Palestine Question Research Articles

Special Issue: Queering Palestine

In this introduction to “Queering Palestine,” the curators of this special issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies explore what queer theory and activism can teach us about the Palestinian condition, and vice versa. They contextualize the arguments made by the contributors for the relevance of queer politics to the question of Palestine, which encompass queer theory and dissent, sexuality politics and the nation-state, and queerness as decolonial practice.

ユダヤ難民問題とパレスチナ問題 : アメリカ合衆国の政策-1938年3月-1939年1月

ユダヤ難民問題とパレスチナ問題 : アメリカ合衆国の政策-1938年3月-1939年1月

Vexed Solidarities: Vietnamese Israelis and the Question of Palestine

During the Six Day War of June 1967, Israeli forces conquered Gaza and the West Bank, extending the State of Israel’s control over Palestine to the Dead Sea and further displacing hundreds of thous...

Transnational Alliances: The AAUG's Advocacy for Palestine and the Third World

This article examines how the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) articulated the Palestine question as both an Arab-American and a Third World issue after the 1967 War. Using archival documents and recollections from several AAUG members, this article traces the ways in which activism on Palestine and other issues facilitated the creation of a transnational Arab-American “intellectual generation.” Although the AAUG often focused on Palestine, it educated its members and engaged in activism on issues affecting other communities who grappled with racism, imperialism, and colonialism. In doing so, it attracted diverse allies to the Palestinian cause, such as Black Americans, Africans, South Asians, and other members of the “global Third World.” This article further analyzes the AAUG's transnational engagement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) during its first decade. Using both traditional and academic activism, the AAUG firmly associated Palestine with the Third World and fostered an Arab-American intellectual movement.

Choices Facing the United States: Greater Israel or Global Israel?

Choices Facing the United States: Greater Israel or Global Israel? Daniel C. Kurtzer (bio) Zionism is, arguably, the most successful movement of national liberation in the last 100 years, and Israel is, inarguably, one of the most potent states globally in terms of security, economy, and society. Israel has absorbed millions of immigrants from diverse geographical and cultural milieus, built a thriving economy, developed a powerful army and achieved a remarkable degree of social cohesion, all this while living in a neighborhood in which all but two countries still consider themselves in a state of war with Israel. To be sure, there have been and continue to be problems that Israel has not been able to fix or to which Israeli policy has contributed. Chief among them are the unresolved issue of the territories that Israel occupied in 1967 (the so-called Palestine question), significant and growing inequalities in the distribution of wealth within Israeli society, endemic tensions between religious and secular Jews, and questions about the durability of Israel’s democracy raised by recent legislative initiatives designed to curb activities and funding of those on the political left. The United States has been a proud and significant supporter of Israel, providing significant resources to fund military and security requirements, participating in joint research and development in advanced defense and related technologies, and, for many years, providing an economic safety net that allowed Israel to take hard decisions related to economic development. The United States has been an active participant and advocate in promoting peace between Israel and its neighbors, has helped Israel build its international ties, and has defended Israel in international fora. The prognosis for Israel and for U.S.-Israeli ties is excellent, as the two countries continue to find ways to deepen and strengthen bilateral cooperation. However, there are some worrying signs ahead that should prompt significant attention to the fabric of the relationship. A look ahead at the [End Page 246] promise and problems would be facilitated by a deep look back at the first seventy years of Israeli sovereignty and of U.S.-Israeli relations. The conventional method for assessing the bilateral relationship between Israel and the United States has been to look at shared values and shared interests, including shared threat assessments. In the United States, Israel has been popularized as a liberal democracy, committed to openness and the advancement of rights and liberties. The United States and Israel have usually tended to share a similar appreciation of the threats that Israel faces—ranging from terrorism and violence emanating from within the occupied territories; terrorism and incessant missile fire from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza; and over-the-horizon threats from Iraq (before 2003) and more recently from Iran. While the mutual understanding of threats did not always result in a common policy approach, the two countries benefitted greatly from the intelligence sharing and overall strategic cooperation that was set in place to try to deal with the threats. More tangibly, the United States has made unprecedented long-term commitments to provide Israel with substantial amounts of security assistance plus additional aid that Congress continues to authorize for special purposes such as anti-missile development. The values aspect of this relationship has come under strain of late, as the attitudes of some American Jews have shifted. For example, large swaths of American Jewry associate with the conservative and reform religious movements; Israel’s religious affairs ministry, under the control of ultra-orthodox rabbis, has set standards for conversion, marriage, and recognition of Jewish identity that place many of these American Jews outside the pale. The dispute over prayer space at the Western Wall has exacerbated this split. As noted in several recent books, more American Jews have become critical of Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue, especially the continued building of settlements. For younger Jews, the Israel they have grown up with is the Israel of the Lebanon war and of occupation, unlike their parents who grew up with the mythic image of the Israel of Leon Uris’ Exodus. The United States and Israel also now differ fundamentally about several critical security issues and...

ФОРМУВАННЯ ТА РЕАЛІЗАЦІЯ ПОЛІТИКИ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОГО СОЮЗУ ЩОДО БЛИЗЬКОСХІДНОГО РЕГІОНУ

The paper analyses the specifics of process of genesis and implementation of the EU policy in the Middle East. After the end of the “cold war”, the region has become the priority for eco-friendly, security and social and cultural interests of the EU member states. The problem of the Arab-Israeli reconciliation lies in the center of the Middle East policy of the EU. Thus, the models of peaceful settlement based on peace in exchange for land failed to have been implemented. The Palestinian question remains a marker of the effectiveness of the EU policy in the Middle East. The regional alignment of forces changed under the influence of the events of the “Arab Spring”. The war in Syria has challenged European security. The Middle East is now facing a protracted process of geopolitical transformation. The region remains an arena of geopolitical confrontation between the great powers: China, India, Russia, the USA and Japan. The complex regional hierarchy of forces is dynamic. The challenge for regional and global security is the Iranian nuclear program. The EU criticizes the administration of the US president, Donald Trump, who canceled the 2015 agreement with Iran on the development of peaceful nuclear energy. The purpose of the EU policy in the Middle East is to prevent the radicalization of political climate. This might help the EU to avoid terrorist threat and modernize the societies of the Muslim countries of the Middle East.

القضية الفلسطينية بين المواثيق الدولية والمصالح السياسية : المشروع الفلسطيني لإنهاء الاحتلال الإسرائيلي نموذجا = The Palestinian Question from the Prespective of Int’l Law between the Legal Powr and the Politicl Interests : The Palestinian Bid for the UNSC as an Example

مواثيق الأمم المتحدة | السياسة الخارجية الأمريكية | حل الدولتين | المشروع الفلسطيني لإنهاء الاحتلال (المشروع) | الكولونيالية الإسرائيلية | The Two-State Solution | UN Conventions | U.S Foreign Policy | Palestinian Bid to the UNSC (the Project) | Israeli Occupation and Colonialism

Coalitions of scholarship

This article considers Bart Moore-Gilbert's unfinished work on Palestine and postcolonialism, which sought to demonstrate that contemporary Palestinian and Israeli writing challenges postcolonial studies' emphasis on national narration by emphasizing hybridity, border-crossing, and dialogue. I outline my disagreements with Moore-Gilbert's argument, while also commending his work for insisting that the question of Palestine should have the same stature for English-language scholars and students as postcolonial theory and postcolonial life-writing.

Slouching towards Jerusalem: The Truman Administration and the Palestine Question

Although the amount of blood shed in the Arab-Israeli conflict has gradually declined during the past seventy years, the amount of scholarly ink spilled on the creation of Israel continues to rise. Irene Gendzier, a political scientist at Boston University who earlier authored a splendid biography of Frantz Fanon and a provocative analysis of American intervention in Lebanon, offers a revisionist account of Harry Truman’s policies toward Palestine. She concludes that, as early as 1948, Washington made a cynical decision to sacrifice Palestinian rights at the altar of Persian Gulf crude, with Israel regarded as a “strategic asset,” not as a diplomatic liability. “The choice facing policymakers was not oil versus Israel but rather oil and Israel,” Gendzier insists in her introduction. “In the years that followed, it was oil and Israel versus reform and revolution in the Arab world” (xviii). To make her case, Gendzier covers a great deal of well-traveled ground, recapping Truman’s shock when the Nazi death camps were liberated in 1945, his frustration with British diplomats and State Department bureaucrats during the battles over “trusteeship versus partition” in 1946 and 1947, and his susceptibility to pro-Zionist arguments delivered by members of his inner circle in 1948. Relying mainly on published material from the State Department’s Foreign Relations series and the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Documents on Foreign Policy volumes, she tells her story in such intricate detail and with so much thick description that even readers already familiar with the trajectory of American policy will feel their eyes begin to glaze over. Indeed, by the final chapters, I found myself skimming through Gendzier’s five-hundred-word quotations from policy planning documents and wishing that her book had included a bibliography listing all her sources in one place. Yet if one reads her introduction, her synopses of each of the book’s five sections (1, 55, 113–14, 181, and 241), and her conclusion, Gendzier’s overall argument emerges in sharper focus, and her two most important findings become crystal clear.

Adrienne Rich’s “Politics of Location,” US Jewish Feminism, and the Question of Palestine

(2017). Adrienne Rich’s “Politics of Location,” US Jewish Feminism, and the Question of Palestine. Women's Studies: Vol. 46, Adrienne Rich, pp. 663-683.

British Foreign Policy towards the Palestinian Issue Since 2003

The topic area of that’s paper dealing with role of Britain in established of Israel, so the paper argued the historical developments of Palestinian question and Role of Britain Government toward peace process since 1992, and then its insight toward plan of Palestinian State.
 That’s paper also argued the British Policy toward Israeli violations toward Palestinians people, and increased with settlement policy by many procedures like demolition of houses, or lands confiscation, the researcher argued the Britain position toward that’s violations beside the political developments which happens in Britain after Theresa May took over the power in Ten Downing Street.

Neither Two States nor One: The Palestine Question in the Age of Trump

In the opening weeks of his administration, President Donald Trump overturned a longstanding U.S. commitment to territorial partition and a two-state model for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized the opportunity to demand “overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River” while exploring regional approaches that bypass the Palestinians. At the same time, a host of Israeli politicians are reviving older models such as limited autonomy without political sovereignty and partial territorial annexation, or advocating for other forms of separation with Israel’s continued control. The resulting middle ground—neither two states nor one—poses a great risk to Palestinian self-determination. By situating recent developments in a broader historical context going back to the autonomy plan of Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, this essay provides an overview of a shifting political discourse and examines the consequences for the fate of the Palestinians today.

Contract or Disobedience?: Reframing Azoulay

The Civil Contract of Photography by Ariella Azoulay has profoundly reshaped the critical study of photography. The concept of “the civil concept of photography” is as intriguing as it is ill-defined. This essay seeks to clarify it. It begins by situating Azoulay’s theory in the single context that has most dramatically stamped her thinking — Palestine. It is in her thinking through photography and the Palestinian question that her debt to, and divergence from, the tradition of social contract theory is clearly seen. It concludes that Azoulay’s central concept — “the civil contract of photography” — is better understood when seen from the combined perspective of Schmitt’s theory of decision and Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience.

The Threat of BDS

The Threat of BDS

Contributors

Contributors

Reframing India’s Palestine Policy

The traditional framing of India’s approach to the Palestine question is inadequate to explain the bourgeoning relations with Israel. Anti-colonialism through which Indian leaders and elites viewed the problem was important, but there are other issues, especially the religious dimension as manifested by the Congress–Muslim League rivalry, which influenced the Indian thinking. The prolonged depiction of the Indian position vis-à-vis Palestine through a moral prism became untenable in the wake of the normalization of relations with Israel in 1992 and hence it is essential to view the Palestine policy of India through a realist prism.

Cold War Dilemmas, Superpower Influence, and Regional Interests: Greece and the Palestinian Question, 1947–1949

This article discusses official attitudes toward the creation of the state of Israel from the eruption of the postwar international crisis in Palestine until the end of Arab-Israeli War of 1948–1949. In 1947–1949, Greek policy toward the Middle East was determined by a mix of regional, political, and ideological factors: the Greek security problem during the early Cold War era, including the Greek civil war; the existence of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem; the Greek government's need to take into account the position of the Greek diaspora community in Egypt; commercial interests in the Eastern Mediterranean; anti-Semitism; the need to secure Arab votes in support of the Greek question before the United Nations; and relations between Greece and its new superpower patron, the United States. Greek decisions were dominated by Cold War needs, but the United States did not impose policy on its junior partner.

Autonomy as State Prevention: The Palestinian Question after Camp David, 1979–1982

The context of Israel’s post-1967 rule over the Palestinian territories, which began well after the end of empire, the mandates, and the major waves of decolonization, sheds new light on the relationship between late-twentieth-century occupation and the persistence of prolonged statelessness. This essay examines how a particular practice within the political and diplomatic repertoire of transformative occupation—the promotion of local autonomy—was successfully deployed in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. It charts the emergence of autonomy from the time of the 1978 Camp David Accords and delineates its broader impact as a tool of state prevention curtailing Palestinian sovereignty until today.

Tunisia and Israel: relations under stress

ABSTRACTThis article provides an analysis of the relations between Tunisia and Israel. The author argues that Israel's attempt to establish diplomatic relations with Tunisia was motivated largely by its quest to reach the countries in the periphery of the Middle East. In addition, the author argues the Israeli leaders were concerned about the fate of the Jewish community in Tunisia. At the same time, the Tunisian ruling Neo Destour party was motivated by the pragmatic considerations of its leader Habib Bourguiba who sought to pursue a unique policy towards Israel based on a willingness to recognize its existence and a just solution to the Palestinian question. Furthermore, the author argues that although the Tunisian regime criticized Israel for its occupation of Arab territories, the contacts between the two countries never ceased entirely. The bilateral connections reached their climax after 1993, when the Oslo accord between Israel and the Palestinians was signed. Despite the continuing tension, both sides remained interested in keeping the contacts and it was primarily Tunisia's concern for its tourism industry that kept it from severing its relations with Israel. The article also shows that Tunisia's Western orientation had a salutary effect on the bilateral relations.

The Holy See, Italian Catholics and Palestine under the British Mandate: Two Turning Points

This paper analyses the reactions of the Holy See and Italian Catholic public opinion towards two events which can be considered as turning points in the history of British Palestine: the disturbances of August 1929 and the presentation of the Peel Plan in the summer of 1937. Through this analysis, based on a wide range of sources, it shows how the Vatican attitude towards the Palestinian question changed during the interwar period. At the same time it aims to ascertain whether or not the Holy See and the Catholic hierarchy in Palestine were in accord with the Italian government's Near East initiatives.