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Begin New Search Political Geography Israel Author Rashid I. Khalidi

1. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
As this issue went to press, prospective Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered himself of a glaring series of gaffes and insults about the Palestinians in a speech in Jerusalem whose level of pandering led even some of the mainstream media to wince, and the Daily Show (31 July 2012) to gleefully exploit his blunders. Romney grossly misstated the per capita GDP of both Palestinians and Israelis (a strange misstep for a candidate whose claim to fame is his business acumen), and ascribed the yawning economic gap between them to “culture” and the hand of Providence. But his failure to mention forty-five years of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as a factor holding the Palestinians back economically is lamentably not anomalous for an American politician. Romney is only one among many engaged in a dizzying race to the bottom when it comes to pandering to the most extreme Israeli positions and denigrating the Palestinians. Ignoring the elephant in the room, whether it is the occupation, or the failure of a so-called “peace process” to deliver peace for more than two decades, is par for the course in American political campaigns where Palestine is concerned.
Topic:
Culture
Political Geography:
America, Israel, Palestine, and Jerusalem

2. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Can Palestine achieve liberation unilaterally by state-building and economic growth, despite the ongoing constraints of a suffocating occupation? Is a two-state solution of any sort still possible, and is it even desirable? What more can we learn about key turning points in Palestine's history like 1917 and 1948? The articles and essays in this issue of the Journal address these and other concerns about Palestine.
Topic:
Intelligence and World Bank
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

3. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Since ISRAEL' S winter 2008–2009 offensive against the Gaza Strip, it has seemed that we are living through a period of après-Gaza. Whether it was because of the brutality of that offensive with its lopsided 100-to-1 casualty ratio, the unusually critical media treatment of Israel that eventually emerged, a greater international awareness of the pernicious nature of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Strip, or the ongoing impact of the Goldstone report, echoes of what happened then in Gaza have lingered on. It is of course too early to make a definitive judgment of the impact of the war on Gaza, but at least in the short term, it appears to have been a turning point.
Political Geography:
Israel and Egypt

4. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The role of U.S. presidents in making policy on Palestine is an insufficiently studied topic. Many believe that if the policy of a given administration is particularly favorable to Israel, this is entirely due to the president's predilections. Disappointment with the policies of the Obama administration after the high hopes raised by his initial declarations is based on this belief. Others are convinced that the Israel lobby is and has always been all powerful, imposing its views on different administrations. Neither of these views is correct. There is no question that a president's personal attitude is important, as could be seen during the Eisenhower and other administrations when U.S. policy showed a degree of balance between Israel and the Arabs. At the same time, the Israel lobby has grown much more powerful, especially since the 1980s and especially in Congress, where it initially focused its efforts and where it has virtually unchallenged influence.
Political Geography:
United States and Israel

5. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has increasingly been defined in terms of the resolution of the question of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967: East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. This purposely short-sighted focus neglects two facts: that the conflict commenced well before 1967, and that the majority of Palestinians live outside these areas. Thus, most discussions of a resolution of the conflict ignore the interests and rights of the 1.5 million Palestinians who live inside the State of Israel and who are vitally affected by issues like the demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
Political Geography:
Israel and Jerusalem

6. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
IN THIS ISSUE, JPS addresses many elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestine question that appeared to be immutable certainties but have recently come into question. One such element is the feasibility, and indeed the desirability, of a two-state resolution to the conflict. Many of those who feel that such an outcome is desirable have come to the conclusion that it has been rendered moot by Israel's ceaseless creation of facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. This growth of new thinking about Palestine and Israel is reflected in this issue's Open Forum section, which contains two pieces, one by a Swedish diplomat and another by an Israeli academic, that offer new alternatives and modifications to the well-known one- and two-state models for a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

7. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of JPS celebrates the work of the renowned anthropologist Rosemary Sayigh, a pioneer in the field of refugee studies and the first scholar to emphasize the signal importance of Palestinian refugees in the revival of Palestinian nationalism in the 1960s-notably in her pathbreaking Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, published thirty years ago. At the same time, Rosemary was one of the first researchers to examine issues of gender in Palestinian and Arab society, as her reliance on women as resources for her investigations revealed to her-and through her, to generations of readers- the crucial role played by women in the social and economic structure of Palestinian refugee camps and Palestinian political life.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

8. From the Editor

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Once again, Gaza dominates the news coming out of Palestine, where the aftershocks of Hamas's 2007 takeover continue to reverberate. With Hamas insisting on launching its rockets from the Strip, Israel's response has been predictable but brutal: almost daily armed incursions and one major operation. Of the more than 130 Palestinians killed this quarter (against four Israelis), the vast majority were Gazans, including many civilians. Meanwhile, the impact of the tightening siege and closure—the subject of growing international humanitarian concern—is taking its toll, slowly but surely driving the population to the breaking point. The centerpiece of the current JPS is also Gaza, but from a very different vantage point: Gaza's archeological wealth, and more particularly an unprecedentedly ambitious multi-stage archeological project launched with European and UNESCO backing. Astonishingly, few people in the United States—or for that matter the West Bank, underscoring the extent of separation between the two territories—have even heard of the project, despite the fact that it was inaugurated with a major exhibition showcasing Gaza's rich archaeological heritage that just closed at Geneva's Museum of Art and Archaeology. Thanks to Fareed Armaly, the exhibition's guest artist, JPS is the first to run his four fascinating interviews with the project's leading players. As Armaly himself notes, the importance of the interviews goes beyond Gaza, for they raise controversial issues confronting archaeology everywhere in the third world: development needs versus preserving the past, private interests versus public patrimony, methods of archaeological extraction, the role of poverty, pressures of urbanization, and so on. Also in this issue is an article addressing the economic dilemmas of a key segment of the Palestinian people: the 1.2 million who remain in Israel as citizens of the state. Economist Raja Khalidi, surveying the community after 60 years of failed integration, demonstrates how the Palestinian economies in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza are all part of a single Israeli-dominated economic regime. Starting from this position, he calls for a new economic paradigm capable of charting a course for Palestinian development based on restructuring relations between the two unequal economies along lines laid out in the economic annex to the 1947 partition plan. The issue also includes a review essay on Israel's other main disadvantaged (though far less so) community—the Mizrahim, or Jews of Middle Eastern origin—by Moshe Behar. Turning to less current subjects, anthropologist Sandy Sufian takes an unusual approach to history in her article analyzing political cartoons in Arabic and Hebrew newspapers during the great Palestinian Revolt of 1936–39 to show the use of body images to convey stereotypes of the adversary. Finally, returning to the archeological theme from a historical perspective, JPS is reprinting as a special document an article that appeared in Ha'Aretz on the destruction in 1948 by the Israeli army of sites important to Palestine's archaeology and history. These are casualties of war that often go overlooked.
Political Geography:
Geneva, United States, Europe, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

9. FROM THE EDITOR

Author:
Rashid I. Khalidi
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Sixty years ago the Zionist movement launched an all-out military offensive to establish a Jewish state in a country with a two-thirds Arab majority. Victories followed in quick succession as the well-organized,well-armed Haganah battled poorly coordinated Arab irregulars and local militias. On 18 April 1948, after the prelude of the Dayr Yasin massacre and the conquest of Arab villages in the Jerusalem corridor, the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Tiberias was captured and its entire Arab population bused to Transjordan. The attack against the Arab quarters of Haifa, Palestine's largest city, followed almost immediately; Haifa fell on 22 April. With the conquest of Arab Jaffa several weeks later, the fate of Palestine was sealed, and on 14 May 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed. This issue of JPS commemorates this first crucial phase of the 1948 war with two articles about those first key Zionist victories: Mustafa Abbasi's “The End of Arab Tiberias” and a reissue of Walid Khalidi's landmark 1959 article, “The Fall of Haifa,” with a new introduction and footnotes by the author. The two articles have different approaches, with Abbasi focusing especially on the background to the tragedy, tracing the deterioration of relations between Tiberias's Jewish and Palestinian communities, and Khalidi concentrating more on the immediate military and diplomatic background of the attack on Haifa and the progress of the battle itself. Both articles, however, highlight the extraordinary collusion between the Haganah and Britain, which in each case virtually turned the cities over to the Zionists. Sixty years after the Nakba, the political and physical fragmentation of what is left of Arab Palestine continues apace. The Palestinian national movement, meanwhile, is in tatters. The West Bank under the Palestinian Authority and Gaza under Hamas are totally cut off from one another. Gaza is under a draconian siege, facing a humanitarian disaster. With the PA leadership increasingly discredited by its cooperation with Israel, and internal Hamas leaders weakened by popular disapproval of their Gaza takeover, the need for reconciliation between the two has become urgent. Against this background, Hamas politbureau chief Khalid Mishal looms larger on the international stage. Mishal's extended interview with JPS, part I of which appears in the current issue, is thus particularly timely. While most interviews with the Hamas leader focus on the current situation, JPS has taken a longer view, foregrounding in particular his political formation, the influences that shaped him, and the founding of Hamas. The issue also contains the second installment of JPS's new Congressional Monitor, cataloguing all the initiatives pertaining to Israel and Palestine in the first session of the 110th U.S. Congress (January 2007 to January 2008). Once again, the cumulative impact of the initiatives is sobering, with little expected to change in the future. Finally, for the record, a special document file contains the main documents associated with the Annapolis Conference of November 2007.
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, Jerusalem, and Gaza