Christians United for Israel, the Zionist lobby group that has grown by leaps and bounds since its founding two years ago, held its second annual conference in Washington, D.C., July 2007. Attended by political figures and rank-and-file members alike, the AIPAC-style conference showcased the group's formidable financial, organizational, and political strength, signaling that the group seems poised to set the agenda for future Christian Zionist work in the United States.
This section is part ninety-five of a chronology begun in JPS 13, no. 3 (Spring 1984). Chronology dates reflect Eastern Standard Time (EST). For a more comprehensive overview of events related to the al-Aqsa intifada and of regional and international developments related to the peace process, see the Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy in this issue.
This section lists articles and reviews of books relevant to Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Entries are classified under the following headings: Reference and General; History (to 1948) and Geography; Palestinian Politics and Society; Jerusalem; Israeli Politics, Society, and Zionism; Arab and Middle Eastern Politics; International Relations; Law; Military; Economy, Society, and Education; Literature and Art; Book Reviews; and Reports Received.
Harvard political economist Sara Roy is the leading researcher and most widely respected academic authority on Gaza today. Her monographs include The Gaza Strip Survey (1986), The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (1995, 2001), and the forthcoming Between Extremism and Civism: Political Islam in Palestine (2008). The present volume consists of previously published essays, arranged thematically, with a new preface, overall introduction, and two-chapter conclusion. There are four parts, each providing a fresh introduction that updates and contextualizes Roy's arguments.
As a discipline, refugee studies is of a recent vintage and very much influenced by the more established tradition of migration studies. Analysis of (voluntary) migration tends to focus on individuals rather than groups. To the extent that groups are considered, they are treated as aggregates of individuals rather than as cohesive social units in the sociological sense of constituting communities with shared common historical experiences (Shami 1993). In contrast with immigrant status, refugee status is the outcome of involuntary forms of migration, in which displacement is often caused by events beyond the control of refugees, such as internal and external wars, state policies of expulsion and exclusion, development projects, and natural disasters.