema and Memory: Dangerous Liaisons [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2004); and The Gulf War and the New World Order (London: Zed Books, 1992).
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Israel, London, Palestine, and Arabia