Gender Segregation,Effacement, and Suppression: Trends in the Status of Women in Israel

The aim of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in Israel. The article describes some of the causes of this phenomenon, its impact on Israeli society, and the difficulty in confronting it. Israeli women have made impressive gains on many fronts, but the exclusion of women from the public sphere as a result of the influence of the growing Ultra‐Orthodox minority, which imposes its norms on the general public, raises serious concerns. The exclusion of women manifests itself in several forms: gender segregation in public spaces, the effacement of women's images from the public sphere, and the suppression of women's voice. The infiltration of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalism into Israeli society may cause the regression of advancements previously made in women's rights in Israel. The article points to the limitations of the treatment of this phenomenon within a theory of multiculturalism, and suggests an alternative framework of discourse, which relies on concepts that are drawn from the literature on environmental ethics, public rights, and public ownership of space and resources.     

Communists and the 1948 War: PCP,Maki, and the National Liberation League

This paper analyzes the way in which Palestine's Jewish and Arab communist parties, the PCP-Maki and the National Liberation League, acted during the 1948 war. Both groups made separate and different efforts to make the two-state solution a reality as originally conceived in the UN partition plan. Ironically, the decisive Jewish victory in the war resulted in an asymmetry between the Jewish Communists the Palestinian Communists when they were unified toward the end of the 1948 war. Despite Maki's labors for an Israeli victory, its standing in the nascent Israeli political system toward the end of the war remained marginal. The concept of Jewish–Arab cooperation under the aegis of the USSR was seen by the Zionist establishment as dangerous and subversive.     

“Operation Exodus”: Israeli government involvement in the production of Otto Preminger's Film Exodus (1960)

This article explores the Israeli government's enthusiastic and substantial role in the production of Otto Preminger's Exodus (1960), the influential pro-Zionist film on the creation of Israel which was loosely based on the highly successful novel by Leon Uris. This involvement followed a decade of mostly unsuccessful Israeli government endeavors to encourage its many supporters in Hollywood to produce films in and about Israel: both for their potential economic rewards and for international propaganda. Utilizing archival sources in the United States, Britain, and especially Israel, this article charts Israeli efforts to encourage Hollywood productions in the 1950s and the extent to which Israeli officials provided encouragement and assistance to Exodus: first to the novel and then critically to the film. The article shows that the film producers took into account British and Arab observations too. However, the degree to which Exodus served Israeli propaganda themes is finally demonstrated by the eager efforts made by Zionist bodies and Israeli government officials to promote its international distribution.     

Towards a bio-territorial conception of power: Territory,population, and environmental narratives in Palestine and Israel

In this paper, I investigate recent Palestinian and Israeli environmental narratives as effects of power. I also read differences between both styles of narration as differences in conceptions and experiences of power. While Palestinian environmental narratives for the most part build on a Weberian perception of power (sovereign-territorial), their Israeli counterparts subscribe to what could be described as a Foucaultian perspective of power (bio-power). These underlying perceptions of power lead to forms of resistance that are focused on property rights and questions of sovereignty in Palestine and on concerns over quality of life of the population in Israel. By constructing theoretical distinctions between territory and population, Palestinian and Israeli environmental narratives continue a strongly entrenched tradition in theories of state, power, and governmentality. In this paper, I provide a critique of this ontological distinction between territory and population and argue that the distinction itself should be recognized as an effect of power: by attending to its territorial forms, power's exercise on the level of population (gender, class, color) is rendered benign; and, by focusing on quality of life of the population, power's expression in territorial forms is often deemed irrelevant for environmental knowledge and action. This critique of power calls for further research on and discusses implications of a bio-territorial conceptualization of power, as well as attendant forms of resistance.     

A Chronicle of Failure Foretold: The UK,Israel and Arms Sales to Argentina in the Era of the Falklands War

In spite of fierce British protests, Israel supplied Argentina with arms both during the Falklands war and with greater intensity after the fighting. While the weapons sales were vital for Israel's economy and its arms industry, recently declassified papers suggest that the Begin government viewed the arms supplies to Argentina as a bargaining chip to exert pressure on Britain to halt its own sale of weapons to Israel's Arab adversaries and to end London's arms embargo against the Jewish State. Britain's restrictions on arms sales had long cast a shadow over Anglo-Israeli ties, and Israeli resentment towards Britain was exacerbated by anger over London's strong condemnation of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its leading involvement in the EEC Venice Declaration of June 1980 which recognized Palestinian self-determination and a role for the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Israelis also perceived the arms supplies as a means to influence the junta in its treatment of Argentina's Jews. Yet, there was actually a rise in the level of anti-Semitism in Argentina during the period in question. At the same time, Britain's approach in attempting to dissuade its allies from selling arms to Argentina was riddled with inconsistencies and ultimately misconceived.     

Sidelining the Hardliners: A 2 + 1 Solution for Israel‐Palestine

This article presents a modified two‐state solution to the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. A “2 + 1 solution” would see the establishment of a State of Palestine in the West Bank whose constitution proscribes the participation in government of any party whose platform calls for the elimination of Israel; Gaza would accede upon the reform or demise of Hamas. Achieving a state in the West Bank should be the proximate, urgent goal of the Palestinian people. Ideologically motivated Israeli settlement of the West Bank continues apace and threatens the viability of a two‐state solution. Meanwhile, religiously motivated policies of colonization hide behind a security narrative conflating Hamas with Fatah and suggesting that the Palestinians pose an existential threat. The 2 + 1 solution, by excluding Hamas from a State of Palestine, directly addresses Israel's legitimate security concerns and thus carries the potential to lay bare the extent to which ideology informs Israeli policy. The approach also gives moderate Palestinians the opportunity to define the civic values and attributes of Palestinian national identity in a way that supports a lasting two‐state peace.     

The Shishakli assault on the Syrian Druze and the Israeli response,January–February 1954

This article addresses Syrian leader Adib al-Shishakli's assault on the Syrian Druze minority in the mid-1950s, the Syrian Druze reaction, and contemporaneous observations and reactions from both the Israeli government and the Israeli Druze community to Shishakli's assault. The events analyzed in this article provide insight into the difficulties and opportunities the Jewish state had in cultivating minority allies in a hostile region, on the one hand, and the dilemmas Middle Eastern minorities had in seeking out the regionally beleaguered Jewish state's support, on the other.     

The invisible war on nature: the Abyssinian war (1935–1936) in newsreels and documentaries in Fascist Italy

This contribution to the special issue focuses on newsreels and documentaries that were produced concerning the Second Italo–Ethiopian War (1935–1936), commonly known as the Abyssinian War. It aims to contextualise LUCE's filmic production on the war, so as to create a framework in which the institute can be understood not only as being part of a wider politics of propaganda in Fascist Italy, but as an example of a modern socio-technical organisation that enabled the discursive construction of East African nature as ‘Other’ and therefore helped to justify colonial war as a process of sanitised creative destruction aimed at replacing a previous, negative ‘first nature’ with a positive, Fascist and Italian ‘second nature’. The article draws on archival documents from Mussolini's government cabinet, and on LUCE documentaries and newsreels; these sources are used to create a background against which LUCE's concern with the Second Italo–Ethiopian War can be understood.     

The metropolitanization of Israel's settlement policy: The colonization of the West Bank as a strategy of spatial restructuring

Israel's West Bank settlements are a central point of contention in the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Overall, however, their rapid proliferation has been generally understood through the lens of an ideologically centered approach that highlights, specifically, the centrality of the national religious settlers' movement. Against this background, the article focuses on the overlooked reality of large, state-sponsored suburban settlements – and in particular on the role of the Israeli Ministry of Housing in their establishment between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. Building on contributions in the field of political economy and political geography, we conceive the actions of the Ministry in the occupied West Bank as a result of a broader strategy of spatial restructuring. By considering both economic and political imperatives underlying this strategy, our analysis offers a more comprehensive assessment of the factors behind Israel's settlement policy. Drawing on a broad range of empirical sources, from archival material to in-depth interviews with Israeli planners, we argue that the proliferation of settlements has been largely the outcome of a process of metropolitanization – i.e. of the dynamics of urban development of Israel's main metropolitan centers and the adoption of a new, post-Keynesian policy paradigm based on market-oriented economic development. This process has constituted a major factor for the settlements' growth and, ultimately, in the emergence and naturalization of a new territorial configuration in the area of Israel/Palestine.     

Review Article: Technology and Culture during the First Climacteric

In 1953 Israel abandoned the ‘defensive–offensive’ military strategy that it had adopted four years earlier, in the wake of the First Arab–Israeli War, in favor of an ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy that, to a large extent, persists until this day. This paper, which employs previously untapped Israeli official documents, personal interviews, memoirs, biographies, and secondary sources, casts new light on this critical juncture in the history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict. The paper challenges existing works by showing when and how Israel's ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy was adopted. More specifically, the authors argue that it was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), especially its planning bodies - and not the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, David Ben Gurion, or the IDF's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Dayan - that initiated this change, and that the new strategy met no objection when it was discussed and approved by the Israeli government. The authors also inquire about the possible implications of this change for Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict, and ask how this case informs general debates regarding the origins of military strategies.     

When the personal becomes political: using legal reform to combat violence against women in Ethiopia

This article focuses on Ethiopia's first civil society organisation, the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA), which has been campaigning for legal reform to secure women's rights and address violence against women. Implementing legal changes to benefit women in Ethiopia is impeded by difficulties in using the formal legal system, by poverty and deeply embedded gender inequalities, by plural legal systems, and by entrenched cultural norms. However, the article argues that the most significant challenge is the increasing degree of authoritarianism in Ethiopian state politics, that this is crucial in determining the space for activism, and that this shapes the successful implementation of legal change. The research shows how women's activism around personal rights challenges public/private and personal/political boundaries and can be seen as a political threat by governments in contexts where democracy and rule of the law are not embedded, leading to repression of women's activism and hindering the implementation of measures to protect women's rights when states become more authoritarian. Little is known empirically about the impact of democratisation on the implementation of measures to protect women's rights in Africa. This article shows how the emergence of democracy and legal reform intersects with the emergence of women's rights, especially with respect to gender-based violence. It shows how trying to secure women's personal right to be free from violence through the law is profoundly political and argues that the nature of democratisation really matters in terms of the implementation of measures such as legal changes designed to protect women's rights.     

The Greeks as an alien minority at the outset of Ethiopia's economic development, 1880–1910

Abstract

Between 1880 and 1910, Greeks constituted one of the largest foreign ethnic communities, in Ethiopia and as such they played an important role in the modernization efforts of Emperor Menilik II (1889–1913). During his reign, Ethiopia's modern economic development had its rudimentary beginnings when, with the participation of resident foreigners, he embarked on an ambitious, although haphazard program to raise his country's material standards. The Italian defeat at Adua in 1896 not only secured Ethiopian independence, but the absence of a single colonial ruler enabled Menilik to seek among various foreign groups the skills and resources necessary for economic development which were then lacking among the indigenous population. Greek participation in construction, internal and external commerce, and in petty retailing contributed to the foundation of Ethiopia's economic growth in the twentieth century.     

Nationalism and self‐determination in contemporary Ethiopia

The 1995 Ethiopian Constitution envisions a multinational state with the right to self‐determination, including secession, given to the nations, nationalities, and peoples of the country. This remarkable document is a product of a unique combination of Ethiopia's history, Marxist‐Leninist debates of the 1974 revolution, and political circumstances of the time the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took power in 1991. The subsequent 20 years witnessed a concerted attempt to implement measures for federal decentralization alongside continued political centralization in the ruling party, with several intended and unintended consequences. Since 2016, a combination of the manipulation of constitutional provisions for personal and factional advantage, and polarized perspectives over the identity and future of the country, have unveiled a chapter of political crisis. The 1995 Constitution is hardly a cause of this crisis, yet the fate of the Constitution has become central to the dynamics of the crisis.     

“The Nation's Living Room”: Negotiating solidarity on an Israeli talk show in the 1990s

The article explores the changing meaning and salience of the ethos of solidarity in Israeli discourse in the 1990s, as reflected on the popular talk show Live, Hosted by Dan Shilon (1991–2000). Examination of the show's format and genre, textual analysis of its cast and topical agendas, and a quantitative analysis of micro-discursive patterns attest to the globalization, individualization, and commercialization of Israeli society and media and to the erosion of the traditionally central ethos of solidarity. Live somewhat resisted this erosion by constructing idealized images of solidarity, demonstrating popular television's role as a site for cultural negotiation.     

Border Anxiety in Palestine–Israel

In this paper, I deal with representations of Palestinian women and their experiences with Israeli national security. In particular I explore how the political philosophy of Agamben and feminist psychoanalytic ideas of “abjection” could assist in understanding the nature and flexibility of the power relationships between Palestinian women and the Israeli state. I pay specific attention to moments when women carry out suicide attacks or when pregnant women in labour are forced to give birth at the checkpoint. I argue that, from a Western perspective, pregnant and exploding women's leaky bodily boundary embodies Israeli fears about the leakiness of the border between Israel and Palestine, fears which necessitated the construction of a so‐called “security fence” in order to create a hermetic border. As such, I emphasize women's capacity to produce, heighten and dissolve boundaries, bodily and political, thereby advancing a radically different kind of political geography.     

Signed,Sealed but Never Delivered: Why Israel did not Receive Nixon's Promised Nuclear Power Plants

ABSTRACT

In the early 1970s, Israel was on the cusp of launching an ambitious nuclear power programme. It had technical nuclear experience and a pressing need to limit its dependency on imported oil and coal, and interest in nuclear powered water desalination. This nuclear vision enjoyed the support of the Nixon administration, which proposed in June 1974 to export reactors to both Israel and Egypt. But by the end of the decade, under the Carter administration, the plan was all but gone. What was the original US and Israeli rationale behind the reactor deal? How did this initiative relate to other developments such as the Indian nuclear explosion, the Arab oil embargo and the peace talks with Egypt? How important was the Carter administration's policy shift in determining the outcome of the initiative? This paper will address these questions by analysing newly declassified documents from several US and Israeli archives.¹1. Archival research for this study was conducted at the Lindon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas, (LBJL), Richard M. Nixon Library, Yorba Linda, California (RNL), Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan (GFL), Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, Georgia, (JCL), National Archives and Records Administration, Maryland, (NARA), The British National Archives, Kew, UK, (TNA), The Israeli National Archive, Jerusalem, Israel (INA), the David Tuviyahu Archive, Be'er-Sheva, Israel (DTA), The Kibbutz Movement Yad-Tabenkin Archives, Ramat-Ef'al, Israel, The Knesset archive, Jerusalem, and several other archives.     

OpenStreetMap in Israel and Palestine – ‘Game changer’ or reproducer of contested cartographies?

In Israel and Palestine, map-making practices were always entangled with contradictive spatial identities and imbalanced power resources. Although an Israeli narrative has largely dominated the ‘cartographic battlefield’, the latest chapter of this story has not been written yet: collaborative forms of web 2.0 cartographies have restructured power relations in mapping practices and challenged traditional monopolies on map and spatial data production. Thus, we can expect web 2.0 cartographies to be a ‘game changer’ for cartography in Palestine and Israel. In this paper, I review this assumption with the popular example of OpenStreetMap (OSM). Following a mixed methods approach, I comparatively analyze the genesis of OSM in Israel and Palestine. Although nationalist motives do not play a significant role on either side, it turns out that the project is dominated by Israeli and international mappers, whereas Palestinians have hardly contributed to OSM. As a result, social fragmentations and imbalances between Israel and Palestine are largely reproduced through OSM data. Discussing the low involvement of Palestinians, I argue that OSM's ground truth paradigm might be a watershed for participation. Presumably, the project's data are less meaningful in some local contexts than in others. Moreover, the seemingly apolitical approach to map only ‘facts on the ground’ reaffirms present spatio-social order and thus the power relations behind it. Within a Palestinian narrative, however, many aspects of the factual material space might appear not as neutral physical objects but as results of suppression, in which case, any ‘accurate’ spatial representation, such as OSM, becomes objectionable.     

Being an Israeli: Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel,fifteen years later

This article presents the results of a study conducted in 2006 among a representative sample of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, aged 18 and over, who arrived in Israel between 1990 and 2005. It examines the changes over time in their collective identity, focusing on the relative weight and meaning of the local, Israeli component of their identity, as compared to the Jewish and Russian components. Unlike studies conducted in other concentrations of Russian Jewish emigrés (in the United States, Canada, and Germany), which found that an increase in the intensity of the local component of their identity was held in check by the enduring strength of the Russian component, this study revealed that in Israel the local identity component grew much stronger while, correspondingly, the Russian component declined. In addition, significant similarities between the immigrants and the veteran population were found with regard to how they conceive of the Israeli narrative. These changes over time in the immigrants' identity, which were not observed in the first years of their integration into Israeli culture and society, require a reexamination of the generalizations that dominate the research literature and the professional relationship with this group, concerning its supposed social and cultural self-segregation and low potential for cultural change.     

Unsettling sovereignty: Violence,myths and the politics of history in the Ethiopian Somali metropolis

An increasingly consolidated anthropological scholarship has moved from a legal notion of sovereignty towards an analysis of its violent enactment. Yet, it has paid insufficient attention to the ways in which the idea of sovereignty forms and operates in localized political struggles. Taking seriously Bonilla’s (2017) call for the “unsettling” of sovereignty, this article scrutinizes how ideas of legitimate rule have formed around myths of violence in the capital of the Ethiopian Somali region. It uses ethnographic material to examine the politics of history around material constructions through which myths of violence are entangled with the city's landscape of memory. It reveals sovereignty in the process of formation, becoming culturally and materially grounded in the myths of violence of an emerging Somali nation within the ethnic federal Ethiopian state. This article argues that past claims to sovereignty continue to affect the politics of history, with profound consequences for ongoing nation-state building projects and the corresponding territorial imaginations. It thus highlights the inherently fragile nature of ideas of state sovereignty in the frontier metropolis. On this basis, it contributes to a geographically differentiated anthropology of sovereignty and to an understanding of its co-constitution through violence in the frontier and myths in the metropolis.