Palestinian Groups Research Articles

Genuine Palestinian cabbage: Myth or fact. Comparison between Palestinian and Belgian coronary artery bypass grafting

Background: Outcomes post-CABG serves as an indicator of the quality and effectiveness of care given by health care providers. The primary aim of this study is to describe outcomes such as mortality, morbidity, length of hospitalization and hospital readmission post-CABG between Ramallah Ministry of Health Hospital and Ghent University hospital. Methods: A retrospective study is conducted on 200 matched patients who underwent isolated CABG in Ramallah hospital and Ghent University hospital between 2009 and 2011. Both groups were followed up in the post-operative period for minimum one year. Inferential statistics were performed to find the presence of relationship among variables. Kaplan-Meyer was performed to compare overall survival rates and freedom from adverse events. The logistic model was used to assess all factors that associated with readmission, mortality, morbidity and hospital stay. Findings: Both groups had comparable patient characteristics and operative data. Risk factors of diabetes (50%) and smoking (60%) were higher in Palestinian patients compared to (29%) and (31%) in Belgian patients. The mortality rate slightly, being higher among the Palestinian group, was 4% compared to 2% among the Belgium group. Occurrence of morbidity was less noted among Palestinian patients compared to Belgium patients (23%, 36%, P = 0.044 respectively). Palestinian patients had shorter hospital stay (IQR = 6 - 10, P

Predictors of aggression among Palestinians in Israel and Gaza: Happiness, need to belong, and self-control

Abstract The present study examined a strong need for belonging (sensitivity to social rejection) as a risk factor and happiness and self-control skills as protective factors in predicting peer-directed aggression among 292 Israeli Palestinian Arab adolescents and 398 Gazan Palestinian Arab adolescents of similar ages (mean ~ 14 years). Findings demonstrated that the two Palestinian groups showed similar aggression rates, but Israeli Palestinians revealed higher self-control, higher happiness, and higher need for belonging than their Gazan peers. Moreover, each of the three predictors, separately, was significantly linked to aggression for the Israelis but not for the Gazans. Possible explanations are discussed related to sex, cultural differences, and life conditions.

Exploration of the Hamas Suicide Attacks

The majority of the Hamas suicide attacks were carried out by young fellows. There were various motivations for the suicide attacks, including four social factors. Firstly, the miserable experiences of the Palestinian people became a hotbed for the suicide attackers. Secondly, the wide public sympathy of suicide attackers among the Palestinian people provided support for Hamas and the suicide attacks. Thirdly, the Palestinians turned to violence as a last resort from the disappointment of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Finally, the Hamas suicide attacks had many religious factors. The Hamas suicide attack has two effects. One is that it causes the Palestinians and Israelis to fall into a vicious circle of ''violence to violence''; however it also strengthens Hamas's leading position as a resistant organization. Another is that it has caused the martyrdom culture to become popular in Palestine and inspired many Palestinians to join suicide attacks. In conclusion, the roots of the suicide attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian groups are found in Palestinian despair of the status quo and therefore, the Palestine issue

The Humanitarian Condition: Palestinian Refugees and the Politics of Living

In 1948 approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, going both to neighboring countries such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon and to the parts of Mandate Palestine that became the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Today, there are five million registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the agency charged with providing assistance to Palestinians across the Middle East. What it is to be a Palestinian refugee is shaped by a political geography of displacement, by dynamics within this dispersed community, and by humanitarian action. The Palestinian refugee community constitutes one of the largest and longest-lasting refugee populations in the world. The causes of both its creation and its longevity are subjects of tremendous political contention-and neither of these questions is my subject here. Rather, I explore the dynamics of longterm humanitarianism, looking particularly at the politics of living within a humanitarian space.I draw on research in the UNRWA archives in Amman, Jordan, and on ethnographic fieldwork I have been conducting in a refugee camp in Jordan, populated by a group of Palestinians with a particular history of double displacement. This research in the Jerash camp is part of a larger project for which I am working across the area of UNRWA operations - Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, and Gaza - to explore the effects of more than sixty years of living in a humanitarian order on Palestinian community and political life. Part of what I seek to understand is what happens as humanitarianism moves from crisis response to a condition of life. Humanitarian practice clearly shifts from disaster relief - provision of food, clothing, emergency shelter - to efforts that look more like social service work and development projects. How are people and communities shaped by this transformation and by living, longterm, in a humanitarian condition? It should be noted that while the length of the Palestinian refugee experience is unusual, protracted refugees (people living for extended periods of time without being either resettled or returned home) constitute a large, and growing, segment of the global refugee population.1The anthropological literature on humanitarianism, to which I have contributed, and much of it in conversation with Giorgio Agamben's arguments about bare life, has highlighted the limits and ethical constraints of humanitarian action.2 This research has explored the ways humanitarianism can reduce the people it seeks to help to mere victims - objects of compassion, but restricted in their capacity to act as full subjects in their own right.3 It has illuminated the hierarchies that are built into a project made up of helpers and victims, one in which some can choose to make sacrifices to assist the helpless while other people are themselves sacrificed in other people's wars and conflicts.4 The anthropological exploration of the depoliticizing effects of humanitarianism intersects with policy-oriented debates about whether humanitarian agencies should take political positions in their work, or whether they should remain neutral, impartial, and nonpolitical in their missions.5 The focus on how humanitarianism constrains and disables has illuminated crucial dynamics of a field that is generally valorized as doing good, but these constraints are not all that needs to be understood about humanitarian effects. In looking at a long-term humanitarian condition, I examine what happens within such a humanitarian order. I ask: what forms of action are enabled by humanitarian materials and practices? What kinds of relationships are produced by humanitarian categories and procedures? What are the lifeworlds that take shape within the humanitarian space and through the humanitarian condition?The Politics of Living in the Humanitarian SpaceIn order to think about the politics of living within humanitarianism, it is necessary to say a bit more about what humanitarianism is. …

Triadic Deterrence: Coercing Strength, Beaten by Weakness

Triadic deterrence is the situation when one state uses threats and/or punishments against another state to coerce it to prevent non-state actors from conducting attacks from its territory. Under what conditions is triadic deterrence successful? Some attribute outcomes to the balance of power between states. By contrast, we argue that the complex asymmetrical structure of this conflict requires attention to the targeted regime's relationship to its own society. The stronger the targeted regime, the more likely deterrent action will prove effective. Moving against non-state actors requires institutional capacity, domestic legitimacy, and territorial control, which only strong regimes are able to furnish. Whereas strong regimes can act to uphold raison d’état, weak regimes lack the political tools and incentives to undertake controversial decisions and enforce them. We illustrate this argument through analysis of between- and within-case variation in Israel's attempts to deter Palestinian groups operating from Egypt between 1949 and 1979, and from Syria since 1963.

A Balance of Fear: Asymmetric Threats and Tit-for-Tat Strategies in Gaza

This article looks at the use of ultra-short-range rockets by Palestinian militant factions in the Gaza Strip as part of the overall dynamic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and as a tool employed within internal Palestinian rivalries. Against the background of the gross military asymmetry between the parties to the conflict, it assesses the strategic utility of the rockets, including their psychological value as an "equalizer" to Israeli attacks. The article scrutinizes Israel's options to counter the rocket threat and identifies steps toward containing violence in Gaza. While bearing in mind that several Palestinian militant groups are involved in the production, acquisition, and firing of rockets, this article focuses on Hamas because, due to its leadership role in the Gaza Strip, a solution for the rocket issue will not be found without factoring in and providing a role for the Islamic organization.

Islamist women of Hamas: between feminism and nationalism

In December, 1995, when Hamas announced the establishment of the Islamic National Salvation Party, a political organisation separate from its military wing, it opened the way for involvement of the Islamic movement in the political processes brought about in the West Bank and Gaza with the signing of the Oslo Accords and the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority. In speaking of the rights of different groups, including women, in its founding statement, and in setting up in Gaza a Women's Action Department, the new Party opened its doors to the ‘new Islamic woman’ and to a significant evolution in Islamist gender ideology in Gaza, if not in the West Bank – where, due to Hamas' policy there of targeting only males, there exists no parallel to the Salvation Party or organisational support for women like that represented by the Women's Action Department in Gaza. Hamas' gender ideology, like that of the secularist parties, remains contradictory, and doors to women's equality only partly open; nevertheless, Islamist women have managed to build impressive, well‐organised women's constituencies among highly educated and professional women coming from poor and refugee backgrounds; and the Salvation Party shows an increasing tendency to foster gender equality and more egalitarian social ideals, while holding fast to the agenda of national liberation. These advances have been achieved both through alternative interpretations of Islamic legal and religious texts, and through positive engagement with the discourses of other groups, whether secular feminists or nationalists. In contrast, secularists are losing ground by advocating a discourse of rights in isolation from the national agenda and in the absence of a mobilising organisation. These developments suggest possibilities for mutual accommodation between Islamist and other Palestinian groups. They suggest also that the nature of the state proposed by Islamists will depend to a large extent on the visions and challenges posed by other nationalist and secularist groups.

…To the Shores of Tripoli

…To the Shores of Tripoli

Sociological Study on the Social Identity of Palestinian Youth in Two Palestinian Camps (Arabic)

Sociological study of Palestinian refugee youth in two Palestinian refugee camps (Askar camp- Nablus and Jenin refugee camp). This paper examines the Palestinian refugee youth identity as envisaged by themselves and by the society. It will further tackle the impact of the refugee camp per se on the formulation of Palestinian group identity as a symbol of Al Nakba and suffering. It will further examine the components of the Palestinian refugee youth social identity, interalia, religious, political and cultural.

Slaughtered innocents: child victims in political discourse during the Second Intifada and Gaza conflict

Throughout the course of the early years of the Second Intifada, discourses of innocent child victimhood were in frequent use in statements to the western media from both Israeli and Palestinian groups, and in American and British media commentary on the conflict. This discourse has had important political consequences within and beyond the region. This paper will explore the social and political context of these discourses and the diverse actors that mobilised them. It will also analyse their role in legitimating acts of state and non-state violence, including during the 2009 Gaza conflict.

Islamist Women of Hamas : Between Feminism and Nationalism

In December, 1995,when Hamas announced the establishment of the Islamic National Salvation Party, a political organisation separate from its military wing, it opened the way for involvement of the Islamic movement in the political processes brought about in the West Bank and Gaza with the signing of the Oslo Accords and the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority. In speaking of the rights of different groups, including women, in its founding statement, and in setting up in Gaza a Women’s Action Department, the new Party opened its doors to the ‘new Islamic woman’ and to a significant evolution in Islamist gender ideology in Gaza, if not in the West Bank -- where, due to Hamas’ policy there of targeting only males, there exists no parallel to the Salvation Party or organisational support for women like that represented by the Women’s Action Department in Gaza. Hamas’ gender ideology, like that of the secularist parties, remains contradictory, and doors to women’s equality only partly open ; nevertheless, Islamist women have managed to build impressive, well-organised women’s constituencies among highly educated and professional women coming from poor and refugee backgrounds ; and the Salvation Party shows an increasing tendency to foster gender equality and more egalitarian social ideals, while holding fast to the agenda of national liberation. These advances have been achieved both through alternative interpretations of Islamic legal and religious texts, and through positive engagement with the discourses of other groups, whether secular feminists or nationalists. In contrast, secularists are losing ground by advocating a discourse of rights in isolation from the national agenda and in the absence of a mobilising organisation. These developments suggest possibilities for mutual accommodation between Islamist and other Palestinian groups. They suggest also that the nature of the state proposed by Islamists will depend to a large extent on the visions and challenges posed by other nationalist and secularist groups.

The making of a human bomb: an ethnography of Palestinian resistance

In The Making of a Human Bomb , Nasser Abufarha, a Palestinian anthropologist, explains the cultural logic underlying Palestinian martyrdom operations (suicide attacks) launched against Israel during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–06). In so doing, he sheds much-needed light on how Palestinians have experienced and perceived the broader conflict. During the Intifada, many of the martyrdom operations against Israeli targets were initiated in the West Bank town of Jenin and surrounding villages. Abufarha was born and raised in Jenin. His personal connections to the area enabled him to conduct ethnographic research there during the Intifada, while he was a student at a U.S. university. Abufarha draws on the life histories of martyrs, interviews he conducted with their families and members of the groups that sponsored their operations, and examinations of Palestinian literature, art, performance, news stories, and political commentaries. He also assesses data—about the bombers, targets, and fatalities caused—from more than two hundred martyrdom operations carried out by Palestinian groups between 2001 and 2004. Some involved the use of explosive belts or the detonation of cars; others entailed armed attacks against Israeli targets (military and civilian) undertaken with the intent of fighting until death. In addition, he scrutinized suicide attacks executed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad between 1994 and 2000. In his analysis of Palestinian political violence, Abufarha takes into account Palestinians’ understanding of the history of the conflict with Israel, the effects of containment on Palestinians’ everyday lives, the disillusionment created by the Oslo peace process, and reactions to specific forms of Israeli state violence. The Making of a Human Bomb illuminates the Palestinians’ perspective on the conflict with Israel and provides a model for ethnographers seeking to make sense of political violence.

The use of forged passports of foreign nationals in international criminal activity

A passport is the property of the State which issues it. As such no State or other legal entity has a right to alter an existing passport of a holder or forge false documentation purporting to have been issued by a State. The fundamental issue therefore, is whether a State or instrumentality of that State can use a forged passport with impunity, particularly in the course of criminal activity. On 19 January 2010, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, considered to be a senior commander of Hams, a radical Palestinian group, was assassinated at a hotel in Dubai in a manner usually employed by professionally trained military and secret service agencies. The killing was attributed to Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Quite apart from the criminality of the assassination, the issue of the use of forged passport was brought to bear by some countries which alleged that the perpetrators of the crime had allegedly forged passports that seemingly belonged to those countries. This international incident sparked off a legal and diplomatic discussion in the media as to the responsibility and liability of States—which condone or allow the use of these forged documents—towards those States that are affected. This article discusses the position at international law with regard to the falsification of passports.

The strategic calculus of terrorism: Substitution and competition in the Israel—Palestine conflict

Previous work on the dynamics of conflicts where we see terrorism has tended to focus on whether we see shifts in attack mode following government countermeasures. We contend that many factors other than counterinsurgency can influence whether groups resort to terrorism, including competition between groups, as well as their relationship to public opinion and other political events. Hence, understanding terrorist tactics in prolonged conflicts with multiple actors requires us to consider a more general framework of innovation, imitation, competition and dependence between actors. We use disaggregated data on terrorist attacks, counterterrorism and public opinion in the Israel—Palestine conflict to jointly evaluate predictions derived from several conventional theories of strategic behaviour. We find that the strategic calculus of Palestinian groups is complex and cannot be treated as time invariant. Our results suggest that factors such as the degree of public support, inter-group competition, the anticipation of countermeasures and non-trivial non-violent payoffs have an observable effect on the strategic behaviour of the Palestinian groups, and that structural relationships are often far from constant over time.

The E-Marketing Strategy of Hamas

Given the growth of Internet research in recent years, it is rather surprising that research of online terrorism and countermeasures has been lacking theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The present study suggests applying the concepts and models taken from e-marketing to the study of terrorist websites. This work proves that when Hamas builds an array of sites in the Internet, it complies with the same rules that the Western business world follows. Chaffey et al. (2000) constructed a model comprised of eight decision points in the process of building a business-oriented Internet site. Although the model was developed for commercial purposes, the present study demonstrates how it could be used as an analytic framework to study terrorist websites. As shown, most of the decision points in the model were relevant to the Palestinian Information Center group of websites. Understanding the e-marketing strategy of Hamas will allow the construction of a competing marketing strategy in order to market rival ideological consumer products.

Agents of Destruction? Applying Principal-Agent Analysis to State-Sponsored Terrorism

This article evaluates state-sponsored terrorism as a principal-agent issue. More often applied to the study of licit national or international institutions as a way to improve their governance, we argue that applying principal-agent analysis to illicit relationships such as those between states and terrorist agents is an equally fruitful application, though one with different objectives. Rather than being used as a tool to improve governance, applying principal-agent analysis to illicit relationships such as state-sponsored terrorism may point to areas of susceptibility and thus inform more effective counterterrorism strategies. In this article, we explain why states delegate to terrorist groups, how they seek to control their agents, and the tensions in the relationship, both generally and through specific reference to Iran’s sponsorship of Hizballah, Syria of various Palestinian groups, and the Taliban of al-Qa’ida. This analysis yields propositions about the conditions under which states are likely to delegate to terrorist groups and specific recommendations on how principal-agent problems of these illicit relationships may be used in practice to combat terrorism.

Who is More Humane? An Ethnographic Account of Power Struggles in Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Encounters

This study addresses the question of majority-minority relations in situations of intractable conflict (Bar-Tal 2000). The study focuses on processes involved in the majority Jewish group’s construction of images of the Palestinian minority group, all citizens of Israel, while participating in a structured dialogue encounter conducted at Tel Aviv University in Israel. In this dialogue, it was observed that negative inhumane images that the Jews have of the Palestinians were notably expressed by the Jewish group in three situations: to cope with distress when their morality was challenged by the Palestinian group; to preserve the Jewish group's superiority and hegemony in Israel; and to preserve or restore the Jewish group's power. The study also examines the gradual processes of change that the Jewish group experienced while becoming aware that dehumanization strategies are practices that preserve dominance. This study contributes to a better understanding of the importance of addressing the iconic representations and images that majority groups hold of minority groups, and suggests the need to challenge the practice of power through the use of these representations and images when facilitating group encounters.

What Rosemary Saw: Reflections on Palestinian Women as Tellers of the Palestinian Present

Referencing the ‘‘stereotypes of self’’ identified by Rosemary Sayigh in the life stories of Palestinian camp women in Lebanon who had lived through the Palestinian resistance, the author focuses on the narratives of two women in Ramallah's Am'ari refugee camp since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada to reflect on the Palestinian present. Though the women——and their goals and struggles——could not be more different, their narratives reveal significant shifts in self-representation that reflect both the impact of post-Oslo political realities and the new (unattainable) aspirations fueled by satellite television images and Ramallah caféé culture. The narratives also reflect, in very different ways, the national crisis, the impotence of Palestinian political groups and institutions, and the erosion of solidarities.

Suicide Campaigns as a Strategic Choice: The Case of Hamas

This article examines the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas as a case study of an organization engaging in suicide campaigns as a result of a strategic choice. It examines the political, cultural and strategic preconditions that make this choice possible. In order to do this, the article also examines the interaction between Hamas and Palestinian society--how Hamas gains support at the grassroots level and how it in turn operates to Islamize the society and how Hamas came to a turning point where its political leadership found that starting suicide campaign was a necessary strategic choice. The article refers to Hamas suicide campaigns in 1994-96 and 2001-04. Hamas achieved its campaign goals: the campaigns sabotaged the peace process and Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006. The suicide missions represented a big shift away from Hamas' previous policies and strategies. Language: en

Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees: Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said (review)

Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees: Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said, edited by Nur Masalha. London & New York: Zed Books, 2005. 300pp. $18.95. Catastrophe Remembered is an anthology that forthrightly presents the narrative and sense of victimization at the hands of victorious Zionists and Israelis. The volume is dedicated to the memory of the Palestinian-American literary scholar, Edward Said; its essays both salute and draw upon Said's contributions to literary theory and to studies, and they continue Said's legacy of articulate advocacy on behalf of the Palestinians. Readers sympathetic to Said will recognize this anthology as a worthy tribute to this prominent engage intellectual. Its eleven articles, written by scholars and journalists of Palestinian, Israeli, and international origin, address a number of controversial issues: the birth of Israel and the resulting internal refugees, their history, the legacy of their habitations and names, the uses of memory, the special significance of oral histories, the development of identity, and Israeli attitudes to memory. Said's detractors, on the other hand, are many. Some of these critics have viewed Said with deep suspicion, and others have vilified him with the title Professor Terror-whether for the incitement they perceived in his outspoken views or for having once committed the offense of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers across the Lebanese border. These readers will find little to impress them in this volume, or to change their minds about who is to blame for the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli impasse. But for anyone who is open to learning more about aspects of the conflict that relate to Israel's Arab citizens and the social and historical issues that affect them, this anthology is a valuable introduction to a greater body of literature. The core of the collection is the section on Palestinian Oral History and Memory. This is a key entry-point for anyone wishing to understand the narrative and how it is distinct from its rival Zionist-Israeli counterpart, which is much more embedded in diplomatic documents and written memoirs (zikhronot). The essay by Mahmoud 'Issa, a refugee historian living in Denmark, illustrates why oral history is so central to the narrative. During the Oslo years 'Issa returned for the first time with a group of Palestinians from Denmark to Lubya, the Galilean village of their origin, and he movingly recorded their spontaneous responses to revisiting the place of their youth. As a peasant society, it still flowed with the rhythms of the seasons, sowing and planting, cultivating and harvesting. The visitors recalled the surfaces of the land in astounding detail; they remembered the local folklore. Pieced together, their various recollections corroborated each other, revealing a distinct existence centered on village and clan. The reader begins to sense the enormity of their sense of loss. One particularly eye-opening contribution to this anthology is by Eitan Bronstein, who writes about Israeli-Jewish awareness of the catastrophe-known in Arabic as al-Nakba. Through his organization Zokhrot (Hebrew for remembering in the feminine plural form, to deliberately underline its non-hegemonic, conciliatory undertones), Bronstein is committed to teaching the history of the Palestinians and their commemoration of the Nakba to Israeli Jews. …