Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Itineraries of Peace
In Near East Travel’s East Jerusalem office, a satellite photograph of the Middle East is framed under glass, inscribed with the names of countries and major cities. National borders are unmarked. The Holy Land — so the map is labeled — appears as a single, seamless territory.
A full-page advertisement for Galilee Tours, an Israeli company, features a mock road sign in green and white. A single arrow, diverging from a central vector with Tel Aviv at its base, points the way to Jerusalem, Amman and Petra, another to Tiberias and Damascus.
Recent Books on Palestinian Society
Marianne Heiberg and Geir Ovensen et al, Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions (FAFO, 1993).
Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Indiana, 1994).
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Free Press, 1993).
Ebba Augustin, ed., Palestinian Women: Identity and Experience (Zed, 1993).
Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands
Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (Cornell, 1993).
Stacking the Deck
For many Palestinians, the political success or failure of the Palestinian Authority (PA) hinges on its ability to bring rapid economic improvement to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where peoples’ livelihoods have been seriously eroded by the Israeli occupation, the intifada and the repercussions of the Gulf war. Some improvements in basic living standards after 30 years of occupation might stave off political opposition to the agreements sufficiently so as to give them a chance of working.
Transfers and Powers
The Declaration of Principles (DOP), signed between Israel and the PLO on September 13, 1993, provided the “agreed framework for the interim period.” [1] This was to be based on the establishment, through elections, of a Palestinian interim self-governing authority for a transitional period not exceeding five years. The jurisdiction of the council was to cover the West Bank and Gaza Strip with the notable exception of Israeli settlements.
Gaza’s Workers and the Palestinian Authority
The story of the January 1995 strike in a private health clinic in Gaza City was published in only one paper, al-Watan, a new weekly affiliated with Hamas. Neither al-Quds nor al-Nahar, dailies in tune with the Palestinian Authority (PA), reported on the first workers’ strike under Palestinian self-rule.
Justice in Transition?
Without quite the same resonance as “new world order” or “end of history,” another set of terms has rapidly become part of the international political discourse: “transition,” “democratization,” “reconstruction” and “building civil society.” Aside from their purely rhetorical uses, these terms describe real and complex political changes following collapses throughout the world of a variety of authoritarian regimes and their replacement by more democratic governments.
From the Editors (July/August 1995)
We have always been uncomfortable using the phrase “peace process” to refer to the actual dynamic of Palestinian-Israeli relations. The phrase in fact appropriates “peace” to refer exclusively to terms of American-Israeli imposition, and to exclude as “enemies of peace” those who insist that these terms are a recipe for continued conflict.
The Islamic Movement and the Palestinian Authority
Bassam Jarrar, a leading Islamist thinker in the Occupied Territories, is a teacher of Islamic studies at UNRWA’s Teacher Training Center in Ramallah in the West Bank and a member of the board of trustees of the Union of Islamic Scholars. He was among the 415 Palestinians expelled by Israel in December 1992 for alleged membership in the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Hanan Ashrawi, a professor of literature at Birzeit University, was the spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation to the bilateral peace talks in Washington. In early December, Ashrawi announced she would not serve in any official capacity in the new Palestinian authority, but would instead work to develop an independent human rights monitoring group. Joe Stork spoke with her in Jerusalem in late October 1993.
Your first response to this agreement was rather negative. Then you changed your mind. What was that process?
An Interview with Khalil Mahshi
Khalil Mahshi is headmaster of the Friends’ Boys School in Ramallah. Joe Stork spoke with him there in late October 1993.
How do you assess the accord and its importance?
I didn’t know how to react. When Israeli friends asked me, “Why aren’t you happy? It’s mutual recognition, it’s the beginning of a real peace,” I said I wasn’t so sure on either account. I wanted Israel to recognize the PLO, which stood for our struggle for a two-state solution, but I have a feeling it’s more like a surrender than a peace agreement. When I read the text I saw some positive things. I think it’s something we can work with.
An Interview with Samir Hleileh
Samir Hleileh, an economist who teaches at Birzeit University, is deputy director of the Palestinian Technical Committees and a liaison with the World Bank and other international agencies. Joe Stork spoke with him in late October 1993.
The Oslo agreement builds in an Israeli economic component to a surprising degree.
An Interview with Azmi Bishara
Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, teaches at Birzeit University. Joe Stork spoke with him in Jerusalem in late October 1993.
How do you assess the present situation?
For or against the agreement is no longer relevant. But I don’t think there’s anything to celebrate.
So you don’t think it’s any kind of a breakthrough?
Rabin’s Gaza “Goodwill Gesture”
Gazans stand in the wreckage of their home, destroyed by Israeli anti-tank missiles and dynamite. Some 20 families in the al-Amal quarter of Khan Yunis were made homeless on February 11 when more than 200 Israeli soldiers and border police carried out a 13-hour military assault in search of “terrorists.”
The troops ordered the families to evacuate their homes before dawn. The Palestinian men between ages 15 and 50 were herded into a nearby garage, bound and blindfolded. Troops fired anti-tank rockets and heavy shells into the houses, and then set dynamite charges inside the wreckage.
Teddy Kollek and the Native Question
On Saturday night, June 10, 1967, Israeli authorities informed more than 100 families living in the Moroccan Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City that they had three hours to evacuate their homes, where some had lived for generations. As Teddy Kollek, mayor of the western half of the city since 1965, recalled in his 1978 autobiography:
Growing Up In Jerusalem
Jamila Freij (Umm Sam‘an) was born in 1930 in “new” Jerusalem, what is now called West Jerusalem. Her family had lived in Jerusalem’s Old City for 15 generations until 1925 when her father and his brother built houses in Bak‘a (which means “beautiful area”), then an unpopulated land outside the Old City walls. The family fled their homes just days before the establishment of the state of Israel. They never returned. Umm Sam‘an describes their life in Bak‘a, their flight in 1948 and return to the Christian Quarter of the Old City, and the family&rsuqo;s disintegration.
