Bulletin: Military Occupation and Conflict, the West Bank, and Gaza

Books

• Andy Clarno, Neoliberal Apartheid
• Matthias Leese and Stef Wittendorp, eds. Security/Mobility. Politics of Movement
• Gershon Shafir, A Half Century of Occupation

Articles

• Nadia Abu-Zahra, Philip Leech, and Leah MacNeil, Resistance and the Israeli Wall in Palestine
• Omri Grinberg, Israeli State Discourses about Palestinian Child Labour
• Laura E. Miller-Graff and E. Mark Cummings, The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: Effects on Youth Adjustment
• Deborah Nathan, Artsbridge: Conflict Mitigation with Israeli and Palestinian Youth
• Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, Extrajudicial Killing with Near Impunity: Excessive Force by Israeli Law Enforcement against Palestinians
• Anne Sofie Roald, Empowerment and Agency for Palestinian Women in the West Bank
• Madalena Santos, Palestinian Narratives of Resistance: The Freedom Theatre’s Challenge to Israeli Settler Colonization
• Michelle Slone, et al, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Meta-Analysis of Exposure and Outcome Relations for Children of the Region
• Rebecca L. Stein, GoPro Occupation: Networked Cameras, Israeli Military Rule, and the Digital Promise

Reviews

• Naama Blatman-Thomas, on Ahmad H. Sa’di’s Thorough Surveillance: The Genesis of Israeli Policies of Population Management
• Anissa Hélie, on Lihi Ben-Shitrit’s Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right

Theses

• Daniel Moses, Billions of Dollars Lost along the Checkpoints? An Econometric Analysis of Labor Mobility, Economic Development, and Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (MA, Oklahoma)
• Aisha Phoenix, Palestinian University Students Narrating Life under Occupation
• Samah Saleh, The Politics of ‘Sumud’: Former Palestinian Women Prisoners’ Experience of Incarceration under Israeli Occupation (PhD, Goldsmiths)
• James Thompson, Social Activists for Palestine: who are they, what do they do and can they make a difference? (BA, Plymouth)

Reports

• Heather Aidy, Tanya Lee, and Meriel Watts, Human Rights and Toxic Chemicals in the Occupied West Bank

Events

• “Israel’s Second Founding: The Six-Day War 50 Years Later“, Michael Brenner moderates discussion with Alon Confino, Arie Dubnov, Yoav Gelber, Benny Morris, Yoram Peri, and Tamara Wittes. American University, April 4, 2017, 7:30pm.

New Article: Shay-Margalit & Rubin, Effect of the Israeli ‘Green Schools’ Reform on Pupils

Shay-Margalit, Brit, and Ofir D. Rubin. “Effect of the Israeli ‘Green Schools’ Reform on Pupils’ Environmental Attitudes and Behavior.” Society & Natural Resources (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2016.1171939

 
Abstract

The objective of this study was to explore the mechanism through which a reform in environmental education (EE) programs affects pupils’ relation to the environment. We surveyed 589 pupils aged 9–12 years in three types of Israeli elementary school: regular schools, schools that implement an EE program (designated “green schools”), and schools that implement a more intensive EE program (designated “persistent green schools”). Analyzing the results obtained from our questionnaire, we found that both EE programs had a positive effect on environmental attitudes. Importantly, however, only persistent green schools showed a direct positive effect on environmental behavior. In addition, we assessed the influences of various demographic and other factors on pupils’ relation to the environment. Of note, we found that students who spent their leisure time watching TV or engaging with other electronic media expressed less concern about the environment.

 

 

New Book: Kreiger, The Dead Sea and the Jordan River

Kreiger, Barbara. The Dead Sea and the Jordan River. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.

 

 

For centuries travelers have been drawn to the stunning and mysterious Dead Sea and Jordan River, a region which is unlike any other on earth in its religious and historical significance. In this exceptionally engaging and readable book, Barbara Kreiger chronicles the natural and human history of these storied bodies of water, drawing on accounts by travelers, pilgrims, and explorers from ancient times to the present. She conveys the blend of spiritual, touristic, and scientific motivations that have driven exploration and describes the modern exploitation of the lake and the surrounding area through mineral extraction and agriculture. Today, both lake and river are in crisis, and stewardship of these water resources is bound up with political conflicts in the region. The Dead Sea and the Jordan River combines history, literature, travelogue, and natural history in a way that makes it hard to put down.

 

Table of Contents

• Part I. This Strange Water
  1. Some Early History, Travellers, Myths
• Part II. Nineteenth-Century Exploration
  2. Three Sailors, and a River
  3. Along the Briny Strand
• Part III. Origins and Evolution
  4. The Life of a Lake
• Part IV. Further Exploration
  5. Gentleman from Siberia
  6. A Lake Divided
• Part V. The Twenty-First Century
  7. The River and Lake in Distress
  8. Reclamation, and a Vision of the Future
• Afterword

 

BARBARA KREIGER is Creative Writing Concentration Chair and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program at Dartmouth College. Her other publications include Divine Expectations: An American Woman in Nineteenth-Century Palestine. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications.

ToC: Israel Affairs 22.2 (2016)

Israel Affairs, Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2016 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Articles Writing Jewish history David Vital Pages: 257-269 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140346 How do states die: lessons for Israel Steven R. David Pages: 270-290 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140358Towards a biblical psychology for modern Israel: 10 guides for healthy living Kalman J. Kaplan Pages: 291-317 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140349 The past as a yardstick: Europeans, Muslim migrants and the onus of European-Jewish histories Amikam Nachmani Pages: 318-354 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140355 The mental cleavage of Israeli politics Eyal Lewin Pages: 355-378 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140352 Framing policy paradigms: population dispersal and the Gaza withdrawal Matt Evans Pages: 379-400 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140353 National party strategies in local elections: a theory and some evidence from the Israeli case David Nachmias, Maoz Rosenthal & Hani Zubida Pages: 401-422 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140356 ‘I have two homelands’: constructing and managing Iranian Jewish and Persian Israeli identities Rusi Jaspal Pages: 423-443 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140348 Avoiding longing: the case of ‘hidden children’ in the Holocaust Galiya Rabinovitch & Efrat Kass Pages: 444-458 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140350 ‘Are you being served?’ The Jewish Agency and the absorption of Ethiopian immigration | Adi Binhas Pages: 459-478 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140345 The danger of Israel according to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi Shaul Bartal Pages: 479-491 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140343 Leisure in the twenty-first century: the case of Israel Nitza Davidovitch & Dan Soen Pages: 492-511 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140347 Limits to cooperation: why Israel does not want to become a member of the International Energy Agency Elai Rettig Pages: 512-527 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140357 The attitude of the local press to marginal groups: between solidarity and alienation Smadar Ben-Asher & Ella Ben-Atar Pages: 528-548 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140344 The construction of Israeli ‘masculinity’ in the sports arena Moshe Levy, Einat Hollander & Smadar Noy-Canyon Pages: 549-567 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140351 Book Reviews From empathy to denial: Arab responses to the Holocaust Alice A. Butler-Smith Pages: 568-570 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140354 Holocaust images and picturing catastrophe: the cultural politics of seeing Alice A. Butler-Smith Pages: 570-572 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140342s

New Article: Tal & Peled, Environmental Education Programs in 10 Israeli Elementary Schools

Tal, Tali, and Einat Peled. “The Philosophies, Contents and Pedagogies of Environmental Education Programs in 10 Israeli Elementary Schools.” Environmental Education Research (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2016.1153047
 
Abstract

In this study, our aim was to understand how environmental education has been implemented in Israeli elementary schools. We selected ten schools that had implemented Education for Sustainability programs and analyzed their mission statements and curriculum documents. We observed each school’s activities and interviewed teachers. Our analysis shows ambiguity with respect to the rationales and the theoretical foundations of the programs. It also shows much didactic teaching of content, a strong focus on behavioral outcomes, especially with respect to reducing resource consumption and to increasing the levels of recycling, as well as some degree of working with the community. The unclear status of environmental education in Israel, in terms of its structure within the education system, prevents it from having sufficient resources for teacher education and curriculum development. It is suggested that this lack of clarity is the main cause of the ambiguity and for the use of the traditional pedagogies we found in our analysis.

 

 

 

New Book: McKee, Dwelling in Conflict

McKee, Emily Dwelling in Conflict. Negev Landscapes and the Boundaries of Belonging. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.

 

Land disputes in Israel are most commonly described as stand-offs between distinct groups of Arabs and Jews. In Israel’s southern region, the Negev, Jewish and Bedouin Arab citizens and governmental bodies contest access to land for farming, homes, and industry and struggle over the status of unrecognized Bedouin villages. “Natural,” immutable divisions, both in space and between people, are too frequently assumed within these struggles.

 

Dwelling in Conflict offers the first study of land conflict and environment based on extensive fieldwork within both Arab and Jewish settings. It explores planned towns for Jews and for Bedouin Arabs, unrecognized villages, and single-family farmsteads, as well as Knesset hearings, media coverage, and activist projects. Emily McKee sensitively portrays the impact that dividing lines—both physical and social—have on residents. She investigates the political charge of people’s everyday interactions with their environments and the ways in which basic understandings of people and “their” landscapes drive political developments. While recognizing deep divisions, McKee also takes seriously the social projects that residents engage in to soften and challenge socio-environmental boundaries. Ultimately, Dwelling in Conflict highlights opportunities for boundary crossings, revealing both contemporary segregation and the possible mutability of these dividing lines in the future.

 

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Narrating Present Pasts
• 2. Seeking Recognition
• Bridge: Distant Neighbors
• 3. Coping with Lost Land
• 4. Reforming Community
• 5. Challenging Boundaries
• Conclusion

 

EMILY McKEE is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department and the Institute for the Study of Environment, Sustainability, and Energy at Northern Illinois University.

 

 

 

New Article: Tal, The Sustainability of Israel’s Irrigation Practices in the Drylands

Tal, Alon. “Rethinking the Sustainability of Israel’s Irrigation Practices in the Drylands.” Water Research 90 (2016): 387-94.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2015.12.016

 

Abstract

Broad utilization of drip irrigation technologies in Israel has contributed to the 1600 percent increase in the value of produce grown by local farmers over the past sixty-five years. The recycling of 86% of Israeli sewage now provides 50% of the country’s irrigation water and is the second, idiosyncratic component in Israel’s strategy to overcome water scarcity and maintain agriculture in a dryland region. The sustainability of these two practices is evaluated in light of decades of experience and ongoing research by the local scientific community. The review confirms the dramatic advantages of drip irrigation over time, relative to flood, furrow and sprinkler irrigation and its significance as a central component in agricultural production, especially under arid conditions. In contrast, empirical findings increasingly report damage to soil and to crops from salinization caused by irrigation with effluents. To be environmentally and agriculturally sustainable over time, wastewater reuse programs must ensure extremely high quality treated effluents and ultimately seek the desalinization of recycled sewage.

 

 

 

New Article: Michaels and Tal, Why Israel Abandoned Its Climate Policy

Michaels, Lucy, and Alon Tal. “Convergence and Conflict with the ‘National Interest’: Why Israel Abandoned Its Climate Policy.” Energy Policy 87 (2015): 480-485.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2015.09.040
Abstract

This article describes how Israel abandoned its climate policy through the prism of the country’s evolving energy profile, most importantly the 2009 discovery of huge natural gas reserves in Israel’s Mediterranean exclusive zone. The article outlines five phases of Israeli political engagement with climate change from 1992 until 2013 when the National GHG Emissions Reduction Plan was defunded. Israel was motivated to develop its climate policy by international norms: OECD membership and the 2009 UN Summit in Copenhagen. Although the eventual Plan may not have significantly reduced Israel’s emissions, it contained immediate cost-effective, energy efficiency measures. Despite rhetorical support for renewable energy, in practice, most Israeli leaders consistently perceive ensuring supply of fossil fuels as the best means to achieve energy security. The gas finds thus effectively ended a potentially significant switch towards renewable energy production. The development of commercially competitive Israeli renewable energy technology may change this prevailing economic calculus alongside renewed international and domestic leadership and a resolution of the region’s conflicts. Although Israel’s political circumstances are idiosyncratic, the dynamics shaping its climate policy reflect wider trends such as competing economic priorities and failure to consider long term energy security.

 

 

New Article: Grosglik, Cultural Meanings of Organic Food Consumption in Israel

Grosglik, Rafi. “Citizen-Consumer Revisited: The Cultural Meanings of Organic Food Consumption in Israel.” Journal of Consumer Culture (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469540515623609

 

Abstract

Organic food consumption is associated with “citizen-consumer” practice, which is an act of promoting different aspects of social and ecological responsibility and the integration of ethical considerations in daily practices such as eating. This article analyzes aspects of organic food consumption in Israel and the symbolic meanings given to it by its consumers. The study shows how practices attributed to ethical eating culture are used in identity construction, social status manifestation, and as a means to demonstrate openness to global cultural trends. Organic food consumption is carried out as part of a symbolic use of ethical values and its adaptation to the local Israeli cultural context. In addition, organic food consumption patterns are revealed as fitting the cultural logic of globalization, which spread in the last decades in Israel. Analysis of the socio-cultural aspects related to organic food consumption points to the polysemy embodied in the term citizen-consumer and shows how the actual implementation of this term in Israel is based on the assimilation of cosmopolitan meanings.

 

 

 

New Article: Davis & Garb, Partnering with the Informal E-Waste Industry

Davis, John-Michael, and Yaakov Garb. “A Model for Partnering with the Informal E-Waste Industry: Rationale, Principles and a Case Study.” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 105A (2015): 73-83.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2015.08.001
 
Abstract

Various forms of informal activity have long played an under-recognized yet substantial role in solid waste management, especially in developing countries. In particular, informal activity is prominent in the electronic waste (e-waste) sector, whose volume and impacts have grown rapidly over recent decades. While the worrying aspects of informal e-waste recycling have been widely discussed, less attention has been given to its positive potential and to its relation to formal e-waste actors and policies. These topics have direct implication for pathways for transitioning from informality, and, in particular, ways in which informal recyclers can build on their strengths while beginning to operate in cleaner ways that retain livelihoods while reducing ill effects.

In this paper, we draw upon extensive field work as well as secondary literatures to offer a taxonomy of management stances towards informal e-waste practices. These range from hostility through disconnection to interaction and, finally, synergy. Our recommendation is for the latter since the informal sector has important strengths and merits, as well as its harmful aspects, while formal approaches that ignore or attempt to squelch the informal sector do not yield constructive outcomes. Specifically, we suggest an incremental ratcheting synergistic model that draws on the respective strengths of both sectors to forge a genuine partnership between them. We describe six key elements of this model, and illustrate it through application to the Israeli–Palestinian context we have studied in depth. In particular, we show how the treatment of copper cables, now one of this industry’s largest and most harmful segments, can be improved through an incremental series of synergetic solutions that preserve or even improve livelihoods of informal recyclers while greatly reducing their health and environmental impacts.

 

 

 

New Article: Alkaher & Tal, Making Pedagogical Decisions to Address Challenges of Joint Jewish–Bedouin Environmental Projects

Alkaher, Iris, & Tali Tal. “Making Pedagogical Decisions to Address Challenges of Joint Jewish–Bedouin Environmental Projects in Israel”. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382046.2015.1106115

Abstract

This interpretive study identifies challenges of working with Bedouin and Jewish Israeli youth in two multicultural projects: education for sustainability and place-conscious education. It also describes the ways the adult project leaders addressed these challenges and their views on the effectiveness of their decisions. Participants comprised 16 Bedouin and Jewish educators. Data collection included interviews and observations of project meetings and staff meetings. Project leaders reported challenges related to (1) intergroup differences in environmental viewpoints, knowledge, and learning styles, (2) embedding issues of environmental justice in the multicultural discourse, and (3) Bedouin–Jewish interactions. To address these challenges, the leaders separated groups for some learning activities, directed discourses, adopted bilingual teaching strategies, and emphasized unique socio-cultural characteristics. Their level of satisfaction with most of their decisions is high. They avoided discussing the broader socio-political Arab–Jewish conflict. The findings highlight dilemmas that multicultural environmental projects pose and suggest the need to adopt critical pedagogy of place to address such dilemmas and challenges. The findings also emphasize the need to better prepare educators for environmental education in multicultural settings.

 

 

 

New Article: Kan and Kislev, Corporatization and Price Setting in the Urban Water Sector under Statewide Central Administration

Kan, Iddo, and Yoav Kislev. “Corporatization and Price Setting in the Urban Water Sector under Statewide Central Administration: The Israeli Experience.” In Use of Economic Instruments in Water Policy: Insights from International Experience (ed. Manuel Lago et al.; Cham: Springer, 2015): 135-46.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18287-2_10

 

Abstract

As in many European countries, all water sources in Israel are public property, and are centrally managed by the government. This is to facilitate correction of market failures associated with externalities, natural monopolies and equity considerations. The economic policy instrument (EPI) considered here comprises two aspects of the centralized approach: (1) an institutional reform: local services that were formerly provided by municipal water departments became the responsibility of corporations; (2) a price-scheme reform: urban water prices are set by the regulator subject to the constraint of overall cost-recovery at the national and municipal levels, combined with an egalitarian policy; the latter is realized in identical municipal end-users tariffs. We evaluate the environmental, economic and institutional aspects of these reforms, and point out two main conclusions. First, with respect to EPI implementation from the regulator perspective, the lesson learned can be summarized by the phrase “grasp all, lose all.” EPI reformation, in this case the establishment of regional corporations, should take account of unattainable objectives: “sanitizing” the political factors from involvement. The second lesson is associated with the challenge of designing a pricing mechanism that simultaneously achieves several potentially contradicting targets: costs recovery, creation of incentives for efficiency, and equality. Also here the mechanism was distorted by political pressures. According to the social norms as they are reflected by the resultant policy, equality overwhelms efficiency.

 

 

New Book: Koensler, Israeli-Palestinian Activism

Koensler, Alexander. Israeli-Palestinian Activism. Shifting Paradigms. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2015.

 

When do words and actions empower? When do they betray? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this volume tracks the repercussions of advocacy activism against house demolitions in ‘unrecognised’ Arab-Bedouin villages in Israel’s southern ‘internal frontier’. It highlights the repercussions of activism for victims, fund-raisers and activists. The ethnographic episodes show how humanitarian aid intervention and indigenous identity politics can turn into a double-edged sword. Ironically, institutional lobbying for coexistence and its interpretative categories can sometimes perpetuate different forms of subjugation. The volume also shows how, beyond the institutional lobbying, novel figures of activism emerge: informal networks create non-sectarian, cross-cutting countercultures and rethink human-environment relationships. These experimental political subjects redefine the categories of the conflict and elude the logic of zero-sum games; they point towards a shifting paradigm in current ethnopolitics.

 

Koensler outlines an ethnographic approach for the study of social movements that follows multiple relations around mobilisations rather than studying activism in itself. This perspective thus becomes relevant for scholars and activists engaged with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and those interested in global rights discourses.

 

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Introduction

• PART I: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF CLAIMS
• 1. Ethnography and social movement studies
• 2. The life of Israeli-Palestinian claims
• PART II: CONTRADICTIONS
• 3.The ‘ghost village’
• 4. Illusions
• 5. Frictions and connections
• PART III: INNOVATIONS
• 6. Politics of polyphony?
• 7. Global ecosophies
• Conclusion

Appendix: Conceptual Tour
Bibliography
Index

 

ALEXANDER KOENSLER is Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, Queen’s University Belfast, UK.

 

New Article: Weil & Levin, Prioritizing for Conservation in a Densely Populated Country

Weil, Gilad and Noam Levin. “Can Siting Algorithms Assist in Prioritizing for Conservation in a Densely Populated and Land Use Allocated Country? – Israel as a Case Study.” Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution 61.1 (2015): 50-60.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15659801.2015.1035858

 

Abstract

Over the years, Israel’s centralized national planning framework and the intense competition on the limited available land played a crucial factor in designing the spatial distribution of the protected areas in Israel. When examining the spatial properties of the protected areas, it was found that they do not adequately represent the variety of the ecosystems in Israel. According to the systematic conservation planning approach, we aimed to examine how optimization algorithms (e.g., MARXAN) would inform us on high priority areas for conservation. We created proxies for anthropogenic disturbance, and for the susceptibility of designating new protected areas subject to existing national and regional land use master plans. Our conservation targets were defined on the basis of the spatial distribution of 461 endangered vertebrate and plant species (red species), as well as by defining and mapping 21 main ecosystems. The results highlight the limited options of significantly improving the representativeness provided by the existing protected areas, due to the diminishing availability of open areas, which may be available to be designated as protected areas. However, the results also emphasize the conservation potential of agricultural land, as well as the need for preserving small and fragmented rare habitats.

 
 
 

New Article: Ward and Becker, Economic Cost of Water Deliveries for Peace and the Environment in Israel

Ward, Frank A., and Nir Becker. “Economic Cost of Water Deliveries for Peace and the Environment in Israel: An Integrated Water Resources Management Approach.” Water Resources Research (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2014WR016783

 

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for discovering an economically viable water sharing plan among neighboring communities for promoting peace and environmental protection. Its application is to the Middle East in which Israel may be facing water supply obligations to address environmental requirements and for a possible a peace agreement with its Palestinian neighbors. The framework consists of integrating external factors, constraints, policy instruments, and targets. Our findings from a constrained optimization analysis of Israel’s national water system show that the costs of increased deliveries are dependent on two major issues: (1) achieving integrated water resources management (IWRM) in which efficient combinations of expansion from several supply sources and reductions in demands occur over time, and (2) the cost of desalination technologies. We identify a $US 1.46 billion price tag, in present value terms, from using integrated management of demand reduction and supply expansion under current desalination costs. Adjustment costs will decline both with anticipated reductions in desalination costs and with an efficient implementation of IWRM. These adjustments can contribute to moderating regional tensions and protecting key ecological assets while addressing water scarcity in a volatile corner of the world.

New Article: Reynolds, Palestinian Agriculture and the Israeli Separation Barrier

Reynolds, Kyra. “Palestinian Agriculture and the Israeli Separation Barrier: The Mismatch of Biopolitics and Chronopolitics with the Environment and Human Survival.” International Journal of Environmental Studies 72.2 (2015): 237-55.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207233.2014.991546

Abstract

Academic scholarship on Israel’s Separation Barrier has focused upon its legality and political impacts. United Nations agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations have been left to document its other actual/potential infringements. The natural environment has been secondary to higher profile issues, such as the intentions behind the structure and its implications for any future peace agreement. Yet, since environmental impediments can have serious long-term implications for natural resources and human subsistence, it is necessary to examine the barrier’s impacts after a decade of existence. This paper focuses upon the main human-environment system of agriculture. A multi-method approach reveals that the impacts constitute much more than the ‘population here, natural resources there’ thesis that has dominated narratives about the barrier’s environmental impediments. In fact, the barrier appears to be having dramatic and perhaps unexpected socio-ecological consequences.

Dissertation: Araj, Planning under deep political conflict: The relationship between afforestation planning and the struggle over space in the Palestinian Territories

Araj, Fidaa Ibrahim Mustafa. Planning under deep political conflict: The relationship between afforestation planning and the struggle over space in the Palestinian Territories. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010.

 

URL: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/16959

 

Abstract

Struggle over space is at the core of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Different actors are involved in this struggle. The Israeli occupation with its planning system, and the Israeli settlers, since the beginning of the occupation, has been enforcing different policies of using space to achieve control over the Palestinians. The Palestinian authority with its planning system under the Israeli policies of control does not have enough power to deal with the different spatial problems that face planning endeavor. Palestinian planners find their autonomy challenged and abilities limited under Israeli policies of control. Among different actors in the spatial struggle in the Palestinian Territories (PT) are Palestinian people who despite their deep suffering from the Israeli policies of control continue making claim to their rights to use space through their spatial practices. Within this complexity of struggle over space in the context of occupation, between actors seeking control and those who resist that control and groups claiming their conflicting rights to the same space, I aim to understand whether and how spatial planning could play a role by understanding the relationship between space, power, and planning. Existing literature is limited in its ability to explain this role. For example, post colonial planning literature, theoretically, addresses the problem of planning as becoming a tool to achieve control. Additionally, radical planning and insurgent planning approaches discuss how in authoritarian political contexts, transformation can be achieved by the engagement of populace in a kind of covert radical or insurgent planning. However, existing literature is mostly focused on conflict between authoritarian state and its citizens, not a state of occupation that involves an occupation of indigenous state and citizens. In order to achieve its goal, the research asks this main question: what is the role of spatial planning in the struggle over space (control and resistance) in the complex context of occupation, and what are the probabilities and the constraints of professional planners’ intervention in such complex context? Since Palestine has a long history of occupation and domination and the phenomenon of the use of planning in the struggle over space in the Palestinian areas is historically rooted, the research takes an historical approach and examines this relationship in two distinct historical colonial periods: the British Mandate in Palestine and the current Israeli occupation. The study hopes to result into conceptual contributions for spatial planning in the PT. The conceptualization of this research will provide an understanding for future studies about planning in cities under deep political conflict such as occupation. It will develop the idea of planning as a form of resistance. The significance of this research lies in its addressing lack of knowledge about planning within the complex context of colonial/occupational areas. It has practical and conceptual contributions. Practically, it documents processes and decisions of planning under occupation. Conceptually, the study contributes to scholarship in planning and political geography by illuminating the spatial practices of different actors in their spatial struggle. To planning scholarship it adds voice to those who have called for an expanded definition of planning. That is planning is not limited to practices of trained professionals. Rather it includes everyday spatial practices of people that are powerful in shaping the space and its territorial control.

Subject: Middle Eastern Studies; Urban planning

 

Classification: 0555: Middle Eastern Studies; 0999: Urban planning

 

Identifier / keyword: Social sciences, Spatial planning, Covert planning, Insurgent planning, Residence planning, Spatial struggle, Radical planning, Palestinian Territories, Afforestation

 

Title: Planning under deep political conflict: The relationship between afforestation planning and the struggle over space in the Palestinian Territories.

 

 

Number of pages: 247

Publication year: 2010

Degree date: 2010

School code: 0090

Source: DAI-A 72/06, Dec 2011

Place of publication: Ann Arbor

Country of publication: United States

ISBN: 9781124580883

Advisor: Miraftab, Faranak

University/institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University location: United States — Illinois

Degree: Ph.D.

Source type: Dissertations & Theses

Language: English

Document type: Dissertation/Thesis

Dissertation/thesis number: 3452051

ProQuest document ID: 863584246

Cite: Furst, Think Global – Act Local: The Case of Greenpeace Israel

Furst, Benny. “Think Global – Act Local: A Descriptive Analysis of Environmental Protest Organization – The Case of Greenpeace Israel.” The Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, University of Maryland – Research Paper 7, 2012.

 

Full paper can be found on The Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies website:

URL: http://www.israelstudies.umd.edu/files/Benny%20Furst%20Research%20Paper-%20April%202012.pdf

 

Abstract

This article presents a field-work based description of an Israeli environmental organization- Greenpeace Israel, focusing on its social structure and political-culture function. Being one of the leading brand-names in the 20th century history of environmentalism, Greenpeace has a dual identity since it has a major affect inside the Israeli environmental movement as well. This research presents a three levels observation: the individual, the organization and the state. The three findings from the interviews of the activists, the leaders of the organization and the decision makers in the political arena are analyzed according to leading theories from the social movements in general and environmental activism in particular. The Findings indicate that Greenpeace main arena is the media, and its strategy is based on non-violent direct action (NVDA) tactics. In addition to that, and in the cultural aspect, Greenpeace functions as a local revitalization group, by posting major issues on the environmental-political agenda of the Israeli society.

Cite: Werczberger, Memory, Land, and Identity

Werczberger, Rachel. “Memory, Land, and Identity: Visions of the Past and the Land in the Jewish Spiritual Renewal in Israel.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 26.2 (2011): 269–289.

 

URL: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a937492388

Abstract

This study focuses on the creative reconstruction of Jewish history via a spiritual New Age perspective. Using the case of the Jewish Spiritual Renewal (JSR) narrative of the past and the land, this article aims to shed light on some of the cultural transformations which are taking place in contemporary Israeli public discourse, especially the reconfiguration of the association between Jewish history, contemporary spirituality, and the land. The JSR narrative recovers, reinterprets and remolds Jewish history in order to legitimize the claim for a spiritual renewal of the present. By offering new perspectives on the Jewish past and history, the JSR attempts to validate its post-modern and spiritual version of Judaism as an original, uncorrupted form of Jewish thought and practice. The comparison of the JSR narrative with the classical Zionist and Canaanite narrative reveals that the JSR spiritual narrative replaces particularistic and nationalistic values regarding the land with universal and global values concerning nature and the environment, in order to create a universal Jewish spirituality that caters to the identity needs of contemporary non-Orthodox Jewish Israelis.