Children's projected political preference: transcending local politics

Traditionally, research on political preference has primarily focused on adults within their local political context. This research attempts to show that the perceived political preference of children is part of their national identity, and encompasses not only local politics but also the global and regional discourse. The present study surveyed 1187 Palestinian adolescents attending school, grades 5–7, in the West Bank to examine whether children's future political party preference is grounded in local/global discourse. The findings revealed a discrepancy between participants' perceptions of the local dominant political party and their projected political party preferences. This research argues that political party preference is facilitated through the transcendence of national identity embedded in children's geopolitical agency. The significance of the findings emphasizes that territorial boundaries are artificial; therefore, children's geopolitical agency is impacted by extraterritorial discourse and is able to transcend the local and regional context into a global politics.     

Political Crisis and Palestine's Cultural Heritage: A Case Study from the Khirbet el-Lauz Site in Area C

Abstract

The protection of Palestine's archaeological heritage faces several serious obstacles: unenforced laws, lack of public awareness, deterioration of Palestine's economic status, unregulated urban development, and the protracted political conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis. As a result, a significant number of archaeological features and sites have been vandalized, looted, or intentionally destroyed without compunction over the past several decades. The Palestinian-Israeli political conflict has negatively affected the archaeological heritage in “Area C,” which remains under complete Israeli civil and military control. This area includes nearly 60% of the archaeological heritage located within the Palestinian Occupied Territories, but the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage lacks the authority to monitor and protect these sites. Furthermore, the Israeli civil and military authorities in the West Bank do not provide the necessary protection of cultural heritage resources in Area C. The devastation of these resources throughout the Palestinian Territories provides the impetus for this research. The main aim is to identify the results of the political conflict on Palestinian archaeological and cultural heritage sites, using a case study at the site of Khirbet el-Lauz.     

Electoral Pluralism,Social Division and the 2016 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan

Representing one of the most stable regimes in the Middle East, Jordan has been undergoing a process of political liberalization since 1989. Due to the so‐called East Bank‐West Bank cleavage that followed by the influx of Palestinian migrants to Jordan, the country has also come to epitomize a divided society. Within this context, this paper aims to analyze the ongoing prospects for democratization in Jordan through an examination of four persistent debates shaping its electoral pluralism: those over social/identity division, electoral law as a regime‐survival mechanism, the role of the Ikhwan and the IAF's electoral boycotts, and electoral apathy. Finally, the impact of the Arab upheavals/revolts on restructuring the process of political reform — as well as opposition in the kingdom in the post‐2011 era — will be explored with reference to the changing dynamics of Islamist opposition.     

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.     

“Refusing to be a victim,refusing to be an enemy”. Form-of-life as resistance in the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism

This paper focuses on practices of non-violent resistance as they are played out in the ongoing Palestinian struggle against the Israeli settler colonialism in the occupied West Bank. By looking at the resistance of expanding settlements, demolition and land confiscation orders, and livelihood destruction in two Palestinian sites, the paper shows how Israeli settler colonial apparatuses, and the variety of techniques and practices of erasure they mobilize, can be fruitfully studied through site-specific ways of Palestinian resistance. In order to do so, the paper turns to discuss a peculiar form of non-violent resistance grounded in what Giorgio Agamben calls ‘destituent power’. It shows how the acts of destituent resistance in the two sites under study function by playing with the apparatuses of control in creative but non-violent ways; namely, by using the potentialities of that form-of-life that the settler colonial apparatuses try to cancel, overrule, control, weaken, criminalize, and erase. The idea of ‘destituent play’ is hence elaborated, and special attention paid to its ability to slow down and hamper the repressive functions of the settler colonial apparatuses through the creative use of the potentialities of Palestinian everyday life.     

PALESTINIAN ANTIQUITIES LOOTERS,THEIR SKILL DEVELOPMENT,METHODOLOGY AND SPECIALISED TERMINOLOGY: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY

Abstract

The state of Palestine’s archaeological heritage resources is one of serious risk, due to the on-going looting of antiquities. Vandalising archaeological resources is a widespread phenomenon throughout the Palestinian National Territories (PNT) and has resulted in either total or partial damage to thousands of these resources, and the extraction of at least hundreds of thousands of archaeological objects. The main aim of this study is to explore the measures that have been used by Palestinian antiquities looters to develop their knowledge, fieldwork skills and experience. To this end, I interviewed 96 antiquities looters residing in the West Bank. The Gaza Strip, which is totally relevant to the issues under discussion, was only excluded from this study due to the current travel restrictions between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.     

The Palestinian village of Ijzim during the 1948 war: Forming an anthropological history through villagers accounts and army documents

In the summer of 1948, following over six months of clashes, the Palestinian village of Ijzim was captured by Israeli troops and its inhabitants were uprooted and dispersed throughout the Middle East. Ijzim was one of roughly 400 Palestinian villages and towns that were depopulated during the 1948 war in Palestine. The combination of information gathered from Israeli army documents and the refugees' oral accounts, collected in Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, yields a complex picture of the local guerilla fighting and the social conditions that influenced the final consequences. Two main arguments are presented along the historical recounting of the events. The one sets the microcosmos of one village in contrast to the macro picture of the war. The other highlights the uniqueness and contribution of oral histories as sources that reveal facets otherwise missing. 1     

Palestinian Water: Resources,Use, Conservation,Climate Change,and Land Use

This article addresses the future of freshwater resources in the Palestinian West Bank through a discussion of contemporary issues that each plays a vital role in determining the long‐term sustainability of freshwater reserves, such as water resource availability, trans‐boundary water issues, water reuse and conservation, changes in land use, and the potential impact of climate change on long‐term water management. Climate change and changing land use patterns are already altering this region's water resources. Future predictions regarding the long‐term effects of these changes are complex and therefore inherently uncertain. However, the consensus among most studies on this subject indicates that currently water‐poor regions such as the Middle East will experience even greater water stress in the future. Nearly all of the freshwater consumed in the West Bank is obtained from local groundwater supplies that are suffering overdraft as well as decreasing water quality. Climate change will exacerbate water stress by increasing overall temperatures, decreasing and fluctuating precipitation, and reducing overall aquifer replenishment. Expanding urbanization will continue to strain freshwater supplies by negatively impacting the quality and quantity of available freshwater. Water management in the West Bank is further complicated by total Israeli control over water resources, which often causes water delivery to Palestinians in this region to be marginalized. This article finds that Palestinian and Israeli water managers must plan for future water crises, which will likely be a result of the combined effects of increasing urbanization and climate change coupled with exponential population growth.     

Marriage under occupation: Israel’s spousal visa restrictions in the West Bank

In the West Bank, hundreds of non-Palestinian women who are married to Palestinian men have recently been issued shortened visas with tightened restrictions. This means they are often prevented from working, their mobilities are severely reduced and they are placed in extremely precarious bureaucratic and procedural positions. The research in this article draws from fieldwork interviews with women affected by such restrictions to show how politically induced precarities produce gendered effects towards specific ends of the occupation of Palestine. We thus frame a discussion of the women’s experiences of visa regulations through precarity before giving an account of the profound effects on women’s roles in family and political life. We then broaden the focus to consider Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the demographic implications of the gendered effects of visa precarity. In doing so we make the argument that Israel’s spousal visa regulations contribute to the (re)production of uneven gender relations and the demographic objective of emptying out the West Bank.     

Israel's Geopolitical Dilemma

A noted Israeli geographer presents and analyzes five different geopolitical approaches to the possible resolution of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict. Focusing on the map and its disputed boundaries, the author identifies the alternatives as (a) agreed-upon borders associated with a two-state solution, (b) Israel's defensible borders advocated since 1967, (c) interim borders involving a unilateral withdrawal in the absence of a political agreement, (d) blurred borders associated with a bi-national state, and (e) borders involving annexation of the West Bank. The paper examines the likely impact of critical forces (Israeli leadership, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, moderate Arab states, Iran and Syria, U. S. and the Quartet, as well as public opinion) to conclude that blurred borders of an unpopular bi-national state may have the greatest chance to be realized in the short term.     

Killing with kindness: funding the demise of a Palestinian state

This article sets out to show the widening gulf that has emerged between the international community's professed diplomatic endgame to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following a two-state paradigm, the aid strategy it has put forward since 1993 in support of this political goal, and the developments on the ground in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Within the context of a volatile Oslo peace process and the intifada, aid to the Palestinians has mainly been used as a substitute for international political will and to compensate for the lack of genuine bilateral negotiations between the parties. Aid, however, cannot buy peace. Not only has the international community's 'aid for peace' strategy failed to attain its stated political and socio-economic objectives, but it is also the central contention of this article that such international intervention has actually been harmful. Donors have ended up financing Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories and its expansionist agenda at the expense of international law, the well-being of the Palestinian population, their right to self-determination, and the international community's own developmental and political goals. Looking ahead, despite the widespread current optimism generated by Gaza disengagement, this does not bode well for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state or the individual and collective security of the Israeli and Palestinian people.     

Law,Culture and Access to Justice under the Palestinian National Authority

It has been widely claimed that the Palestinian National Authority has failed to provide adequate access to the law for many Palestinians. Whilst impediments to legal access are often treated as a technical questions of procedure, or as an issue of the cultural appropriateness of legal regimes, this article takes a third approach, which stresses political and historical factors. In order to understand obstacles to legal access it is necessary to discover the ways in which legal practices are understood, used and abandoned in particular contexts. Through an examination of labour disputes, the article argues that in the context of the West Bank, legal claims have no absolute moral value, but are attractive for the substantive claims that can be made through them, opening up legal avenues for political manipulation. In this context, legal entitlements are distributed according to political resources, rather than legal procedures. The article concludes by arguing that promotion of effective access to legal processes in the West Bank should not be seen as a short‐cut to a stable political regime, since accountable legal processes require a centralized, strong and stable coercive support, based in a measure of organizational cohesion and territorial sovereignty.     

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.     

Minutes of the Annual General Meeting for the Palestine Exploration Fund, 9 June 2016

Abstract

Palestine's archaeological heritage is facing a serious crisis due to the prevalence of illicit digging. Antiquities looting is a widespread and flourishing phenomenon throughout the Palestinian National Territories (PNT) and has resulted in a large number of primary and secondary archaeological sites and features being damaged, disfigured, or completely destroyed, and in the extraction of at least hundreds of thousands of heritage items. The main aim of this research project is to explore the physical hazards encountered by the Palestinian antiquities looters. To this end I interviewed 53 antiquities looters residing in 41 different villages in the West Bank. The physical hazards which they encountered are classified by type as follows: cave-ins; the use of equipment, including heavy machinery (back-hoes, front-end loaders, bulldozers, etc.), other power implements, and traditional excavation tools; falling stones or tools; contact with insects, snakes, scorpions, and spiders; work during inclement weather; and attack by the jinn.     

Political language in Italy and Great Britain

Abstract

Patrick McCarthy underlined the role of political language in the crisis of the Italian Republic. It was both a reflection of the crisis and an active agent of political change. A study of Berlusconi's political language reveals the importance of his new, simplified style of political communication in the creation of his party Forza Italia and of his own personal charisma. He has been able to adapt his rhetoric to changing political circumstances and to different publics. Romano Prodi was successful in 1996 in constructing his image as the ‘anti-Berlusconi’, and Walter Veltroni also broke with the old style of hermetic political discourse acknowledging the inspiration both of Robert Kennedy and Tony Blair, but the language of the centre-left in recent years has generally failed to convey a clear message and has perpetuated obscurity in order to conceal its internal divisions. A comparison with the political language of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair reveals interesting similarities and differences. Thatcher, like Berlusconi, appealed to the need for national revival in the face of the threat from the left, but her language, unlike his, was rooted in the tradition of Protestant individualism and invigorated rather than challenging the existing party system. Blair managed to make skilful use of a new rhetoric of emotion and to incorporate elements of Thatcher's appeal in his ‘new Labour’ synthesis. In conclusion: McCarthy was deeply preoccupied with the possibility of an alternative and more honest style of political communication.     

Recovering Republican Eloquence: John Cheke versus Stephen Gardiner on the Pronunciation of Greek

Abstract

The controversy over Greek pronunciation at Cambridge University in 1542, principally between university chancellor Stephen Gardiner and regius professor of Greek John Cheke, marked the emergence of not only the linguistic but also the political agenda of the mid-Tudor Cambridge humanists. This important group included future statesmen and political thinkers such as William Cecil, later Elizabeth's famous minister, Thomas Smith, author of De republica anglorum, and John Ponet, leading exponent of ‘resistance theory’. In the 1542 Greek controversy Cheke and his allies advocated the restoration of an ancient pronunciation they saw as having been the medium of eloquence in the Athenian republic. Their concepts of language provide a template for their political concepts: both language and political structures are generated by the community, reflective of the community's particular character, susceptible to change and capable of improvement. Throughout their subsequent careers and especially in the reign of Edward VI, when their influence was at its height, these humanists fostered a ‘monarchical republican’ politics; it involved rhetorical persuasion as the main mode of political action, programmes of religious and economic reform, and popular consent as an important factor in the good governance of the commonwealth.     

Language identity,linguistic diversity and political cleavages: evidence from Ukraine

ABSTRACT. This article revisits the notion of linguistic diversity and its function as a political cleavage. It argues that people's linguistic and cultural attitudes are influenced not only by their communicative practice but also by their identification with particular language(s) – even though they may not always communicate in that language. In Ukraine, from which my empirical data is drawn, language identity is embodied in the concept of native language that was imposed by the Soviet institutionalisation of ethnicity and came to mean ethnic belonging as much as linguistic practice. My analysis of survey data demonstrates that native language is a powerful predictor of people's attitudes and policy preferences with regard to both language use and other socially divisive issues, such as foreign policy and historical memory. This finding should also be applicable to other societies with a large‐scale discrepancy between language practice and identity.     

Children's agency and Islam: unexpected paths to solidarity

This ethnographic study analyzes the experiences of Palestinian children's agency of religion and its manifestation in religion as resistance while it is fighting the globalized hegemony. Children's agency of religion as resistance is cultivated within the debate of Islamist movements and the evolution of Palestinian national identity while it serves as a call for global solidarity. It is this creative construct of agency of religion that transcends borders and distinguishes itself from the old generation method of resistance. The differences between generations on this construct, as described by children's agency and their ability to transform, is constructed by particular meanings of Islamist symbols and rejects the assumption that children's roles are defined. The agency of religion as resistance evolves as the role of religion in national discourse is deliberated in secularism and sectarianism. In 2005/2006, I was awarded the Rockefeller Fellowship in the Anthropology Department of Johns Hopkins University. The award was for my work on children's political socialization in the Middle East. I also have been active with international studies: in 2009, I collaborated with the Children's Rights Unit, Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch, Switzerland on the research project, Living Rights: Theorizing Children's Rights in International Development. I am serving as research member on the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and Ethnic Diversity (JLICED), Division of Children's Rights. My work has been published in the Journal of Qualitative Inquiry, Childhood, Children's Geographies, Journal of Mix Method Research and others. View all notes     

The Political Economy of Israeli-Palestinian Interdependence

The Israeli and Palestinian economies are asymmetrically interdependent. Some scholars argue that the Palestinian economy cannot be viable alone. Others believe that economic links with Israel will promote peace. Supporters of separation argue that these links distort Palestinian development. I show that the current interdependence is associated with a cyclical Israeli-Palestinian violence and Palestinian economic decline. Assuming that an independent Palestinian state forms in most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I argue that Israeli-Palestinian relations require economic separation to be stable. Economic separation will deteriorate Palestinian welfare in the short run. Policies to make it viable are considered.     

The Bullion Controversy and the history of political thought: experience,innovation and theory

ABSTRACT

In 1797 the British government relieved the Bank of England of the obligation to pay specie for its notes upon demand; then, after bitter debate and sustained inflation, it restored this burden in 1821. The episode is studied as the “Bullion Controversy”, and it is commonly assigned high significance in the development of monetary theory. Yet the Bank stood as an old target for so-called “country” thought, which suspected commerce of corroding virtue and undermining the proper functions of Parliament. Both the Bank and the Whig regime that created it in 1694 had withstood such attacks, but in the nineteenth century these critical voices were joined by political economists who reworked the existing lines of attack, above all by presenting themselves not as defenders of an ancient virtue but as the champions of a modern, commercial society that was being endangered by the government's and the Bank's ignorance and self-interest. This paper thus examines the Bullion Controversy in relation to the history of political thought, and reveals how the return to convertibility represented an early victory for political economy's self-styled “theorists” in reforming the state's institutions in the nineteenth century.