CIAO DATE: 09/2012
Volume: 38, Issue: 4
Summer 2009
From the Editor (PDF)
Rashid I. Khalidi
THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of JPS celebrates the work of the renowned anthropologist Rosemary Sayigh, a pioneer in the field of refugee studies and the first scholar to emphasize the signal importance of Palestinian refugees in the revival of Pales- tinian nationalism in the 1960s—notably in her pathbreaking Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, published thirty years ago. At the same time, Rosemary was one of the first researchers to examine issues of gender in Palestinian and Arab society, as her reliance on women as resources for her investigations revealed to her—and through her, to generations of readers— the crucial role played by women in the social and economic structure of Palestinian refugee camps and Palestinian political life.
A Tribute Long Overdue: Rosemary Sayigh and Palestinian Studies (PDF)
Beshara Doumani, Mayssun Soukarieh
Rosemary Sayigh—writer, activist, mentor, and ethical compass—has arguably made a greater impact on Palestinian studies than most scholars over the past generation. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon; women under occupation; oral history of the Nakba; gender and politics; memory and identity; culture and resistance; the political responsibility of the researcher—these are but some of the lines of inquiry she has pioneered. Starting with her classic book, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries; A People’s History, pub- lished thirty years ago, she has become the unofficial mentor of large numbers of PhD students specializing in the above fields. “Unofficial” because, although she has been an indispensable resource for emerging scholars, she remains an outsider to institutions of higher education. She has never held a permanent academic position and was largely shunned by universities and research cen- ters in Lebanon, the country where she has lived for more than fifty years. This special issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies (JPS) in honor of Rosemary Sayigh is richly deserved and long overdue.
Speaking Palestinian: An Interview with Rosemary Sayigh (PDF)
Mayssun Soukarieh
This interview is part of a longer conversation that independent researcher Mayssun Soukarieh conducted with Rosemary Sayigh in Beirut during the summer of 2008. Sayigh, an anthropologist, oral historian, and researcher, was born in Birmingham in the United Kingdom and moved to Beirut in 1953, where she married the Palestinian economist Yusif Sayigh. She earned her master's degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1970 and was awarded a PhD from Hull University in Yorkshire in 1994. Since coming to Beirut fifty-six years ago, Sayigh has dedicated her life to writing and advocating for the Palestinians in Lebanon and elsewhere. She is the author of two groundbreaking books: Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries; A People's History (Zed Books, 1979) and Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon (Zed Books, 1993). Although these conversations focused on Sayigh's scholarly work rather than her personal history, it became clear that the two are inextricably linked.
What Rosemary Saw: Reflections on Palestinian Women as Tellers of the Palestinian Present (PDF)
Penny Johnson
Referencing the 'stereotypes of self' identified by Rosemary Sayigh in the life stories of Palestinian camp women in Lebanon who had lived through the Palestinian resistance, the author focuses on the narratives of two women in Ramallah's Am'ari refugee camp since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada to reflect on the Palestinian present. Though the women--and their goals and struggles--could not be more different, their narratives reveal significant shifts in self-representation that reflect both the impact of post-Oslo political realities and the new (unattainable) aspirations fueled by satellite television images and Ramallah café culture. The narratives also reflect, in very different ways, the national crisis, the impotence of Palestinian political groups and institutions, and the erosion of solidarities.
Fragile Intimacies: Marriage and Love in the Palestinian Camps of Jordan (1948-2001) (PDF)
Stephanie Latte Abdallah
This article focuses on conjugal love as an articulated, lived emotion; on relationships between spouses within the context of the family; and on how these emotions and relations have changed over time in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Based on interviews with four generations of Palestinian camp women, the article charts evolving marital patterns and attitudes toward marriage in relation to changing political circumstances and diverse influences. Particular emphasis is given to the third generation and the emergence of individualization of choice and its consequences. The influence of the family and the role of protection in the formation of conjugal bonds are also addressed.
Memories of Home and Stories of Displacement: The Women of Artas and the "Peasant Past" (PDF)
Falestin Naili
This article deals with the memory narratives of women from the West Bank village of Artas who were displaced as a result of the 1967 war and are today living in working-class neighborhoods of eastern Amman. Imbued with nostalgia, their narratives extol the values that had governed life in the village before their dispersal, values that have proved to be important for survival in exile. The "peasant past" remembered by these women is examined in the dual context of the history of Artas and the migratory itineraries of the women, many of whom were displaced for a second time during the Gulf War of 1990-91.
From Nationalist to Economic Subject: Emergent Economic Networks among Shatila's Women (PDF)
Diana Allan
This article revisits Rosemary Sayigh's theory of "culture as resistance" and considers how primordial attachments of kin and village, and by extension nation, in Shatila camp are being reconfigured by deepening poverty and provisionality. Shifting analytical attention away from the discursive continuities of nationalism toward the contingencies of everyday material practice in its local environment, the article examines how dynamically evolving networks of solidarity are reconstituting traditional structures of kinship and political belonging, broadly conceived, and producing new forms of agency and economic subjectivity for camp women.
Reflections on the War on Gaza (PDF)
Camille Mansour
This essay looks at the Gaza war of winter 2008–2009 within its broader politico-military context. At the political level, Israel’s post-2005 disengagement policies and initiatives with regard to Gaza (and Egypt) and their implications relative to the future of the West Bank are emphasized. Militarily, in examining the background and objectives of the war, the author gives particular importance to the testing of lessons drawn from the past, especially the summer 2006 war on Lebanon, in the aim of regaining a kind of “Dahiya” deterrence based on reprisals against civilians rather than on battlefield victory.
Notes on the Aftermath: Gaza, Summer 2009 (PDF)
Elena N. Hogan
This personal account describes aspects of closure, siege, and daily life witnessed in the Gaza Strip from May to July 2009, with emphasis on the impact of the blockade in the wake of Operation Cast Lead. As an international worker made to grapple with increasingly complicated Israeli bureaucracy, but “allowed” access into Gaza for purposes of humanitarian aid, the author describes her impressions of the current Gazan situation as an instance of isolation whose plight is increasingly hidden from the gaze of the outside world.
Feldman: Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule (PDF)
Rochelle A. Davis
Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, by Ilana Feldman. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2008. xii + 235 pages. Notes to p. 295. Bibliography to p. 312. Index to p. 324. $79.95 cloth; $22.95 paper.
Sayigh: The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (PDF)
Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman
The Palestinians: From Peasants to Rev- olutionaries, by Rosemary Sayigh. London: Zed Books, 2007. xxviii + 210 pages. Notes to p. 228. $25.95 paper.
Kelly: Law, Violence, and Sovereignty among West Bank Palestinians (PDF)
Samera Esmeir
Law, Violence and Sovereignty among West Bank Palestinians, by Tobias Kelly. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xviii + 181 pages. References to p. 193. Index to p. 199. $85.00 cloth.
Cohen: Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (PDF)
Lenni Brenner
Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948, by Hillel Cohen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. viii + 268 pages. Notes to p. 315. Bibliography to p. 325. Index to p. 344. $45.00 cloth; $18.95 paper.
Grabar: The Dome of the Rock (PDF)
Finbarr Barry Flood
The Dome of the Rock, by Oleg Grabar. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. ix + 212 pages. Bibliography to p. 222. Index to p. 234. $22.95 hard.
Holzman-Gazit: Land Expropriation in Israel: Law, Culture, and Society (PDF)
Geremy Forman
Land Expropriation in Israel: Law, Culture and Society, by Yifat Holzman-Gazit. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. viii + 173 pages. Bibliography to p. 196. Index to p. 204. $99.95 cloth.
Fischbach: Jewish Property Claims against Arab Countries (PDF)
Sami Shalom Chetrit
Jewish Property Claims against Arab Countries, by Michael R. Fischbach. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. xvii + 271 pages. Notes to p. 317. Bibliography to p. 327. Index to p. 355. $35.00 cloth.
Marnia Lazreg
Why Not Torture Terrorists? Moral, Practical, and Legal Aspects of the ‘Ticking Bomb’ Justification of Torture, by Yuval Ginbar. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxvii + 349 pages. Annex to p. 364. Bibliography to p. 397. Index to p. 414. $130.00 cloth
Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat) (PDF)
This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.
From the Hebrew Press (PDF)
This section includes articles by Israeli journalists and commentators that have been selected for their frank reporting, insightful analyses, or interesting perspectives on events, developments, or trends in Israel and the occupied territories.
Photos from the Quarter (PDF)
This small sample of photos, selected from hundreds viewed by JPS, aims to convey a sense of the situation on the ground in the occupied territories during the quarter.
Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy: 16 February - 15 May 2009 (PDF)
Michele K. Esposito
The Quarterly Update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and the future of the peace process. More than 100 print, wire, television, and online sources providing U.S., Israeli, Arab, and international independent and government coverage of unfolding events are surveyed to compile the Quarterly Update. The most relevant sources are cited in JPS's Chronology section, which tracks events day by day.
Settlement Monitor (PDF)
Geoffrey Aronson
This section covers items--reprinted articles, statistics, and maps--pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material.
Congressional Monitor (PDF)
Brian Wood, Paul Costic
The Congressional Monitor provides summaries of all relevant bills and resolutions (joint, concurrent, and simple) introduced during the previous session of Congress that mention, even briefly, either Palestine or Israel. Speeches are not included. The format of this Monitor provides an overview of U.S. legislation related to the Palestine issue and helps to identify the major themes of legislation, its initiators, their priorities, the range of their concerns, and their attitudes toward the regional actors. Material in this compilation is drawn from www.thomas.loc.gov, where readers can also find a detailed primer on the legislative process entitled "How Our Laws Are Made."
The international law and human rights issues raised by Israel's sustained military assault on Gaza conducted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009 are discussed. The report challenges the widespread emphasis on whether Israeli force was disproportionate in relation to Palestinian threats to Israeli security in order to foreground the prior question of whether Israeli force was legally justied at all.
International Crisis Group's (ICG) 50-page report in the wake of OCL examines the war's toll and fallout for Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, as well as prospects for a lasting cease-fire, Gazan reconstruction, and intra-Palestinian reconciliation in light of current realities. The excerpts below focus on Egypt's role, both in Gaza and with regard to the "regional cold war." Footnotes have been omitted for space considerations. The full report can be found online at www.crisisgroup.org.
Prompted by the 2 March 2009 international donors conference that pledged $4.5 billion for the reconstruction of Gaza, prominent Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations were led to reflect on the broader issue of the donor community's role in underwriting the costs of Israel's repeated destruction of infrastructure and housing, and other violations of international law resulting in recurring humanitarian crises. Signatories include the Palestinian NGO Network; the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights; Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights; Al-Haq; Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights; BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights; Gaza Community Mental Health Program; Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement; the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; ITTIJAH (Union of Arab Community-Based Organizations); Physicians for Human Rights-Israel; Public Committee Against Torture in Israel; and Women's Affairs Centre. The full letter is available online at www.pchrgaza.org.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories produces a biweekly report on movement and access to monitor the progress made since the 2005 U.S.-brokered Agreement on Move- ment and Access was signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (see Doc. A4 in JPS 136). The excerpts below come from the May 2009 movement and access up- date, an 18-page analysis synthesizing the biweekly reports in the period between September 2008 and end of March 2009. Footnotes have been omitted for space considerations. The full report can be accessed online through www.ochaopt.org.
Hasan Nasrallah devoted his usual Friday televised address to responding head-on to the Egyptian government’s dramatic announcement two days earlier of a Hizballah network operating in Egypt to spread Shi‘i ideas and prepare hostile operations threatening public security. While forcefully denying the charges as made, the speech is important for its confirmation, with detail, of Hizballah’s involvement in transporting weapons and ammunition across the border into Gaza the month before Operation Cast Lead. Nasrallah’s summary of his party’s policies with regard to the Arab countries is also noteworthy. (See section “The Regional Cold War” in Doc. A2 above for International Crisis Group’s analysis of the Egyptian-Hizballah exchange.) The speech, carried by Hizballah’s al-Manar television, was translated in full by BBC Monitoring Middle East and made available by BBC World Monitoring on 12 April 2009.
Khalid Mishal′s interview with the New York Times was his first to a U.S. news organization in more than a year. The excerpts published by the Times on 5 May were taken from a five-hour interview conducted in Arabic over two days at his house in Damascus. Although the excerpts do not cover much ground that was not covered in Mishal’s long interview with JPS in March 2008 (see the two-part Mishal interview in JPS 147–48), they are interesting in that they are clearly directed at the new Obama administration. The full excerpts of the Times interview can be found online at www.nytimes.com.
C1. Gershon Baskin, "Gilad Shalit, Hamas, and Olmert," Jerusalem Post, 9 February 2009 (excerpts) (PDF)
Less than a month after Operation Cast Lead (OCL) ended, an Israeli peace activist who had occasionally served as an unofficial emissary between Israel and Hamas revealed that ten days before the operation's launch the Olmert government had rejected Hamas's back-channel offer to negotiate the renewal of the interrupted cease-fire, as well as a prisoner exchange involving captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Gershon Baskin, co-founder and director of the Jerusalem-based Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, wrote a detailed account of the episode in the Jerusalem Post, concluding that it gave the lie to the government's claim that OCL was a "war of no choice." The full text of this article can be found online at www.jpost.com.
C2. Avigdor Lieberman, Inaugural Statement as Foreign Minister, Jerusalem, 1 April 2009 (excerpts) (PDF)
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beitainu (“Israel Is Our Home”) party, was appointed foreign minister in March 2009 in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud government coalition, which formed nearly six weeks after the Knesset elections of 10 February 2009. Lieberman, who ran under the slogan “no loyalty, no citizenship” — demanding that Arab citizens of Israel pledge allegiance to the Jewish state or be expelled and calling for the “annihilation” of Hamas—won an unprecedented fifteen seats, beating out Labor to become Israel’s third-largest party in the Knesset. Lieberman, a settler and immigrant from the former Soviet Union, caused a stir with his first speech as foreign minister, in which he declared the road map to be the sole document binding Israel to its pledges post-Oslo. The full text of the speech can be found online at www.mfa.gov.il.
D1. The Israel Project, "25 Rules for Effective Communication," April 2009 (excerpts) (PDF)
The Israel Project (TIP), a pro-Israel media consulting firm “devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom, and peace,” commissioned Republican pollster and political language expert Frank Luntz to craft a language strategy for “visionary leaders who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel” to talk to Americans with the aim of “winning the hearts and minds of the public.” Luntz’s first Global Language Dictionary for TIP was published in 2003; the 2009 Global Language Dictionary is the result of revisions based on research conducted in 2008. The 117-page document is available in full at www.docstoc.com/docs/8303274/ The-Israel-Projects-2009-Global-Language- Dictionary; the following excerpts are taken from chapter 1.
Excerpts from a speech by Lt Gen Keith Dayton detailing the mission and accomplishments of the US Security Coordinatory, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), are presented. Dayton's speech angered PA officials, who felt he had disclosed sensitive details about PA-U.S. operations, and was treated by PA opponents as an affirmation of PA collaboration with Israeli occupation forces.
Chronology (PDF)
Michele K. Esposito
This section is part 102 of a chronology begun in JPS 13, no. 3 (Spring 1984). Chronology dates reflect Eastern Standard Time (EST). For a more comprehensive overview of events related to the al-Aqsa intifada and of regional and international developments related to the peace process, see the Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy in this issue.
Bibliography of Periodical Literature (PDF)
This section lists articles and reviews of books relevant to Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Entries are classified under the following headings: Reference and General; History (through 1948) and Geography; Palestinian Politics and Society; Jerusalem; Israeli Politics, Society, and Zionism; Arab and Middle Eastern Politics; International Relations; Law; Military; Economy, Society, and Education; Literature, Arts, and Culture; Book Reviews; and Reports Received.