Bulletin: Israeli Palestinians and Arab Minorities in Israel

Books

Nadim N. Rouhana, Israel and its Palestinian Citizens

 

 

Articles

• Yasmin Aboud-Halabi and Michal Shamai, The Role of Parents in Defining Collective Identity of Arab Adolescents in Israel
• Muhammad Amara, Language, Identity and Conflict: Examining Collective Identity through the Labels of the Palestinians in Israel
• Asnat Dor and Hana Hallifa-Yunnis, Prolonged Coresidence: Israeli Arab Emerging Adults Who Live with Their Parents
• Sfaa Ghnadre-Naser and Eli Somer, The Nakba Experience among Internally Displaced Palestinians in Israel
• Caesar Hakim, Jenny Kurman, and Yohanan Eshel, Stereotype Threat and Stereotype Reactance: Performance of Palestinian Citizens of Israel on Achievement Tests
• Tal Meler, Palestinian-Israeli Single Mothers Accord Motherhood a New Meaning
• Kareem Nasser, Dalia Sachs, and Amalia Sa’ar, A Necessary Evil: Residential Placement of People with Intellectual Disability among the Palestinian Minority in Israel
• Paul S. Rowe, Palestinian Christian Civil Society Organizations and the Survival of the Christian Minority in Israel-Palestine
• Amalia Sa’ar, Alisa C. Lewin, and Dalit Simchai, Feminist Identifications among Jewish and Palestinian Students in Israel
• Maha Sabbah-Karkaby and Haya Stier, Education and Age at Marriage among Palestinian Women in Israel
• Maisa Totry-Fakhoury and Nurit Alfasi, Applying Complexity Theory for Analyzing Arab-Palestinian Towns in Israel
• Ghadir Zreik, David Oppenheim, and Abraham Sagi-Schwartz, Infant Attachment and Maternal Sensitivity in the Arab Minority in Israel

 

Lecture: Morris, A New Look at the 1948 War (Georgetown, April 20, 2016)

The Department of Government  invites you to

The 201​6 Goldman ​Lecture

“A New Look at the 1948 War”

Benny Morris, Professor of History
Middle East Studies Department, Ben-Gurion University

Wednesday, April 20
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Copley Formal Lounge

Please RSVP by ​Monday, April 18
at the Eventbrite page

Benny Morris is Professor of History in the Middle East Studies Department at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba, Israel, where he has taught since 1997. He was born in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh and was brought up in Jerusalem and New York. He earned his BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Cambridge University. Between 1978 and 1991 he was a journalist and diplomatic correspondent at The Jerusalem Post. 

He has been a fellow at the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute and a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, St Antony’s College in Oxford and at Oxford’s Centre for Hebraic and Jewish Studies, Yarnton Manor. In addition, he has taught at the University of Florida, Dartmouth College, the University of Maryland, Munich University and Harvard University.

Professor Morris has published ten books, including The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988); The Roots of Appeasement, the British Weekly Press and Nazi Germany during the 1930s (1991); Israel’s Border Wars 1949- 1956 (1993); Righteous Victims (1999); and 1948, A History of the First Arab Israeli War (2008) – winner of the Jewish National Book Award. He is currently completing a book on Turkey’s relations with its Christian minorities, 1876-1924. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The National Interest, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, and other newspapers and journals in Europe.

New Article: Heian-Engdal, Efforts to Release Blocked Palestinian Bank Accounts of 1948

Heian-Engdal, Marte. “‘A Source of Considerable Annoyance’: An Israeli–Palestinian Backchannel in the Efforts to Release the Blocked Palestinian Bank Accounts.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2016.1170590

 

Abstract

In addition to the great emotional toll that the Nakba inflicted on the Palestinian people, the 1948 exodus occasioned substantial material losses for the refugees as well. As the 1948 War ground to a halt, the international community had to decide how to deal with all of this, and in the early 1950s the matter of the so-called ‘blocked’—or frozen—Palestinian bank accounts became one of the main issues on the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission’s agenda. Initially, its effort included the government of Israel and the British-owned Barclays Bank. As things progressed, however, Israeli diplomats also engaged a group of Palestinian refugees in an informal backchannel. This article sheds light on this largely overlooked episode and shows how the channel was established, and how the Palestinian group faced nothing but strong international opposition, most notably from the British Foreign Office. Protecting the interests of its regional ally Jordan, as well as those of Barclays Bank, the Foreign Office did what it could in order to make sure that this particular Israeli–Palestinian backchannel was promptly closed.

 

 

 

New Article: Goren, The Jews of Jaffa at the Time of the Arab Revolt

Goren, Tamir. “The Jews of Jaffa at the Time of the Arab Revolt: The Emergence of The Demand for Annexation.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15.2 (2016): 267-81.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2015.1090113

 

Abstract

The outbreak of the 1936 riots immediately motivated the Jews of Jaffa to sever their ties with that city in favour of annexation to Tel Aviv. This demand became one of the thorniest and most sensitive problems on the local level, and engaged the British authorities right up to the end of the Mandate. It also became a concern of the highest order for the institutions of the yishuv, bound up with the Zionist struggle as a whole. This article focuses on the origin of the problem and its treatment from 1936 to 1939. The activity of the Jewish side is studied as being in conflict with that of the British and Arab side. From the outset, a solution hardly seemed likely. As long as the authorities preferred a policy of non-involvement, the issue remained a quarrel between the Jews and the Arabs. Although this period ended without any progress towards a settlement, it produced several notable gains for the Jewish side that formed a basis for continued action towards annexation in the years to come.

 

 

 

Lecture: Sabbagh-Khoury, Zionist Left and the Nakbah, 1936-56 (NYU, April 11, 2016)

Areej Sabbagh-Khoury

Meyers-Taub Postdoctoral Fellow (NYU) / Fulbright Scholar

“The Zionist Left, Settler-Colonial Practices and the Nakba in Marj Ibn ‘Amer (Jezreel Valley), 1936 – 1956.”

April 11, 2016 @ 6pm
14A Washington Mews, 1st Floor

New Article: Alayan, The Holocaust in Palestinian Textbooks

Alayan, Samira. “The Holocaust in Palestinian Textbooks. Differences and Similarities in Israel and Palestine.” Comparative Education Review 60.1 (2016): 80-104.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/684362

 

Abstract

The article explores how the Holocaust is represented in history textbooks for Palestinian pupils in the Palestinian and Arab-Israeli curricula from a pedagogical perspective. Since no mention of the Holocaust was found in Palestinian Authority textbooks, the study seeks to explain why this is so, while examining representations of the Holocaust in the Arab (Palestinian) Israeli textbooks. It pursues four principal objectives: (1) to investigate the extent to which Israeli and Palestinian history textbooks discuss the Holocaust, (2) to examine how it is portrayed, (3) to contextualize these portrayals in relation to collective memories of other events (e.g., the Nakba), and (4) to consult with Israeli and Palestinian curriculum policy makers regarding the inclusion or omission of the Holocaust from the curriculum.

 

 

 

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: Ben-Shaul, Israeli and Palestinian Site-Specific Re-enactments

Ben-Shaul, Daphna. “The Performative Return: Israeli and Palestinian Site-Specific Re-enactments.” New Theatre Quarterly 32.1 (2016): 31-48.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X15000846

 

Abstract

In this article Daphna Ben-Shaul explores politically engaged Israeli and Palestinian site-specific re-enactments that pursue what she terms a ‘performative return’. This includes performed aesthetic and political re-enactments of real-life events, which bring about a re-conceptualization of reality. Three contemporary cases of return are discussed with regard to the historical precedent of Evreinov’s 1920 The Storming of the Winter Palace. The first is an activist, unauthorized return to the village of Iqrit in northern Israel by a group of young Palestinians, whose families were required to leave their homes temporarily in the 1948 war, and have since not been allowed to return. The second is Kibbutz, a project by the Empty House Group, which involved an unauthorized temporary settlement on an abandoned site in Jerusalem. The third is Civil Fast, a twenty-four-hour action by Public Movement, which was hosted mainly on a central public square in Jerusalem, integrated into the urban flow. The article draws attention to the fine line these actions straddle between political activism and aesthetic order, and explores their critical and performative effectiveness. Daphna Ben-Shaul is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts, Tel Aviv University. Her current research on site-specific performance in Israel is funded by a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation. She is the editor of a book on the Israeli art and performance group Zik (Keter, 2005), and has published articles in major journals.

 

 

 

New Article: Even-Tzur, Israeli Social Unconscious and the Palestinian Nakba

Even-Tzur, Efrat. “‘The Road to the Village’: Israeli Social Unconscious and the Palestinian Nakba.” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies (early view; online first).

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aps.1478

 

Abstract

This paper tackles the paradox inherent in Israeli attempts to silence the Palestinian Nakba: despite massive effacement efforts, the traces of the Nakba remain all-pervasive in Israeli culture and collective memory. Several silencing practices are described and discussed from a Freudian perspective, as instances of collective repression of anxiety provoking material. Furthermore, it is suggested that as far as the Nakba is concerned, this repression might be the result of collective perpetrator trauma. Finally, the paper offers several intriguing examples of “social traumatic symptoms”, which are understood as signs of the return of the repressed. According to LaCapra, collective post-traumatic symptoms serve as obstacles to the formation of just and responsible societies. Thus, the paper concludes with a discussion of the socially therapeutic value of the current analysis and its potential contribution to long term processes of collective working through and decolonization.

 

 

 

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

 

Lecture: Morris, New Perspectives on the War of 1948

THE WAR OF 1948: NEW PERSPECTIVES

Dr. Benny Morris
Professor of History, Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University

Location: Leacock Building, Room 738, McGill University
Time: November 12, 2015, 6:00 P.M.
Convener: Michelle Whiteman, Director, ISGAP Canada

ToC: Journal of Palestine Studies 44.4 (2015)

Table of Contents Alert University of California Press is happy to notify you that the new issue of Journal of Palestine Studies is now available. The online issues of this journal are hosted on JSTOR on behalf of University of California Press. Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. 44, No. 4, Summer 2015 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Institute for Palestine Studies Cover Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4 Front Matter Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4 Table of Contents Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4 FROM THE EDITOR Rashid I. Khalidi Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 5-6. ARTICLE The Two-State Model and Israeli Constitutionalism: Impact on the Palestinian Citizens of Israel Mazen Masri Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 7-20. INTERVIEW Elia Suleiman: The Power of Ridicule Nehad Khader Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 21-31. ESSAYS Dream-Work of Dispossession: The Instance of Elia Suleiman Stathis Gourgouris Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 32-47. The Way Forward: Full Citizenship for Israel’s Palestinian Minority Avraham Burg Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 48-56. REMEMBRANCE Eric Rouleau: Journalist Extraordinaire, Champion of the Palestinian Cause Linda Butler Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 57-67. SPECIAL DOCUMENT FILE The Iran Nuclear Negotiations: Israel and the U.S. Congress Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 68-92. RECENT BOOKS Review: From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950 From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947–1950 by Ariella Azoulay Review by: Issam Nassar Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 93-95. Review: Colonial Jerusalem: The Spatial Construction of Identity and Difference in a City of Myth, 1948–2012 Colonial Jerusalem: The Spatial Construction of Identity and Difference in a City of Myth, 1948–2012 by Thomas Philip Abowd Review by: Michael Dumper Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 95-97. Review: Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel’s Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel’s Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe by Jo Roberts Review by: Awad Halabi Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 97-98. Review: Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty by Erica Weiss Review by: Mark Levine Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 99-101. Review: Producing Spoilers: Peacemaking and the Production of Enmity in a Secular Age Producing Spoilers: Peacemaking and the Production of Enmity in a Secular Age by Joyce Dalsheim Review by: Anna Bernard Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 101-103. Review: Violence and Understanding in Gaza: The British Broadsheets’ Coverage of the War Violence and Understanding in Gaza: The British Broadsheets’ Coverage of the War by Dávid Kaposi Review by: Ben White Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 103-105. Review: Intellectual Resistance and the Struggle for Palestine Intellectual Resistance and the Struggle for Palestine by Matthew Abraham Review by: Bruce Robbins Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 105-106. Review: Steve Sabella: Photography, 1997–2014 Steve Sabella: Photography, 1997–2014 by Hubertus von Amelunxen; Hubertus von Amelunxen; Kamal Boullata Review by: Dorothea Schoene Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 106-108. SELECTIONS FROM THE PRESS Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 109-136. PHOTOS FROM THE QUARTER Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 137-144. PALESTINE UNBOUND Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 145-152. UPDATE ON CONFLICT AND DIPLOMACY Paul Karolyi Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 153-193. CONGRESSIONAL MONITOR Paul Karolyi Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 194-243. DOCUMENTS AND SOURCE MATERIAL Journal of Palestine Studies Summer 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4: 244-268.

New Article: Tauber, The Arab Military Force in Palestine Prior to the Invasion of the Arab Armies, 1945–1948

Tauber, Eliezer. “The Arab Military Force in Palestine Prior to the Invasion of the Arab Armies, 1945–1948.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.6 (2015): 950-85.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1044896

 

Abstract

The article examines the size, structure, composition and modi operandi of the Arab military forces which fought the Jews in the 1948 war, before the invasion of the Arab regular armies, based first and foremost on the Arab sources themselves. An attempt is made to assess the substantial reasons behind the Arab defeat in the first ‘civil war’ phase of the campaign, including a comparison of the number of combatants, which also explains the outcome.

 

 

New Article: Sazzad, Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry as Sumud

Sazzad, Rehnuma. “Mahmoud Darwish’s Poetry as Sumud. Palestinian Resistance to Israeli Occupation and Subjugation.” Interventions (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1079493

 

Abstract

This essay makes explicit the connection between Palestinian resistance to Israeli control and the principle of sumud. Drawing on Raja Shehadeh and Ismail Shammout, I define this concept and show its strategic role in the resistance. Arguably, critics have identified Darwish’s constant pursuit of aesthetics and his deep commitment to the Palestinian cause without linking them to the narrative of sumud. I suggest that his contribution to the narrative is built on the ground that his aggressors lack the intrinsic tie to the land, which his people perennially possess. Whereas the Israelis produce mythical claims on the land, the indigenous Palestinians are like their olive trees – unswervingly there. In particular, the creativity of the people makes present their absented homeland. Darwish’s exile renders the second phenomenon more comprehensible. Even though he was physically removed from his homeland at a young age, his imagination remained implanted there throughout his life, which resulted in a rich oeuvre.

 

 

New Article: Alon-Mozes, National Parks for a Multicultural Society

Alon-Mozes, Tal. “National Parks for a Multicultural Society: Planning Israel’s Past and Present National Parks.” In Landscape Culture – Culturing Landscapes: The Differentiated Construction of Landscapes (ed. Diedrich Burns et al; Wiesbaden: Springer, 2015): 173-83.

 

 

Extract

Both case studies demonstrate the power of the landscape as an agent fostering first national and later communal identity. Early planning of Gan HaShlosha and Zippori national parks emphasized the role of the biblical/Hellenistic pastoral landscape in reinforcing a common national identity among the Jewish settlers of Israel. Consequently, the Palestinians’ past was erased from Zippori grounds, as in other places in Israel, and their narrative was silenced.

Due to the failure of the melting pot policy and the emergence of Israel as a multicultural society, contemporary Israeli national parks are designed and managed in order to address the needs of various communities of visitors, and not solely the hegemonic ones. The new clientele includes veteran Jews and new immigrants, various Jewish ethnic groups, ultra-orthodox Jews, Christian pilgrims, and the Palestinians Currently, panning strives to increase the profitability of the parks by recruiting new communities, by enabling mass gatherings and communal cultural events, and by mitigating conflicts among participants. Various stakeholders promote parallel narratives within and surrounding the parks, advancing the parcelization of the area based on time or space zones. Within this relatively enabling system, even the Palestinian narrative of Zippori is marked on the land, in spite of objections based on nationalistic considerations.

 

 

Reviews: Tovy, Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Issue

Tovy, Jacob. Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Issue. The Formulation of a Policy, 1948-1956. London and New York: Routledge, 2014.

 

 
Reviews

• Romirowsky, Asaf.”Problem across the Border: The Origins of Israel’s Policy on Palestinian Refugees.” Ynet August 5, 2015.
• Rosen, Steven J. “Review.” Middle East Quarterly, 22.4 (Fall 2015).

 

 

New Article: Dumper, Refugee Entitlement and the Passing of Time

Dumper, Mick. “Refugee Entitlement and the Passing of Time: Waldron’s Supersession Thesis and the Palestinian Refugee Case.” In Forced Migration, Reconciliation, and Justice (ed. Megan Bradley; Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015): 323-44.

 

 

Extract

This is not to say that Zionism as an ideology is unravelling, but more that the current debate in Israel and the Jewish diaspora over its nature reflects these changes in political architecture. And such changes will accelerate after a peace agreement. As Rashid Khalidi points out, a peace agreement will not arrive out of thin air but as part of a dialectical process with Israel, perhaps offering more generous terms resulting in a softening of negative Arab attitudes that in turn will lead to a greater understanding of Israeli security needs and so forth. Of course this dialectic must also be underwritten by an essential component of any agreement: reconciliation. A viable peace agreement between the parties will likely to include clauses detailing a series of reconciliatory steps such as public apologies, a truth commission, commemorations, joint educational programs, and other forms of transnational dialogue. These may erode the high social walls and ideological divide between the protagonists.

Thus, to return to the central question of the impact of changing circumstances, the Palestinian claim for justice needs to be seen in light not only of growing Israeli entitlements but also of the less-than-cataclysmic implications of the demands being made and a dynamic political situation that is broadly leading to greater cooperation and the potential for greater understanding. The Palestinian claim, therefore, can be met if it on one hand is disaggregated, and on the other precipitates a further change in circumstances. A claim that considers the changed nature of the land Palestinian have exiled from, the rights of new generations of Israelis, and the concerns of Israelis to safeguard their Jewish culture, and that devises a series of proposals to respond to these issues, can to some extent square the circle of mutually exclusive Palestinian and Israeli entitlements. At the same time, Israeli Jewish claims based on an exclusivist Zionist ideology will need to be softened in ways in which non-Jews can be embraces so that all Israelis may live and work within a state that is committed to equality and justice for all its citizens.

 

 

New Article: Molloy et al, The Palestinian Refugee Issue

Molloy, Michael, John Bell, Nicole Waintraub, and Ian B. Anderson. “The Palestinian Refugee Issue: Intangible Needs and Moral Acknowledgment .” In Forced Migration, Reconciliation, and Justice (ed. Megan Bradley; Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015): 298-322.

 

Extract

The Palestinian refugee issue has long been framed in the West as a humanitarian problem to be resolved through a variety of practical measures. These measures include compensation for losses and suffering as well as providing the refugees with a range of options spelled out in the “parameters” circulated by President Bill Clinton just before the end of his term of office and after the Camp David negotiations failed. These options include return to a new Palestinian state; return to “swapped” areas (i.e., areas of present day Israel that would be ceded to the Palestinian state in return for parts of the West Bank now occupied by Israeli settlements); integration in host countries, Jordan and Syria in particular, where refugees already live; resettlement in western countries; and return of limited numbers and categories of refugees to Israel. From a Palestinian perspective, while practical solutions to their displacement are important, the issue is first and foremost a matter of rights, dignity, and international law. Palestinians view their case as in many ways unique, requiring resolution in accordance with their understanding of their rights as spelled out in UN General Assembly resolution 194 and international instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 13.2) and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the colonization of territory under military occupation.

 

 

New in Hebrew: Webman and Litvak, From Empathy to Denial

Webman, Esther, and Meir Litvak. From Empathy to Denial. Responses to the Holocaust in the Arab World. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2015 (in Hebrew).

 

 

This book is a comprehensive and rigorous study, the first of its kind, presenting a wide range of responses to the Holocaust in the Arab world. The authors examine the evolution of representations of the Holocaust in Arabic through newspapers, literature, cinema, television and the internet. By analyzing case studies and trends over a period spanning seventy years – from the end of World War II and the founding of the State of Israel down to present day – the authors show how attitudes toward the Holocaust were formed in the shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict and thus integrated into broad systems of anti-Zionist and antisemitic discourse.
The English edition (2009) of the book won the Washington Institute Book Prize in 2010