Political Geography: West Bank / Topic: Occupation

Author:: Michał Wojnarowicz and Szymon Zaręba
Publication Date:: 01-2020
Content Type:: Special Report
Institution:: The Polish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:: On 12 November 2019, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) issued a judgment on products from Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Golan Heights. It states that EU members are required to ensure that the origin is properly marked. The implementation of this requirement may cause disputes in the EU because of differences in Member States’ policies towards Israel. Tensions in relations with the U.S. are also possible, especially in the context of that country’s recent change in policy favouring the Israeli position on settlements. Hence, it is advisable for the EU to develop a uniform policy regarding imports and labelling of products from all occupied territories.
Topic:: International Law, Territorial Disputes, European Union, Occupation, Judiciary, and Trade
Political Geography:: Europe, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, North America, United States of America, West Bank, and Golan Heights

Author:: Avner Gvaryahu, Daniel Seidemann, Celine Touboul, and Bashar Azzeh
Publication Date:: 10-2019
Content Type:: Video
Institution:: Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:: While some corners of Washington and the international community are waking up to the reality of Israel's de facto annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and recurrent crisis in Gaza, few policymakers understand how the policies that have created this brutal and often tedious reality look like on the ground. This panel of seasoned Israeli experts will untangle the mess of occupation and annexation facing Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the decisions required to address Gaza’s chronic problems.
Topic:: Foreign Policy, Occupation, and Annexation
Political Geography:: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Jerusalem, Gaza, and West Bank

Author:: Gershon Hacohen
Publication Date:: 04-2019
Content Type:: Special Report
Institution:: The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:: This study explores the strategic-military implications of the establishment of a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 lines. Its central thesis is that the creation of such a state, on the heels of the IDF’s total withdrawal from the West Bank, will not only deprive Israel of defensible borders but will almost certainly lead to the advent of a terrorist entity like the one created in the Gaza Strip – at a stone’s throw from the Israeli heartland.
Topic:: Security, Terrorism, Military Strategy, Self Determination, and Occupation
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank

Author:: Christine Leuenberger
Publication Date:: 09-2019
Content Type:: Research Paper
Institution:: Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:: Maps and mapmaking have traditionally enjoyed the prestige of privileged and objective sources of knowledge. Within the geographic community and the public at large, it was assumed that the natural world was observable and could be rendered in pictorial form. Cartography is therefore not like psychoanalysis. It does not deal with internal phenomena hardly accessible to direct observation. Land and cityscapes do not need to be inferred or deduced. They are presumed to be susceptible to the scientific method in a most unproblematic fashion. Geographers, cartographers, historians of science, and science studies scholars, however, have increasingly questioned maps as objective representations. They have analyzed the social production of maps and maps’ link to society, culture, and geopolitics. They have found that mapmakers inevitably present a particular vantage point, one tied to certain social interests, values, and practices.
Topic:: Geopolitics, Occupation, Settler Colonialism, and Cartography
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank

Author:: Bassem Eid
Publication Date:: 03-2016
Content Type:: Video
Institution:: Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
Abstract:: Since 2007, Palestinians have become so divided that reconciliation is in the interest of neither Hamas nor Abbas. Bassem Eid discusses the internal politics and significance of this divide.
Topic:: Human Rights, Politics, Violent Extremism, Occupation, Conflict, and Violence
Political Geography:: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank

Author:: Shira Havkin
Publication Date:: 05-2011
Content Type:: Special Report
Institution:: Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:: Since 2006 the checkpoints along the borders of the West Bank and the Gaza strip have been reorganized and equipped with a new technological platform. They are now managed by private security firms. The instigators of these reforms speak of the "civilianization" of the checkpoints and justify their program on economic, organizational and humanitarian grounds. This detailed study of the concrete means by which the management of the Israeli checkpoints has been outsourced and commodified enables one to establish links between the evolution of Israeli society in terms of the relationship between the State, the market and society and the actual changes in the operation of the occupation. It would appear that this is not a case of the State receding in the face of market forces in a zero sum game. Rather it is the redeployment in a neoliberal context of the State in which it has adopted the uniquely Israeli layering of the public and the private, the national and the international, the State and civil society.
Topic:: Security, Economics, Human Rights, Science and Technology, Occupation, Neoliberalism, and Borders
Political Geography:: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank

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