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18681. Why Can't the Palestinians Recognize the Jewish state?

Author:
Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Israel's relatively recent demand for recognition as a “Jewish state” or “homeland for the Jewish people” has important implications for the Palestinians (whether refugees, citizens of Israel, or residents of the occupied territories) with regard to their history, identity, rights, and future. This essay explores the moral and practical reasons why they cannot accede to this demand, or even accept Israel's self-definition as a matter of exclusive Israeli concern.
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

18682. In Pursuit of My Ottoman Uncle: Reimagining the Middle East Region as One

Author:
Raja Shehadeh
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
In April 2011, Raja Shehadeh visited the United States to promote the U.S. edition of his new book, A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle (OR Books, 2011). JPS heard several of his presentations, during which he read passages from his book and reflected on its genesis, major themes, and how writing it changed his thinking about the future of the region. In response to our request, he agreed to allow us to compile the typed notes for his various lectures into a single integrated essay, which he later edited and expanded with additional reflections and comments. A London-trained lawyer with numerous cases in Israel's military courts to his credit, Shehadeh first gained prominence as a human rights advocate and cofounder (in 1979) of al-Haq—the West Bank affiliate of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists and the first human rights organization in the occupied territories—and for his legal writings. He has written a number of memoirs, one of which—Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape—won the Orwell Prize, Britain's top award for political writing, in 2008. When I finished writing Palestinian Walks about the vanishing hills around Ramallah, I felt confined, both by the narrow territory of the West Bank and by a time frame that logically begins with the 1967 war. The West Bank was the arena of that book, yet the Palestine problem, my overriding concern, neither began there nor can its meaning be contained within the four decades of the post-1967 period. The Israelis have perfected the art of “maintained uncertainty,” which consists of repeatedly extending and then contracting, through an unpredictable combination of changing and selectively enforcing regulations and controls, the space in which Palestinians can maneuver. This exacts a heavy psychological toll, inducing a sense of perpetual temporariness. At the same time, the proliferation of settlements, bypasses, and roadblocks that Israel constructs has succeeded in convincing the occupied of the permanence of the fragmentation, as if a truly new geography had been put into place. It suits Israel to elude political resolution, to keep negotiating borders (or talking about negotiating borders) while counting on the resulting uncertainty to maintain the population's quiescence. I wanted to escape all this. I needed to travel in a wider area and to write, so to speak, on a larger canvas in terms of both space and time. One of my abiding interests, which was at the base of Palestinian Walks, is the relationship that exists between people and the landscape. I wanted to continue this exploration. I had always been fascinated by the Great Rift Valley, created by a fault in the geology of the earth that extends from the Taurus mountains in southern Anatolia all the way to Mozambique in central Africa, forming a series of smaller rift valleys along the way. In its eastern Mediterranean segment, the valleys and plains through which the Orontes, Litani, and Jordan rivers flow are part of that system, as are the mountains and hills that lie to either side. Thus our stretch of the Great Rift Valley runs from modern Turkey in the north through Syria, Lebanon, Palestine/Israel, and Jordan, all the way down to the tip of the Hijaz in modern-day Saudi Arabia—all lands once part of the Ottoman Empire. As early as the mid-1990s, when the disappointment of the Oslo process was becoming obvious, my thoughts had begun to turn to the past. I considered writing a book that looks at the relations between the Turks of Ottoman times and the other peoples and lands of the eastern Mediterranean. When I proposed the idea to my publisher, he said this would be not one book but three. But I kept thinking about how I could frame such material and make of it a coherent story. In the meantime, I discovered a memoir written by a great-great uncle of mine, Najib Nassar, an important historical figure of late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine, who was one of the first to publish a book in Arabic about the dangers of Zionism. Though he defined himself the same way any Palestinian, or Turk, or Syrian, or Jew would have defined himself at the time, as an Ottoman, his memoir recounts his “great escape” from the Ottoman police during World War I. His “escape” took him from Haifa through the Galilee and down the Jordan Valley and into the desert wilderness east of the Jordan River. As I read about him, I saw we had a number of things in common: a strong interest in agriculture, an affinity to people who live close to the land, and a preoccupation with a cause. He was also a writer whose writings advocated for that cause. The two ideas—the Great Rift Valley and my great-great uncle's story—coalesced when I began to look for a subject to write about after finishing Palestinian Walks. The result was A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle. It's a book about two journeys: the great escape of my great-great uncle from 1915 to 1917, which basically followed the Great Rift Valley, and my own modern-day explorations, starting out from Ramallah, of the places where he had been. And so it is also a book about two rifts—the Great Rift Valley that begins in Asia Minor and the “rift in time”—the century that separated our two journeys, and how the land has been transformed in the course of that century. More broadly, this book is my attempt to escape the confining reality of occupied Palestine, to free myself to see another reality beneath the present reality that tries to impose itself on our minds in every way, driving home its immutability. It seemed to me that it might be possible to emerge from the political despair that has become our lot by going back into the past and reimagining our region, concentrating on the Rift Valley and its physical integrity, and thinking how that continuity might one day return to reflect the political wholeness that the region once had. It was an act of imagination that I wanted to invite others to share, with the hope that they might come to see, like me, that the present is not permanent and that it is possible to rethink our land and what its future might look like.
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, London, and Palestine

18683. Hidden Histories: Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean

Author:
Keith W. Whitelam
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Political Geography:
Palestine

18685. Ready or Not: Pakistan's resilience to disasters one year on from the floods

Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The floods that hit Pakistan in 2010 were the worst in the country's history. The humanitarian response achieved remarkable successes in minimising the immediate loss of life and providing relief to millions of people. However, it could have been better: more than 800,000 families remain without permanent shelter and more than a million people remain in need of food assistance. These unmet needs must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
Topic:
Economics, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, and Natural Disasters
Political Geography:
Pakistan and South Asia

18687. State of Siege

Author:
Jeffrey Sacks
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Reviewed work(s): State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish; Munir Akash; Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore DOI: 10.1525/jps.2011.XL.4.104

18688. Arab Views (cartoons from al-Hayat)

Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
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.
Political Geography:
Israel and Arabia

18689. Selections from the Press

Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This section includes articles and news items, mainly from Israeli but also from international press sources, that provide insightful or illuminating perspectives on events, developments, or trends in Israel and the occupied territories not readily available in the mainstream U.S. media.
Political Geography:
Israel

18690. Photos From the Quarter

Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This small sample of photos, selected from hundreds viewed by JPS, aims to convey a sense of the situation on the ground in the occupied territories during the quarter.