Bully praetorian states

Review

The Threat of BDS

If You Wish It—It Is the West Bank: The Israeli Regime in the West Bank in the First Decade, 1967–1976 [Im Tirtzu—Zo Hagada

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

The United States and Israel

Brief Synopses of New Arabic Language Publications

Unlike North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela, Israel was a democratic state. However, it was also a de facto colonial power. After it was attacked by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon in 1967, Israel conquered the territories of the West Bank (so-called because it is on the west side of the Jordan River) and Gaza. These two areas are generally known internationally as the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), but after 2005 Gaza was not technically occupied, as Israel had withdrawn its settlements from the territory. As will be shown below, however, Israel did maintain effective control of Gaza, not least via the blockade it imposed in 2007. Israel also disputed that the West Bank was occupied, although the consensus of international legal opinion was that its rule did indeed constitute an occupation. Therefore, in order to focus on Palestinians’ right to food, I will refer to these territories throughout as simply the West Bank and Gaza (WBG). This chapter cannot document all Israeli laws and policies that had the effect of denying Palestinians their right to adequate nutrition: I merely indicate some major factors in the WBG. Nor do I suggest that Palestinians’ own leaders bore no responsibility for these problems. Yasser Arafat, who was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the leader in the WBG until his death in 2004 was notorious for his corruption, channeling funds meant for all Palestinians to his supporters (Allen 2006, 15). 84 percent of Palestinians responding to a 2003 survey thought there was corruption in the institutions of the Palestinian Authority (PA), a semi-autonomous body established in 1993 to govern the West Bank (Dowty 2012, 179). The PA was known to be dysfunctional and to rely on patronage and cronyism as well as outright corruption: such corruption may well have contributed to malnutrition in the WBG. Somewhat offsetting this may have been the activities of Islamic charities that provided food aid as well as other services to Gazans (Gordon and Filc 2005, 553; Masters 2012, November 27, 1, 5). Egypt also contributed to the high rate of malnutrition in Gaza. Fearing terrorist infiltration into the Sinai Peninsula by Hamas, the Islamist political movement that ruled Gaza as of 2007, Egypt sealed its border with Gaza. As a result, Gazans could not buy food and other goods they needed in Egypt.

When the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) decided to embark on the twostate political platform in 1974, this constituted tacit recognition of the reality of the state of Israel in Palestine within the Green Line. The PLO’s shift was also effectively an admission of defeat for the previous PLO programme that called for a secular, democratic state throughout all of Palestine. Today, advocates of the one-state solution argue that the two-state solution is no longer possible due to the realities Israel has created on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza. In other words, the political programme launched by the PLO in 1974 has effectively been defeated. The growing one-state movement is, thus, the third time Palestinians are reacting to Israel’s defeat of Palestinian attempts to obtain their human rights. It is against this background that this paper attempts to address three questions: Why has the two-state political programme not been achieved?; What sources of nonviolent power could potentially realize and effect Palestinian human rights?; and What is the single most important strategy of which no Palestinian political programme should ever lose sight?

Against the backdrop of changes in the power structure of the international system at the end of the twentieth century, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) entered into a peace process with Israel in 1993. Initially characterized by the influence of a multilateral order and then by the unipolar order dominated by the United States, in addition to the asymmetry of power between the two parties, the process ended up failing. The heir to that political legacy, the Palestinian Authority (PA), has tried to compensate for this weakness—despite its dependency relationships—with an internationalization strategy the continued advance of which appears to be severely limited. Added to this is the setback brought about by the political and diplomatic offensive of the Trump administration (2017–2021), one of unilateral support for Israel and absolute Palestinian exclusion. However, the increasing reconfiguration of the world order, the arrival of the new Biden administration, and the receptiveness of the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in Palestine seem to indicate a new political juncture. In this situation, the PA could also try to counterbalance the power asymmetry by seeking greater involvement from countries such as Russia, which has returned to the region as a great power, and China, whose presence there is growing. In turn, the PA will have to deal with different issues (unity, elections, a renewal of leadership) and try to boost its political legitimacy and international alliances to three ends: the prominence and reactivation of the PA, the recognition of Palestine as a state with in situ<em> </em>results, and international protection from Israeli policies.

Palestine: Children Laboring

Repenting for What Israel Did to Gaza—Without Condoning the Wrongs Committed by Hamas

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Stamps inscribed Palestine reappeared on the world scene in August 1994 after a 27-year absence as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) assumed direct administrative control over territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip assigned to it by the Israeli government. The newly created Palestinian Authority (PA) was granted authority to operate a postal service and issue stamps but with restrictions as to the name of the issuer (only Palestinian Authority), the currency (only those in circulation in Jordan or Israel), and content (the PA was to abstain from “hostile propaganda”). Between 1995 and 2013, after initial efforts to assert national identity which were blocked by the Israeli government, the PA focused on cultural identity with stamps depicting cultural symbols, traditions, and events, promoting its ties to the wider world, and publicizing the natural wonders of the territories under its administration, all the while adhering to the restrictions imposed on it by Israeli occupation authorities. However, by 2013, as a result of the changed relationship between the PLO and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which took control of the Gaza Strip and began issuing its own stamps, international agreements granting greater postal autonomy, and United Nations recognition of the existence of a Palestinian state, Palestinian stamps began to focus more on Palestinian national and political identity and resistance to Israeli occupation.

Changing Attitudes Toward the West Bank in Jordan Michael Sharnoff (bio) A quarter of a century after King Hussein’s disengagement from the West Bank, and nearly two decades after the signature of the Wadi Arabah Peace Accord with Israel, Jordan’s western border has still not been fixed and the fate of the Palestinian refugees on the East Bank remains uncertain. —Tariq Mreyoud al-Tal1 This quote, expressed by Jordanian scholar Tariq Mreyoud al-Tal probably appears strange to most Westerners and perhaps even non-Jordanian Middle Easterners. Jordan’s boundaries in question refer to its relationship with the West Bank, a landlocked territory bordering Israel and Jordan and home to around 3 million Palestinian Arabs and half a million Israeli Jews. Jordan occupied this land during the 1948 war and subsequently annexed it in 1950. The West Bank became an integral part of Jordan until Israel conquered the land from Jordan during the 1967 war. Despite Israel’s occupation, Jordan continued to assert sovereignty claims on the West Bank until King Hussein severed all legal and administrative ties in 1988 in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Today, Jordan, along with nearly the entire international community, regards the West Bank as an Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory. The official position of the Hashemite Kingdom supports ending Israeli rule of the West Bank and establishing an independent Palestinian state [End Page 44] there, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as its capital. However, despite Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank, the Hashemite monarchy’s stance obfuscates Jordan’s complex and historical, political, and legal relationship with this territory. Indeed, Jordan’s attitudes toward the West Bank have evolved, as explained by Adnan Abu-Odeh, former political advisor to both King Hussein and King Abdullah II, from an indivisible part of Jordan, to an occupied Jordanian land with Israel, to a territorial dispute with the PLO, and to an occupied Palestinian land.2 Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank in 1988 and peace treaty with Israel in 1994 sought to affirm that Jordan is not Palestine, that Jordan would not become a substitute Palestinian homeland, and that the PLO was principally responsible to end the occupation and establish an independent state. This article aims to explain the changing attitudes toward the West Bank in Jordan from 1948 until the present. It will expand on Abu-Odeh’s remarks about the fluidity and evolving perceptions of Jordan’s attitude toward the West Bank and explain why some Jordanians espouse views toward the West Bank which challenge official Hashemite policy. In doing so, this article will demonstrate how Jordanian perceptions of the West Bank are influenced by Israeli and Palestinian politics and will assess how attitudes in opposition to official regime policy seek to defend the kingdom’s national security and protect the Palestinian people. Historical Context During World War I, the Allied Powers recognized Britain at the San Remo Conference in April 1920 to serve as the mandatory power in Palestine. The Allies endorsed the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine based on the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, which would comprise land on both banks of the Jordan River. The League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, sanctioned the British Mandate of Palestine in 1922, which remained in effect until 1948. However, in 1921, Britain severed three-fourths of the original Mandate to Abdullah I, son of Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca, based on agreements signed with London before the start of the Great Arab Revolt (1916–1918) against the Ottoman Turks. This new Arab entity became known as Transjordan and comprised territory east of the Jordan River. Transjordan, which gained semi-independence in 1923 and full independence from Britain in 1946, [End Page 45] consisted of vast territory with sparsely populated cities such as Irbid, Salt, Karak, and Ma’an. The ruling Hashemite dynasty governed over a quarter of a million Bedouin and non-Bedouin Muslim Arabs, settled Christian Arabs, and small numbers of Armenian Christians, Druze Arabs, Muslim Circassians, and Muslim Chechens.3 Abdullah I had grand territorial ambitions that Transjordan alone could not satisfy. Coveting a...

T extension of the higher education “franchise” to significant numbers of young people with modest means and from underprivileged strata since the mid-1970s has had far-reaching social and political consequences for Palestinian society. This brief article will investigate how Palestinian institutions of higher education—primarily the four universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—were implicated in the formation of an influential and hegemonic generation of activist intelligentsia in the crucial two decades preceding the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. It will also discuss this generation’s fortunes under the current social and political regime in Palestine. It is appropriate to locate the widening of opportunities for higher education in the mid-1970s within the general trajectory taken by the Palestinian national movement during the same period. It may be noted briefly that changes in the strategic thinking of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) after 1974 identified the Occupied Territories as the site of the future Palestinian state and the main arena for the struggle for its realization. Thus, the establishment of an infrastructure of national institutions as well as a network of political parties and front organizations to promote the struggle can be viewed as the cornerstones of the Palestinian state-building strategy. The few institutions of higher education existing in the Occupied Territories were thus “nationalized,” and their rapid expansion after the mid-1970s was supported by funds channeled by the PLO into the Occupied Territories. Wide sectors of society took advantage of this unprecedented availability of highly subsidized “mass” university education, and enrollment in local institutions of higher education rose dramatically during the 1970s and 1980s. Although the PLO and some political parties were instrumental in providing university education in the Arab world and abroad (mainly through scholarships offered by some Arab and then-socialist countries), the bulk of university graduates in the Occupied Territories after the 1970s have been the products of the local educational system. Palestinian universities during the latter part of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s were the prime site for the formation of a cadre of political activists who at important junctures were in the vanguard of the national resistance to occupation. While such cadres were also being recruited and built within other institutions such as secondary schools, labor unions, and women’s organizations, the universities were by far the most enabling medium for the crystallization of a politicized cohort of activists. Higher education has been perceived as, and has actually been, an avenue of social mobility for sons and daughters of peasants, refugees, and the urban middle and lower classes in Palestinian society. In this sense, graduates of local universities constitute a significant segment of the growing middle strata in Palestinian society, especially in the period after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and the expansion of employment opportunities in the growing public and private sectors. What concerns us here, however, is how Palestinian universities were implicated in this process by constituting the environment par excellence for the elaboration of a politically hegemonic elite during the period prior to and after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. The “nationalization” of the universities during this critical period meant above all that—by virtue of the fact that they were being supported by public, national funds (through the Palestinian Council for Higher Education)— they were part of the national project. As such, their administrations were expected (and often compelled) to allow full freedom of political activity and to align their institutions with the national movement. While political activity was largely conceived of as national, anti-occupation resistance, there was at the same time an increased student focus on internal university politics, embodied in activities such as the campaign for “Arabization” of the curriculum and the struggle for student representation in university bodies. Elected student councils succeeded in wresting a considerable degree of authority (and recognition of the legitimacy of that authority) from university administrations and became a powerful force in university life.