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Begin New Search Political Geography Lebanon Journal Journal of Palestine Studies Publication Year within 5 Years

1. Toward the Consolidation of a Gazan Military Front?

Author:
Camille Mansour
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This essay considers the place of the Gaza Strip in the broader Palestinian context. Israel’s determination to separate Gaza from the West Bank since the signing of the Oslo Accords and its subsequent withdrawal from the territory in 2005 resulted in a process that culminated in the buildup of a Palestinian military front reminiscent of that established by the Palestine Liberation Organization in south Lebanon in 1975–82. In both instances, the military front appears to serve as a Palestinian counterstrategy to achieve linkage. Palestinians demonstrated their determination to break the isolation of Gaza in the war of May 2021 that was accompanied by mass mobilization across and outside Mandate Palestine. The essay probes the question of whether we are witnessing the consolidation of a Gazan military front and points to the minimal political conditions necessary for such a development to advance the liberation struggle.
Topic:
Non State Actors, Civilians, Hamas, and 2021 Gaza War
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon, and West Bank

2. Resistance Literature and Occupied Palestine in Cold War Beirut

Author:
Elizabeth M. Holt
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
For the last decade of his life, the Palestinian intellectual, author, and editor Ghassan Kanafani (d. 1972) was deeply immersed in theorizing, lecturing, and publishing on Palestinian resistance literature from Beirut. A refugee of the 1948 war, Kanafani presented his theory of resistance literature and the notion of “cultural siege” at the March 1967 Beirut conference of the Soviet-funded Afro-Asian Writers Association (AAWA). Articulated in resistance to Zionist propaganda literature and in solidarity with Marxist- Leninist revolutionary struggles in the Third World, Kanafani was inspired by Maxim Gorky, William Faulkner, and Mao Zedong alike. In books, essays, and lectures, Kanafani argued that Zionist propaganda literature served as a “weapon” in the war against Palestine, returning repeatedly to Arthur Koestler’s 1946 Thieves in the Night. Better known for his critique of Stalinism in Darkness at Noon (1940), Koestler was also actively involved in waging cultural Cold War, writing the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Congress for Cultural Freedom 1950 manifesto and helping the organization infiltrate Afro-Asian writing in the wake of Bandung. Kanafani’s 1960s theory of resistance literature thus responded at once to the psychological dislocation of Zionist propaganda fiction and the cultural infiltration of Arabic literature in the Cold War.
Topic:
Cold War, Zionism, Literature, Arabic, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon

3. Responding to Precarity: Beddawi Camp in the Era of Covid-19

Author:
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
How are refugees responding to protect themselves and others in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic? How do these responses relate to diverse local, national, and international structures of inequality and marginalization? Drawing on the case of Beddawi camp in North Lebanon, I argue that local responses—such as sharing information via print and social media, raising funds for and preparing iftar baskets during Ramadan, and distributing food and sanitation products to help people practice social distancing—demonstrate how camp residents have worked individually and collectively to find ways to care for Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Kurdish, and Lebanese residents alike, thereby transcending a focus on nationality- based identity markers. However, state, municipal, international, and media reports pointing to Syrian refugees as having imported the virus into Beddawi camp place such local modes of solidarity and mutuality at risk. This article thus highlights the importance of considering how refugee-refugee assistance initiatives relate simultaneously to: the politics of the self and the other, politically produced precarity, and multi-scalar systems that undermine the potential for solidarity in times of overlapping precarities.
Topic:
Nationalism, Refugees, Solidarity, Public Health, Humanitarian Crisis, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Kurdistan