Search

Begin New Search Political Geography Lebanon Journal Journal of Palestine Studies

11. Speaking Palestinian: An Interview with Rosemary Sayigh

Author:
Mayssun Soukarieh
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This interview is part of a longer conversation that independent researcher Mayssun Soukarieh conducted with Rosemary Sayigh in Beirut during the summer of 2008. Sayigh, an anthropologist, oral historian, and researcher, was born in Birmingham in the United Kingdom and moved to Beirut in 1953, where she married the Palestinian economist Yusif Sayigh. She earned her master's degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1970 and was awarded a PhD from Hull University in Yorkshire in 1994. Since coming to Beirut fifty-six years ago, Sayigh has dedicated her life to writing and advocating for the Palestinians in Lebanon and elsewhere. She is the author of two groundbreaking books: Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries; A People's History (Zed Books, 1979) and Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon (Zed Books, 1993). Although these conversations focused on Sayigh's scholarly work rather than her personal history, it became clear that the two are inextricably linked.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, America, Palestine, and Lebanon

12. What Rosemary Saw: Reflections on Palestinian Women as Tellers of the Palestinian Present

Author:
Penny Johnson
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Referencing the "stereotypes of self" identified by Rosemary Sayigh in the life stories of Palestinian camp women in Lebanon who had lived through the Palestinian resistance, the author focuses on the narratives of two women in Ramallah's Am'ari refugee camp since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada to reflect on the Palestinian present. Though the women-and their goals and struggles-could not be more different, their narratives reveal significant shifts in self-representation that reflect both the impact of post-Oslo political realities and the new (unattainable) aspirations fueled by satellite television images and Ramallah caf´e culture. The narratives also reflect, in very different ways, the national crisis, the impotence of Palestinian political groups and institutions, and the erosion of solidarities
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon

13. From Nationalist to Economic Subject: Emergent Economic Networks among Shatila's Women

Author:
Diana Allan
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article revisits Rosemary Sayigh's theory of "culture as resistance" and considers how primordial attachments of kin and village, and by extension nation, in Shatila camp are being reconfigured by deepening poverty and provisionality. Shifting analytical attention away from the discursive continuities of nationalism toward the contingencies of everyday material practice in its local environment, the article examines how dynamically evolving networks of solidarity are reconstituting traditional structures of kinship and political belonging, broadly conceived, and producing new forms of agency and economic subjectivity for camp women.
Topic:
Security and Politics
Political Geography:
Lebanon

14. 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

15. 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

16. Arab B1. Abbas Zaki, PLO Executive Committee Representative to Lebanon, Apology to Lebanon on Behalf of the Palestinian People, 7 January 2008

Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Abbas Zaki made the following statement at a ceremony in Beirut marking the 43d anniversary of Fatah. The text, which was published by Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya in spring 2008, was translated from Arabic by JPS.
Political Geography:
Palestine, Lebanon, and Beirut

17. C2. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "Responding to Hamas Attacks from Gaza—Issues of Proportionality," March 2008 (excerpts)

Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
In response to criticisms that its military attacks on Gaza following Hamas Qassam rocket strikes in Sederot were causing unnecessary civilian casualties, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) released a background paper in March, excerpted below, to clarify and justify the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) understanding of the principle of proportionality. This principle, along with the principle of intentionality, forms the jurisprudence of International Humanitarian Law. Citing a number of international legal scholars and Article 52(2) of the Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions (1977), to which Israel is a signatory, the background paper attempts to redefine proportionality in order to legitimate attacks on targets that are not strictly military, placing the blame for any civilian deaths on Hamas for using civilians as "human shields." Although the IDF and the MFA have advanced this argument in response to international criticism about IDF strikes causing civilian deaths in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories, this background paper represents an attempt to subordinate the need to cause as little harm to civilians as possible to Israel's stated need to preempt future attacks. The report is available online at www.mfa.gov.il.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and Lebanon