CIAO DATE: 11/2010
Volume: 23, Issue: 1
Spring 2009
Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Twentieth Century (PDF)
JUAN COLE
Iraq and Israel/Palestine may on the surface appear to be very different societies with little in common. Iraq has its Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiites, and its modern history has been a struggle over monarchy, republicanism, and the one-party state. Israel and Palestine are Jewish, Sunni Arab, and Christian Arab, and their central struggle has been over the shape of the Zionist state and the question of Palestinian statelessness. Iraq is a hydrocarbon state, while Israel and Palestine have diverse economies. The two can fruitfully be viewed through the same prism in two ways, however. On a comparative level, they share much in common, being multi-ethnic states with a background in Ottoman and British colonial administrative practices. Their fragility and ethnic instability have driven both internal civil wars and wars with neighbors. They have also had an important impact upon one another. The rise of Zionism in the Middle East and the Arab rejection of it robbed Iraq of its vibrant and influential Jewish community, with fateful results. It also displaced thousands of Palestinians to Iraq and hundreds of thousands to neighboring Kuwait. Iraqi troops fought Israel, with Iraq supporting its Palestinian foes. The Palestinians of Kuwait were further displaced by the Gulf War, and those of Iraq had to flee to Jordan and Palestine after 2003. The Israel lobby in the United States was one important mover in fomenting the 2003 U.S. overthrow of the Iraqi government, which propelled Iraq into chaos.
Forty Years in Search of Arab-Israeli Peace (PDF)
William B. Quandt
The conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors is overlain with history and religion, but it is best understood as a product of two 20thcentury nationalist movements that sought self-determination and statehood in the same small piece of land. The British, who held the League of Nations’ mandate over Palestine, never found a mutually acceptable plan for self-government by Jewish Zionists and Palestinian Arabs during their moment of preeminence (1920–1947). It fell to the newly formed United Nations to recommend partition into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Palestinians, backed by their Arab brethren, did not accept the partition, decided to wage war against the new state when the British withdrew, and were badly defeated, but not vanquished, on the battlefield.
Thomas M. Ricks
The 8 August 2008 death of Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s greatest modern poet, did not go unnoticed by the global community of scholars of Palestine as obituaries of Mahmoud Darwish continue to appear in the media around the world. The poet from Birweh, one of the 400 destroyed villages within present-day Israel, was honored in Ramallah with three days of official mourning in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as well as a state funeral (usually reserved for the highest political officials). The past forty years (1967–2007) are an appropriate time period for reflection on the process of colonization in the Occupied Pal- 83 Macalester International Vol. 23 84 estinian Territories (OPT) of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. While many Israelis may consider the past forty years a time of rejoicing and jubilation, Palestinians worldwide see it as a time of quiet mourning and reflection. The events following the June 1967 Six-Day War began the Israeli process of colonial occupation of the West Bank through the use of former British Mandate emergency laws, the establishment of illegal colonies (called settlements), and an array of rules and restrictions on movement within the territories. Limitations were imposed on imports and exports of manufactured goods and produce. Restrictions were placed on access to religious sites, aquifers and wells, and home and factory building permits. There was the establishment of arbitrary invasions and the closure of schools and universities. It is the latter colonial restrictions and prohibitions that are the subject of this essay, which serves as a litmus test of the extent of the colonial social and cultural transformation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories over the past four decades. It is in the schools, colleges, and universities of a society where much of the growth and future hope of a nation may be observed and which manifest the deeper social and cultural values and aspirations of the nation. Yet these institutions are vulnerable to military and police actions.
Difficult Dialogue: The Oslo Process in Israeli Perspective (PDF)
Avraham Sela
The Oslo Accords seemed to represent the new post-Cold War/ post-Gulf War era, which ostensibly heralded the beginning of a “new world order” under American hegemony. The weakened Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Arab radical actors, such as Syria and Iraq; the belief that the American-led capitalist, market-oriented ideology had scored its final victory—best expressed by Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis; Israel’s vulnerability to Iraq’s mediumrange missiles and to American financial pressures; and the perceived loss of Israel’s status as a reliable U.S. ally in a tumultuous Middle East all seemed to have created ripe conditions for a historical breakthrough in the long-stalemated Arab-Israeli peace process.
Hydro-Politics: Water and Difficult Dialogues on Resources (PDF)
Abdel Rahman Tamimi
Water is considered the most important factor leading to instability and conflict in the Middle East region. Recent analyses and reports point to the fact that the problem of water will get much more complicated than current politics can handle. This is primarily because the problem is in conjunction with the natural features of the region: it is dry and desert terrain. Indeed, desert covers 60% of Israel, 70% of Syria, 85% of Jordan, and 90% of Egypt.
Israel's Mizrahim: "Other" Victims of Zionism or a Bridge to Regional Reconciliation? (PDF)
Franklin Hugh Adler
It may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with Israeli society, and especially those who have been led to believe it primarily composed of European Jews who settled in the Middle East, that roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population is made up of Jews who for millennia were deeply rooted in the region and summarily expelled from Arab states after Israel was founded in 1948. In fact, this Arab Jewish population exceeds in number those Palestinians who were displaced, and it possessed substantially greater property that was confiscated without compensation upon expulsion.1
Civil Society, Democracy, and Peace (PDF)
Terry Boychuk
Do democratic societies engender democratic states? Or, do democratic states engender democratic societies? Are democratic states inherently more peaceful than other regimes? In the 1990s, international agencies invested heavily in building up civil society organizations (CSOs) in the developing world as the leading edge of a broader campaign to promote democratic transformations of authoritarian regimes. In the case of Palestine, the intent was to establish a democratic social foundation for an emergent political entity, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Within a decade, much of the original enthusiasm for promoting democratic governance through bottom-up initiatives had waned. Optimism for engineering democratic cultures from below that would exert pressure upward for state-level reforms had given way to more pessimistic assessments of the potential for CSOs to induce political change. The dawning wisdom was that the political elites of non-democratic states had proven themselves quite capable of co-opting burgeoning CSOs into reproducing existing patterns of governance. The relationship between state and civil society seemed circular and self-reinforcing; non-democratic polities beget non-democratic civil societies while democratic polities beget democratic civil societies.
Meditations on a Middle-East Pilgrimage: Impasse, Memory, Hope/Promise (PDF)
Lucy Forster-Smith
The human community yearns for a home, for place, for a “storied space,” as Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says, where meaning is attached to a place “because of the history lodged there.”1 This yearning is no more evident than in the daily reality of those living in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. For Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Baha’is who live in this region and those drawn to it as a pilgrimage destination, it is a place where the power of history and the impasse of the present weigh upon the pilgrim’s stride. Often the assumption for those from lands beyond the Middle East is that by leaving their home community and going to seek the sacred in a holy place, they will strengthen or restore their faith. Yet many times those who come from far-off places to seek the holy in the Holy Land encounter the pilgrim spirit in those who long for home, those whose pilgrim’s way longs for a homeland, but hits walls, stumbles on slippery slopes, is snared by economic challenges—and their faith falters as they locate their story in the painful quest for the Holy Land. The pilgrim way heeds impasse, memory, and hope. In my encounter with this land, I also navigated the complex pilgrim’s way through the eyes of university students, faculty members, administrators, and workers for peace.
Culture and Politics in the Visual Arts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (PDF)
Olga González
What makes Palestinian art “Palestinian”? This became a central question in my attempt to understand the emphasis on national identity that Palestinian visual artists put on their artwork, particularly given that what I saw at art exhibits and the studios and homes of artists during my short visit in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Bethlehem could be basically classified under the broad category of contemporary visual art. Whether realistic, figurative, abstract, or conceptual in their styles, the five artists I interviewed presented me with a varied assortment of images meant to highlight the “Palestinian-ness” in the contemporary art of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Zionism and the Nationalization of Jerusalem (PDF)
Khaldoun Samman
Over the years, I have given many public talks on the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. After discussing the formation of apartheid in Israel and its unethical nature, I have at times received responses implying that I hate the “Jewish people.” I have all too often witnessed occasions in which some pro-Israeli supporters quickly label you as an anti-Semite at the slightest hint of language that speaks critically of Israel, as if such language is a condemnation of all Jews. Similarly, this equating of Zionism with the “Jewish people” has lately seeped into Palestinian and Arab discourse, which is surprising given the fact that traditionally activists have consciously attempted to disentangle the two concepts. Some Palestinians may even think that you are a traitor if you show up in Arab East Jerusalem with a Jewish friend wearing a yarmulka, as I noticed on one occasion during my last visit to the region. Indeed, this defensive “knee-jerk” reaction of identifying criticism of state policy as an attack on your own identity has become the rule rather than the exception when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When I protest this form of what we could call a “culturalized” or an identitarian politics, the response is usually a blank stare, as though my criticism is impractical and naïve. “Isn’t it self-evident,” many ask me, “that the issue is between two peoples?” My response is an unequivocal, “No, it is not so!”
The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Action in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (PDF)
Wendy Weber
This essay reflects upon the dilemmas of humanitarian action in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Its reflections center around the experience of Machsom Watch, an Israeli organization established in 2001 in response to the current closure regime that restricts the mobility of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Machsom Watch is not a traditional humanitarian organization in the sense of providing relief and/or protection in accordance with the principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence. Rather, it is an organization that works to protect human rights and to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories that has integrated humanitarian activities into its political work. As such, its experiences assisting Palestinians reveal both the dilemmas facing all humanitarian organizations working in the OPT as well as the serious difficulties that confront organizations that combine humanitarian and political work.
Conflicts, Occupation, and Music-Making in Palestine (PDF)
Chuen-Fung Wong
This article began as a reflective essay for the Faculty Development International Seminar of Macalester College, Minnesota, entitled, The Israeli-Palestinian Impasse: Dialogic Transformations, in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The seminar involved a semester-long preparation of lectures, colloquia, and readings in St. Paul, Minnesota, leading to a three-week on-site seminar and research in the West Bank cities of Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, in May and June 2008.