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21. Claiming Identities in Palestine: Migration and Nationality under the Mandate

Author:
Lauren Banko
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
In the decades just prior to the end of World War I, residents of the Ottoman Empire’s provinces alternated with ease between a variety of personal identities and affiliations. Overlapping imperial, supranational, and localized identities could all be claimed with flexibility by Arab travelers and migrants in the region and in the wider diaspora. Arab, and later Jewish, inhabitants of Palestine conceived of nationality as a choice based on personal understandings of identity that were not necessarily tied to domicile in a particular territory. This article traces the demise of such a notion of nationality, and its practical repercussions after 1918, showing how Palestine’s emigrants and immigrants did not immediately understand or reimagine themselves as part of the more rigid nationality system imposed by the British Mandate. Analyzing regional migration into and out of Palestine during the interwar period, the study seeks to explain the ways in which a system of flexible national affiliation transformed into a rigid system of nationality based on domicile.
Topic:
Migration and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Palestine

22. Legislating Exclusion: Palestinian Migrants and Interwar Citizenship

Author:
Nadim Bawalsa
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the British Mandate’s legal framework for regulating citizenship and nationality in Palestine following the post–World War I fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire. It argues that the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council prioritized the settlement and naturalization of Jews in Palestine, while simultaneously disenfranchising Palestinians who had migrated abroad. Ultimately, the citizenship legislation reflected British imperial interests as it fulfilled the promises made in the Balfour Declaration to establish in Palestine a homeland for the Jewish people, while it attempted to ensure the economic viability of a modern Palestine as a British mandated territory. Excluded from Palestinian citizenship by the arbitrary application of the Order-in- Council, the majority of Palestinian migrants during the 1920s and 30s never secured a legal mean
Topic:
Migration, International Security, International Affairs, and Diaspora
Political Geography:
Palestine

23. Return Migration and the Rise of the Palestinian Nouveaux Riches, 1870–1925

Author:
Jacob Norris
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article examines the figure of the returning émigré in late Ottoman and early Mandate Palestine. The wave of Palestinians who emigrated in the pre–World War I period did not, for the most part, intend to settle abroad permanently. Hailing largely from small towns and villages in the Palestinian hilly interior, they moved in and out of the Middle East with great regularity and tended to reinvest their money and social capital in their place of origin. The article argues that these emigrants constituted a previously undocumented segment of Palestinian society, the nouveaux riches who challenged the older elites from larger towns and cities in both social and economic terms. The discussion focuses in particular on their creation of new forms of bourgeois culture and the disruptive impact this had on gender and family relations, complicating the assumption that middle-class modernity in Palestine was largely effected by external actors.
Topic:
Migration and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Palestine

24. Interview with Ibrahim Dakkak (1929–2016) A Life of Struggle for Palestinian Rights

Author:
Salim Tamari
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
The passing of Ibrahim Dakkak in early June 2016 marked the departure of the last of the great socialist leaders of Palestine’s post-Nakba generation. Dakkak was known for multiple levels of activism, as a trade unionist, as an exponent of economic development and higher education, and as a political organizer. He was also widely recognized for his role as the chief architect in charge of the restoration of al-Aqsa Mosque after an arson attack in 1969. Politically, he was in the top leadership of three major movements inside the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt): al-Jabha al-wataniyya or Palestine National Front, a coalition launched in August 1973 that mobilized civil resistance to Israeli land confiscations and a whole host of other rights violations; Lajnat al-tawjih al-watani (the National Guidance Committee or NGC), established in 1978 to coordinate resistance efforts inside the oPt with the political leadership of the national movement based outside; and al-Mubadara al-wataniyya (the National Initiative Committee), which Dakkak cofounded with Mustafa Barghouti and Haidar Abdel-Shafi in the 1990s to counter the consequences of the Oslo Accords.
Topic:
Human Rights and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Palestine

25. Relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem is illegal, and is a reckless provocation

Author:
Walid Khalidi
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Kellyanne Conway, President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign manager, has stated that relocating the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a “a big priority” for the incoming administration. She added: “It is something that our friend in Israel, a great friend in the Middle East, would appreciate and something that a lot of Jewish-Americans have expressed their preference for." Meanwhile, in a passage that has since been removed from the online article, the Times of Israel has reported that the Trump transition team “has begun exploring the logistics of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv, and checking into sites for its intended new location,” adding that the site being considered was formerly the location of the Allenby Barracks,the site of the British army's Jerusalem garrison during the Mandate.
Topic:
International Security and Political Power Sharing
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

26. Obama’s Legacy on Israel/ Palestine

Author:
Josh Reubner
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
his retrospective assessment argues that despite the arrival in office in 2009 of a president who articulated the case for Palestinian rights more strongly and eloquently than any of his predecessors, U.S. official policy in the Obama years skewed heavily in favor of Israel. While a negotiated two-state resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continued to be the formal goal of the United States, Israel’s defiant refusal to stop settlement expansion, the administration’s determined actions to perpetuate Israeli impunity in international fora, as well as the U.S. taxpayer’s hefty subsidy of the Israeli military machine all ensured that no progress could be made on that score. The author predicts that with all hopes of a negotiated two-state solution now shattered, Obama’s successor will have to contend with an entirely new paradigm, thanks in no small part to the gathering momentum of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution
Political Geography:
America, Israel, and Palestine

27. The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Changing Discourse on Palestine

Author:
Phyllis Bennis
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This essay examines the discourse on Palestine/Israel in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, charting the impact of the Palestine rights movement on the domestic U.S. policy debate. Policy analyst, author, and long-time activist Phyllis Bennis notes the sea change within the Democratic Party evident in the unprecedented debate on the issue outside traditionally liberal Zionist boundaries. The final Democratic platform was as pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian as any in history, but the process of getting there was revolutionary in no small part, Bennis argues, due to the grassroots campaign of veteran U.S. senator Bernie Sanders. Bennis also discusses the Republican platform on Israel/Palestine, outlining the positions of the final three Republican contenders. Although she is clear about the current weakness of the broad antiwar movement in the United States, Bennis celebrates its Palestinian rights component and its focus on education and BDS to challenge the general public’s “ignorance” on Israel/ Palestine.
Topic:
International Security and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

28. Persevering through Colonial Transition: Nazareth’s Palestinian Residents after 1948

Author:
Leena Dallasheh
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Nazareth, the only Palestinian city to survive the 1948 war intact, became the social, economic, and political hub of Palestinian life in the postwar period. As such, it provides the ideal setting to study early Palestinian responses to the creation of Israel. This paper reexamines the ambivalent relationship between Nazareth’s political leadership and the newly established State of Israel to argue that the Palestinian citizens of Israel were neither traitors and collaborators, on the one hand, nor passively quiescent, on the other. Rather, as a new national minority, Palestinians overcame myriad forms of control as they negotiated the structural obstacles placed before them by their new overlords. Local Communist politicians, in particular, took a leading role to advocate on behalf of Nazarenes beset by the day-to-day hardships of poverty, hunger, displacement, and unemployment. The Israeli authorities harped on the Communist threat in response, echoing the Cold War rhetoric of the time
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Palestine

29. Language Matters: Talking about Palestine

Author:
Julie Peteet
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article explores the linguistic repertoires and conceptual categories that are discursive workhorses in the task of informing U.S. public opinion and shaping policy on Palestine. It situates language commodification in a modern settler- colonial context as it intersects with corporate public relations. The article probes two sites of knowledge production and circulation: the media and the academy. It argues that, ultimately, the media’s discursive strategies are handmaidens of violence, enabling and legitimizing colonial relations of displacement and domination. Shifting to academic discourse, particularly anthropology, the article engages with a few selected terms to explore emerging and alternative ways of conceptually framing Palestine.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Palestine

30. Perceptions of Palestine: The View from Large Linguistic Datasets

Author:
Terry Regier
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Cultural norms and trends are often reflected in patterns of language use. This article explores cultural perceptions of Palestine and Palestinians in the English- speaking world, through two analyses of large linguistic datasets. The first analysis seeks to uncover current conceptions of participants in the Israel- Palestine conflict, by identifying words that are distinctively associated with those participants in modern English usage. The second analysis asks what historical-cultural changes led to these current conceptions. A general theme that emerges from these analyses is that a cultural shift appears to have occurred recently in the English-speaking world, marked by greater awareness of Palestinian perspectives on the conflict. Possible causes for such a cultural shift are also explored.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Palestine