The Nakba—a mini-holocaust for the Palestinians—is a key point in the history of Palestine and Israel: In 1948, a country and its people disappeared from international maps and dictionaries. The Nakba resulted in the destruction of much of Palestinian society, and much of the Arab and Islamic landscape was obliterated by the Israeli state—a state created by a an settler-colonial community that immigrated into Palestine in the period between 1882 and 1948. About 90 percent of the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from the territory occupied by Israel in 1948–49—many by psychological warfare, a large number at gunpoint. After 1948, the historic Arabic names of geographical sites were replaced by newly coined Hebrew names, some of which resembled biblical names.
Occupied lands for Israel without incorporating the people on the land—the Palestinians. This set in motion a set of practices—expropriation of land, expansion of settlements (all of them illegal), and erection of walls to prevent Palestinians from reaching their lands—that collectively constitute occupation. Palestinians in the territories thus have become outsiders who are denied access to the “inside.” Walls and Israeli roads should be understood “as an effect rather than a cause” (p. 30); the real problem is the occupation itself, which demands such practices. This has led to the division of the West Bank into “three or four large pieces, plus East Jerusalem” (p. 57). These divisions, of both Palestinians and their lands, have been codified by the Oslo negotiations, which also produced a compliant Palestinian leadership incapable of advancing the national rights of Palestinians.
Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence is a daring attempt to analyze the thinking of Hamas as a social movement and not simply as a terrorist organization. Using a combination of political theory and empirical research, Jeroen Gunning, a lecturer in international politics at the University of Wales (and deputy director of the university's Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence), contextualizes issues of democracy, religion, and violence as they relate to Hamas. Methodologically, Gunning offers an extensive discussion of his interpretive ethnographic fieldwork in the Gaza Strip (conducted 1997–2004), taking his analysis beyond the straightforward causality or correlation of mainstream political science. The main merit of the book, however, rests in Gunning's attempt to wed the study of Hamas's discourse to the study of its actual practices regarding religion, democracy, and violence.
This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.
This section includes articles by Israeli journalists and commentators that have been selected for their frank reporting, insightful analyses, or interesting perspectives on events, developments, or trends in Israel and the occupied territories.
The Quarterly Update is a summary of bilateral, multilateral, regional, and international events affecting the Palestinians and the future of the peace process.
This section covers items-reprinted articles, statistics, and maps-pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East
, and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material.