No, Newt and JPost, there is no Santa Claus: how national identities are really formed | Ibishblog. What's most interesting about the brouhaha regarding Newt Gingrich's outrageous comments about Palestinians being “an invented people” — which he then augmented by describing them in general as “terrorists" — isn't the rebuttals or defenses of these comments. Almost every responsible, sane and rational actor has dismissed Gingrich's remarks as preposterous, not because the Palestinians are not in some sense “invented” but because all modern national identities plainly are, in the same ways. This is not only obvious at first glance, it's also been thoroughly dissected and documented by a host of academics in multiple disciplines over the past 30 years.
Over the summer, I wrote two lengthy essays (read them here and here) about how this process works in both Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms, both of which can draw in ancient sources, but both of which are of course entirely modern and essentially 20th-century phenomena. So far, so good, one would think. Think again. Christmas fading in the Holy Land. JERUSALEM — In the land that put Christ in Christmas, Christianity is shrinking. Less than a century ago, Christians comprised nearly 10 percent of the population of Palestine (now Israel and the Palestinian territories). In 1946, the figure was around 8 percent. Today, Christians make up about 4 percent of the West Bank’s population, although there are still a few Christian-majority villages, such as Taybeh, whose skyline is dominated by church spires and whose businessmen produce the only Palestinian beer.
In Israel, though Christians make up 10 percent of its Palestinian population, they only constitute 2.5 percent of the total population. In Gaza, the Christian minority is even smaller, representing just 1 percent of the population. One major factor in the decline of Christianity here: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Also, the fertility rate among Christians is the lowest within Israel and Palestine, playing a role, however small it is, in their decline,” he added. Violence Flares Up Between Gaza and Israel - In Focus. Late last week Israel launched a targeted air strike, killing Zohair al-Qaisi, militant leader of the Popular Resistance Committee, claiming the group was planning a terrorist strike in Israel.
Over the next few days, militant groups in Gaza launched hundreds of rockets into southern Israel in retaliation, and Israel responded with new rounds of air strikes. Israel also deployed an anti-missile system known as Iron Dome, claiming to have shot down more than 40 rockets. Egypt stepped in to help broker a cease-fire that began yesterday, and held for about a day, but both sides have since launched limited attacks. In all, eight people in Israel have been wounded in the fighting, and at least 27 Palestinians have been killed. [36 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: A rocket launches from the Israeli anti-missile system known as the Iron Dome, in order to intercept a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip in Ashdod, Israel, on March 11, 2012.
Under the Guise of Security? Population Control by the Occupying Power « International Law Observer. Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a new report , on 5 February 2012, that exposes the ways in which Israel controls immigration and nationality in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) through the population registry, which it established in September 1967. The first census conducted upon its establishment resulted in the exclusion of at least 270,000 individuals. In another wave, Israel excluded a further 130,000 West Bank Palestinians who stayed abroad for long periods of time, between 1967 and 1994. In 2000, Israel effectively ‘froze’ the registry’s functions altogether and prevented the Palestinian authorities from issuing identity and travel documents or updating information for residents of the OPT.
“Israel’s control over the population registry has significantly reduced the registered Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, probably by hundreds of thousands of people. Last 5 posts by Valentina Azarov Rate: Thanks! An error occurred! The Myth of Israel's Liberal Supreme Court Exposed. Little more than a decade ago, in a brief interlude of heady optimism about the prospects of regional peace, the Israeli Supreme Court issued two landmark rulings that, it was widely assumed, heralded the advent of a new, post-Zionist era for Israel. But with two more watershed judgments handed down over the winter of 2011-2012 the same court has decisively reversed the tide. Palestinians, both in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel, will pay the biggest and most immediate costs of the new decisions. In one, the Supreme Court has created a new concept of “prolonged occupation” to justify further Israel’s denial of basic protections to the Palestinian population living under belligerent military rule.
In the other, it has upheld the right of the Israeli state to strip the Palestinian minority inside Israel of one of its fundamental rights of citizenship. Activist Reputation “As If Annexed” The case should have been cut and dried. But there was an even graver implication. Exploiting A ‘Dynamic’ Interpretation? The Israeli High Court of Justice Accepts the Legality of Israel’s Quarrying Activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory « EJIL: Talk! Valentina Azarov is a lecturer in human rights and international law and the chair of the Human Rights Program at the Al-Quds Bard College, Al-Quds University, East Jerusalem, Palestine.
Formerly she worked as a legal researcher with Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organisation, with consultative UN ECOSOC status, and HaMoked-Centre for the Defense of the Individual, a legal aid human rights group that submits petitions before the Israeli High Court on violations of Palestinian rights in the occupied Palestinian territory. She is also an author for the International Law Observer. On 10 January 2012, Yesh Din submitted a request for a further hearing in the case with a larger panel of judges to examine a set of principled legal questions raised by the judgment. Israel started operating quarries in the occupied Palestinian territory in the 1970s, with their production levels growing incrementally since. Today, there are ten quarries, eight of which are in operation. Exploiting a Dynamic Law of Prolonged Occupation: The Israeli High Court of Justice and Israel's Quarries in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
On 26 December 2011, the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) rendered its judgment in a case challenging Israel’s quarrying activities in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) filed by the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din. The petitioners demanded that the activities be terminated since they violate Israel’s obligation to administer the OPT for the benefit of the local population. Israel started operating quarries in the OPT in the 1970s; today there are ten, eight of which are in operation.
Approximately seventy-five percent of their yielded product is used on the Israeli construction market; in some quarries, this number reaches ninety-four percent.. The PLO-Israel Interim Agreements 1995: An Absolution for International Law Violations The court begins its decision by examining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)-Israel Interim Agreements 1995 in which the parties agreed to transfer rights over the quarries to the Palestinian Authority (PA). How the Occupation Became Legal by Eyal Press. This is the second in an NYRblog series about the fate of democracy in different parts of the world. In 1979, a group of Palestinian farmers filed a petition with Israel’s High Court of Justice, claiming their land was being illegally expropriated by Jewish settlers.
The farmers were not Israeli citizens, and the settlers appeared to have acted with the state’s support; indeed, army helicopters had escorted them to the land—a hilltop near Nablus—bringing along generators and water tanks. The High Court of Justice nevertheless ordered the outpost dismantled. “The decision of the court… proved that ‘there was justice’ in Jerusalem and that Israel was indeed ruled by Law,” exulted one Israeli columnist. But the frustration of the settlers did not last very long. Surprisingly little is known about the legal apparatus that has enabled and structured the occupation.
The Most Controversial Israeli Settlements - By Oren Kessler. Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank, perched atop the Judean Hills in the very center of the territory's southern portion. The city is home to 165,000 Palestinians, as well as 500 Israeli settlers who have taken up residence in and around its old quarter since 1968. Hebron is the one West Bank city not transferred to Palestinian control under the Oslo Accords; a separate agreement signed in 1997 placed 120,000 Palestinians under full Palestinian Authority control, with the remainder staying under Israeli jurisdiction. Hebron is home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where tradition says Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their respective wives are buried.
Like the city itself, it is divided down the middle. The tomb complex is the second holiest site in Judaism, but roughly half of it is consecrated for Muslim worship as the Ibrahimi Mosque. Hebron is one of the most sensitive nodes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Uriel Sinai/Getty Images JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images. The Dilemmas of Israeli Power. The Problem of Privilege. “To believe in a democratic Jewish state today is to be caught between the jaws of a pincer,” writes Peter Beinart in his widely circulated and hotly debated op-ed. Indeed -- but it was ever thus. Today the pincer is not, as Beinart would have it, the incongruity of the “democratic Israel” inside the Green Line and the “undemocratic Israel” outside it. It is the discrepancy between the notions that Israel -- whether a Greater Israel encompassing West Bank settlements or the pre-1967 Israel for which Beinart pines -- is both “democratic” and a “Jewish state.”
This discrepancy is nearly as old as the Palestine conflict itself. Zionist leaders had good reason to believe their efforts would pay off. The prospect of US rule was terrifying to Zionist boosters, who lobbied aggressively at the Allied peace talks in Paris to block it. In international law at the time, the terms “race” and “culture” often appeared interchangeably with “nation.” EU Must Back Palestinians Cut Off from Farmlands by Israel. By preventing Palestinian farmers from reaching their land for most of the year, Israel is reducing many of them to poverty - claims campaign group.
The farmers of the West Bank village of Beit Surik used to make their living selling oil from their olive trees. Now, says Abu Rami, the head of the village farmers' association, they cannot produce enough olive oil for their own families. The problem is the system Israel has set up for getting access to their land in the West Bank is on the other side of Israel's separation barrier. In effect, Israel treats all Palestinians living in or seeking to reach their own lands on the Israeli side of the barrier as though they were security threats. Israel began building its separation barrier – in some places a fence, in others an eight metre-high concrete wall with guard towers – in 2002, for the stated purpose of preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from attacking Israeli civilians.
Degrees of Incarceration. When I started shooting for what would become Degrees of Incarceration in 2003, I had no idea that it would entail anything more than a day’s work. I showed up with a camera because a dear friend and colleague asked if I had a day to document a youth play about prisons. I ended up spending the night (leaving Bethlehem by public transportation after 4pm was impractical, my new friends told me) and then regularly returning to the youth center that organized the play. As I got to know the activists who worked on the play, I heard about the night arrest raids that stunned the camp awake on a regular basis, about the youth detentions that took children from school, friends, and family, and the unending ache of having relatives in prison for decades.
It struck me that even among Americans interested in Palestine, there was little awareness of the procedures and effects of political imprisonment. I wanted to learn more, and so I embarked on this film. Prison affects children, too. Palestine nominates birthplace of Jesus in controversial UNESCO World Heritage bid. Palestine, recognized last October as the 195th member state by the U.N. Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), recently launched its first initiative as a full-fledged government in the Paris-based agency, nominating the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and a traditional pilgrimage route to be listed as an endangered site on the World Heritage List.
The fate of the Palestinian bid will be decided along with 35 other sites by a commission of 21 state parties to the World Heritage Convention at a June 24-July 6 conference in St. Petersburg, Russia. But the case has already become embroiled in controversy. The Palestinian action, of course, has broader political significance, representing a new assertion of sovereignty in a place -- Bethlehem -- where Palestinians police the streets but Israel exercises control over what goes in and out. But the initiative has run into problems that have little to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Totalitarian Trend | The Majalla. In this report on the security sectors in the West Bank and Gaza, Yezid Sayigh shows how Western donations have impeded progress in the West Bank. What the Palestinians need to achieve security in the long term is a sense of ownership and responsibility. Furthermore, the West Bank and Gaza governments will have to agree upon a common vision in order maintain the hope not only for security, but also for Palestinian statehood. This post has already been read 32 times! Western donations have paradoxically hindered Mahmoud Abbas's stewardship of the West Bank Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian Transformation in the West Bank and Gaza Yezid Sayigh Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Feb 2011 The governments in the West Bank and Gaza have sought to strengthen their respective Palestinian Authority Security Force (PASF) sectors in recent years, but in very different ways.
So how is one to reverse this move towards authoritarianism? To read the full report click here. Defusing Palestinian Statehood Bid at the UN - Hussein Ibish - International. Palestinian leaders need a reason not to ask the United Nations for recognition in September, which would be risky for everyone involved Palestinian President Abbas wipes his brow after addressing the UN in September / Reuters For most of 2011, Palestinian leaders have been privately and publicly speculating about potential statehood initiatives at the UN General Assembly meeting in September. The PLO may present some plan in effect asking the UN to recognize Palestine as an independent state, which wouldn't make it so, but it would put Israel and the U.S. in a very awkward position. These ideas have been opposed by both Israel and the United States, which have described them as "unilateral," and met with a mixed response among European states. To date no clear plan or strategy has been put forward but language of a draft resolution could be unveiled as early as Thursday.
Many Israelis and Americans are frustrated at the impasse in peace talks. There are other risks. Why the Palestinians can’t recognize the Jewish State. The UN Vote and Palestinian Statehood. A Formal Funeral for the Two-State Solution. Israel’s Long Winter | The Majalla. The Palestinine Play | The Majalla. Palestine/UN - quick update: showdown at the Security Council less likely | Carne Ross. A simple guide to Palestine's application for membership of the United Nations | Carne Ross. Palestine Moves In | The Majalla. Confusion reigns over PLO’s next move at UN | The Majalla. How I became a 'terrorist' Drawing an Israel-Palestine Border - The Editors - International. The Atlantic, Israel, and Palestine - Zvika Krieger - International. The Problem Is Palestinian Rejectionism. What About Israeli Rejectionism? Israel's Bunker Mentality.
Can the Center Hold? Palestine Diaries. Searching for the Arab Spring in Ramallah. Debating Palestine: Representation, Resistance, and Liberation. Fatah-Hamas unity government: Israel condemns move. Strength in Unity | The Majalla. "Hamas Comes in from the Cold" by Michael Bröning. Remembering Arafat. After the Arab Spring in Palestine: Contesting the Neoliberal Narrative of Palestinian National Liberation. Palestinian hunger-striker ‘at risk of death’ highlights injustice of administrative detention. Qalandia: The Potential to Transform Palestinian Nonviolent Resistance. The Palestine question, and the Arab answer. Show, Don't Tell: Why the Apartheid Analogy Falls Flat.
New Raw Deal for Israelis, Old Raw Deal for Palestinians: Labor Zionism and the Israeli Summer. Direct negotiations: Recipe for prolonging the occupation. Singular Legal Regime Necessitates One-State Solution. Should ‘Coordinated Unilateralism’ Replace the Peace Process? Why the EU Must Intervene to Stop the Prawer Plan: A Conversation with Dr. Thabet Abu Rass. Desmond Tutu: Justice Requires Action to Stop Subjugation of Palestinians. "Put Palestine First" by A.B. Yehoshua. The Palestinian Authority, UNESCO, and the Illusion of Triumph. Do Palestinians expect too much from Egypt? Under the Skin of Hamas. The Brothers Abbas - By Jonathan Schanzer.
The Awan Quartet: Forging New Ground in Palestine. Navigating Changing Winds. The state of Gaza: Five years after Hamas took power in the city, how has life changed for its citizens? - Middle East - World. The Battle for Arafat's Secret Archive. The Visionary. The Third Intifada? Carceral Politics in Palestine and Beyond: Gender, Vulnerability, Prison. The Last Liberty--An Interview with Anat Litvin. On Legal Advocacy and Legitimation of Control.
Increase of Inhumane Punishment by IPS for Thousands of Palestinians Classified as “Security Prisoners” in 2011. Empty Stomachs, Clenched Fists: How Palestinians Are Fighting Israel's Unaccountable Prison System | World. Randa Jarrar: Imagining Myself in Palestine. My friend has a story. ‘I Am an Illegal Alien on My Own Land’ by David Shulman. Israel and Palestine: International Law Updates. War by Other Means Against the Palestinians in Israel.