CIAO DATE: 05/2012
Volume: 41, Issue: 2
Winter 2012
From the Editor (PDF)
Rashid Khalidi
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
This article addresses an aspect of Egypt’s 2011 revolution almost entirely ignored in most Western media accounts: Israel and Palestine as prominent themes of protest. In reviewing Egyptian mobilization opposing normalization and in support of the Palestinian cause starting from Sadat’s peace initiative of the mid-1970s, the author shows how the anti-Mubarak movement that took off as of the mid-2000s built on the Palestine activism and networks already in place. While the trigger of the revolution and the focus of its first eighteen days was domestic change, the article shows how domestic and foreign policy issues (especially Israel and Palestine) were inextricably intertwined, with the leadership bodies of the revolution involved in both.
Digital Occupation: Gaza's High-Tech Enclosure (PDF)
Helga Tawil-Souri
In disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel did not end the occupation but technologized it through purportedly "frictionless" high-technology mechanisms. The telecommunications sector was turned over to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo II and subcontracted to Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL), furthering a neoliberal economic agenda that privately "enclosed" digital space. Coming on top of Israel's ongoing limitations on Palestinian land-lines, cellular, and Internet infrastructures, the result is a "digital occupation" of Gaza characterized by increasing privatization, surveillance, and control. While deepening Palestinian economic reliance on Israel and making Palestinian high-tech firms into dependent agents, digital occupation also enhances Israel’s territorial containment of the Strip.
The "Urban Redesign" of Jenin Refugee Camp: Humanitarian Intervention and Rational Violence (PDF)
Linda Tabar
UNRWA’s reconstruction of Jenin refugee camp following the massive destruction by Israel in April 2002 was the largest humanitarian intervention during the second intifada. This article uses the Jenin project as a lens through which to critically examine the minimalist humanitarian paradigm underwriting the agency’s relief-centered mandate. Reviewing the negotiations between UNRWA planners and local refugee committees, the author highlights the tension between the agency’s politically “neutral” technical vision and the refugees’ needs and wishes. While recognizing UNRWA’s crucial role, the author regrets that in expanding its operations beyond relief provision, the agency opted for a more traditional (liberal) community-based development framework rather than a rights-based approach, resulting in a depoliticization that undermines the community’s struggle for its rights.
Anaheed Al-Hardan
The Palestinian Right of Return Movement (RoRM) emerged among diaspora refugee communities following the Oslo accords and the perceived threat to the right of return. This article focuses on the RoRM in Syria in the context of the community’s history and unique civil rights there. Based on extensive interviews in the Damascus area, it provides an overview of the heterogeneous movement, which, while requiring state approval, operates in an autonomous civil society sphere. RoRM activists translate visions of the return formulated in the Palestinian national arena into local community practices that mobilize memories of Palestine as resources (through oral history, village commemorations, etc.) with the aim of ensuring a future return by the new generation of refugees.
The Iron Wall Revisited (PDF)
Avi Shlaim
More than a decade after the publication of his acclaimed The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, Avi Shlaim returns to Ze'ev Jabotinsky's theory as a framework for understanding Israel's Arab policies, this time focusing on the post-1967 period. The author revisits the theory's formulation by the leader of Revisionist Zionism in 1923 and its near total convergence with the (unacknowledged) strategy followed by Labor Zionism. Examining each Israeli government since 1967, he shows that all zealously followed stage one of Jabotinsky's strategy (constructing an “iron wall” of unassailable military strength) but that the lesser known stage two (serious negotiations with the Palestinians after being compelled by stage one to abandon all hope of prevailing over Zionism) has been completely ignored except by Yitzhak Rabin. Indeed, the recent periods have witnessed a full-blown return to the iron wall at its starkest, with increasing resort to violence and unilateralism.
Fieldnotes from Jerusalem and Gaza, 2009–2011 (PDF)
Elena Hogan
Written by a humanitarian aid worker moving back and forth between the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem over a two-year period (May 2009– June 2011), the observations in these “fieldnotes” highlight the two areas as opposite sides of the same coin. Israel “withdrew” from Gaza and annexed East Jerusalem, but both are subject to the same degree of domination and control: by overt violence in Gaza, mainly by regulation in East Jerusalem.
Mapping the Nakba (PDF)
Ilan Pappé
Staying Human Amidst Inhumanity (PDF)
Edda Manga
The Meaning of Memorialization (PDF)
Rosemary Sayigh
Occupation, Fear, and State Discourse (PDF)
Rahela Mizrahi
It Only Takes One to Tango (PDF)
Moshe Behar
Uncovering Jerusalem (PDF)
Mick Dumper
Hizballah's Evolving Identity (PDF)
Mouannes Hojairi
Refugee Culture (PDF)
Steven Salaita
High Technology and Palestinian Nationalism (PDF)
Magid Shihade
Cartoons from al-Hayat (PDF)
Photos from the Quarter (PDF)
Update on Conflict and Diplomacy (PDF)
Michele Esposito
Settlement Monitor (PDF)
Geoffrey Aronson