[The Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) brings you the twentieth in a series of “Peer-Reviewed Article Reviews” in which we present a collection of journals and their articles concerned with the Middle East and Arab world. This series will be published seasonally. Each issue will comprise three-to-four parts, depending on the number of articles included.]
Contemporary Arab Affairs (Volume 15, Issue 1)
Beyond Lebanon’s Power-Sharing
By: Claudia Ditel
Abstract: Lebanon’s Ta’if Agreement, although implemented as a tool for conflict reconstruction, did not build a sustainable peace, nor has it created the base for democratic and economic development. Rather, it perpetuates elites’ interests at the expense of an ever-poorer population, while crystallizing fragmentation along sectarian identities, thus increasing the security dilemma. New literature on Lebanon’s power-sharing system is questioning how to build cross-sectarian cooperation and trust in Lebanon and, in doing so, is widely looking at the potential peacebuilding of civil society initiatives. The central point of the paper is that thinking about conflict transformation in Lebanon requires investigating the relation between power-sharing and civil society within a perspective of creating inclusive institutional mechanisms for the latter.
The Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
By: Sari Hanafi
Abstract: The Syrian crisis has caused one of the greatest episodes of forced displacement since World War II and some of the densest refugee-hosting situations in modern history. Lebanon has hosted more than 1 million Syrian refugees. This article is based on a large multisectoral survey of Syrian refugees’ households in Bekaa, conducted by the Union of Relief and Development Associations (URDA) in the period 2016–17 with a total of 1614 households and 6199 individuals. It assesses the socio-economic and living conditions of this representative sample (i.e., the location of refugees and housing conditions, the legal status of refugees, family expenditure, shelter, displacement, education, work, health, child health including child marriage). Among many vulnerabilities experienced by Syrian refugees, we identify three salient domains of precariousness, which are education, health, and early marriage. A particular analysis covers the differential analysis between camp dwellers versus urban ones, and the conviviality of the former compared with the latter.
The Syrian Conflict’s Influence on the Chinese Role in the Middle East
By: Hocine Laarid
Abstract: For China, the Middle East is a large geostrategic region that contributes to determining policies, and therefore the Chinese have always aimed to “step” into this arena and advance their agenda. Even though they are seeking a strategic location on the Mediterranean coast, Beijing’s pursuit of alternative energy sources, which has not been successful in Central Asia, has increased rather than diminished. We will try to understand how the Chinese strategic perspective in the Middle East is manifested in its position on the Syrian conflict, especially in light of Russian involvement. China’s relations with other Middle Eastern states will be discussed in relation to the Syrian conflict. The study concludes that China is seeking to export its image as a country with flexible diplomacy, a stable economy, massive industrial capacity, and huge capital in order to ensure an orderly rise against the West.
The Benefit of the Doubt or the Underdog Effect? American Public Attitudes towards Islam, 1990-2020
By: Ayman Mansour Nada
Abstract: This study analyzes the determinants of American public opinion towards Islam and Muslims. It examines the impact of both period of time (1990–2020) and significant events (e.g., September 11, 2001) on the general impression (favorability) and knowledge of Islam among the American people. Twenty-two polls including questions about the favorability and the knowledge of Islam and carried out between 1990 and 2020 were analyzed. The results show that (1) positive attitudes towards Islam increase over time, meaning that time has a positive impact on Americans’ impressions about Islam; (2) knowledge about Islam among the American people increases over time—time has also been found to have a positive impact on Americans’ knowledge about Islam; and (3) there is a reciprocal correlation between knowledge and attitudes. Knowledge of Islam has a positive impact on attitudes, and attitudes have positive impact on knowledge about Islam. The findings of this study set the base for a strategic plan to improve the image of Islam in the United States and Americans’ knowledge about Muslims and their true beliefs.
Israeli Peace: A Study of Models and Approaches
By: Abdelkarim Ben Dakhli
Abstract: Philosophers have dwelt on the concept of peace to study its differences and diversity within the framework of a much more extensive and comprehensive field. They have discovered other concepts stemming from the main concept such as the recognition of the other, identity, altruism, cooperation, and integration. But along with its multiple subconcepts peacemaking is a complicated problematic concept. The difficulty of defining the concept of “peace” is not the main challenge, but rather the ability of such concept to reimagine the world so that it is compromised in political thought and practice. It is a concept that shapes the world, connecting the core with the margins, and steers policies of major countries influencing regional and global affairs. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global balance of power, interest in the concept of peace grew. Given how peace can influence the situation in the Arab region, and its relation to the Arab–Israeli conflict, it is vital to research the components and strategies of “the Israeli peace” and how it impacts the Arab region. This article focuses on “the Israeli peace,” highlighting its themes and approaches, and also unveils the Israeli drive and aspiration to structure a new Arab regional order based on hegemony and dependency. If the Arabs wish to achieve peace, they will have to reconsider the main premises of peace, its theoretical assumptions, and practical procedures, especially after consecutive US administrations have abandoned their role of honest broker in overseeing negotiations. The article poses several questions in relation to whether and how a peaceful settlement is equal to “the Israeli peace,” and how it could be relevant to and based on mutual interests. What makes any peace inclusive and what are the differences between different approaches? In this context, the article analyses the complications related to peace in the region, adhering to an approach in which it acknowledges the historical, political, and cultural overlap that is connected to the nature and comprehensiveness of the concept of peace.
Israel Studies (Volume 27, Issue 1)
Marketing the Occupation to the Palestinians of the West Bank: Shabak Facebook Pages in Historical Context
By: Hillel Cohen
Abstract: Not available
The Fourth Phase of Palestinian Arab Politics in Israel: The Centripetal Turn
By: Oded Haklai and Rida Abu Rass
Abstract: Not available
The Limits of Symbolic Capital: The Case of Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter Evacuees in Qatamon
By: Eldad Brin
Abstract: Not available
Beyond the Periphery—Israel's Intervention in the Yemen Civil War in the 1960s
By: Yogev Elbaz
Abstract: Not available
The Rise and Gradual Decline of Israeli Democracy, 1920–2020
By: Benyamin Neuberger
Abstract: Not available
The Right-Wing ‘One-State Solution’: Narrative, Proposals, and the Future of the Conflict
By: I. Mateo Cohen
Abstract: Not available
Trump and Israel: Exploiting a Partisan Divide for Political Gains
By: Amnon Cavari
Abstract: Not available
Infanticide and the Life-Threatening Abandonment of Children in Israel's State-Building Era (1948–1968)
By: Orna Alyagon Darr and Nomi Levenkron
Abstract: Not available
Hebrew Law as a Source for Conciliation and Mediation in Supreme Court Decisions: The Legacy of Justice Elyakim Rubinstein
By: Ehud Eiran
Abstract: Not available
Journal of Palestine Studies (Volume 51, Issue 1)
Cultivating Credit: Financialized Urbanization Is Alienation!
By: Tareq Radi
Abstract: Since 2007, the Palestinian Authority has implemented a strategy of financialized urbanization in response to economic crises precipitated by Israel’s settler-colonial stranglehold on the Palestinian economy. This article argues that financialized urbanization operates as a mechanism to expand the local banking sector and as a modality of settler-colonial alienation. Examining the joint-ownership structures of companies whose activities straddle real estate and financial markets, the article shows where land ownership in the West Bank ultimately lies. The study highlights qualitative changes in money lending and the extended reach of finance to emphasize the risks of financial collapse. Understanding finance capital and settler colonialism as systems predicated on managing risk for maximum returns, the discussion draws their relation to each other into a single analytical framework to center the question of land dispossession and racialization at the heart of financialized urbanization.
Palestine Solidarity Conferences in the Global Sixties
By: Sorcha Thomson, Pelle Valentin Olsen & Sune Haugbolle
Abstract: This article maps the internationalization of the Palestinian cause by studying the participants, groups, and themes at Palestinian solidarity conferences held in 1969–70. Examining such conferences reveals the extent of communication and ideological debate between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and international solidarity activists at an important juncture in the internationalization of the Palestinian liberation movement. The article makes the methodological point that international conferences organized by the PLO and other Palestinian institutions can function as an alternative archive that complements the traditional archives of diplomatic and intellectual history. Read in tandem with extant Palestinian sources, the paper trail left by international conferences mitigates the scattered and precarious status of Palestinian archives.
Finding a New Idiom: Language, Moral Decay, and the Ongoing Nakba
By: Elias Khoury
Abstract: This essay is a translated and edited version of the Anis Makdisi Program in Literature lecture delivered by the author in May 2021. The talk, on the uprising sweeping every Palestinian geography from the river to the sea, was constructed as a series of illustrative stories. Their distillation, as Khoury points out, is that there will be no end to the Palestinian question so long as there exists a people continually prepared to resist the ongoing Nakba. “It is enough,” Khoury concludes, “that with this uprising Palestine has recovered the alphabet, leaving us to create a new idiom.”
“Captain Filastine” and the Trappings of Success
By: Nada Elia
Abstract: Many Arab Americans cheered Lieutenant Filastine Srour’s promotion to the rank of captain in the New York City Police Department as if this constituted a collective victory for Palestinians. But one person rising up in a notoriously racist institution does not end their community’s criminalization. Nor is individual advancement by a woman a feminist accomplishment, as feminism aspires to dismantle oppressive systems, not succeed in them.
An Invitation to Belong: Challenging the Systemic Exclusion of Palestinians as Present Absentees
By: Sarah Anne Minkin
Abstract: This essay takes as its starting place the “present absentee” status of Palestinians in U.S. and Jewish discourse and engagement with Israel/Palestine. Ethnographic fieldwork in Jewish American communities demonstrates practices that reiterate a dynamic of Jewish belonging against the presence of Palestinian absence. The essay explores different initiatives to challenge this systemic exclusion of Palestinians, including public programs that amplify Palestinian voices and normalize hearing Palestinians as experts in their own lives and an experimental study group with Jewish American leaders that centers Palestinian perspectives in an effort to cultivate radical empathy. Insights gained in these initiatives point to the importance of articulating fuller visions of community and belonging in engagement with Israel/Palestine.
Toward the Consolidation of a Gazan Military Front?
By: Camille Mansour
Abstract: This essay considers the place of the Gaza Strip in the broader Palestinian context. Israel’s determination to separate Gaza from the West Bank since the signing of the Oslo Accords and its subsequent withdrawal from the territory in 2005 resulted in a process that culminated in the buildup of a Palestinian military front reminiscent of that established by the Palestine Liberation Organization in south Lebanon in 1975–82. In both instances, the military front appears to serve as a Palestinian counterstrategy to achieve linkage. Palestinians demonstrated their determination to break the isolation of Gaza in the war of May 2021 that was accompanied by mass mobilization across and outside Mandate Palestine. The essay probes the question of whether we are witnessing the consolidation of a Gazan military front and points to the minimal political conditions necessary for such a development to advance the liberation struggle.
Israeli Law and the Rule of Colonial Difference
By: Rabea Eghbariah
Abstract: Israeli law is an important medium that maintains, perfects, and facilitates the fragmentation of Palestinians. Israeli citizenship figures in this structure of fragmentation as an exceptionalizing legal status that blurs “colonial difference” between Palestinian citizens in Israel and Jewish Israelis. The May 2021 uprising and its aftermath not only highlighted the counter-fragmentary forces present among Palestinians across different legal statuses, it also brought into clearer view a rule of “colonial difference” that crisscrosses the Israeli legal system and pertains to all Palestinians under its control. This essay explores the concept of “colonial difference” as applied to Palestinians through the law, and how this rule has been employed in the context of the May 2021 uprising against Palestinian citizens in particular.
Middle East Critique (Volume 31, Issue 2)
Decolonizing Knowledge Production: Perspective on Promotion and Tenure Regulations in Palestine and beyond
By: Mudar Kassis,Rita Giacaman, Maher Hashweh
Abstract: Using the model of promotion and tenure regulations prevalent in Palestine as an impetus, this article argues that these regulations perpetuate neo-coloniality by localizing and reproducing hegemonic center–periphery relations in academia. This is especially true when it comes to using scientometric criteria in the evaluation of knowledge produced by Arab academics and which gives preference to English language over Arabic language publications, to journals over monographs, and when adopting Western assumptions about the form and substance of academic knowledge production. Consequently, Arab universities expand the reach of Western dominance and its control techniques.
The Mahdavī Society: The Rise of Millennialism in Iran as the Cultural Outcome of Social Movements (2000–2016)
By: Amirhossein Teimouri
Abstract: This study asks questions about the understudied cultural, especially discursive, consequences of social movements at large, and rightist movements in particular. Focusing on the discursive repertoire of the Islamist rightist movement in Iran (known as principlism), I demonstrate that in response to the liberal Reform Movement (1997–2005), the principlist groups in Iran weaponized a millennial language against liberal reformists beginning in the early 2000s. The institutionalization of the Islamist principlist movement in 2005 mainstreamed this politicized language, giving rise to a new cultural reform politics in the country known under Aḥmadīnizhād as the Mahdavī discourse (millennialism). That is, the Mahdavī discourse represented a new cultural reconfiguration, or “cultural engineering,” in state politics. However, the Green Movement of 2009 as well as the Arab uprisings divided the unified Mahdavī discourse within the principlist movement into divergent millennial discourses. Drawing on millennial-oriented news stories and events from the early 2000s until the rise of the self-identified Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, I highlight the millennial discourses, as well as the Islamist-centered cultural engineering project, as the discursive outcomes of social movements.
Forbidden Melodies: Music and Arab-Jewish Identity in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema
By: Raz Yosef
Abstract: This article explores the role Arab music has played in forming Mizrahi identity in contemporary Israeli cinema, focusing on the films “The Ballad of the Weeping Spring”, “Testimony” and “Three Mothers”, which second and third generation Mizrahi filmmakers born to Jewish immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries made in Israel. Using Arab music, these films display the vast array of historical and imaginary relations between the Jew and the Arab, West and East, Israel and the Middle East. Memory of the Arab-Jewish past is a place that cannot be revisited, even if one can travel to the geographical territory that appears to be a place of ‘origin.’ As members of the second and third generations born in Israel, these Mizrahi filmmakers cannot reclaim the Arab-Jewish past of which they never really were a part, and so they try to trace musical routes that will take them to places, histories and encounters with people they have not known before. The grounded certainty of their Mizrahi roots is replaced in the films by the contingencies of the routes that the music enabled.
Land Reform and Kurdish Nationalism in Postcolonial Iraq
By: Nicola Degli Esposti
Abstract: This article revisits the origins of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq, problematizing the narrative, shared by nationalists and scholars alike, that presents the 1961–1975 insurgency solely as a moment of national awakening. Placing the Kurdish revolt within the social and political conflicts of postcolonial Iraq reveals its strong connection to the Iraqi Revolution of 1958. The early stages of the 1961 revolt must be understood as a reaction of the Kurdish landed class against the post-revolutionary land reform policy and the empowerment of the peasantry. The Kurdish tribal and landowning elite successfully turned its revolt into a national revolution by forcing progressive urban nationalists into a position of subordination and demobilizing the peasantry, formerly the backbone of the anticolonial movement. The hegemonic position of the landed class, won in 1961, had long-term consequences on the development of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq determining its conservative character and the persistent marginalization and depoliticization of the subaltern classes
Reproduction of Palestinian Heterotopic Space: Encountering First Wave of Covid-19 in East Jerusalem
By: Maha Samman, Yara Saifi
Abstract: This article was written during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in East Jerusalem between March and June 2020. It discusses how the Palestinians approached the pandemic within the context of occupation, and how they used their power to reproduce what Henri Lefebvre called heterotopic spaces. People articulated these spaces accumulatively as they sought meaning in their daily lives, while managing the pandemic and benefitting from their previous experiences during their struggle against Israeli occupation. Thus, the aim is to shed light on the evolving role of civil society to support local action in dealing with a pandemic and to understand COVID-19 from peoples’ perspective rather than from a top-bottom lens in occupied cities. The methodology is multilayered: We use theoretical concepts of heterotopic spaces and analyze them through the social/societal, the temporal/historical, and the spatial/geographical forms of knowledge borrowed from Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, and Edward Soja. It also builds on participant observation, official and media sources, and semi-structured interviews conducted with heads of committees of the Jerusalem Cluster community initiative. Accordingly, the study illustrates how the voices of the people become more significant in taking a leading role in a pandemic crisis in an occupied city.
Middle East Quarterly (Volume 29, Issue 2)
When Israel Destroyed Syria's Nuclear Reactor: The Inside Story
By: Ori Wertman
Abstract: Not available
How Arab Rulers Undermined a Palestinian State
By: Roie Yellinek, Assaf Malach
Abstract: Not available
Why Israel's Arabs Are Its Biggest Threat
By: Efraim Karsh
Abstract: Not available
Twin Towers and Ivory Towers, 20 Years Later
By: Martin Kramer
Abstract: Not available
Middle East Report (Issue 302)
Settler Colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa: A Protracted History
By: Lorenzo Veracini
Abstract: Not available
France, a Settler Postcolony?
By: Olivia C. Harrison
Abstract: Not available
Settler Entanglements from Citrus Production to Historical Memory
By: Muriam Haleh Davis
Abstract: Not available
“But if I don’t steal it, someone else is gonna steal it” – Israeli Settler-Colonial Accumulation by Dispossession
By: Areej Sabbagh-Khoury
Abstract: Not available
Indigenous Wine and Settler Colonialism in Israel and Palestine
By: Daniel Monterescu, Ariel Handel
Abstract: Not available
The Question of Palestinian Statehood and the Future of Decolonization
By: Leila Farsakh
Abstract: Not available
How the Fishing Industry Strengthened Morocco’s Occupation of Western Sahara
By: Victoria Veguilla
Abstract: Not available
Palestine - Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture (Volume 27, Issue 1-2)
Future Scenarios – Where Do We Go from Here?
By: Ziad AbuZayyad, Hillel Schenker
Abstract: Not available
Economic Peace: A Myth Distancing Peace and Prolonging the Occupation
By: Samer A. Sinijlawi
Abstract: The slogan “shrinking the conflict” aims at strengthening the occupation by prioritizing Israel’s interests and its expansionist policy over the attainment of Palestinian rights.
Occupation as a State of Mind - the East Jerusalem Experience
By: Meir Margalit
Abstract: With the passing of each day, it becomes ever increasingly complicated to define the essence of the abnormal situation in Jerusalem and define the Israeli matrix of control.
Scenarios for Resolving the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict – Between What’s Real and What’s Possible
By: Firas Yaghi
Abstract: Anticipating the future of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in terms of possible and realistic solutions has taken on new dimensions that must be discussed seriously.
From Here to Apartheid, What's Next?
By: Walid Salem
Abstract: Whether the situation on the ground is “settler colonialism” or “apartheid” is not a luxury but a discussion that has practical political implications.
From “Shrinking” to “Singing” the Conflict – Bennett’s Attempts to Beautify the Occupation
By: Shaul Arieli
Abstract: The primary problem with the use of the concept “shrinking the conflict” is its failure to define the conflict as a national conflict between two peoples, relating to it instead in terms of violence and economic distress.
Which Israel Are We Facing? A Different View of Israel
By: Raif Hussein
Abstract: Along with the dwindling support for the two-state solution, the apartheid regime in the OPT and racism within Israel have become perfectly normal.
Israel, Amnesty, and the Apartheid Accusation: A Wake-Up Call
By: Dov Waxman
Abstract: Instead of debating the applicability of the term “apartheid,” we ought to concentrate on finding a solution to end the Israeli occupation and the blockade of Gaza.
Comparable to South Africa? “Within Israel, It Is Not Apartheid. But in the OccupiedTerritories, It Is”
By: Alon Liel
Abstract: I do not think the situation within Israel is comparable to South Africa, but in the West Bank, our control over what happens is total.
Palestine: A Forgotten Just Cause
By: Manuel Hassassian
Abstract: There will never be an Israeli military solution if the Palestinians continue to remain steadfast and to fight for their freedom through unarmed, peaceful resistance.
Is Israel an Apartheid State? Is Amnesty International Antisemitic?
By: Tony Klug
Abstract: Switching the focus from occupation to apartheid obscures the imperative to end the occupation, of which apartheid is an ugly offspring.
Amnesty's Distorted Framing of an Evolving Tragedy
By: Frances Raday
Abstract: Amnesty’s blatant attack on Israel as an apartheid state fails to recognize the historical dynamic or the current difficulties in reaching a desirable outcome of self-determination for both peoples.
Naming As a Mechanism of Spatial Justice in Israel’s Mixed Cities
By: Maysoun Ershead Shehadeh
Abstract: Giving Arabic names to streets in Israel’s mixed cities can be an opportunity to realize spatial equality and can also be a way of forming relations of acceptance.
Amnesty International’s Apartheid Report
By: Muriel Asserburg
Abstract: While there are reasons to view Amnesty’s report critically, it is a serious wake-up call to no longer accept grave human rights violations as normal and to not regard the ongoing occupation as a state of affairs that exists detached from a “democratic Israel.”
How Far Is Israel from Being an Apartheid State?
By: Moien Odeh
Abstract: One may question whether Israel is an apartheid state but there is no question that it is getting closer to that definition.
Palestinians Can Create Their Own Political Horizon
By: Jerome M. Segal
Abstract: What is needed today is for the UN General Assembly to establish a second UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP-2) that would be empowered to develop a fully detailed end-of-conflict proposal based on the two-state solution.
Palestine and Ukraine: Exposing the Double Standard
By: Daoud Kuttab
Abstract: The war on Ukraine has done more to expose the Western world’s double standard than all the Palestinian activists and their supporters have been able to do in decades.
Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine?
By: Hillel Schenker
Abstract: It is not accurate to compare the Russia-Ukraine case with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but it may open up new opportunities for resolving the conflict.
A Jewish and Zionist Case for a Just, Binational (Federated) or “Two-State Plus” Solution
By: Gerry Serotta
Abstract: The fears of both sides and the deep cultural wounds cannot be erased overnight and will take years, if not decades, to resolve, but a joint vision of two peoples living together on the same homeland is the only solution.
