Future Palestinian State Research Articles

Palestine: Sovereignty to the Extent Possible

The general understanding was that a future Palestinian state would necessarily account for Israel’s concerns, whether real and intentionally inflated.

Psychological impediments are at the core of theIsraeli–Palestinianconflict

AbstractThe most puzzling aspect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is that, after 73 years of mutual violence, enmity, and suffering, it remains unresolved even when coexistence is inevitable and a two‐state solution remains the only viable option, in the context of a confederation between Israel, a future Palestinian state, and Jordan. Although there are many contentious issues that must be specifically addressed and resolved before a final agreement can be implemented, especially the dispute over the land, it is the psychological dimension of the conflict which directly impacts every conflicting issue and makes it increasingly intractable. To mitigate the conflict, we must first look into the elements that inform the psychological dimension—psychological resistance, historical experience and perception, entrenched ideologies, mutual delegitimization, and religious conviction—and how to alleviate them as prerequisites to finding a solution.Related ArticlesHarel‐Shalev, Ayelet. 2009. “Lingual and Educational Policy toward ‘Homeland Minorities’ in Deeply Divided Societies: India and Israel as Case Studies.”Politics & Policy37(5): 951–70.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2009.00206.x.Talal, Olga. 2022. “Bureaucrats as Policy Makers: Minority Accommodation and Exclusion in Ethnic Nation‐states.”Politics & Policy50(6): 1138–54.https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12507.Tusalem, Rollin F. 2015. “Ethnic Minority Governments, Democracy, and Human Rights.”Politics & Policy43(4): 502–37.https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12125.

Vague and unworkable: The fuzziness of the archipelago as a concept and its unsuitability as model for a 21st century Palestinian nation

While it is frequently invoked, the archipelago is such a vague concept that its deployment in fields such as island studies is only productive when the contingency of its use is specified. In this article, we examine the concept itself and then consider the use of the archipelago as a metaphor and/or model for a future Palestinian state. The creation of the modern nation-state of Israel in Palestine in 1948, various Israeli military actions, and (often related) public and private developments of former Palestinian lands has resulted in a substantial proportion of Palestinians fleeing to neighbouring countries (chiefly Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria). Those Palestinians who have remained have largely been confined to territorial isolates within the Jewish state. These isolates have frequently been understood and analogised as ‘islands’ within Israel, and the aggregation of these isolates has been variously referred to and/or represented as an archipelago. This article examines the development of this metaphoric interpretation of the Palestinian community within Israel in Anglophone, Arabic, and Francophone discourse, and characterises the contortions necessary to imagine Palestinian territories as archipelagic. The conclusion returns to consideration of the notion of the archipelago itself and of its usefulness in island studies and other contexts.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

THE «JORDANIAN OPTION» FOR THE SETTLEMENT OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT: FROM THE «ABDULLAH-HUSSEIN’S PLAN» TO THE D. TRUMP’S «DEAL OF THE CENTURY»

The article is devoted to the consideration of the role of the «Jordanian option» for the solution of the Palestinian question, which was embodied in the Middle East by the Hashemite dynasty. As the direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, they initiated the pan-Arab movement to create a united Arab state on the lands of the historical «Great Syria» and the Hejaz. In the context of the formation of a mandate system of these territories, the opposition of the Zionist movement and neighboring Arab countries, the Hashemites focused their attention on Palestine. After World War II, the Abdullah Hussein plan was implemented, which resulted in the creation of a federation between Jordan and Arab Palestine. After the loss of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, Jordan maintained administrative and legal ties with the part of Palestine occupied by Israel. Only in 1988, having abandoned its claims to the status of a unified Arab state, Jordan «distanced itself» from the specific forms of the future Palestinian state formation and the time framing of its emergence. By such actions, Jordan «secured» itself from participation in the creation of a Palestinian state what is explained by the fact that the Palestinians play an important role in the country, influencing its demographic and socio-economic component. The peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump in 2018 stipulating the formation of a Jordan-Palestine federation, known as the «Deal of the Century» can be considered as an actual revival of the «Abdullah-Hussein» plan. This indicates that Jordan and in the 20s of the XXIst century still remains an important actor in the settlement of the Palestinian question, on which balanced policy the factual peace in the Middle East will strongly depend.

Unrequited Hope: Obama and Palestine

The early hope that the two-state solution would be implemented during the Obama presidency faded as both the Mitchell and Kerry negotiations failed. Only during his final weeks in office did Obama agree to the US abstaining on a UN vote condemning the ongoing Israeli settlements in territory earmarked as part of a future Palestinian state. After he leaves the presidency, there is a slim chance that Obama might join Jimmy Cater in working to mobilize American voters and taxpayers around efforts by Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) and other movements to oppose pro-Zionist lobbies, especially American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and to force Congress and the President to pressure Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and enable the creation of a de-militarized Palestinian state.

Pockets of Privilege: A Historical, Spatial, and Political Economy Analysis of Industrial Zones in Palestine

This article argues that industrial zones in Palestine do not effectively promote Palestinian economic development. The article rests on a historical, spatial, and economic analysis of the political economy of industrial zones in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. By examining the nature and functionality of these zones through different methodological lenses, it is clear that the industrial zones in Palestine fail on two levels. Firstly, as successful export-processing zones and employment generating programs, the zones are unable to deliver their intended results. On the other hand, even when they do succeed, their performance is limited and does not contribute to a holistic, democratic, and egalitarian notion of economic development. In fact, the benefits accrued are often channeled to Palestinian elites and foreign capital, at the expense of popular Palestinian economic needs such as viable employment, healthcare, housing, food security, and domestic investment. Moreover, the zones work well within the confines of the Israeli Occupation and seem to entrench aspects of its overarching architecture. Lastly, this article argues that industrial zones in Palestine are elements in a wider political and economic project that is being increasingly defined by political, economic, and spatial fragmentation. The emerging social topography is in fact a spatial effect produced by the convergence of Palestinian capitalist class power, international financial institutions (IFIs), the Israeli Occupation, and the expansion of foreign capital. The effect is a future Palestinian state that is highly undemocratic, corrupt, and rife with inequality.

Political infrastructure and the politics of infrastructure

Against the background of a highly conflictive urban situation, the paper focuses on the planning and implementation of the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR). Running from the west all the way to the east of the city, the JLR traverses and connects contested territory. While Palestinians and the international community consider East Jerusalem to be part of a future Palestinian state, Israel adheres to its claim to the whole city, a unified Jerusalem. It is to that end that the JLR was implemented and, as this paper argues, it can be seen as an important governance tool that not only serves the city’s citizens and residents alike, but also works towards consolidating the Israeli authorities’ claim to the whole city. Further, the paper discusses whether infrastructure is inherently political or if there is a ‘politics of infrastructure’ at stake in Jerusalem with regards to the JLR and its wider implications for the urban fabric. The paper suggests that much can be learned from major transport infrastructure in cities, not only for contested cities such as Jerusalem, but also ordinary cities, since infrastructure is always already part of the existing and emerging political power struggles in every city.

The Two-Stage Solution: Toward a Long-Term Israeli-Palestinian Truce

There is growing consensus among Israelis and Palestinians that the paradigm of pursuing a two-state solution through bilateral talks has reached a dead end. Yet the widely discussed alternatives to this supposedly expired model have not posed a credible challenge to it. Instead they have been confined largely to academic discussions among activists who enjoy little support in their societies; the proposals are more a reflection of widespread desperation than a serious movement to bring change. In the absence of a negotiated settlement to the conflict, one possibility, though currently remote, is that Israel and a future Palestinian state will establish a long-term truce that settles some disputes, such as over territory, while leaving other issues unresolved.

Palestinian unity and everyday state formation: subaltern ‘ungovernmentality’ versus elite interests

With Palestine gaining increasing international recognition for its sovereignty aspirations, this paper investigates the ongoing Palestinian state-formation process. It examines how far grassroots movements, domestic political leaderships and international actors have promoted or undermined intra-Palestinian unity and societal consensus around the rules, design and extent of a future Palestinian state. The paper introduces the novel concept of everyday state formation as a crucial form of grassroots agency in this process. Moreover, it illustrates the internal tensions of contemporary statebuilding: without reconciliation across multiple scales – local to global – the complex interactions of structural, governmental and subaltern power tend to build societal fragility into emerging state structures.

The Cry of the Forgotten Stones

Based on extensive archival work, this essay assesses the contribution of a Palestinian liberation theology (PLT) to a comprehensive view of peacebuilding that involves not only liberation from oppressive occupation but also a holistic vision and strategy for attaining just societal structures. Emerging out of the victim's viewpoint, a PLT is consistent with a multiperspectival approach to justice. It articulates a call for a holistic transformation of the interrelations between Jews and Palestinians, envisioning a just peace that must entail a re-framing of geopolitical structures as well as ideological discourses that vindicate systemic and symbolic violence against the Palestinians. However, the author shows that a PLT is asymmetrical: while it challenges the theopolitical affinities between Christian and Jewish Zionists and the structural injustices and social mechanisms they endorse, it refrains from contesting the symbolic boundaries of a Palestinian national identity. This bears important implications for the broader debate concerning the role of religion in peacebuilding. The author argues that the limits of a PLT as a peacebuilding framework relate to its conceptual reliance on an unreconstructed secularist interpretation of a future Palestinian state and on its elective affinity with a supersessionist and theological orientation that, by definition, hermeneutically de-Zionizes the Bible and its interpretations.

Higher Education, Resistance, and State Building in Palestine

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.

Socioeconomic and environmental impacts of the Israeli Separation Wall

The physical construction of the Separation Wall is new, but the philosophy or purpose behind the Wall is not. The Wall’s first phase has a multidimensional impact which works to ensure Israeli domination over natural resources; both water and land. The overarching category that highlights the significance of water in the first phase is twofold. First, the location of the Wall’s first phase and its path above the best Palestinian potential abstraction areas of the Western Aquifer reflects Israel’s goal to complete its control over the richest groundwater sources in Palestine. Second, as water is crucial to a sustainable future Palestinian state, Israel’s overall control on water resources consistent with its water policies will lead to further impoverishment, landlessness and existential and national threat to Palestine.

Selection Of A Currency Regime For Palestine

This case deals with currency regimes, currency value and exchange rate management. It is presented in the context of a hypothetical decision regarding the currency for a future Palestinian state.

A3. World Bank, "The Underpinnings of the Future Palestinian State: Sustainable Growth and Institutions," Executive Summary, Washington, 21 September 2010.

"A3. World Bank, "The Underpinnings of the Future Palestinian State: Sustainable Growth and Institutions," Executive Summary, Washington, 21 September 2010.." Journal of Palestine Studies, 40(2), pp. 177–178

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Building the Future Palestine

A Palestinian geographer and urban planner discusses one of the territorial challenges that will likely emerge in the process of building a future Palestinian state. More specifically, he outlines how looming population pressures (high density in tandem with rapid natural increase and return of displaced refugees) will require that investments to support economic growth and new construction be organized within a national settlement system based on the existing urban hierarchy. In addition to describing the elements of such a system ("developed urban axis of Palestine"), the paper also covers the effects of public opinion and shifting political alignments within the territories on shaping the conceptualization of a future Palestinian state.

Two States or One (Arab) State

Danny Rubinstein's account, in his Summer 2010 Dissent article ("One State/Two States: Rethinking Israel and Palestine"), of the disdainful reaction of Sufyan Abu-Zayda, a prominent figure in the Palestinian Authority, to Benjamin Netanyahu's "Bar-Ilan speech," in which the right-wing prime minister of Israel formally accepted the two-state solution, is remarkable and telling. Someone who perceives this conflict as it is usually perceived—a small people struggling for national independence after decades of military occupation by a mighty regional power—would perhaps have expected something different. Admittedly, it is natural enough to avoid giving the rival side credit for any show of moderation. A moderate Palestinian spokesman might have questioned Netanyahu's sincerity, called on the international community to hold the prime minister to his word, and insisted that the future Palestinian state be established on Palestinian terms rather than those suggested by Netanyahu. Instead, Abu-Zayda dismisses the very idea of separate Palestinian statehood: Netanyahu is not doing us any favors by agreeing to two states; we have another, more attractive option—"one state."

A Constitutional Framework of a Future Palestinian State - Synthesis of Leading Palestinian Thinking and Public Perceptions

This paper will look at leading Palestinian thinking and public perceptions on the following: First, the relationship between the three powers of state; different perceptions of the principle of the ‘separation of powers’ in Palestinian literature including the potential separation between the PLO and the PA. Second, the systems which create, amend and enforce laws such as the PLC and the judiciary. Third, the basic rules which govern public finances including a presentation of the main principles included in the BL and DPC and also the reform process. Fourth, the degree to which normative orientation (secular/religious) should direct state formation, institution building and the application of law.

Israel/Palestine Sixty Years on

The article undertakes a legal positivist analysis of the two core issues of international law which inform the Israel/Palestine dispute. The first of these is the present lawful extent and delimitation of the territory of the state of Israel and, conversely, of the territory to which the Palestinian people are entitled as the basis of a future Palestinian state. The second is whether Israel is under an international legal obligation to repatriate those Palestinian Arabs who fled abroad in 1947–1949, along with their descendants, and to restore to them their property, and whether, or in the alternative whether, it is obliged by international law to compensate them.

From imposed ceasefire line to international border: The issue of the green line between Palestine and Israel

The border between the state of Israel and a future Palestinian state has not yet been settled, and has instead been postponed to final‐status negotiations. The question of the location of the border, however, is critical. Will it be alongside the separation wall and fence which Israel is constructing? Or will it fall along the Green Line defined by the ceasefire agreement of 1949, prior to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip? This paper shows, as a case study, how the Green Line, a temporary separation line determined by military considerations, changed over time into a de‐facto boundary, and later became regarded as an international border—thus highlighting that what may be intended to be ‘temporary’ in bordering processes can rapidly seem permanent. The paper also describes and analyses historical developments and narratives with respect to boundaries in Mandatory Palestine, and concludes with an analysis of the possible consequences of a failure to establish a new international border. It indicates that bordering processes are complicated matters that must take into account many factors, including narratives, changing ethno‐demographic realities and powerful interests, in contrast to ceasefire and separation lines, which usually relate solely to military matters.