Palestinian Citizenship Research Articles

“You can’t teach your students something that is divorced from reality”: Palestinian citizenship teachers making sense of the relevance of Islam for citizenship education in Israel

Even though religion plays a central role in many people’s lives, it is often omitted from citizenship education in secularized societies. Educational scholars have increasingly demanded that teaching about religion should be included in citizenship curricula to foster effective participation for all citizens. However, this is an enormous challenge, especially in societies like Israel where religion is politicized as an aspect of violent conflict. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Palestinian Muslim educators in Israel, we explored how citizenship teachers refer to Islam in their citizenship lessons. The teachers in our study drew on Islam as an important resource to either resist predominant conceptions of citizenship education in Israel or to make the subject more meaningful and relevant to their students. We argue that incorporating religious epistemologies alongside critical pedagogies in the citizenship curriculum is a necessary educational task in diverse and conflict-affected societies like Israel.

Not, not citizen: art and the making of fugitive sociality in the settler colony

ABSTRACT This paper takes up the entwinement of citizenship and the political in the writings of Engin Isin in the context of the Palestinians in Israel. It opens with an invitation to think with an artwork by the Palestinian artist Durar Bacri as a staging of fugitivity through a refusing of that which has been refused. Out of this I pose the question of whether such an act of refusal is political or not. I start by thinking with this artwork to unpack the settler colonial nature of Palestinian citizenship in Israel and how the figure at the centre of the painting is refusing the citizenship that is being refused him. From this I posit that not only is there a refusal of citizenship, but more there is an ‘end’ or limit to the political itself, and with it the political subject. I conclude with a discussion of a fugitive sociality and its implications for understanding the struggle of Palestinians in Israel.

When Man is a Cause: The Undecidability of Belonging in Kanafani's Returning to Haifa

The focus of my article is on the undecidability of Dov's/ Khaldun's identity throughout his conversations with Said X., his 'biological father', along with some significant selective semiotic referents in Ghassan Kanafani's novella Returning to Haifa. These aspects are highlighted to elicit/ trace Kanafani's implied symbolism of Palestine, the land, and the undecidability/ conflict of its belonging to critique (healthy self-criticism) the submission of the Palestinians as being guilty of ceding with their land then keep crying to restore it. The novella has been previously tackled from a variety of perspectives: parody, intertextuality, characterization, among others. However, the key parts of the novella that show the conflict between father/ son, self/other, right/loss are the conversations between Dov/Khaldun and Said X. To achieve the article's goal, Derrida's conception of undecidability is employed to indicate the inability to take a decision due to factors beyond the focal character's, Dov/Khaldun, means. This state of freeplay makes it impossible to settle to any side/identity. In Dov's/ Khaldun's case, it is the indeterminate area between the biological Palestinian identity and the acquired Jewish identity. Given that, this view of undecidability is supplemented by other related philosophical aspects such as identity of the 'I', the conception of belonging, and the symbolic reflection between the Dov/ Khaldun: the Jew/ the Palestinian: the Colonizer/ the Colonized (both Man and the land). The analyses of the novella reveal that a state of bewilderment and vortex of undecidable identity opens once Dov Iphrat Koshin, the Israeli soldier, knows he was born Khaldun Said, the Palestinian citizen. Dov's/ Khaldun's words to Said X. show a defensive attitude whereas his semiotic behavior reflects the pain of the truth, and that since that moment, he will not be able to settle; his identity is undecidable between Israel/ Palestine, Zionists/ Palestinians, Colonizer/ Colonized, Judaism/ Islam... Kanafani provides a criticism of the Self, here. As the Palestinians of 1948 escaped from their homes forsaking their land to the foreign occupation and then they (with the Arabs and Muslims) did nothing to restore it but waiting and weeping. Kanafani's self criticism is healthy as being the first step towards profoundly diagnosing the problem, the loss of Palestine, so as to find practical final solutions for the problem.

Stop the Show

On 17 April 2015, in honour of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, A Parallel Time was performed with Hebrew translation the first time at the Palestinian-Arab Al-Midan Theatre. The play, created by Bashar Murkus, was inspired by the personal story and writings of Walid Daka, a Palestinian citizen of Israel convicted for aiding in the murder of soldier Moshe Tamam. On the night of the performance, niece of the deceased soldier Ortal Tamam led a demonstration against the play, claiming it glorified terrorists. News quickly spread to the press and social media, inciting what ultimately became a ‘big scandal’. Using a wide range of sources, this article reconstructs the scandal of A Parallel Time and demonstrates its bipolar dynamic. At one pole is a play produced by a state-supported theatre about the life of ‘security prisoners’, and at the other are protest performances that embodied bereavement discourse in Israel, the public support they received from politicians and rallies for freedom of expression. The scandal managed to transform a small play by a theatre unknown among Jewish Israelis into a public, multi-player drama. This drama also included bureaucratic and judicial performances that legally validated the ‘symbolic crusade’ against Palestinian theatre, and exposed the weaknesses of Israeli democracy. This article will propose that this type of big scandal, which culminated in the shutdown of a theatre, is in fact an interruption—and will work to unveil its components and the dynamics of delegitimization that characterized it.

Palestinian citizenship: past, present, future

INTRODUCTION. The article deals with the evolution of the Palestinian citizenship and the possibility of its development under the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Citizenship is a classic institution of public law and is perceived in a similar way in various legal systems. In this case, however, there is a very special phenomenon, the content of which is due to a number of historical, political and international legal factors.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research is based on the analysis of Balfour Declaration 1917, UN Partition Plan for Palestine 1947, Agreement Oslo II 1995, Articles on Nationality of Natural Persons in relation to the Succession of States (ILC, 1999), Articles on Diplomatic Protection (ILC, 2006), Israeli law governing the status of Palestinians, nationality laws of the Arab states, political and regulatory acts of Palestinian institutions. The research methods include historical method, methods of formal logic, comparative method and various methods of interpretation. A significant part of the research is a comparison of positions of Israeli and Palestinian lawyers, as well as an analysis of various options for the development of the Palestinian citizenship.RESEARCH RESULTS. Currently, the status of residents of the occupied territories is determined by the Oslo II Agreement of 1995: the administrative powers are delegated to the Palestinian Authority; Israel retains the right of control. The resident status is not equivalent to the status of a citizen and is sui generis. This status implies a number of Israel’s obligations: to end it and provide a citizenship to Palestinians; recognize its international elements; transfer more powers to Palestinian institutions. The lack of regular citizenship makes it difficult for Palestinians to enjoy diplomatic protection from Palestinian institutions.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Presently, there are conditions for the establishment (declaration) of the Palestinian citizenship, which would fix a political connection sui generis, implying the rights of Palestinians to participate in administration of the occupied territories, their membership in a nation striving for self-determination, the right of Palestinian institutions to provide diplomatic and other protection, etc. This citizenship should be provided automatically, since it involves not naturalization, but consideration of existing social and vital ties of Palestinians to their people. The solution of the problem of diplomatic protection may consist in the development of customary law and the search for new tools, for example, protection on the part of international organizations.

Palestinian (Non)Citizenship

Citizenship in the Palestinian case cannot be understood simply as legal membership of a state entailing, in the best of all possible worlds, mutual rights and obligations. This article presents the particularly complex political and legal challenges that Palestinians have faced in their struggle for defining their nationality, delving into the historical trajectories and changing political realities that affect them to this day. Even with the declaration of Palestinian statehood, and its recognition by the United Nations and 138 countries to date, the State of Palestine — albeit under foreign occupation and with diminished sovereignty — still has not adopted a nationality law or initiated a citizenship roster and acquisition process.

Palestinian Citizenship within the State of Palestine: The Right Answer for the Wrong Question

In this chapter the authors suggest citizenship in Palestine has developed as a state-centred institution, and its implementation has served objectives that are the opposite of those that drive citizenship in democratic societies, specifically the empowerment of citizens and the establishment of a basis for essential rights and freedoms. Instead, Palestinian citizenship has more often functioned as a colonial tool that sustains the occupation, contributes to Palestinian disempowerment and enables the dispersal of the local population. Furthermore, it has also repeatedly failed to provide essential protections and prevent the violation of basic rights. In the view of the authors, this state-centered and territorial citizenship is at best counterproductive and at worst dangerous.

Citizenship as Domination: Settler Colonialism and the Making of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel

The article traces the making of the Israeli citizenship regime, focusing on the period between 1948 and 1952. During these formative years, the 1950 Law of Return, which governs Jewish entitlement to citizenship, and the 1952 Citizenship Law, which governs the status of ’48 Palestinians, were enacted. Situating the Israeli case within the broader history of citizenship-making in Anglophone settler colonial sites and drawing on analogies with Australia, the United States, and Canada, this article is interested in what this formative period, in which the constitutional cornerstones of Israel’s citizenship regime came into being, can tell us about Palestinian citizenship in Israel and about the institution of citizenship in settler-colonial contexts more broadly. Drawing on original archival material, it argues that in Israel, as in other settler polities, citizenship has figured as an institution of domination, functioning as a mechanism of elimination, a site of subjectivation, and an instrument of race making. Racial subjects, space, and citizenship were constituted in relation to each other in intimate ways. Citizenship transformed space from Arab/Palestinian to Jewish, rendered settlers indigenous, and produced Palestinian natives as alien. Israel’s citizenship regime was predicated on the racial demarcation between Palestinians, whose citizenship was governed by the logic of naturalization, and Jewish settlers, viewed as natural and authentic subjects of citizenship.

Palestinian Citizenship Law

Palestinian Citizenship Law

Legislating Exclusion: Palestinian Migrants and Interwar Citizenship

This article explores the British Mandate's legal framework for regulating citizenship and nationality in Palestine following the post–World War I fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire. It argues that the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council prioritized the settlement and naturalization of Jews in Palestine, while simultaneously disenfranchising Palestinians who had migrated abroad. Ultimately, the citizenship legislation reflected British imperial interests as it fulfilled the promises made in the Balfour Declaration to establish in Palestine a homeland for the Jewish people, while it attempted to ensure the economic viability of a modern Palestine as a British mandated territory. Excluded from Palestinian citizenship by the arbitrary application of the Order-in-Council, the majority of Palestinian migrants during the 1920s and 30s never secured a legal means to return to Palestine, thus marking the beginning of the Palestinian diaspora.

Bibliography of Books, Chapters and Journal Articles on Colonialism and Imperialism Published in English in 2016

Bibliography of Books, Chapters and Journal Articles on Colonialism and Imperialism Published in English in 2016 Marcella Fultz Marcella Fultz comp. Books Abbondanza, Gabriele. Italy as a Regional Power: The African Context from National Unification to the Present Day. Ariccia: Aracne, 2016. Google Scholar Adeney, Martin. Baggage of Empire: Reporting Politics and Industry in the Shadow of Imperial Decline. London: Biteback, 2016. Google Scholar Ageel, Ghada, ed. Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences. Edmonton: U of Alberta P, 2016. Google Scholar Ahuja, Neel. Bioinsecurities: Disease Interventions, Empire, and the Government of Species. Durham: Duke UP, 2016. Google Scholar Aitken, Ian. The British Official Film in South-East Asia. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Google Scholar Alamo-Pastraqna, Carlos. Seams of Empire: Race and Radicalism in Puerto Rico and the United States. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2016. Google Scholar Aldrich, Robert and Cindy McCreery, eds. Crowns and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas Empires. Manchester: U of Manchester P, 2016. Google Scholar Alecou, Alexios. Communism and Nationalism in Postwar Cyprus, 1945–1955. Cham: Springer, 2016. Google Scholar Ali, Muhamad. Islam and Colonialism: Becoming Modern in Indonesia and Malaya. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2016. Google Scholar Allan, Michael. In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2016. Google Scholar Allen, Amy. The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia UP, 2016. Google Scholar Allender, Tim. Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1820–1932. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016. Google Scholar Alshaer, Atef. Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World. London: Hurst, 2016. Google Scholar Anastacio, Leia Castañeda. The Foundations of the Modern Philippine State: Imperial Rule and the American Constitutional Tradition in the Philippine Islands, 1898–1935. New York: Cambridge UP, 2016. Google Scholar Anderson, Mark Cronlund. Holy War: Cowboys, Indians, and 9/11s. Regina: U of Regina P, 2016. Google Scholar Anderson, Clare, Madhumita Mazumdar, and Vishvajit Pandya. New Histories of the Andaman Islands: Landscape, Place and Identity in the Bay of Bengal, 1790–2012. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016. Google Scholar Anishanslin, Zara. Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World. New Haven: Yale UP, 2016. Google Scholar Antunes, Cátia and Amélia Polónia, eds. Beyond Empires: Global, Self-Organizing, Cross-Imperial Networks, 1500–1800. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Google Scholar Atçıl, Abdurrahman. Scholars and Sultans in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016. Google Scholar Atkinson, David C. The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2016. Google Scholar Aymer, Paula L. Evangelical Awakenings in the Anglophone Caribbean. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Google Scholar Babcock, Matthew. Apache Adaptation to Hispanic Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016. Google Scholar Bach, Ulrich E. Tropics of Vienna: Colonial Utopias of the Habsburg Empire. New York: Berghahn, 2016. Google Scholar Balce, Nerissa. Body Parts of Empire: Visual Abjection, Filipino Images, and the American Archive. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016. Google Scholar Balkun, Mary McAleer and Susan Clair Imbarrato, eds. Women's Narratives of the Early Americas and the Formation of Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Google Scholar Balthaser, Benjamin. Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2016. Google Scholar Banivanua-Mar, Tracey. Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016. Google Scholar Banko, Lauren. The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2016. Google Scholar Bankoff, Greg and Joseph Christensen. Natural Hazards and Peoples in the Indian Ocean World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Google Scholar Barry, Gearóid, Enrico Dal Lago, and Róisín Healy, eds. Small Nations and Colonial Peripheries in World War I. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Google Scholar Barter, Shane Joshua. Explaining the Genetic Footprints of Catholic and Protestant Colonizers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Google Scholar Bassi, Ernesto. An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada's Transimperial Greater Caribbean World. Durham: Duke UP, 2016. Google Scholar Bates, David. William the Conqueror. New Haven: Yale UP, 2016. Google Scholar Bauer, Brian S., Madeleine Halac-Higashimori, and...

Intergroup emotional similarity reduces dehumanization and promotes conciliatory attitudes in prolonged conflict

Creating a sense of interpersonal similarity of attitudes and values is associated with increased attraction and liking. Applying these findings in an intergroup setting, though, has yielded mixed support. Theorizing from a social identity perspective suggests that highlighting intergroup similarity may lead to increased antipathy to the extent that it is perceived as a threat to one’s unique social identity. To circumvent this process, we examine the influence of emotional similarity, rather than attitudinal or value similarity, with the expectation that the short-term nature of emotions may evoke less threat to one’s social identity. Moreover, given the importance of emotions in intergroup humanization processes, we expected that emotional similarity would be associated with greater conciliatory attitudes due to an increase in humanization of the outgroup. We report results from two studies supporting these predictions. Following exposure to an anger-eliciting news story, Jewish Israeli participants were given information that their own emotional reaction to the story was similar (or not) to an individual member of the outgroup (Study 1: Palestinian citizen of Israel) or the outgroup as a whole (Study 2: Palestinians of the West Bank). As predicted, emotional similarity was associated with increased humanization of the outgroup, and a subsequent increase in one’s willingness to support conciliatory political policies toward the outgroup. We conclude that emotional similarity may be a productive avenue for future intergroup interventions, particularly between groups where differences in attitudes and values are foundational to the intergroup conflict.

Peace as opportunity for social justice: Establishment of new social change organizations in Israel in the wake of the Oslo Peace Accords

The social work profession is committed to the promotion of peace and social justice. It is often assumed that peacetime enables diverting resources and attention to the promotion of disadvantaged groups. However, little is known about the mechanisms. This study of the Israeli experience following the Oslo Peace Accords suggests that one potential mechanism is the development of social change organizations (SCOs) in the wake of peace. Findings indicate growth in SCO establishment in the periphery and small towns, in vulnerable groups, and in the Israeli Palestinian (Arab) citizen minority group. Implications for social work are suggested.

Stateless citizenship: the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel

List of Figures Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Liberal Citizenship: Ambiguities and Inconsistencies Framing citizenship Theorizing citizenship Citizenship beyond the state Problematizing legal categorizations Racial state, racialized citizenship 2. The Israeli Incorporation Regime Colonizing the land of milk and honey A multifaceted discrimination Legislative level Formal and declarative levels Structural and institutional levels Mass protests of October 2000 Acre Riots of 2008 The 2008-2009 War on Gaza Criminalizing Arab Political Participation and Discourse Targeting Arab MKs: From Bishara to Zoabi Arab civil society: A non-state alternative Response to the rise of Arab civil society: The case of Ameer Makhoul Operative and budgetary level Israeli apartheid: Beyond South Africa 3. Israeli Hostipitality From hospitality to Derridean 'hostipitality' Oscillating between host and guest Israeli 'hostipitality' 4. Liberal Pretence of a Jewish State The UN Partition Plan of 1947 The principle of 'two states for two peoples' Israel as a 'state for all of its citizens' Rashid Bey: The de-Palestinianized Arab Zionist democracy in a comparative context Israeli demographobia Liberal rubber stamp for Israeli crimes 5. From Citizenship to Stateless Citizenship 'Israeli' and 'Palestinian' as incomplete identities Defining the 'Israeli' nation Research on Palestinians in Israel: An Overview Formulating Palestinian citizenship - Stateless citizenship 6. The Anatomy of Stateless Citizenship Knowing the terrain: From the exception to the example An exclusive inclusion A perpetual state of emergency Coexistence without existence Conclusion Appendix I: Selections from The Democratic Constitution by Adalah: Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (20 March 2007) Appendix II: Selections from The Haifa Declaration by Mada al-Carmel: The Arab Center for Applied Social Research (15 May 2007) References Index

Seawater intrusion into the coastal aquifer in the Gaza Strip: a computer-modelling study

Background Climate change is transforming life on earth, as seasons shift, rainfall decreases, and temperatures increase. Rising sea levels and overpumping are causing seawater intrusion into the coastal aquifer. This problem acutely affects people living in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and is worst in the Gaza Strip, where the coastal aquifer is the region's only freshwater resource and is therefore insufficient for the needs of the population. This aquifer has already been degraded by over extraction, infiltration of sewage, and seawater intrusion, contributing to high rates of waterborne diseases in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli authorities tightly control the quantity of water from the aquifer that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip can extract. Palestinians in the oPt receive less than the WHO recommendation of 100 L/day per person. An Israeli citizen uses 250 L/day, whereas a Palestinian citizen uses 66 L/day. Seawater intrusion into the Gaza Strip's northern coastal aquifer was predicted with computer modelling to show the potential effects of climate change and human overuse on the region's only freshwater source. Methods A simulation of seawater intrusion into the coastal aquifer into the northern part of the Gaza Strip was done with SEAWAT, a computer program developed by the US Geological Survey for simulating the three-dimensional variable density groundwater flow in porous media with multispecies solute transport. This program was used to analyse the groundwater flow and transport, water replenishment rates, and extraction quantities with projected rises in the sea level. The simulation enables prediction of inland seawater intrusion rates and chloride concentrations in the abstraction wells for the next 35 years. Findings Various scenarios were simulated to study the effects of climate change on seawater intrusion due to rises in the sea level, and variations in replenishment and pumping rates at the study area. The current rate of seawater intrusion into the coastal aquifer is 65 m/year. Computer-modelled scenarios with SEAWAT of future low replenishment rates predict worst-case-scenario intrusion rates of about 80 m/year by the end of the study in 2035. The best computer-modelled prediction of 35 m/year intrusion was obtained with solutions proposed in the management scenario by the local water authorities to reduce the water deficit and remove water salinity in the aquifer. Interpretation Seawater intrusion can jeopardise the groundwater resources for coastal communities such as those living in the Gaza Strip, putting them at risk of waterborne diseases. The best management of seawater intrusion would be to apply desalination technology and improve the efficiency of existing waste-water treatment plants for water recycling and subsequent reuse. These methods will become increasingly important as climate change negatively affects the aquifer and population demand increases. Funding None.

The one-state condition: occupation and democracy in Israel/Palestine

Since the start of the occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Israel's domination of the Palestinians has deprived an entire population of any political status or protection. But even decades on, most people speak of this rule-both in everyday political discussion and in legal and academic debates-as temporary, as a state of affairs incidental and external to the Israeli regime. In The One-State Condition, Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir directly challenge this belief.Looking closely at the history and contemporary formation of the ruling apparatus-the technologies and operations of the Israeli army, the General Security Services, and the legal system imposed in the Occupied Territories-Azoulay and Ophir outline the one-state condition of Israel/Palestine: the grounding principle of Israeli governance is the perpetuation of differential rule over populations of differing status. Israeli citizenship is shaped through the active denial of Palestinian citizenship and civil rights.Though many Israelis, on both political right and left, agree that the occupation constitutes a problem for Israeli democracy, few ultimately admit that Israel is no democracy or question the very structure of the Israeli regime itself. Too frequently ignored are the lasting effects of the deceptive denial of the events of 1948 and 1967, and the ways in which the resulting occupation has reinforced the sweeping militarization and recent racialization of Israeli society. Azoulay and Ophir show that acknowledgment of the one-state condition is not only a prerequisite for considering a one- or two-state solution; it is a prerequisite for advancing new ideas to move beyond the trap of this false dilemma.

The creation of Palestinian citizenship under an international mandate: legislation, discourses and practices, 1918–1925

The history of the development of Palestinian nationalism is vast and recent scholarship continues to focus on the creation of national identities in the modern Middle East. However, the creation of internationally recognised citizenship of the Arab Middle East during the era of mandates has not been studied in-depth. In the case of Palestine, the creation of Palestinian citizenship by the British as a colonial power was a unique yet delicate process and one which was rejected by the Arabs. The British sought to create an apolitical citizenship, one without civil or political rights, in order to satisfy both the mandate terms and the Jewish national home policy. By the time the citizenship was conferred, the Arab population of Palestine had a detailed counter-discourse to the British notion of citizenship. The Palestinians viewed their civic identity as imbued with rights of citizenship, but they saw themselves in terms of having a primordial nationality by birth. In effect, the certificate of citizenship produced by the British came out of colonial processes despite the fact that the British were instead meant to be an international trustee in Palestine. This article presents that process, with reference to the Palestinian reaction to the legislation of Palestinian mandate citizenship.

The Post-Zionist Condition

1 In the summer of 1991, the first issue of the Israeli journal Teoria Ubikoret (Theory and Criticism) published an essay of mine on Anton Shammas, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who wrote the Hebrew novel Arabeskot (Arabesques).1 In this essay I traced Shammas’s subversion of the Jewish ethnocentrism of the Hebrew literary canon.2 Shammas’s novel reveals how the Hebrew canon in Israel, in the guise of the apparently neutral term Hebrew Literature, which only apparently bases itself on the Hebrew language as the common literary language of Jews and Arabs, has in fact imposed an exclusionary policy. That is, in order to enter its realm, those who write in Hebrew must be Jewish. Shammas, I argued, sought to de-Judaize the Hebrew language and turn it into a language shared by all Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike. Now, twenty years later, Teoria Ubikoret has published a different essay of mine, this time on Tuvya haholev (Tuvya the Dairyman), Dan Miron’s Hebrew translation of the great Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem’s novel Tevye der Milhiker. I claim that while Miron’s Hebrew indeed Hebraicizes Aleichem’s Yiddish, it also moves in the opposite direction; it Yiddishizes Hebrew, giving Yiddish a prominent presence in the Hebrew translation and thus decentering Israeli subjectivity and undermining the cohesive force of Hebrew.3 These essays span two decades. The first article was nourished by the utopian assumption that the existence of the Israeli state meant that its national identity would be Israeli, while the second was written after this hope had been smashed to smithereens. And so, instead of the reterritori-

Queering Palestine: Piercing Eytan Fox's Imagined Bubble with Sharif Waked's Chic Point

In this piece I address the construction of male homosexuality in Eytan Fox's The Bubble (Israel, 2006) in contrast with its presentation in the artist Sharif Waked's short film, Chic Point (Palestine, 2003). Examining the tensions between Palestinian and Israeli masculinity and homosexual desire, I espouse a narrative about the dualities of representing Palestinian queerness. I argue that the very nature of Palestinian daily life is queer. That is, if we utilize the word in the now anachronistic adjectival sense whereby the word queer describes a sense of strange(ness) or even the life of a stranger. The forced and unpredictable movement of individuals from the now depopulated Palestinian towns, villages, and holy sites into refugee camps and diasporas evidences the queering of modern Palestinian identity in this sense. The emotion or impression that one is a perpetual stranger in one's birth land, without an inherent or stable representation of community identity, encourages one to cling vicariously to “the imagined.” Similarly, the possibility of a secure and collective Palestinian citizenship currently exists only in a fictive guise, as the narrative of perpetual conflict continues to shadow any vision of what a peaceful reality might look like. Thus it is increasingly difficult to speak of sexual politics without reference to grander institutional schemas.

The post-Oslo Palestine and gendering Palestinian citizenship

This article examines the gendering of Palestinian citizenship that occurred in the decade immediately following the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Based on extensive interviews, official documents and personal experience, it traces the evolution of women’s political, social and economic actions from the early charitable societies to a popular mass women’s movement. The article focuses on the secular, donor-driven proliferation of professional institutions emphasizing the externally imposed restrictions that defend the Palestinian Authority from charges of ‘neo-patrimonialism’, while at the same time offering a critique of the limitations of NGOs and institutions of ‘civil society’ existing in such a situation.