Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
The Demise of the Oslo Process
Following the death of King Husayn and the accession of Abdullah II, the Clinton administration and the International Monetary Fund expressed their support for the new Jordanian ruler by committing $450 million in new aid on top of $225 million committed by the US earlier this year. The US is also increasing its annual grant to the Palestinian Authority from $100 to $400 million. Israel, on the other hand, will not receive the $1.2 billion it was promised at the October 1998 Wye summit. These financial measures are meant to sustain a Middle East peace process that has all but collapsed. King Husayn's death, the fall of Israel's Likud government, the scheduling of early Israeli elections and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to freeze implementation of the Wye accords have rendered progress in the peace process impossible for the foreseeable future. This has led to much speculation about the effects of political changes in Jordan and in Israel on the peace process. Such crystal ball-gazing obscures an underlying reality: the Oslo process was always unlikely to result in a just and stable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The Palestinian Economy: Between Imposed Integration and Voluntary Separation
Arie Arnon, Israel Luski, Avia Spivak and Jimmy Weinblatt, The Palestinian Economy: Between Imposed Integration and Voluntary Separation (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
Understanding Ghada: The Multiple Meanings of an Attempted Stabbing
I came to know Ghada, a young Palestinian village woman, during my 14 months of fieldwork in her village in the West Bank. Ghada’s village, located south of Bethlehem, is home to approximately 3,000 residents, all of whom are Muslims. Ghada gained notoriety in the village and the surrounding communities after she attempted to stab an Israeli soldier at the Israeli army-controlled checkpoint on the road that links Bethlehem to Jerusalem. This checkpoint marks the dividing line between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Although the whole area was still under Israeli military occupation when Ghada attempted her attack, the Bethlehem area has, since 1996, been under partial control of the Palestinian Authority.
The Containment Myth
Among those who direct American foreign policy, there is near unanimity that the collapse of communism represents a kind of zero hour. The end of the Cold War so transformed the geopolitical landscape as to render the present era historically discontinuous from the epoch that preceded it. Policy makers contend that America’s mission abroad has had to change to keep pace with these new circumstances.
The Enigmas of Shas
On April 23, 1997, the general secretary of Israel’s Sephardi orthodox Shas movement, Rabbi Aryeh Deri, was carried shoulder high above the roar of more than 20,000 adoring supporters gathered in the Givat Ram sports stadium in West Jerusalem. “We are all Deri,” was one chant; “Deri equals Dreyfus” was another.
The Myth of Gender Equality and the Limits of Women’s Political Dissent in Israel
The profuse media coverage showered upon Israel on its fiftieth anniversary largely failed to consider more critical perspectives that might have cast a different light on the celebrations. While some commented on the familiar divisions between secular and religious Jews, left and right, or immigrants and “native” Israelis, their analyses remained superficial. There was little or no attempt, including in the pages of such progressive magazines as The Nation and Tikkun, to examine how the Zionist project and the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict is based upon and, at the same time, masks not only ethnic and racial power relations but also gendered divisions of labor and power. [1]
Dayr Yasin Remembered
Noam Chomsky, commenting on the just released book Remembering Deir Yassin, notes that “the Deir Yassin massacre is a bitter symbol of a long history of terror and repression, to which — to our shame — we have contributed in many substantial ways, and still do. We should not only remember, but also rethink and understand, and more important, act to bring some measure of justice to people who have suffered gravely.”
Countering Israel’s Fiftieth on the Internet
The struggle over the historical record and popular memory of 1948 has reached the Internet. A number of websites and posted materials devoted to the Palestinian experience in 1948 known as the nakba (national catastrophe) offer a wealth of information to counter the virtual media silence about the victims of Israel’s independence. Two comprehensive nakba websites have been created by the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem (www.arabstudies.org/mainp.htm) and the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah (www.alnakba.org/), both of which provide historical accounts of the nakba, survivors’ testimonies, chronologies and photo galleries.
The Israeli Peace Movement
Mordechai Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996).
Iman Abdel Megid Hamdy, “Dissenters in Zion: The Bi-nationalist and Partitionist Trends in the Politics of Israel,” unpublished PhD dissertation (Cairo University, Department of Political Science, 1996).
Reuven Kaminer, The Politics of Protest: The Israeli Peace Movement and the Palestinian Intifada (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1996).
Simona Sharoni, Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
From the Editors (Summer 1997)
The construction of a new Jewish settlement at Jabal Abu Ghunaym is but the latest effort by the Israeli government to assert its sovereignty over East Jerusalem and preempt the “final status” talks on the city’s future. In addition to completing the inner ring of Jewish settlements around East Jerusalem, Har Homa will eliminate Jabal Abu Ghunaym as a land reserve for the natural growth of the surrounding Palestinian communities.
The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict After Oslo
Naseer Aruri, The Obstruction of Peace: The US, Israel and the Palestinians (Common Courage, 1995).
Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Verso, 1995).
“Palestine: Diplomacies of Defeat,” special issue of Race & Class 37/2 (October-December 1995).
Edward Said, Peace and its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (Vintage, 1996).
Graham Usher, Palestine in Crisis: The Struggle for Peace and Political Independence after Oslo (Pluto/Transnational Institute/MERIP, 1995).
On the Right to Dream, Love and Be Free
Michel Khleifi, born in Nazareth in 1950, studied theater and cinema at INSAS in Belgium, where he currently resides. In 1980, Khleifi directed his first film, Fertile Memory (al-Dhakira al-Khasiba). Khleifi received international acclaim following Wedding in Galilee (‘Urs fi al-Jalil, 1987), which won the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. His other films include Maloul Fete sa Destruction (Malul Tahtafil fi Dimariha, 1984), Canticle of the Stones (Nashid al-Hajar, 1990) and L’Ordre du Jour (1993).
Thwarting Palestinian Development
The preamble of the Protocol on Economic Relations between the Government of the State of Israel and the PLO, signed on May 4, 1994, states:
This protocol lays the groundwork for strengthening the economic base of the Palestinian side and for exercising its right of economic decision making in accordance with its own development plan and for exercising its right of economic decision making in accordance with its own development plan and priorities.” [1]
Palestinian Political Prisoners
Since the Oslo accords came into effect in May 1994, Israel’s treatment of Palestinian political prisoners has been a litmus test for a viable, just end to the Israeli occupation. Today the prisoners’ crisis continues to reflect an agreement that entrenches Israel’s remote control over Palestinians and commissions Yasser Arafat to deliver local compliance with the new order.
Political Negotiations on the Palestinian Refugee Question
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the Palestinian refugee question began with the first meeting of the Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs in 1992. After the 1993 Oslo accords, the question of the repatriation of the 1967 refugees to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip was to be dealt with immediately by a quadripartite committee composed of delegations from Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the PLO. The international community was to provide financial and technical assistance for large-scale programs to improve living conditions in Palestinian refugee camps in the diaspora, and for databanks and research.
Palestinian Authority, Israeli Rule
From September 23-26, Palestinian security forces and civilian demonstrators clashed with Israeli soldiers armed with machine guns and helicopters leaving approximately 80 Palestinians and 14 Israeli dead and 1,200 Palestinian and Israeli wounded. The pitched battles, which began in East Jerusalem the previous day and quickly spread to Ramallah, Bethlehem, the Gaza Strip and finally the rest of the West Bank, resulted in the worst bloodshed the Occupied Territories have witnessed since the June 1967 war. [1]
