Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech, which followed Palestinian pres. Mahmud Abbas's, was sharply critical of the United Nations, and emphasized Israel's unflagging efforts to reach a just peace in the face of multifold threats, the most recent and gravest being Islamist fanaticism. Though reiterating his often-expressed hope that the Palestinians will become a partner in peace and finally recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the speech was vague on specific reasons (beyond Palestinian intransigence) for the stalled negotiations. When Netanyahu took the podium following a standing ovation for Abbas, a number of delegates left the assembly hall, prompting him to state: "I did not come here to win applause. I came here to speak the truth." The speech was taken from the Israeli Prime Minister's.
Much of President Obama's speech was taken up with surveying the year's progress with regard to ending conflicts and realizing democracy and human rights (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, the Arab Spring). His remarks on the Israel-Palestine conflict, reproduced below, were less optimistic, and contrasted with his UN General Assembly address of September 2010, which gave a nod to the Palestinian demand for a settlement moratorium with tentative support. In this year's address, the burden of responsibility seemed to lie squarely with the Palestinians, leading some critics to speak of a "final capitulation to the Israeli position." The text of Obama's speech was distributed by the White House press office.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, New York, Israel, Palestine, Arabia, United Nations, and South Sudan
Veteran U.S. foreign policy experts Robert Blackwell (a former senior State Department official and National Security Council aide) and Walter Slocombe (a former Pentagon official) wrote the following feature piece in the Jerusalem Post at a time when regional instability generated by the Arab Spring revived debate over whether Israel was a strategic asset or liability to the United States. The authors argue for maintaining the U.S. - Israel special relationship not only on the grounds of "shared values and morality" but also because of the benefits derived from bilateral security coordination. The excerpts below highlight the deep military and intelligence ties existing between Israel and the United States.
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 (through 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, Arts, and Culture; Book Reviews; and Reports Received.
This essay analyzes the impact of Israeli unilateralism-specifically that of its settlement project-on the two-state solution. After exploring the relationship between unilateralism and power, the authors show, inter alia, that in-migration has accounted for about half the settlement growth since the international embrace of the land-for- peace formula in 1991, that the level of in-migration does not fluctuate according to government composition (right or left), and that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have spurred rather than inhibited settlement expansion. The essay is framed by a contrast with the Palestinian bid for full UN membership, rejected as unilateralism by the Western powers but in fact aimed at undercutting Israeli unilateralism and creating the conditions for meaningful negotiations.
Coping with (and adapting to) climatological hazards is commonly understood in intergovernmental and aid agency for a as a purely technical matter. This article examines the UN Development Programme's stakeholder consultations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to challenge the donor-driven technical-managerial framing of Palestinian climate vulnerability by showing how Israeli occupation practices exacerbate environmental stresses. While emphasizing the importance of social, economic, and political contexts in shaping populations' responses to climate change in general, the authors demonstrate the multiple ways in which the occupation specifically compounds hazards reveals it as constitutive of Palestinian climate vulnerability.
Since its creation in 1987, Hamas has been at the forefront of armed resistance in the occupied Palestinian territories. While the movement itself claims an unbroken militancy in Palestine dating back to 1935, others credit post-1967 maneuvers of Israeli Intelligence for its establishment. This article, in assessing these opposing narratives and offering its own interpretation, delves into the historical foundations of Hamas starting with the establishment in 1946 of the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (the mother organization) and ending with its emergence as a distinct entity at the outbreak of the first intifada. Particular emphasis is given to the Brotherhood's pre-1987 record of militancy in the Strip, and on the complicated and intertwining relationship between the Brotherhood and Fatah.
In the near 20 years since the Oslo peace process began, Palestinians have suffered losses-socially, economically and politically-arguably not seen since 1948. This altered reality has, in recent years, been shaped by critical paradigm shifts in the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is understood and addressed. These shifts, particularly with regard to international acceptance of Palestine's territorial fragmentation, the imperative of ending Israel's occupation, the de facto annexation of West Bank lands to Israel, and the transformation of Palestinians into a humanitarian issue-have redefined the way the world views the conflict, diminishing the possibility of a political resolution.
The period of the British Mandate rule in Palestine is of great significance for the modern history of Christianity in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, because it represents an important transition point between the end of four centuries of Ottoman rule and the formation of the modern states of Israel and Jordan. It is surprising, however, that while the importance of the Mandate for the Christian churches is often noted, it has to date been an understudied area. Hence Laura Robson's book Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine is especially welcome.
Yitzhak Rabin was better known for his early role in the so-called peace process rather than for his role in the aerial bombardment, massacre, and expulsion of the people of al-Lydd and al-Ramlah in July 1948. The few families that survived and remained came under Israeli military rule. Fatima Kassam's book is an exploration of the life narratives of twenty of those women who remained in their natal towns of al-Lydd and al-Ramlah or sought refuge in towns from other destroyed localities.