Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 12/07

Journal of Palestine Studies

Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, Summer 2007, Issue 144

 

From The Editor

Articles

• Struggle in a Post-Charisma Transition: Rethinking Palestinian Politics after Arafat
  Ali Jarbawi and Wendy Pearlman

  Drawing on Max Weber’s three kinds of legitimate domination, this article proposes the concept of “post-charisma transition” to describe the transformation of a political system in which authority is legitimated by a leader’s personal stature. As illustrated by recent Palestinian politics, such a transition may result in attempts at institution-building when a successor to a charismatic leader bolsters legal forms in order to derive authority that his personality alone cannot command. Whereas charisma was an important facet of Yasir Arafat’s rule, Mahmud Abbas’s lack of charisma has rendered him unable to govern the system that Arafat bequeathed him. Analysis of Abbas’s dilemma sheds new light on the legislative elections of 2006 and subsequent events, including the latest developments in the Gaza Strip.

• Arming David: The Haganah’s Illegal Arms Procurement Network in the United States, 1945–49
  Ricky-Dale Calhoun

  Anticipating an armed conflict in Palestine after World War II, the Haganah embarked upon a large-scale effort to buy armaments to be sent to Palestine. Through front companies, and with the cooperation of certain Latin American governments, arms purchased primarily through the War Assets Administration, which sold surplus U.S. military equipment in the wake of World War II, were transferred illegally to Palestine, often via Czechoslovakia. This article places a group of prominent, wealthy, and politically connected Jewish Americans—referred to here as the Sonneborn group, a reference to the involvement of Rudolf Sonneborn—at the center of a network of Haganah operatives involved in this effort.

• Soldiering for Arab Nationalism: Fawzi al-Qawuqji in Palestine
  Laila Parsons

  Fawzi al-Qawuqji was a soldier and Arab nationalist who fought European colonialism all over the Middle East between World War I and 1948. He served as an officer in the 4th Brigade of the Ottoman Army, fighting the British advance north through Palestine; led the al- Hama sector of the Syrian Revolt against the French in 1925–1927; was one of the rebel leaders in the Arab revolt against the British in Palestine in 1936; participated in the Rashid ‘Ali al-Kaylani coup against the British-controlled government in Iraq in 1941; and served as field commander of the Arab Liberation Army in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. This essay, part of a larger study of Qawuqji’s life and career, is based on his published memoirs as well as his private papers, stored in boxes at the back of a closet in the Beirut apartment where he lived after his retirement until his death in 1976.

Essay

• Palestine Versus the Palestinians? The Iron Laws and Ironies of a People Denied (PDF, 16 pages, 118 KB)
  Beshara Doumani

  The emergence in 2007 of two Palestinian “authorities” in two geographical areas—Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank—has given new urgency to several perennial questions: Who are the Palestinians? In what sense do they constitute a political community? What do they want? Who speaks for them? The nearly century-long persistence of these questions highlights some of the iron laws and ironies of modern Palestinian history that merit consideration in discussions about the causes and consequences of the current predicament and about how to come up with creative strategies for achieving freedom, peace, and justice. By “iron laws” I mean the formative historical forces produced by the overwhelming asymmetry of power relations that have imprisoned Palestinians in what Rashid Khalidi has termed an iron cage.[1] By “ironies” I mean the paradoxes of history that subvert nationalist narratives about the past. I argue that iron laws and ironies point to the need for a critical reappraisal of the relationship between “Palestine” and “Palestinians” as concepts, and of the state-centered project of successive phases of the Palestinian national movement.

Book Review Essay

• In the Mirror of the Occupier: Palestinian Art through Israeli Eyes
  Adila Laïdi-Hanieh

Special Documents

• The Status and Future of Israel’s Palestinian Minority

Recent Books

• Bar-Yosef: The Holy Land in English Culture, 1799–1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism
  Reviewed by Nabil Matar

• Likhovski: Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine
  Reviewed by Geremy Forman

• Nadan: The Palestinian Peasant Economy under the Mandate: A Story of Colonial Bungling
  Reviewed by Farid Al-Salim

• Masalha: Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel, and the Internal Refugees
  Reviewed by Marwan Dalal

• Rabkin: A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism
  Reviewed by Yerah Gover

• Tolan: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East and Baltzer: Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories
  Reviewed by Mark Chmiel

• Karp: Missed Opportunities: U.S. Diplomatic Failures and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1967
  Reviewed by Lawrence Davidson

• Brand: Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa
  Reviewed by Lisa Anderson

• Majali, Anani, and Haddadin: Peacemaking: The Inside Story of the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty
  Reviewed by Marc Lynch

• Bahgat: Israel and the Persian Gulf: Retrospect and Prospect
  Reviewed by James A. Russell

• Al-Qasim: Sadder than Water: New and Selected Poems and Habiby: Saraya, the Ogre’s Daughter: A Palestinian Fairy Tale
  Reviewed by Noha Radwan

• Shorter Notices

Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat)

From the Hebrew Press

Photos From The Quarter

Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy

Settlement Monitor

Congressional Monitor (PDF, 13 pages, 194 KB)

Documents and Source Material

• International

  • A1. UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD), Record of Preliminary Hearing on Israel, Geneva, 1 March 2007 (excerpts)
  • A2. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Address to the Arab League Summit, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 28 March 2007
  • A3. Oxfam International, “Poverty in Palestine: The Human Cost of the Financial Boycott,” London, 13 April 2007 (excerpts)
  • A4. World Bank Technical Team, Report on Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank, Washington, 9 May 2007 (excerpts)

• Arab

  • B1. PA Executive Authority, List of National Unity Government Members, Ramallah, 17 March 2007
  • B2. Palestinian Authority, National Unity Government Platform, Ramallah, 17 March 2007 (excerpts)
  • B3. Israeli MK Azmi Bishara, Article on the Circumstances of His Resignation from the Knesset, 3 May 2007
  • B4. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Special Report on Palestinian Demography, Ramallah, 14 May 2007

• Israel

  • C1. Winograd Commission, Summary of the Interim Report on the 2006 Lebanon War, Jerusalem, 30 April 2007 (excerpts)

• United States

  • D1. U.S. Department of State, Acceleration Benchmarks for Agreement on Movement and Access As Well As on the Gaza Security Situation, April 2007

Chronology (16 February–15 May 2007)

Bibliography of Periodical Literature