FIGHTING WITHOUT WEAPONS: PALESTINIAN DOCUMENTARY FILMS AND ACTS OF RESISTANCE

Film production has for a long time been a prominent medium for Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation and create a cultural memory. Though there are some academic studies on the subject, a critical framework of analysis for such films remains underdeveloped. This article argues that Palestinian film production has surged particularly in recent years as part of an increasingly globalised dimension to Palestinian resistance, alongside such initiatives as the Electronic Intifada and the BDS movement. Early Zionist rhetoric asserted the non-existence (or invisibility) of Palestinians. Several decades later, when the Arab revolt was shut down, the Israeli official propaganda largely shifted to a discourse of “emergency”, which decontextualizes the anti-colonial nature of Palestinian resistance. The films 5 Broken Cameras (2011) and Private (2004) both engage with Israeli colonialism and the state of emergency by acting as tools of witnessing, laying bare the occupational strategies the Israelis use under emergency law and revealing the arbitrary nature of such practices as the Separation Wall. The films challenge Israeli authority through their depictions of predominantly non-violent forms of resistance, which counters their historically constructed invisibility as a people, as well as the colonialist narrative of “terrorism”. Non-violent resistance makes the recognition of Israeli authority problematic, as the settlers cannot use brute force to drive out the Palestinians if there is no documented incident in context to justify violence. Furthermore, the article argues that the form of the films – pseudo-documentary and especially “talking witness” documentary – enables their emotive content to reach out to an international audience, which could potentially respond. Thus, the films not only contain acts of resistance, but they significantly are tools of resistance in the conflict.     

‘A source of considerable annoyance’: an Israeli–Palestinian backchannel in the efforts to release the blocked Palestinian bank accounts

In addition to the great emotional toll that the Nakba inflicted on the Palestinian people, the 1948 exodus occasioned substantial material losses for the refugees as well. As the 1948 War ground to a halt, the international community had to decide how to deal with all of this, and in the early 1950s the matter of the so-called ‘blocked’—or frozen—Palestinian bank accounts became one of the main issues on the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission’s agenda. Initially, its effort included the government of Israel and the British-owned Barclays Bank. As things progressed, however, Israeli diplomats also engaged a group of Palestinian refugees in an informal backchannel. This article sheds light on this largely overlooked episode and shows how the channel was established, and how the Palestinian group faced nothing but strong international opposition, most notably from the British Foreign Office. Protecting the interests of its regional ally Jordan, as well as those of Barclays Bank, the Foreign Office did what it could in order to make sure that this particular Israeli–Palestinian backchannel was promptly closed.     

Palestinian Political Prisoners: Hunger Strikes and the Battle for Dignity

Thousands of Palestinians have been imprisoned in Israeli jails since 1948, reflecting an objective of Israel's occupation of Palestine to break the spirit of Palestinians in their struggle for liberation. A form of protest often undertaken by Palestinians in response to their political imprisonment is hunger strike. Indeed, when considered in relation to governance as an enactment of power upon people in prison, hunger strikes are an attempt of powerless prisoners to exercise some level of power over their circumstances. Concepts around hunger strike as form of protest are complex and multidimensional, and may reflect the interests of an individual or group, and/or speak more to the broader rights of people. Of interest to this study is the relationship between hunger strike and human dignity as manifest as a form of protest by Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli jails. Specifically, this study aimed to investigate the extent to which the concept of human dignity is a fundamental principle guiding Palestinian political prisoners' initial decision to hunger strike and then to continue to hunger strike. To facilitate the investigation, a stratified sampling approach was used to support the collection of quantitative data via a survey of 29 expolitical prisoners who had participated in hunger strikes during their imprisonment in Israeli jails. The collected data were related to three core dimensions of the protest construct: motivations for undertaking the protest (hunger strike); personal feelings when undertaking protest; and the experienced responses to/outcomes of the protest. Analysis of the participants' responses and the reporting of the main findings was informed by reference to key theoretical frameworks developed by Habermas, Kant, Sartre, and Durkheim. This study found that Palestinian political prisoners often considered human dignity to be more important than food. They therefore believed that hunger strike was a way to express that they would not surrender their dignity nor stray from their resistance. This article contributes to the important debate on the extent to which the hunger strike is an effective way to protest against the loss of human dignity experienced as a Palestinian political prisoner.     

The fall of a village in the 1948 war: a historical close-up of the conquest of Mi’ilya and its surrender

The present paper attempts to take a close look at the events surrounding the conquest of the Palestinian village of Mi’ilya in the 1948 war based on Hebrew-language documents in the Israel Defense Forces archive and interviews conducted in Arabic with elderly people living in Mi’ilya. Its aim is to explore how these two types of sources and the distinct cultures of remembrance which they represent may be combined to produce a new historical canvas, affording a broader and deeper picture than could be achieved based on the Israeli archive alone or on Palestinian memories alone. Our main concern has been to reconstruct the past, a task that has become particularly urgent as regards oral memories of the war. At the same time we seek to show how present-day cares weigh on our recollections of the past and affect their form.     

Fatah from Below: The Clash of Generations in Palestine

Dominated by a Fatah/Palestinian National Authority coalition, West Bank politics is characterized by authoritarianism, factionalism and an accommodating policy vis-à-vis the Israeli occupier. These features are prominent parts of what Hisham Sharabi called neopatriarchy, a dysfunctional political system that leaves societies internally repressive and externally weak, marginalizing the young and accommodating colonial interests. The resulting alienation and dissatisfaction among young Palestinians have led to two kinds of reaction that bear on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict: a well-organized but leaderless popular resistance, and destructive, spontaneous outbursts of violence. The onus is on the elite to reform the political culture, as liberation from Israeli occupation will not by itself improve the dysfunctional organization of West Bank politics.     

A portrait of the Israeli woman as the beloved: the woman‐soldier in the poetry of Mahmüd Darwish after the 1967 war

Understandably, the treatment of the Israeli as an individual in contemporary Arabic literature has been quite limited. A significant attempt to portray an Israeli woman has been made by the Palestinian poet, Mahmüd Darwish. Over the course of three poems, written at different points in the poet's career, Darwish introduces and develops the character Rita, capturing in each poem a different facet of the personal, human tragedy inherent in the love between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man. The conflicts of love, national suffering, and the inconstancy of human behaviour work against any hope for a lasting relationship between Rita and the poet. Beyond the narrative of this ‘Rita trilogy’, a number of points merit critical evaluation: the novelty of a compassionate portrayal of an Israeli woman in Arabic literature, and the question of whether Rita is in fact an individual or a symbol of something greater. Texts of the poems treated are provided as appendices in both English and Arabic.     

The Nakba in Palestinian Memory in Israel

Changes in the international, regional and domestic arenas in the late 1990s resulted in discursive change with regard to interpretation of the Al Nakba in the political and civil societies of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. Apart from fuelling a discursive challenge to the Israeli dominant discourse about the 1948 events, this reinterpretation allowed the Palestinian Arab citizens to discuss the historical roots of the problems they experienced within the Israeli political and civil societal spheres. This article analyses the nature and significance of discursive change of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel on the Nakba by referring to its impact on their identity politics as well as their political and civil societal activities.     

Lone-wolf or terror organization members acting alone: new look at the last Israeli–Palestine incidents

The ‘sacrificial attacks’ in Jerusalem and throughout all of Israel, from July 2014 until August 2015, were the promo of the full-scale knife-attack that started from October 2015 until now. The uniqueness of this wave of terror is its length – over a year – and its use of the old-new ‘white weapons’ which, since October 2015, has included women and children. This research answers how and why these lone-wolf attacks started. The ‘lone-wolf’ attacks, as nicknamed in the Israeli and worldwide press, are, in reality, a continuation of the organized terror activities of the Palestinian liberation organizations especially the Islamic Jihad and Hamas. This is not a popular intifada drawing the masses, nor an armed intifada, but a wave of terror that includes a large number of initiated attacks by known anti-Israel Palestinians connected to terrorist organizations by their past activities or through relatives (prisoners or martyrs) or inspired by the Internet sites and social media. The Palestinian liberation organizations are all protecting al-Aqsa and supporting, without any restrictions, a continuation of the attacks against Israeli targets in Jerusalem and competing with each other.     

Palestinian Oral History as a Source for Understanding the Past: Insights and Lessons from an Oral History Project among Palestinians in Israel

The purpose of this article is to further explore the potential for Palestinian oral history to be used as a source for understanding the past. It examines existing directions in this field and highlights new approaches based on a discussion of an oral history project conducted by the author of this paper - a Jewish Israeli - in the Upper Galilee between the years 2006 and 2011. The article sharply illustrates the necessity and the urgency of recording Palestinian oral history with regard to the period that preceded the 1948 war, especially where written sources are lacking. It demonstrates the richness of oral history among Palestinians in Israel and exemplifies its ability to capture a vivid picture of a segment of Palestinian rural life before the Nakba. Methodologically, the article emphasizes the significance of cross-checking non-dependent oral sources as well as cross-checking oral sources against written testimonies as a means of striving for the truth and as a useful way of examining the reliability of oral sources.     

Where is the State of Israel? Testimonies from IDF Nachal soldiers on Israel’s territorial integrity

The present article aims to uncover how and where combatants in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) draw the boundaries of the State of Israel. The territorial integrity of Israel remains unsettled and IDF’s combatants cannot look merely towards fixed territorial borders and legal agreements when drawing the demarcation lines between Israel and its neighbours. The article’s empirical basis is a longitudinal study of 34 soldiers in the IDF’s 50th Battalion in the Nachal Infantry Brigade in the period 2006–2010, and explores how this group ‘mapped’ the State of Israel during their military service. The article shows how the combatants operated in a strategic universe where the boundaries of Israel’s territorial integrity were drawn by stressing the combatants’ sense of attachment to certain areas as Israeli Jews; not merely as Israeli citizens. This became particularly clear and overt in the case of the West Bank, which they viewed as a patchwork of Israeli and Palestinian territories.     

Assessing Israel's Motives In Annexing the Jordan Valley

This article analyzes Israel's motives in annexing the Jordan Valley—a plan that, if approved, will eliminate any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state, even on a small part of historic Palestine. This promises to be one of the most critical strategic turning points in the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The analysis reveals that the Israeli annexation decision, even if postponed, has become a reality imposed by Israel on the international community, insinuated into formal and official government announcements and declarations. In addition, the article highlights the danger of imposing Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley since it carries with it a threat to regional stability. As part of this examination, the study traces the development of the positions of successive Israeli governments toward the issue of annexing this region, from 1967 through the dissolution of the Netanyahu government in 2021.     

Discrimination against Jewish Women in Halacha (Jewish Law) and in Israel

Democracy is supposed to allow individuals the opportunity to follow their conception of the good without coercion. Generally speaking, Israel gives precedence to Judaism over liberalism. This article argues that the reverse should be the case. In Section I it is explained what the Halachic grounds for discrimination against women are. Section II concerns the Israeli legal framework and the role of the family courts. Section III considers Israeli egalitarian legislation and groundbreaking Supreme Court precedents designed to promote gender equality. Section IV analyses inegalitarian manifestations of Orthodox Judaism in Israeli society today, especially discriminatory practices in matters of personal status. It is argued that Judaism needs to adopt gender equality because of Israel’s commitment to human rights. Israeli leaders should strive to close the unfortunate gap between the valuable aims and affirmations voiced in the 1948 Declaration of Independence and the reality of unequal political and social rights for women.     

Is a Just and Lasting Peace Possible?

The right-wing drift in Israeli public opinion that brought Benjamin Netanyahu to power for the fourth time has deepened the existing political stalemate, sharpened internal Palestinian discontent with the Palestinian Authority (PA), and further undermined its legitimacy. After nearly a quarter of a century of negotiations, since the Madrid conference in late 1991, the PA appears to have reached the end of the line. Its attempt to “internationalize” the conflict by seeking recognition as a state by the UN Security Council and the General Assembly is meant in part to gain time and fill the political gap. Palestinian civil society groups perceive Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as an alternative strategy to the failed “negotiated process” to end occupation even if it is a long term effort. A stable and just peace does not appear possible in the near future, and in the long run the nature of the solution need not be the one deemed at present as the only possible one.     

The Origins of the Redemption in Occupied Suburbia? The Jewish-American Makings of the West Bank Settlement of Efrat, 1973–87

Founded primarily by Jewish-American immigrants after the 1973 Arab–Israeli war, Efrat has emerged as one of the most highly recognizable settlements in the occupied territories. Drawing on archival materials, the periodical press, and interviews never before brought to light, this article both explores the untold history of this ‘city on a hilltop’ as the product of a quadrilateral relationship between American–Israelis, the Israeli government, the native Israeli settler movement, and local Palestinian communities, as well as reconstructing the discourses in the making of Efrat, which combine religio-political imperatives alongside a deeply Americanized vision of building new, utopian, suburbanized communities in the occupied territories, during its formative years between 1973 and 1987.     

The Future Israeli-Palestinian Relationship

In this concept paper, the Joint Working Group on Israeli‐Palestinian Relations‐a group of influential Palestinians and Israelis that has been meeting periodically since 1994 to discuss final‐status issues in the Israeli‐Palestinian negotiations‐explores the future relationship between the two societies after the signing of a peace agreement. The paper considers a relationship based on total separation between the two societies and states as neither realistic nor desirable. Instead, it envisages a future relationship based on mutually beneficial cooperation in many spheres, conducive to stable peace, sustainable development, and ultimate reconciliation. The basis for such a relationship must be laid in the process and outcome of the final‐status negotiations and in the patterns of cooperation established on the ground. Efforts at cooperation and reconciliation cannot be pursued apart from their political context. The paper argues that the only feasible political arrangement on which a cooperative relationship can be built is a two‐state solution, establishing a genuinely independent Palestinian state alongside of Israel. The resolution of final‐status issues must be consistent with the sovereignty, viability, and security of both states. The paper then proceeds to describe several models for the relationship between the two states and societies. It advocates a model of close cooperation, but proposes that this relationship be built in stages. The scope and speed of expanding and institutionalizing cooperative activities must be determined by experience‐by the extent to which such activities meet the needs of both parties, enhance mutual trust, and reduce inequalities between the parties. Finally, the paper discusses three avenues for promoting a cooperative relationship based on equality, reciprocal benefit, and mutual trust and respect: the development of functional ties and civil‐society institutions across national borders; programs directed toward attitude change and stereotype reduction; and efforts to close the economic and political gap between the two societies.     

Things that matter: nostalgic objects in Palestinian Arab homes in Israel

This article addresses the complex identity of Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens from an atypical perspective: through manifestations of their material culture. The cultural expressions that will be examined are objects from the past and objects that relate to the past, particularly to the rustic Palestinian life profoundly destabilized by the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. These objects, displayed in the homes of some of Israel's Arab citizens, are interpreted by contemplating their design, the design of their environment, their relationship to other objects, and their placement within the domestic sphere. Our study is animated by the desire to sketch a cultural portrait of Palestinian Arab Israelis, as well as by a methodological interest in interpretations based on a socio-architectural reading of objects.

This article reveals the various layers of meaning within these nostalgic displays in all their diversity, and will discuss at length their uniqueness, which is linked to the past traumas and present difficulties of Israel's Arabs. Our main purpose is to develop a line of thought whereby objects that express nostalgia are understood as the embodiment of a consciousness that is characteristic of the present.     

Israel's Middle Eastern Jewish Intellectuals: Identity and Discourse

The intellectual movement HaKeshet HaDemokratit HaMizrahit (The Eastern Democratic Rainbow) was established in 1996 by second and third generation Middle Eastern and North African Jewish immigrants who are faculty members, graduate students, actors, artists, educators, businessmen and women, and media workers. These self-identified Mizrahi Israeli intellectuals aimed to initiate new debates in Israeli society with their criticism of Zionist narrative and policies by applying post-colonial theory to expose the construction of social categorisation among Jewish Israelis. In their discursive contribution they addressed several issues of historical and contemporary inequality between groups of Israeli citizens. By examining the motivation behind this intellectual activism, the present article asks what the Mizrahi identity means to people labelled as Mizrahim and why it is important.     

They Were Prepared: The Palestinian Arab Scout Movement 1920–1948

This article explores different historical aspects of the Palestinian scouting movement, mainly during the British Mandate (1920–1948). I begin with the general contours of the movement's development and its deteriorating relationship with the Mandate government. I then proceed to reconstruct and analyze scouting culture, showing how it exposed Palestinian boys and young men to a vast array of socializing practices which solidified identification with local communities, parent organizations, and the Palestinian Arab nation. The article also shows that scouting was a visible and powerful component of the Palestinian public sphere. This article explores a historical phenomenon significant to the broader history of Palestinian society and the development of the national movement.     

The wall has feet but so do we: Palestinian workers in Israel and the ‘separation’ wall

While the Israeli-constructed wall in the occupied West Bank seemingly signifies a shift to a policy of separation, every year thousands of West Bank Palestinians legally and illegally cross its bounds into Israel for work. In this article, I explore the varying regimes of (il)legality and (im)mobility that have accompanied the construction of the Israel–West Bank separation wall, which decisively impact the lives of Palestinians who work in Israel. The peculiar separation legislated by the wall, which is often treated as a de facto ‘border’, obscures the ways in which it facilitates continued Israeli territorial expansion and deepens the subjugation of the Palestinian population. As a border, the separation wall functions more as a colonial frontier, the asymmetry of which has powerful implications for the border crossings of documented and undocumented workers, as well as their respective experiences of illegality inside the West Bank and in Israel. It is in the context of West Banker Palestinians who work in Israel, I argue, that the doctrine of separation embodied in the wall is exposed as not only deceptive, but also obfuscating of the relation of asymmetrical dependence between the two entities.     

Opposition to Israel’s first Qadiya

ABSTRACT

In 2017, following a fraught 22-year struggle, Israel appointed the first female judge (sing. qadiya, pl. qadiyat) to its Islamic (shari’a) courts. This contrasts with the earlier appointments of qadiyat around the world, most notably in the Palestinian Authority in 2009. The Israeli shari’a courts’ jurisdiction over family law, a field of law which engages in women’s issues, makes the introduction of qadiyat particularly salient. This article is among the first to focus academic research on the issue of qadiyat within Israel and is based on field interviews with practitioners and academic experts, as well as documentary primary and secondary sources. This article finds that the obstacles that delayed the appointment of Israel’s first qadiya were a manifestation of the political impact Muslim minority status had on the country’s Muslim and Jewish establishments.