Palestine Liberation Organization Research Articles

PalestineApplication of Palestine for admission to membership in the United Nations, including two letters signed by Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas

PalestineApplication of Palestine for admission to membership in the United Nations, including two letters signed by Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas

Palestinian Political Forgiveness

The authors reflect on the possibility of Palestinian political forgiveness on the part of both Palestine and Israel. They discuss the concept of political forgiveness, as well as reasons for taking feelings out of the account of political forgiveness. They claim that a Palestinian agent who has been wronged by an Israeli is the presumption of Palestinian political forgiveness. They argue that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) could satisfy the basic conditions for the possibility of Palestinian forgiveness.

Reversing defeat through non-violent power

When the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) decided to embark on the two-state 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 non-violent 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?

History Revisited or Revamped? The Maronite Factor in Israel's 1982 Invasion of Lebanon

In the June of 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon, ostensibly to drive guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) based in south Lebanon beyond reach of the Israeli border. Instead, the Isr...

When Prophecy Fails? The Theology of the Oslo Process--Rabbinical Responses to a Crisis of Faith

The Oslo process began with secret negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and led to the signing of a declaration of principles by the two sides in Washington, DC in 1993. Israel agreed to withdraw from territories in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, and to establish a Palestinian autonomous authority in the area for an interim period, with a view to reaching a permanent settlement between the sides. This process, and particularly the territorial compromise it entailed, created a profound crisis within those religious Zionist circles that have identified Israeli reality as part of a process of redemption. The political concessions threatened to disrupt their messianic expectations and required a response adapted to the new reality. Accordingly, the Oslo process provides a test case for the way in which the religious Zionist public as a whole faced this crisis of faith, and, more specifically, the manner in which the Halachic guides of this public—those responsible for shaping its religious behavior—responded to this crisis.

Review: Women and Terrorism

WOMEN AND TERRORISM Female activity in domestic and international terror groups Margaret Gonzales-Perez London: Routledge, 2008. 162pp, US$140, cloth (ISBN 978-0-415-46467-3)Although history offers abundant examples of women fighting in wars, we still tend to see female militancy as aberrant, and the mainstream academic literature on warfare largely excludes women. Margaret Gonzales-Perez has made a significant contribution to the small but growing body of work that examines female militancy. While her book suffers from methodological and typological weaknesses that limit the application of her theoretical framework, its scope exceeds everything else in print. She examines 26 domestic and international militant groups, most of which have heretofore not been studied from a gendered perspective. This contribution ensures that, despite its shortcomings, Women and Terrorism will be a mainstay in the field for the foreseeable future.Drawing on a broad base of research, the book's central claim that women are more likely to join domestic terrorist organizations than international ones for two reasons. First, domestic groups offer greater opportunities for female members to improve their status. Second, these groups are more likely to reject traditional gender roles and welcome women as members. Conversely, international terrorist organizations attract fewer women because they tend to focus on external opponents and rarely challenge conventional gender norms (1-2).Gonzales-Perez discusses some well-known groups, including the IRA, the Baader-Meinhof gang, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. She also examines groups in which women are not commonly known to have operated, including some from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Algeria. The quality of this research makes this book one ofthe most comprehensive analyses of women in African political violence to date (79). The chapter on the Americas considers the role of women in Uruguay's Tupamaros and El Salvador's Farabundo Marti, particularly their positions after conflict has ended. In the Farabundo Marti, for instance, women were employed and treated in the same way as men during the conflict. Afterwards, however, the group refused to provide the director of the Women's Secretariat with pay equal to comparable departments, and 70 to 80 percent of the female excombatants did not receive the benefits accorded them through the post-revolutionary land reform program (27). The reversion to societal norms in the postconflict phase indicates that while some organizations expected women to fight and participate in the conflict, these same organizations were not willing to recognize that participation during demobilization. Gonzales-Perez's discussion of women's demobilization, though brief, groundbreaking, since the question has yet to receive much academic attention.The book's theoretical model, which aims to explain differing levels of female participation in terrorist organizations, falls short because of fundamental methodological problems. The author's definition and application of the term terrorism - which she insists is not intended to imply any normative value or judgment - insensitive to the political implications of the term and ignores the consequences of applying it to independence movements and insurgent groups (79). …

Engagement: A Path to Disarmament or Disaster?

This article argues that under certain conditions the United States can play an important role in peacefully resolving a conflict involving an ally and a nationalist terrorist organization (NTO) by engaging the NTO. An American policy of engagement can bring both parties to the table by convincing them that they are trapped in a mutually hurting stalemate and that negotiations offer the only way out of this situation. In addition, engagement provides the U.S. with significant leverage over both of the disputants, enabling it to push both parties to make the concessions necessary to realize a settlement. However, engagement can only have these effects if the U.S. bias towards its ally is tempered and if its policy is serious, sustained, and conditional. For these conditions to hold, there must be significant domestic support within the United States for a policy of engagement. These arguments are illustrated with case studies of the U.S. engagement of Sinn Fein between 1994 and 2005 and the U.S. dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization between 1988 and 1990.

Spoiling Inside and Out: Internal Political Contestation and the Middle East Peace Process

Actors turn to negotiating or spoiling as a means of contesting not only what a proposed peace settlement entails but also who has the power to decide the terms. Conflicts are more likely to witness negotiating and spoiling for purposes of internal contestation to the degree that one or both of the warring parties lack an institutionalized system of legitimate representation. Whether internal contestation leads a group to act as a peace maker or as a peace breaker is conditioned by its position in the internal balance of power. Two eras in the Palestinian national movement—the Palestine Liberation Organization's bid to join the Geneva peace conference in 1973–74 and its engagement in the Oslo peace process from 1993 to 2000—illustrate these propositions. Leaders of national movements and rebel groups, no less than leaders of states, are systematically influenced by domestic politics. As such, sponsors of peace processes should expect spoiler problems unless a movement heals rifts within its ranks.

Israel's 1993 Decision to Make Peace with the PLO or How Political Losers (this Time) Became Winners

AbstractPolitical losers' theory claims that political losers can move to a winning position if they turn the tables and change the situation completely. Our analysis shows that political losers can become winners by maintaining their favored option on the agenda. If the alternatives promoted by the political winners collapse and the losers have access to the winners' agenda, then there can be a situation in which the losers' favored alternative might be adopted. The 1993 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) illustrates this. We show how a team of political losers facilitated an alternative that the political winner – Israel's Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin – eventually had to adopt when his more favored options for negotiations became irrelevant. Thus, this narrative offers a complementary explanation to existing explanations of the Oslo Agreement, applies political losers' theory and provides further insight into the influence of domestic politics on international negotiations.

The Status of the Palestinian Refugees in the Near East: The Right of Return and UNRWA in Perspective

The article explores the Palestine refugees’ legal status in the Near East: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Combining findings of recent surveys with information drawn from primary and secondary sources, it seeks to highlight the continuous interplay of humanitarian, socioeconomic, and political considerations that have shaped the refugees’ status in the Near East during two distinct phases of their history, namely before and after the signing of the “Oslo Accords” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in September 1993. In this respect, the Palestine refugee experience offers a textbook example of how the relationships between humanitarian agencies, donor and host authorities and refugees evolve in such a way as to maintain over decades, and despite widely diverging agendas, a status quo predicated on the hypothetical advent of a regional peace. The article also sheds light on the potential lines of fragmentation and cohesion that have appeared amongst Palestinians during the “Oslo process” over such crucial issues as the very meaning of the “ right of return” and the role United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East ought to be called upon to play pending the achievement of a lasting Arab–Israeli peace process.

UNRWA and the Palestinian Refugees: A History within History

It is difficult to conceive a sustainable, long-lasting solution to the Palestinian– Israeli conflict without examining the refugee issue and identifying a just solution to it for both sides. Over time, and beside its emotional dimensions, the refugee issue has been increasingly regarded as a “problem” for the Israeli and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)/Palestinian Authority (PA) leaderships, who have generally taken uncompromising positions. The international stakeholders have been unable to suggest compromises acceptable to the parties concerned. In a recent work, M. Chiller Glaus reviews in detail the juridical debates and the political proposals of the last twenty years and concludes that “there will be no Israeli-Palestinian Peace agreement if the question of refugees remains unresolved, and the question of Palestinian refugees will not be resolved without the concrete prospect for an overall Israeli-Palestinian agreement”. 1 Sometimes depicted as “the original sin” of the Israeli State, 2 the displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinian civilians during the 1948 war contradicts the Zionist myth of the right to “a land without people for a people without a land”. Yet, for the Israeli population, the possible return of masses of Palestinian refugees is disconcerting as they view any such return as analogous to the effacement of Israel’s Jewish character. 3 Denying, ignoring or sweeping the refugee issue under the rug, therefore, has been the main approach of most Israeli governments since 1948. On the Palestinian side, and during the secret Oslo talks, the Fatah leadership accepted not to include United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 194 of 1948 4 in the Declaration of Principles, signed in

The Need to Belong: Writers' Voices at the 2008 Gothenburg Book Fair

The Need to Belong: Writers' Voices at the 2008 Gothenburg Book Fair

Trading Refugees for Land and Symbols: The Palestinian Negotiation Strategy in the Oslo Process

This article analyses the negotiation strategy of the Palestine Liberation Organization regarding the refugee issue in the failed Israeli–Palestinian peace process from 1993 to 2001. It is argued that the PLO was on the brink of conceding the ‘right of return’ for the sake of territorial concessions from Israel. The author discusses the implications of this strategy for the domestic legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership, as giving up the right of return would violate a core tenet in Palestinian national mythology. The PLO negotiators tried to solve that dilemma by, first, separating the principle of return from its implementation—making it possible for the PLO to remain committed to the principle, while offering compromises on physical return—and, second, by demanding symbolic gestures from Israel, including acknowledgment of Israel’s historic responsibility for the refugee problem. It is argued that Israel’s refusal to offer a minimum of face-saving gestures prevented the PLO from formalizing its compromise proposal.

Middle Eastern Terrorism: From Black September to September 11. By Mark Ensalaco. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 318 pp. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-8122-4046-7.)

The international community was faced with a novel kind of terrorism in the late 1960s, one very different from the lone anarchist or nihilist assassin of the nineteenth century, and the revolutions and counterrevolutions of the early twentieth century. This book focuses on the evolution of that new terrorism, from hijacking airplanes and kidnapping and murdering civilians to, eventually, suicide bombings. The major theme is how Americans came to be targeted and involved in terrorism, first emanating from the Middle East and eventually from a wider Muslim geography. Middle Eastern terrorism was internationalized at its inception. The terrorists justified murder in the name of “revolutionary violence, which is a political act,” and distinguished it from “terrorism, which is not” (pp. 6–7). The story began with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (plo) and its factions, with the motto “no one heard our screams and suffering” (p. 8). Western governments and intelligence agencies had neither the frame of mind nor the intelligence capacities or operational experience to deal with terrorism. In 1972, the Black September faction kidnapped Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and demanded the release of Palestinian militants from Israeli jails as well as the Baader-Meinhoff leadership of the German Red Army Faction. The West German government refused help and advice from the Israeli counterterrorist unit and provided helicopters to the terrorists and captives, planning to set ambush at the airfield. But the operation failed and resulted in the massacre of all the athletes. However, in time, the plo, the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine (pflp), and Black September managed to convince some European governments to release jailed terrorists, and, later, even Israel began to comply on occasion. By the time the plo turned against violence in the 1980s, other organizations had split into murderous factions (pp. 56–59).

Four Decades after Black September: A Jordanian Perspective

This article examines how Jordan's position vis-à-vis the Palestinians has evolved in the aftermath of the military showdown in 1970. Time and again, Jordan sought to speak for the Palestinians at the expense of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). However, to the chagrin of the Jordanian monarch, the PLO won the battle over representing the Palestinians. Hence, the classical Jordanian school of thought that viewed the occupied territories as part of Jordan, gave way to the emergence of a more assertive school that views the establishment of an independent Palestinian state to be in the best interest of Jordan. For this reason, Jordan digs in its heels and refuses calls for confederation with the Palestinians. Indeed, Jordan has been active in creating a momentum for a two-state solution to bring the Palestinian–Israeli conflict to an end. It remains to be seen, however, how Jordan and the Palestinians will relate in case a two-state solution does not materialize.

Representing Permanent War: Black Power’s Palestine and the End(s) of Civil Rights

Representing Permanent WarBlack Power’s Palestine and the End(s) of Civil Rights Keith P. Feldman (bio) In the past few weeks, the Arab-Israeli conflict exploded once again into allout war as it did in 1956 and as it had done in 1948, when the State of Israel was created. What are the reasons for this prolonged conflict and permanent state of war which has existed between Arab nations and Israel? . . . Since we know that the white American press seldom, if ever, gives the true story about world events in which America is involved, then we are taking this opportunity to present the following documented facts on this problem. These facts not only affect the lives of our brothers in the Middle-East, Africa and Asia, but also pertain to our struggle here. We hope they will shed some light on the problem. Thus opens what quickly became an infamous article published in the summer of 1967 by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC 1967). SNCC’s “Third World Round-up: The Palestine Problem: Test [End Page 193] Your Knowledge” does groundbreaking rhetorical and imaginative work to remap the relationship between domestic movements for racial justice in the United States and transnational struggles for liberation in Israel/Palestine. This essay sketches a genealogy of this remapping project, uncovering how it was forged under extraordinary conditions: against a long intellectual tradition of Afro-Zionism in the black freedom movement and a U.S. Cold War, racial liberal regime shared in various ways by the state of Israel. The social, imaginative, and rhetorical spaces of what we might call Black Power’s Palestine clarify and contest the shifting imperial formation emerging in the confluence of the end of the U.S. civil rights movement and the beginning of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Although the article has been routinely condemned for participating in the tragic fracture of the so-called black-Jewish civil rights alliance, in the spaces it opened up in the months and years that followed its publication, a critique of the occupation could be lodged in discussions about the future of New Left racial politics (Jacobson 2006; Hall 2003); members of the Black Panther Party could cultivate durable allegiances with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Oakland to Algiers (D. Du Bois 1975; Genet 2003; K. Cleaver 1998); Andrew Young, the first African American ambassador to the United Nations, could sacrifice his vaunted position by entering discussions with the PLO; organizations like Freedomways could pair with the Association of Arab American University Graduates to expose the 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps; and poets like June Jordan could bear witness to such tragedy, imagining being “born a Black woman” and in the presence of Sabra and Shatila having “become Palestinian” (1985, 124). Indeed, some of the most durable critiques of the colonial occupation of Palestine have emerged through the embattled post–civil rights spaces imagined by SNCC in 1967. That is the article’s oft-forgotten future. But what of its past, its genealogy? Imperial Formation and “Permanent State of War” Let us first consider the analytical purchase SNCC captures in the phrase “permanent state of war.” What does such an analytic reveal? And to what effect? One finds this figure in a range of literary and polemical works in the [End Page 194] post–World War II black freedom movement. In the preface to the 1953 edition of The Souls of Black Folk, for instance, W. E. B. Du Bois revises his famous thesis about the “world problem of the color line”: “Back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem that both obscures and implements it.” This is a problem articulated through the functional register of permanent war as, he claims, it maintains through violence the material privileges of “so many civilized persons” so that “war tends to become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race” (in Edwards 2007, 130). More than a decade later, picking up on the Maoist conception of a people’s war, Huey P. Newton turns to the figure in his famous...

Palestine Solidarity, Political Discourse, and the Peace Movement, 1982–1988

Palestine Solidarity, Political Discourse, and the Peace Movement, 1982–1988 Hilton Obenzinger (bio) From the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 through Jesse Jack-son’s second presidential campaign in 1988, the issue of Palestinian rights entered American political discourse in an unprecedented fashion. Arab and Palestinian Americans began to be involved in all aspects of American political life, including electoral politics, while a loose alliance of white New Left activists, African Americans, liberal Jewish groups, churches, and others began to create a consistent pro-Palestinian presence in the peace and anti-intervention movement, despite the fact that it was “arguably the most vilified peace and solidarity effort in the country” (Elbaum 2002, 266). At the same time, several attempts to deepen intercommunal relations between the Arab American and African American communities were launched, and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition presidential campaigns of [End Page 233] 1984 and 1988 brought the Palestinian issue into the public arena as never before. The task was to crack open the pro-Israel consensus that had dominated political life in the United States since at least 1967. This essay reviews some of the key initiatives that set the stage for deeper American sympathies and political action for Palestinian rights leading up to the first intifada. None of these efforts—as limited as they were—came easily; and in the end, despite major openings in public discourse, the goal of overturning the pro-Israel consensus in national politics ultimately fell short. A historical review of several aspects of this period—the response to the 1982 war, the development of a self-conscious Palestine solidarity movement, and the Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns—will help to understand this mixed assessment. On June 12, 1982, nearly a million people marched in New York City during the Second Special United Nations Session on Disarmament calling for an end to the nuclear arms race, targeting President Reagan’s policies of increased militarization in particular. A week before, Israel had launched its invasion of Lebanon with a number of unannounced goals, one of the most important of which was to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The invasion heightened already existing conflicts within the peace movement. The rally was organized by predominantly white peace groups, many associated with the nuclear freeze movement, which believed that it would be necessary to limit potentially controversial demands of the demonstration to generate a massive turnout. A Third World and Progressive People’s Coalition (TWPPC) formed with leaders from communities of color and leftists to demand representation on the planning committee. Sheila Collins, in her history of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, recounts how TWPPC “also insisted that the march call for an end to US intervention in the third world, a redirecting of the nation’s priorities from military spending to human needs, and an end to racism and other issues of concern to people of color” (1986, 101). As a result, the planning committee became embroiled in bitter fights, with accusations of left sectarianism and racism exchanged among the factions. Notably, however, “This was the first time since the anti–Vietnam War movement that black and other minority activists had made a serious bid to shape the direction of a movement [End Page 234] that white activists saw as ‘theirs,’ and it very nearly exploded” (101). Compromises were made, the leadership committee was broadened, and the program expanded to include a demand for money to be directed from military spending to human needs at home. Anti-interventionist speeches and slogans were to be allowed—except for anything having to do with the invasion of Lebanon. The leadership of the June 12th demonstration refused to link the nuclear threat to the Israeli invasion and the stateless condition of the Palestinians. As Max Elbaum explains, “Activists from the TWPPC as well as others pointed out that conflict in the Middle East was consistently identified as one of the most likely trigger-points for a nuclear war and that Israel’s nuclear capacity was an open secret. . . . But the influence of Zionism among central antinuclear organizers was too great for such points to be allowed a mention from the rally platform” (2002, 266). Those opposed to...

Revolution, Revival, and Religious Conflict in Sandinista Nicaragua

Calvin L. Smith, in Revolution, Revival and Religious Conflict in Sandinista Nicaragua, investigates a unique element of the rise of the Sandinistas in 1979. Much has been written about the social, political, and economic elements of the victory of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, but Smith maintains that Christianity played a unique role in the way the revolution developed. Smith turns long-overdue scrutiny to the apparently homogeneous and unified pro-Frente Nicaraguan Protestants. His significant work brings exhaustive archival research and interviews of key religious and political actors to bear to challenge that homogeneity and unity.Smith examines three widely divergent interpretations of the Protestant-Sandinista relationship. The first maintains that the Sandinista regime was proactively anti-Christian. The second holds that persecution of Christians was passive and the result of splits between the “historic Protestants,” who generally supported the Frente, and pro – United States Evangelicals. Finally, others maintain that any Sandinista policies that were harmful to religion were reactive expressions of frustration with Washington’s support of Evangelicals. Smith contextualizes these interpretations by engaging in a survey of Nicaraguan Protestantism from the first European contact with the Miskitos in the sixteenth century to evangelization campaigns by Pentecostal groups in the 1970s.Smith also analyzes the relationship between Somoza and Protestants to establish a necessary baseline against which to measure the later dynamic between Protestants and Sandinistas. In doing so, he effectively challenges the predominant interpretation of the Somoza-Protestant relationship. Smith ultimately characterizes the Somozas’ attitude toward Protestants as largely indifferent, rather than as using Protestants as a “prop” or as dupes through which the regime maintained control.One of Smith’s more important contributions is his exploration of the multifaceted Protestant reaction to the Sandinista revolution — a reaction that belies the widely accepted, yet one-dimensional interpretation of Protestant support for the revolution. The primary tenets of Protestant support for the revolution include the Evangelical concern for the plight of the poor and their embrace of a general agenda of social reform. This support manifested itself in a variety of ways, from the more concrete, such as financial aid funneled into government food and vaccination programs, to the more ephemeral pro-revolutionary sentiments voiced from the pulpit.This emphasis on the support by many Evangelicals, however, ought not to obscure the fact that many conservative Evangelicals condemned the Sandinistas as Marxists who would soon turn on the church. In fact, Smith effectively deconstructs the apparent Protestant unity by drawing clear lines between leaders and grassroots members, conservatives and social advocates, “historics” and “Pentecostals,” rich and poor, and pro-government and pro-revolutionary activists, all of whom found a home under one “Protestant” roof. These differences lie at the heart of Smith’s conclusion that “contrary to popular understanding, the majority of Protestants did not support the Sandinistas” (p. 134). A key to this apparent contradiction is that, while the vast majority of Protestants supported and participated in Sandinista revolutionary social projects, this does not mean the same as supporting the government itself. Conservative Protestants criticized the Sandinista regime for its Marxist roots, its extensive propaganda effort, and the conscription of Protestants into the ranks of the revolutionary army.Smith effectively historicizes Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism in their sociopolitical contexts vis-à-vis Sandinismo. Pentecostals’ eschatology led them to avoid social involvement, thereby affording the government latitude, with which it pursued the revolution. Insofar as Evangelicals, who were more involved in fighting for social justice, presented themselves as barriers to the regime’s programs, the Sandinista regime responded with harshness. Key was the Sandinista demand that everyone participate fully in the revolution. The crux of the matter came in the various ways Christians balanced their religious affiliation with their revolutionary obligation. Smith’s best work lies in his explication of this at times contradictory balancing act. Coverage of linkages between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Sandinistas, and the Evangelicals and the Contras adds to the seductive complexity of this work.This book is a vital addition to the growing bibliography of revolutionary movements in Latin America. Smith’s exhaustive research, combined with an intimate voice possible only through close personal contact between the author and many of the actors whose experiences color the pages, will secure this volume’s place in scholars’ libraries. It will appeal to specialists and advanced students in the field, although its complexity and fairly frequent reliance on a multiplicity of acronyms may confuse general readers or undergraduates.

Identity and Religion in Palestine

In recent years a subtle but steady transformation has been taking place inthe Arab-Israeli conflict. The prominence of Hamas and the process ofIslamization in the West Bank and Gaza are having repercussions on botha local and a regional level, while politics, faith, and nationalism have createda mélange of ideologies.As secularist squares up to Islamist, andHamasand Islamic Jihad vie with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the objectiveof the Palestinian struggle becomes trampled in the haste to drawsupport to either political group. In the midst of this turmoil, Palestiniansecular-nationalists are defying their ideological background and turning toreligion for support, hope, and survival. The Palestinian political identity isin a state of flux, and Islam’s dominant role in Palestinian society can nolonger be ignored or dismissed. The emergence of Loren D. Lybarger’sIdentity and Religion in Palestine is, then, a timely publication, as it providesa perceptive analysis of political identities in the Occupied Territories.Through his debut publication, Lybarger draws on interviews and experiencesgathered during volunteer work with the Mennonite CentralCommittee in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Conducted over aperiod of six years – three in the 1980s in theWest Bank, two in Gaza in theearly 1990s, and one in the West Bank and Gaza from 1999 to 2000 – theauthor breathes life into accounts of the evolving Palestinian political identityby rendering his respondents’ dilemmas, vulnerabilities, hopes, and fearswith startling clarity. By incorporating a plethora of political factions, religiouscommunities, age groups, geographical locations, and socio-economicclasses, he cogently assesses the Palestinian political and religious identity.Equally, his book deepens one’s awareness of the relationship between eventsand the cultural and historical forces that transform the region’s socialmovements and political identities. Over the course of five chapters and anepilogue, Islamism and secular-nationalism are defined both in theory andpractice, thus affording a comprehensive insight into the contemporaryOccupied Territories ...

After the Fall: Palestinian Communist Journalism in the Post–Cold War World

This study examines how the Palestinian Communist Party, renamed the People's Party in 1991, conceptualized its new role in Palestinian politics in its documents and its press based on its perceptions of its own strengths and weaknesses after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the weakening of Arab unity, the rise of the Islamic Movement, the entry of the Palestine Liberation Organization into the West Bank and Gaza in 1994, and the success of Hamas at the expense of Fateh in the 2006 Legislative Council elections. The study concludes that the party fares better when it does not deny its Marxist roots, and describes how the party is in the process of reclaiming its Marxist heritage, even after Palestinians elected Hamas to the Palestinian Legislative Council.