Palestine and the Uprisings: SOAS Palestine Society Annual Conference (London, 17 March 2012)

[Image from SOAS Palestine Society] [Image from SOAS Palestine Society]

Palestine and the Uprisings: SOAS Palestine Society Annual Conference (London, 17 March 2012)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Palestine and the Uprisings: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Palestine Society 8th Annual Conference

17 March | Brunei Gallery | SOAS – London

Hosted by London Middle East Institute and the Centre for Palestine Studies (SOAS)

 

Program 

9:00 – 9:30: REGISTRATION

9:30 – 9:45: OPENING REMARKS Hassan Hakimian  – London Middle East Institute

9:45 – 11:45: MAPPING FORCES CONFRONTING THE UPRISINGS

Chair: Laleh Khalili  – School of Oriental and African Studies

U.S. Hegemony in the Middle East: From Peak to Adversity
Gilbert Achcar - School of Oriental and African Studies

Revolution and Counter-revolution: Situating the Gulf Arab States in the Uprisings
Adam Hanieh  – School of Oriental and African Studies

An Islamic Awakening? The Arab Revolts and Palestine in the Iranian Imagination
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam – School of Oriental and African Studies

The Domestic and International Implications of Turkey`s Search for Regional Power
Yüksel Taşkın  Marmara University

11:45 – 12:00: Refreshments

12:00 – 13:30: REGIONAL RECALIBRATIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

Chair: Mezna Qato  University of Oxford

Palestine and the Arab Uprisings in Lebanese and Syrian Imaginings
Samah Idriss  Editor, Al-Adab

The Road to Jerusalem through Cairo: Anti-Zionism and the Place of Palestine in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution
Reem Abou El-Fadl  University of Oxford

King Abdullah of Jordan and the Arab Awakening
Nicholas Pelham  The Economist

13:30 – 14:30: Lunch

14:30 – 16:30: TYRANNY, INDIFFERENCE AND THE TRIUMPH OF POPULAR WILL

Chair: Dina Matar – School of Oriental and African Studies

The Israeli Position towards the Arab Uprisings
Jamal Zahalka – Chair, National Democratic Assembly/Tajammu’ and Knesset Member

The People Demand to Remain Indifferent
Yael Lerer  Writer, Activist and Publisher, al-Andalus Publishing

Palestinian National Liberation and Contesting the Neoliberal Narrative - Time to Change Gear
Raja Khalidi  United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Liberation, Return, and Direct Representation: Reclaiming the PLO as an Act of Popular Sovereignty
Karma Nabulsi  – University of Oxford

16:30 – 17:00: Refreshments

17:0018:30: ROUNDTABLE: EMANCIPATION AND LIBERATIION: RECONSIDERATIONS


Tickets

Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED. Book in advance.

Price: £12 (£10 concessions) – All tickets include lunch (refreshments for purchase at SOAS).

To purchase

  • Online – www.soaspalsoc.org
  • By cheque: Send cheques payable to SOAS Palestine Society with attached note of email address to: SOAS Palestine Society, Thornhaugh Street, London, WC1H 0XG

Location

SOAS Brunei Gallery
Thornhaugh Street
Russell Square
London, WC1H 0XG

Contact

palestineconference@gmail.com | www.soaspalsoc.org

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412