‘Therefore They Shouldn’t Exist’: The Carter Administration,the ‘Israel Lobby’ and the Sinai Settlements

Abstract

The Israeli settlements in Sinai could have been a fatal obstacle to Egyptian–Israeli peace, but the Jimmy Carter administration overcame it. The established narrative of how Israel ceded the Sinai settlements focuses on the Camp David summit. However, the real battle over the fate of the settlements was fought previously. In February–April 1978, the Carter administration attempted to turn pro-Israeli supporters in the United States against the Israeli position, according to which the Sinai settlements should remain in place. The Menachem Begin government mobilized to counter that push but lost the battle. Contrary to his image as an awkward political operator, Carter won over supporters of Israel effectively. The case raises questions regarding the oft-mentioned role of the ‘Israel lobby’ in preventing peace.     

Multi-disciplinary investigations at PoW Camp 198, Bridgend,S. Wales: site of a mass escape in March 1945

Abstract

The largest escape of German Prisoner of War (PoW) in WW2 was in March 1945 from Camp 198, situated in Bridgend, South Wales, UK. Since camp closure the site has become derelict, and has not been scientifically investigated. This paper reports on the search to locate the PoW escape tunnel that was dug from Hut 9. This hut remains in remarkable condition, with numerous PoW graffiti still present. Also preserved is a prisoner-constructed false wall in a shower room behind which excavated material was hidden, though the tunnel entrance itself has been concreted over. Near-surface geophysics and ground-based LiDAR were used to locate the tunnel. Mid-frequency GPR surveys were judged optimal, with magnetometry least useful due to the above-ground metal objects. Archaeological excavations discovered the intact tunnel and bed-board shoring. With Allied PoW escape camp attempts well documented, this investigation provides valuable insight into German escape efforts.     

A Visceral Politics of Sound

Questions of bodies and embodiment are a critical focus for geographers. In this paper we advance discussion of the mobilisation of bodies that investigates the interconnections between the visceral and discursive, through paying attention to the affordances of sound. We draw on our ethnographic research of the Climate Camp parade held during October 2009 in Helensburgh, New South Wales, Australia. Using feminist theory and visceral understandings of socio‐political life, we explore sounds to illustrate how people's beliefs about climate change are mobilised at this parade. We argue that visceral experiences of the rhythmic affordances of sounds—flow, pulse and beat—provide us insights as to how people are mobilised into action. Our results explore bodily judgements of sounds to illustrate how a visceral approach can help to mobilise bodies in ways that can both upset, and reproduce, particular beliefs, subjects and places.     

康天顺与镇远第二俘虏收容所管理工作的改进

在全面抗战开始后,南京国民政府将战场俘获之日军集中收容,并分别在陕西宝鸡与贵州镇远集中收容。贵州镇远是战时中国最大的俘虏收容所,在初期的收容过程中,收容所中存在一定问题。在中共安排下,康天顺来到俘虏收容所,对所内事务进行改革,较好地执行了日内瓦公约,并获得红十字国际委员会的高度评价。     

The origins of pottery as a practical domestic technology: Evidence from the middle Queen Creek area, Arizona

The site of Finch Camp in the middle Queen Creek area of Arizona, southeast of Phoenix, has produced some of the earliest evidence of utilitarian pottery use in the US Southwest. Using multiple lines of evidence from vessel morphology, surface alteration, and minute fatty acid residues in vessel walls, I evaluate the nascent function of the earliest vessels (mostly neckless jars, or tecomates) and infer a diachronic process of functional expansion from about 350 B.C.-A.D. 400. This evidence provides robust evidence for evaluating various theoretical models of pottery origins. I argue that utilitarian pottery was initially adopted in connection with the intensification of small particulate plant foods (e.g., seeds, grains) and increasing household-level control over resources. Further, vessel functions may have expanded during the early centuries A.D. in response to women’s task-scheduling conflicts stemming from increasing residential stability and growing reliance on low-level horticulture.     

The camp and the question of community

Recent literature in camp geographies has sought to emphasize the significance of political agency among camp residents, particularly in refugee camps, as part of a critical reaction against the highly influential Agambenian conceptual vocabulary of exception and bare life. The concept of community has been integral to this body of work, with diverse accounts of the camp implicitly or explicitly positioning community as the natural scale through which camp resident and inmate agency is formulated, and yet there has hitherto been little research reflecting directly on the meaning that community takes on in the specific context of the camp. In this article we adopt Roberto Esposito's critique of the concept of community to problematize the assumption that camp communities necessarily constitute a space of empowerment and agency for camp residents and inmates. Drawing on Esposito's genealogical account of communitas (2010), whereby community is encountered not in terms of a property shared among individuals but instead as the loss of individuality and other forms of ‘the proper’, we suggest that the implementation of community, while generative of agency, is also fundamental to camp authorities and related regimes of power. Furthermore, we argue that the operation of camp communities includes its own forms of politics that are specific to the exceptional space of the camp and that potentially expose individuals to violence. We develop this argument through an experimental reading of communitas in relation to the two empirical contexts that have been most influential on the trajectory of camp studies within geographical debates, the concentration camp and the refugee camp, represented in this paper by Auschwitz and the contemporary archipelago of Serbian refugee camps respectively. The ambivalent account of power relationships emerging from these readings suggests that Esposito's rendering of community may have important analytic value in investigating the complexity of camp spatialities and the distinctive co-articulation of power and agency therein.     

In the camp but not of the camp. The forced incorporation of Bangladeshi host communities in Rohingya refugee camps

This paper is an investigation of an arguably unique manifestation of camp geography: the forced incorporation, since 2017, of existing Bangladeshi communities within Rohingya refugee camps in Cox's Bazar. The repercussions of refugee policies that have shaped these camp spatialities have spurred socio-economic and environmental impacts for Bangladeshis not recognized as full residents of the camp and therefore not receiving humanitarian aid. We argue that this unique situation deserves scrutiny, since exploring impacts of camp spatialities in relation to local host communities is urgent as campscapes are expanding their effects globally, and particularly in the Global South. Here we analyze three Rohingya camps that have surrounded Bangladeshi households by privileging the view of host(ed) community members and reflecting on how they articulate and react to the consequences of these campscapes in their lives – especially when already confronted by social, economic, and environmental challenges. The article concludes by suggesting that these camps may be seen as powerful spatial political technologies producing new forms of marginalization which have lasting impacts for the forcibly ‘incorporated’ Bangladeshi communities whose presence seems to have been omitted from the statistics, policies, and operations of the organizations involved in camp management.     

Exception beyond the sovereign state: Makhmour refugee camp between statism and autonomy

This paper explores the camp as a space of autonomy within the context of Makhmour refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. It re-examines the relationship between the camp and autonomy by inverting the concept of exception. Drawing on the theoretical opening provided by Khaled Furani (2014), the paper develops a critical understanding of the exception that originates not in the sovereign decision of the state and its juridical apparatus, but in the capacity of political subjects to form autonomous collective life in struggle with, against and beyond the state. Moving the locus of the exception from the sovereign state to the governed allows for a novel conception of the camp as a constituent site for autonomy. The experience of Makhmour shows the emergence of what I will call the “anti-camp” within the spatiality of the refugee camp, providing theoretical and empirical insights into alternative conceptualisation of the camp. While the anti-camp is a political manifestation of will to autonomous world-making, it is a process marked by constant bricolage, negotiation and contestation with the statist form of time and space.     

‘History from the inside’ South African Prisoner-of-War Experience in Work Camp 1169, Dresden, 1943–1945

This article narrates the experiences of white English-speaking South African Prisoners-of-War in Dresden Work Camp 1169 during the Second World War. Work Camp 1169 was populated predominantly by South African servicemen, and the availability of their memoirs and diaries, as well as first-hand interviews with some of the former inmates of this camp, provide an opportunity to analyse their experiences in terms of national identity, how well they adapted to captivity and how they managed relationships between themselves, their captors and the German citizens with whom they came into contact.     

A military camp in the middle of nowhere: mobilities,dislocation and the archaeology of a Second World War German military base in Finnish Lapland

This article discusses military mobilities and encampment, and associated themes such as dislocation and displacement of people, through the case of a Second World War German military camp in Finnish Lapland. The article describes the camp and its archaeological research and discusses various aspects of the camp and camp life in its particular subarctic ‘wilderness’ setting, framing the discussion within the themes of mobilities and dislocations, and especially their multiple impacts on the German troops and their multinational prisoners-of-war based in the camp. A particular emphasis is put on how mobilities and dislocation – in effect ‘being stuck’ in a northern wilderness – were intertwined and how the inhabitants of the camp coped with the situation, as well as how this is reflected in the different features of the camp itself and the archaeological material that the fieldwork produced.