Bulletin: Peacemaking, Peace Building and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

Books

• Ilan Alon and Daniel Bar-Tal, eds. The Role of Trust in Conflict Resolution
• Carmel Borg and Michael Grech, eds. Pedagogy, Politics and Philosophy of Peace
• Herbert C. Kelman and Ronald J. Fisher, eds. Herbert C. Kelman: A Pioneer in the Social Psychology of Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Articles

• Bashir Bashir, The Strengths and Weaknesses of Integrative Solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Susan S. Lanser & Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Israeli–Palestinian Narratives and the Politics of Form: Reading Side by Side
• Rotem Nagar and Ifat Maoz, Predicting Jewish-Israeli Recognition of Palestinian Pain and Suffering
• Padraig O’Malley, Israel and Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution
• Tina Kempin Reuter, Simulating Peace Negotiations: A Case Study of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Karen Ross, Untangling the Intervention-Context Dyad through Horizontal Comparison: Examples from Israeli Peacebuilding Organizations
• Mohammed Samhouri, Israeli-Palestinian Economic Relations, 1994–2014
• Mandy Turner, The Peacebuilding–Counterinsurgency Nexus in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
  

Reviews

• Michael Shulz, on Jacob Eriksson’s Small-State Mediation in International Conflicts: Diplomacy and Negotiations in Israel-Palestine

Theses

• Rebecca Katherine Buchanan, Analysis of Strides for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with the Application of Theories by Butler and Buber (BA, Wofford)
• Andrew Rizzo Naudi, Track-Two Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution: A Case Study of Israel-Palestine Negotiations in the Run-Up to the Oslo Accord (MA, Malta)

New Article: Adwan et al, Portrayal of the Other in Schoolbooks

Adwan, Sami, Daniel Bar-Tal, and Bruce E. Wexler. “Portrayal of the Other in Palestinian and Israeli Schoolbooks: A Comparative Study.” Political Psychology 37.2 (2016): 201-17.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pops.12227

 

Abstract

The present study examined how Israelis and Palestinians present their narratives related to their conflict in school textbooks used by the state educational system and the ultraorthodox community in Israel and by all Palestinian schools in Palestinian National Territories. The focus was on how each side portrays the Other and their own group. The content analysis was based on a developed conceptual framework and standardized and manualized rating criteria with quantitative and qualitative aspects. The results showed in general that (1) dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the Other are rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books; (2) both Israeli and Palestinian books present unilateral national narratives that portray the Other as enemy, chronicle negative actions by the Other directed at the self-community, and portray the self-community in positive terms with actions aimed at self-protection and goals of peace; (3), there is lack of information about the religions, culture, economic and daily activities of the Other, or even of the existence of the Other on maps; (4) the negative bias in portrayal of the Other, the positive bias in portrayal of the self, and the absence of images and information about the Other are all statistically significantly more pronounced in Israeli Ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian books than in Israeli state books.

 

 

 

New Book: Kahanoff, Jews and Arabs in Israel Encountering Their Identities

Kahanoff, Maya. Jews and Arabs in Israel Encountering Their Identities. Transformations in Dialogue. Lanham and London: Lexington Books and Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2016.

 

 

Jews and Arabs in Israel Encountering their Identities reveals the powerful potential of inter-group dialogues to transform identities and mutually negating relations. Using meetings with Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arabian students who attend the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as case studies, Kahanoff examines the hidden psychological dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and illustrates how each participant’s sense of identity shifted in response to encounters with conflicting perspectives. Kahanoff contends that an awareness of the limitations of dialogue, without the renunciation of its value, is the most realistic basis upon which to build a sustainable agreement. This book is recommended for scholars of psychology, sociology, religious studies, political science, and communication studies.

 

Table of Contents

• Part I. Center Stage Conversations
• Chapter One: Split Discourse: Jews and Arabs Converse
• Part II. Behind the Scenes
  
• Chapter Two: Internal Jewish-Israeli Dialogues
  
• Chapter Three: Internal Palestinian-Arab Dialogues
  
• Part III. Inner/Hidden Dialogues
  
• Chapter Four: Jewish Israeli Dilemmas
  
• Chapter Five: Palestinian Arab Dilemmas
  
Chapter Six: Theoretical Aftertalks: Dialogical Transformations

 

MAYA KAHANOFF is lecturer at the Swiss Center Graduate Program for Conflict Research, Management and Resolution and associate research fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

New Article: Mor et al, Can Facebook Promote Dialogue in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict?

Mor, Yifat, Yiftach Ron, and Ifat Maoz. “‘Likes’ for Peace: Can Facebook Promote Dialogue in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict?.” Media and Communication 4.1 (2016): 15-26.
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v4i1.298
 
Abstract

This study examines the ways in which social media is used to promote intergroup dialogue and reconciliation in the context of the protracted, ethnopolitical conflict between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. We focus on content analysis of posts and comments on a Facebook page named “Tweeting Arabs” which was established and is administered by Pales-tinian citizens of Israel. This page states that its’ main goal is to publicize opinions, thoughts and beliefs of Palestinians, enabling the moderate voice to be heard and encouraging dialogue between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. The analysis is based on a data set containing posts and comments collected from “Tweeting Arabs” since the page was founded in November 8th 2014 and until December 4th 2014. This data set contains 85 posts which gained a total of 9657 “likes”, and 461 “shares”, as well as 3565 comments and replies to these posts. Our findings reveal that while posts that pre-sented the narrative of Palestinian suffering were mostly followed by negative comments from Israeli-Jews, posts that brought up the Palestinian moderate and peace seeking voice elicited higher Jewish–Israeli acceptance and sympathy. The research adds to our understanding of Facebook as a dialogue provoking platform that enables users from different ethnopolitical groups in divided and conflicted societies to perform peacebuilding actions.

 

 

 

New Article: Nicholson, The Role of Historical Representations in Israeli-Palestinian Relations

Nicholson, Cathy. “The Role of Historical Representations in Israeli-Palestinian Relations: Narratives from Abroad.” Peace and Conflict 22.1 (2016): 5-11.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pac0000143
 
Abstract

This study focuses on narratives of historical events that were discussed during open ended interviews about conflict and coexistence within Israeli–Palestinian relations. Jewish Israelis and Palestinians living in London often used historical events as a way of justifying a positioning of a perspective that was felt to be central to the conflict and its possible resolution. These historical themes included the Holocaust, Biblical interpretations, and the effects of Israel gaining statehood in 1948. Narrative research is useful to portray stories that reflect a description of a perceived social reality in order to gain understanding of the meanings people give to their lived experiences. The theory of social representations provides an opportunity to explore further a narrative approach that includes the significance of intersubjectvity across group boundaries. It was found that each group defined themselves through the perspectives of ‘the other,’ demonstrating how studying both groups together can highlight an understanding of the contextual processes that might lie between them. By exploring how these particular narratives have been anchored and objectified, we can plot how representations of past events are continually developing to reflect present day positioning and ideas for future action. Although representations of intractability between the 2 groups were present, the results did not suggest that this was the only perspective taken, as other futures were imagined where conflict plays a lesser role.

 

 

 

New Book: Sharvit & Halperin, A Social Psychology Perspective on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Sharvit, Keren, and Eran Halperin, eds. A Social Psychology Perspective on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Celebrating the Legacy of Daniel Bar-Tal, volume 2. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2016.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been waging for decades, resulting in mass losses, destruction, and suffering with profound effects on the members of the involved societies. Furthermore, its effects reach beyond the involved societies and influence regional and global stability. Many attempts have been made to bring this conflict to peaceful resolution, but so far without success. Due to its intensity and extensive effects, this conflict has drawn the attention of scholars from numerous disciplines, who attempted to explain the causes of the conflict and the reasons for the difficulties in resolving it. Among these one can find historians, geographers, political scientists, sociologists, and others. Social and political psychologists have also addressed this conflict, and one of the most influential among them has been Daniel Bar-Tal.

This is the second of two volumes intended to pay tribute to Daniel Bar-Tal’s scholarly contribution upon his retirement from his position at Tel Aviv University. While the first volume was devoted to Bar-Tal’s general theory of the sociopsychological foundations of intractable conflict and the theory’s relation to other prominent theoretical frameworks, this volume is devoted to applying Bar-Tal’s theory to the specific case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his most recent book, published in 2013, Bar-Tal acknowledges the immense effects that living in Israel, being exposed to this conflict, and taking part in it have had on his thinking, theorizing, and empirical research regarding intractable conflicts. We too, as his former students, have been inspired by living in Israel and by Bar-Tal’s work to continue to investigate the sociopsychological dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and through them to advance the understandings of intractable conflicts in general.

 

Table of Contents

• Sociopsychological Foundations of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Applying Daniel Bar-Tal’s Theorizing
  Keren Sharvit
• Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict: A Developmental Perspective
  Yona Teichman
• Young Children’s Experiences and Learning in Intractable Conflicts
  Meytal Nasie
• The Israeli Collective Memory of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict: Its Characteristics and Relation to the Conflict
  Rafi Nets-Zehngut
• The “Silenced” Narrative of 1948 War Events Among Young Palestinians in Israel
  Eman Nahhas
• Perceptions of Collective Narratives Among Arab and Jewish Adolescents in Israel: A Decade of Intractable Conflict
  Anan Srour
• “Seeing Through a Glass Darkly”: Israeli and Egyptian Images of the Other During the Nasserite Period (1952–1970)
  Elie Podeh
• The Jewish–Israeli Ethos of Conflict
  Neta Oren
• Ethos of Conflict of the Palestinian Society
  Ronni Shaked
• Harmed by Our Protection: Exposure to Political Violence and Political Preferences in the Range of Fire
  Daphna Canetti
• Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Intractable Conflict and Their Relation to the Ethos of Conflict in Israeli Society
  Ruthie Pliskin
• When Jewish and Zionist Identities Encounter Otherness: Educational Case Study
  David Ohad
• Peace Education Between Theory and Practice: The Israeli Case
  Soli Vered
• Containing the Duality: Leadership in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process
  Nimrod Rosler
• The Role of Peace Organizations During Peacemaking Processes: The Case of the Jewish-Israeli Society
  Tamir Magal
• The Road to Peace: The Potential of Structured Encounters Between Israeli Jews and Palestinians in Promoting Peace
  Ifat Maoz
• Addressing Israelis’ and Palestinians’ Basic Needs for Agency and Positive Moral Identity Facilitates Mutual Prosociality
  Ilanit SimanTov-Nachlieli
• Transitional Justice in Societies Emerging from Intractable Conflicts: Between the Right to Truth and Collective Memory
  Ofer Shinar Levanon
• Index
• About the Authors

 

New Book: Bekerman, The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Bekerman, Zvi. The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education. Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

The Promise of Integrated and Multicultural Bilingual Education presents the results of a long-term ethnographic study of the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel that offer a new educational option to two groups of Israelis–Palestinians and Jews–who have been in conflict for the last one hundred years. Their goal is to create egalitarian bilingual multicultural environments to facilitate the growth of youth who can acknowledge and respect “others” while maintaining loyalty to their respective cultural traditions. In this book, Bekerman reveals the complex school practices implemented while negotiating identity and culture in contexts of enduring conflict. Data gathered from interviews with teachers, students, parents, and state officials are presented and analyzed to explore the potential and limitations of peace education given the cultural resources, ethnic-religious affiliations, political beliefs, and historical narratives of the various interactants. The book concludes with critique of Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives that currently guide peace education, maintaining that one of the primary weaknesses of current bilingual and multicultural approaches to peace education is their failure to account for the primacy of the political framework of the nation state and the psychologized educational perspectives that guide their educational work. Change, it is argued, will only occur after these perspectives are abandoned, which entails critically reviewing present understandings of the individual, of identity and culture, and of the learning process.

 
Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1
• 1. Positioning the Author
• 2. Theoretical Perspectives
• 3. Methodology: From Theory to Implementation
• 4. Schools in Their Contexts
• Part 2
• 5. The Parents
• 6. Teachers at Their Work
• 7. The Children
• Part 3
• 8. School Routines: Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Classroom
• 9. Ceremonial Events
• 10. Conflicting National Narratives
• Part 4
• 11. The Graduates
• 12. Conclusions
• Author Index
• Subject Index

 

ZVI BEKERMAN teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as culture and identity intersect with issues of social justice, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education.

 

 

 

New Article: Kohn, Refugee Camp Narratives

Kohn, Ayelet. “Refugee Camp Narratives: The Role of ‘Eye-Witness Testimony’ in Journalists’ Travel Accounts.” Current Sociology 64.1 (2016): 83-100.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392115587748

 

Extract

This article examines three narrative formats which Israeli journalists use to describe their tours in Palestinian refugee camps. The article aims to suggest possibilities for reporting patterns, carefully framing a sense of urgency, which attempt to form a right measure of proximity and distance from the sufferers which might motivate audiences into action. The discussion focuses on three narratives, one literary and the other an article which was published in a popular Israeli journal, both unique in their deliberate emphasis on writing style and their reflection of the ongoing tension between the reporters’ professional, creative and national identities. The third format is a testimony, given by the narrator in Ari Folman’s animated film Waltz with Bashir (2008). The film ends with a few minutes of documented events, filmed at Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982. While all three narratives use direct showing, personal testimonies and a variety of written, illustrated and photographed portraits, the written narratives focus on the reporters’ central role and on the Israeli readers, while Waltz with Bashir challenges the possible feeling of guilt on the Israeli side and invokes the viewer’s human empathy through a direct encounter with personal comments and shocking images.

 

 

 

ToC: Israel Studies 21.1 (2016; Narratives of the 1948 war)

Volume 21, Number 1, Spring 2016

Table of Contents

Representations of Israeli-Jewish — Israeli-Palestinian Memory and Historical Narratives of the 1948 War

Edited by Avraham Sela and Alon Kadish

Preface and Acknowledgements

pp. V-VI

Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Historical Narratives of the 1948 War—An Overview

pp. 1-25
Avraham Sela, Avraham Kadish

 

The 1948 Palestine War on the Small Screen: A Comparative Analysis of its Representation in Two Israeli Television Series

pp. 27-53
Bosmat Garami

 

Israel’s Publications Agency and the 1948 Palestinian Refugees

pp. 54-81
Rafi Nets-Zehngut

 

The War of Independence Exhibited: A Study of Three Israeli Museums

pp. 82-108
Offer Boord

 

Contested Urban Memoryscape Strategies and Tactics in Post-1948 Haifa

pp. 109-131
Ziva Kolodney

 

The Making of a Myth: The Story of Kfar Etzion in Religious Zionism 1948–1967

pp. 132-156
Dror Greenblum

 

Descending the Khazooq: “Working Through” the Trauma of the Nakba in Emile Habibi’s Oeuvre

pp. 157-182
Assaf Peled

 

Wa-ma Nasayna (We Have Not Forgotten): Palestinian Collective Memory and the Print Work of Abed Abdi

pp. 183-208
Tal Ben-Zvi

 

New Article: Segalo et al, Engaging Memory and Imagination Within Decolonizing Frameworks

Segalo, Puleng, Einat Manoff, Michelle Fine. “Working With Embroideries and Counter-Maps: Engaging Memory and Imagination Within Decolonizing Frameworks.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 3.1 (2015).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v3i1.145

 

Abstract

As people around the world continue to have their voices, desires, and movements restricted, and their pasts and futures told on their behalf, we are interested in the critical project of decolonizing, which involves contesting dominant narratives and hegemonic representations. Ignacio Martín-Baró called these the “collective lies” told about people and politics. This essay reflects within and across two sites of injustice, located in Israel/Palestine and in South Africa, to excavate the circuits of structural violence, internalized colonization and possible reworking of those toward resistance that can be revealed within the stubborn particulars of place, history, and culture. The projects presented here are locally rooted, site-specific inquiries into contexts that bear the brunt of colonialism, dispossession, and occupation. Using visual research methodologies such as embroideries that produce counter-narratives and counter-maps that divulge the complexity of land-struggles, we search for fitting research practices that amplify unheard voices and excavate the social psychological soil that grows critical analysis and resistance. We discuss here the practices and dilemmas of doing decolonial research and highlight the need for research that excavates the specifics of a historical material context and produces evidence of previously silenced narratives.

 

 

New Article: Saaty et al, A Structured Scientific Solution to the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Saaty, Thomas L., Luis G. Vargas and H. J. Zoffer. “A Structured Scientific Solution to the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: The Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach.” Decision Analytics 2.7 (2015): 53pp.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40165-015-0017-3

 

Abstract

While the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has raged for decades, in all of its ramifications there has never been a totally structured or scientific approach to the conflict with all of its details. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approaches the problem along these lines. There are a plethora of reasons why the traditional face to face negotiations have broken down over the years. This paper identifies a significant number of those impediments and indicates how the AHP can productively address them. A summary of the highlights of the AHP approach precedes how it has been applied to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. To date, the participants, significant members of both communities, have derived and agreed upon a solution that includes all the major issues, except for the refugee problem. That problem is currently being worked on, but will take an extended period because of the unique factors involved. What has been provided is an agreed upon solution to virtually all of the issues impeding past negotiations, including borders, settlements, the status of Jerusalem, the Holy Places, security and expectations of each side.

 

 

New Article: Nathanson, A Malignant Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? A Cardiothoracic Surgeon’s Perspective

Nathanson, Michael. “A Malignant Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? A Cardiothoracic Surgeon’s Perspective and Remedial Implications.” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 14.1 (2015): 105-22.
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/hlps.2015.0106

 

Abstract
A debate persists whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved through substantive and ‘painful’ compromises or that the foundational parametres of the conflict apriori deny a resolution. The nationalist Zionist agenda of mass Jewish settlement in Palestine inevitably clashed with Palestinian nationalist sentiments. Both nationalist movements saw the conflict as mutually exclusive. European imperialist designs and US political considerations at home only cemented the intractability of the conflict. As such, the conflict is akin to a human malignant process that is allowed to progress unchecked and compromises its host because those who were and are responsible to eradicate it have committed malpractice.

 

 

 

New Article: Lazar et al, Positive Weighing of the Other’s Collective Narrative among Jewish and Bedouin-Palestinian Teachers

Lazar, Alon, Orna Braun-Lewensohn, and Tal Litvak Hirsch. “Positive Weighing of the Other’s Collective Narrative among Jewish and Bedouin-Palestinian Teachers in Israel and Its Correlates.” International Journal of Psychology (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12152

 

Abstract

Teachers play a pivotal role in the educational discourse around collective narratives, and especially the other’s narrative. The study assumed that members of groups entangled in a conflict approach the different modules of the other’s narrative distinctively. Jewish and Palestinian teachers, Israeli citizens, answered questionnaires dealing with the narrative of the other, readiness for interethnic contact, negative between-group emotions and preferences for resolutions of the Israeli–Palestinian (I–P) conflict. Positive weighing of the other’s narrative among Jewish teachers correlated with high levels of readiness for interethnic contact and low levels of negative between-group emotions, across the various modules of the Palestinian narrative. Preferences for a peaceful resolution of the I–P conflict and rejection of a violent one were noted in two of the modules. Among Palestinian teachers, positive weighing of the other’s collective narrative was exclusively noted for the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust, and this stance negatively related to negative between-group emotions and preference for a violent solution of the I–P conflict, and positively related to readiness for interethnic contact and preference of a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Practical implications of these findings for peace education are discussed.

Reviews: Roberts, Contested Land, Contested Memory

Roberts, Jo. Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel’s Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe. Toronto : Dundurn Press, 2013.

 

Reviews

• Esber, Rosemarie M. “In New Book, Palestinians, Israeli Jews Reflect on History of Ethnic Cleansing.” Electronic Intifada, January 17, 2014.
• Shuman, Ellis. “We Have to Talk about the Nakba.” Times of Israel, May 26, 2014.
• Davis, Brandon. “Violence in Paradise: Jo Roberts Probes Israeli Memory and Myth.” Mondoweiss, June 26, 2014.
• Ronan, Marian. “The Middle East: Where One Catastrophe Begets Another.” National Catholic Reporter, August 13, 2014.
• Christiansen, Drew. “Building An ‘Ethnocracy’.” America – The National Catholic Review, September 29, 2014.
• Adas, Jane. “Review.” Americans for Middle East Understanding.
• Riegle, Rosalie G. “Review.” Oral History Review.

 

 

 

 

New Article: Abdel-Nour, The Jewish State and the Palestinian Right of Return

Abdel-Nour, Farid. “Irreconcilable Narratives and Overlapping Consensus. The Jewish State and the Palestinian Right of Return.” Political Research Quarterly 68.1 (2015): 117-27.

 

URL: http://prq.sagepub.com/content/68/1/117.abstract

 

Abstract

The Israeli demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian demand that Israelis recognize the Palestinian refugees’ moral right to return express the two peoples’ need to have their respective causes affirmed by the “other side.” Yet, the two causes are irreconcilable as are the core political narratives that give them meaning. The question then arises as to whether an end to the conflict can even be conceptualized, let alone implemented, with the two peoples adhering to their core narratives and expecting affirmation of their respective causes. This paper’s argument is that John Rawls’ later work contains resources that allow for such a conceptualization. An overlapping consensus over a list of common acknowledgments is possible between adherents to the two peoples’ core narratives. In that list, which is proposed in the paper, each of the two peoples can see its cause implicitly affirmed and its need for recognition met, without having to abandon its core narrative or to explicitly grant the demand for recognition made on it by the other side. Thus, the irreconcilability of narratives does not present an insurmountable obstacle to conceptualizing potentially just and stable relations between the two peoples.

New Book: Kizel, The New Mizrahi Narrative in Israel (in Hebrew)

קיזל, אריה. הנרטיב המזרחי החדש בישראל. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2014.

The hyphenated narrative – the new Mizrahi narrative that stands at the center of a radical Mizrahi discourse – goes against the Zionism’s negation of an Oriental and Arab identity and posits itself as an alternative of an inntellectual and assertive identity. Arie Kizel’s book examines the rise and consolidation of the Mizrahi narrative which serves as a milestone in the struggle of conflicting narratives as an expression of various identities to express themselves as independent and hybrid among locations of Israeliness.

The author carefully examines the postcolonial and anti-Zionist origins of the Mizrahi narritve and the intellectual assault it launches against the very legitimacy of Zionism, as well as the morality of the political solution it created. This new narrative stance acknowledges the historical difficulties of its subversion, which is presented as emancipatory and especially as ethical. Its foundations relate to the victimized Palestinian narrative, and in its radical version seeks to collaborate with it in order create a new space that will favor Arabism – culturally, linguistically and even politically. This framework is expected to dismantle Zionist colonialism in relation to the regime of truth, the discourse of knowledge and the dominant power, along with rising voices and other narratives as part of a meeting point between anti-Zionism and postmodernism.

Using a three-stage narrative model the author examines the Mizrahi narrative’s attempt to challenge the limits of Israeli discourse, to dissociate from the hegemonic Zionist program, and to present a narrative plan that would allow the construction of a multicultural, anti-colonial model, and rehabilitate the space of Mizrahi-Arab identity. The author lays out the voices of opposition to the proposed narrative and analyzes the causes of the victimization stage it has reached and in which it is trapped, in a capitalist social reality created by Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Israelis and their joint children.

 

New Book: Daniele, Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Daniele, Giulia. Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The Road Not Yet Taken. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.

 

 

URL: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415722452/

 

Abstract

Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict explores the most prominent instances of women’s political activism in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel, focussing primarily on the last decade. By taking account of the heterogeneous narrative identities existing in such a context, the author questions the effectiveness of the contributions of Palestinian and Israeli Jewish women activists towards a feasible renewal of the ‘peace process’, founded on mutual recognition and reconciliation.

Based on feminist literature and field research, this book re-problematises the controversial liaison between ethno-national narratives, feminist backgrounds and women’s activism in Palestine/Israel. In detail, the most relevant salience of this study is the provision of an additional contribution to the recent debate on the process of making Palestinian and Israeli women activists more visible, and the importance of this process as one of the most meaningful ways to open up areas of enquiry around major prospects for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tackling topical issues relating to alternative resolutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book will be a valuable resource for both academics and activists with an interest in Middle East Politics, Gender Studies, and Conflict Resolution.

Table of Contents

Foreword Ilan Pappé

Introduction

 

Part I: Ethno-Nationalism and Women’s Activism From a Critical Viewpoint

1 Challenges to the intertwined narratives of Palestinian and Israeli Jewish Women

2 Palestinian Women and Deep-Rooted National Narrative Identity

3 Different perspectives of Narrative Identities Among Israeli Women Activists

 

Part II

4 Parallelism and Inextricability of Women’s Narratives in Palestine/Israel

5 Deconstructing Ethno-national Narrative Identities: Women’s Activism Within the Paralysis of Military Occupation

6 Women Activists Towards Political Criticism and Joint Actions

 

Conclusion

New Book: Siniver, The Yom Kippur War. Politics, Legacy, Diplomacy

Siniver, Asaf, ed. The Yom Kippur War. Politics, Legacy, Diplomacy. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

 

URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-yom-kippur-war-9780199334810

The Yom Kippur War was a watershed moment in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the modern Middle East more broadly. It marked the beginning of a US-led peace process between Israel and her Arab neighbours; it introduced oil diplomacy as a new means of leverage in international politics; and it affected irreversibly the development of the European Community and the Palestinian struggle for independence. Moreover, the regional order which emerged at the end of the war remained largely unchallenged for nearly four decades, until the recent wave of democratic revolutions in the Arab world. The fortieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War provides a timely opportunity to reassess the major themes that emerged during the war and in its aftermath, and the contributors to this book provide the first comprehensive account of the domestic and international factors which informed the policies of Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, as well as external actors before, during and after the war. In addition to chapters on the superpowers, the EU and the Palestinians, the book also deals with the strategic themes of intelligence and political of the war on Israeli and Arab societies.

 

 

Table of Contents

List of Contributors

1. Introduction
Asaf Siniver

2. Dominant Themes in the October War Historiography: Blame and Historical Analogy
Carly Beckerman-Boys

3. Israel and the October War
Jacob Eriksson

4. The October War and Egypt’s Multiple Crossings
Yoram Meital

5. Syria and the October War: The Missed Opportunity
Eyal Zisser

6. US Foreign Policy and the Kissinger Stratagem
Asaf Siniver

7. The Soviet Union and the October War
Galia Golan

8. Jordan’s War that Never Was
Assaf David

9. Palestinian Politics in Transition: The Case of the October War
Philipp O. Amour

10. Faraway Causes, Immediate Effects: The War and European Consequences
Rory Miller

11. Oil and the October War
David Painter

12. Ashraf Marwan and Israel’s Intelligence Failure
Ahron Bregman

13. Evolving a Diplomatic Legacy from the War: The US, Egyptian and Israeli Triangle
Kenneth W. Stein

14. Clashing Narratives of the October War: Collective Memory and Group Perspective
Claudia De Martino

15. Gone But Not Forgotten? The Occasional Lessons of the October War
Clive Jones