Occupation
Final Status in the Shape of a Wall
In Jayyous, a village of 3,000 in the northern West Bank, Najah Shamasneh cradles her granddaughter in her lap and listens to her husband Yusuf tell of the loss of their agricultural land. The Shamasneh family's 25 dunams (about 6.25 acres), their sole source of income, now lies on the western side of the wall that Israel is erecting in the West Bank.
Why There’s No Peace in Palestine
On September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat signed a Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, heralding the beginning of the Oslo peace process. Ten years later, the process is completely deadlocked. Israel has decided to “remove” Arafat, and many outside observers are left wondering what went wrong. The answer lies in the fundamental failure of the Oslo process to address the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Reading Palestine-Israel
Works Reviewed
Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Learning Lessons from the Algerian War of Independece
On May 9, 2002, Tony Judt, professor of history at New York University, began an essay on Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation with a quote from Raymond Aron’s book on the 1954-1962 Algerian War of Independence from French colonial rule. [1] France, Aron argued, could not impose its administration on the Algerians indefinitely nor was it willing to integrate them into French society. Until they left Algeria, Aron argued, the French were harming themselves more than the Algerians.
Palestinians Debate “Polite” Resistance to Occupation
When an August 2002 opinion poll released by the US-based NGO Search for Common Ground showed that majorities of Palestinians would support a non-violent intifada, many residents of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem greeted the results with suspicion. "They're trying to make us be 'polite,'" one leader of the Fatah youth movement laughed bitterly. The poll itself was dangerous, he suggested, possibly part of an insidious effort to convince Palestinians to give up resistance to the Israeli occupation.
The Makings of a Political Trial
The Marwan Barghouti case has been labeled a “political trial” by Israelis and Palestinians alike. In the courtroom, Israel is trying Barghouti for terrorism. In the court of public opinion, the Israeli government is using the prosecution of Barghouti to discredit the Palestinian leadership and Palestinian resistance to occupation. Barghouti, in turn, is using the event to put Israel on trial.
The Costs of Chaos in Palestine
Israel has launched a comprehensive war of attrition in the Occupied Territories, whose objective is a decisive military victory leading to prolonged interim arrangements dictated by Israel. Facing these overwhelming odds, the Palestinians remain plagued by a crisis of leadership that has already exacted a high price indeed.
Grave Breaches
There are several things that strike you when first entering Jenin refugee camp: images of the Star of David spray-painted on the walls, the exposed fronts of houses which had been bulldozed, half-set tables, children’s toys scattered and then, as you approach Hawashin, a strong sweet odor. The Hawashin area of the camp, some 400 by 500 square meters in size, and comprised of about 140 homes and several hundred families, has been erased. An elderly man stands near the remains of a house at the area’s western edge; his daughter’s body lies underneath.
Postmortem of a Compassionate Checkpoint
In late October 2000, the intifada was in its then bloodiest throes. In his offices in Stockholm harbor, architect Alexis Pontvik followed the news from the Middle East with growing disquiet but little surprise. What perhaps would have been his most prominent project to date had already been stowed in a large steel drawer, but he had pored over it often enough to understand the frustrations that eventually came to a boil in the Palestinian territories.
From the Editors (Summer 2002)
At least 700,000 people jammed the streets of New York on June 12, 1982 to demand full disarmament from the heads of state gathered to discuss nuclear policy at the United Nations. The raucous crowd's chants of "No nukes!" drew favorable comment from German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who praised the "great and positive moral force" protesting outside the UN building.
In Ramallah, Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
He was the tallest of the Palestinian policemen. Thin, his olive drab uniform ballooning over his boots, he swayed momentarily as a helmeted Israeli soldier stood behind him and tucked the muzzle of a gun into the Palestinian's right armpit, keeping his finger on the trigger. Only then did the line of crouching soldiers descend down the driveway into the Ramallah apartment. The Palestinian, his hands in the air, shielded them on their way.
