‘I came naïve from the village’: on Palestinian urbanism and ruralism in Haifa under the British Mandate

ABSTRACT

During the Mandate period (1920–1948), Haifa attracted thousands of Palestinian rural migrants, who constituted a significant portion of its Arab population. The article examines the experience of rural migrants in urban life and the influence of this social group on urban society. I argue that rural migrants contributed to Haifa’s economic development, participated in political and cultural activity and formed a connecting link between the city and their villages of origin. Rural migrants played a significant role as agents of change in Palestinian society, owing to the conjunction of rural and urban characteristics in their daily life. To demonstrate this, I focus on three arenas of their agency: the labour market, civil society and militias during the Arab Revolt. Their involvement in civil associations and in the Arab Revolt was central to their construction of modernity, and they disseminated it in widening circles in their villages of origin and among their acquaintances in the city.     

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 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.     

Linguistic Diversity and Ideologies among the Catholic Minority in Mandate Palestine. Fear of Confusion or a Powerful Tool?

Abstract

Palestinian Catholics have always played a major role in the Palestinian political, cultural and educational systems, with an influence disproportionate to their numbers. Instrumentalized by France during and even after her Protectorate of the Christians (1924), more visible for the Europeans during the growth of European institutions in the Holy Land and the beginning of an international Christian network, Catholic Palestinians (mainly Latin and Melkite) favoured multilingualism, but at the same time felt trapped between different trends that influenced linguistic ideologies and practices. They faced the centralizing Catholic interests of Rome (who first favoured French and Italian, but soon after the Mandate mostly Arabic); the national interests of Catholic European powers present in the Holy Land favouring their own languages (French, German through the German Catholics and the Austrians, and English through the British Catholics); and the Arabization promoted by the Melkite community.

The present article aims to analyse the linguistic choices of the Catholic community, via its educational system, by observing the process through which a complex local reality has been simplified by colonial powers, to tackle identity and conflict through language.     

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.     

EMU Political Leadership vs. Greek Civil Society: How Shall We Live Together?

EMU is a political programme at risk: its reform must reconnect with the original Community ethos as well as institutional and policy changes. Historically this ethos manifested itself in public practices of power as action in concert (‘promise’) and generosity (‘gift’), which Arendt, Mauss and Ricoeur’s political thought helps define. The 2012 Fiscal Compact moved away from such practices. Some Greek civil society organizations have demonstrated more genuine commitment to promise and generosity during the Greek fiscal crisis. This is not unique to Greece. EU parliaments and executives must consult with civil society meaningfully to properly integrate EMU within EU law.     

A Paradise Lost? The Rise and Fall of the Palestinian Community in Kuwait

The article discusses the evolution of the Palestinian community in Kuwait in the wake of the 1948 War. The demand for skilled labour facilitated the gradual integration of the Palestinians into Kuwaiti society, especially in the education system and state institutions. In this regard the article examines the role of education and students in creating personal and political socio-economic networks. The relatively liberal political atmosphere in Kuwait during its years of development transformed it into a hotbed for Palestinian political activism. This trend continued up to the 1991 Gulf War, when Yasir Arafat's support of Saddam Husayn in that wa, caused the fall from grace of the Palestinians in Kuwait. This ended the central role that the Palestinians played in the historical process of Kuwait state building. Following the death of Arafat the PLO began to seek reconciliation with Kuwait. At this timely moment in the history of relations between these two communities, the article sheds light on these efforts.     

The Public Sphere and the Rise of South Korean Civil Society

This article examines how civil society in South Korea emerged as a social force and developed a distinctive relationship with the state. It is argued that political, institutional and cultural factors are no less important than economic relations in accounting for the distinctive nature of South Korean civil society. The article explores the dialectical relationship between the state and Korean civil society and its political and social consequences. For example, the dynamic interplay between the formal and informal structures of political power and the role of various civic organisations in political and other processes of social transformation are discussed. It is argued that the complex relationship between the state and civil society should be theorised in terms of mutual empowerment and synergy in the sense that civic organisations and groups have contended for, or negotiated, power. Hence, observers should bear in mind an alternative hypothesis that different historical conditions may well determine structural changes that have diverse outcomes in the political and cultural arenas, especially in an era of globalisation.     

Anti-Iraq War Protests in Turkey: Global Networks,Coalitions, and Context

This article examines how Turkish citizens participated in protests against the Iraq War and why civil society organizations were able to mobilize tens of thousands of people across the country despite the institutional weakness of the Turkish peace movement. The Iraq War case is important in that its scale and level of protest mobilization were unprecedented based on any other anti-war protests in Turkey. Using content analysis of newspaper reports of anti-Iraq War protest events, this article maps the patterns and forms of protest against the Iraq War and argues for the importance of global networks, coalitions among organizations, and political context for protest mobilization.     

Untangling Social and Political Capital in Latin American Democracies

Robert Putnam extolled the virtue of social capital by arguing that social networks, civil society, and trust contribute to democracy. Subsequent research, however, identified a weakness in the social capital “model” in its underspecification of the mechanisms by which social capital affects political systems. This article proposes the concept of political capital as a likely product of social capital that links civil society participants to the political system. The article tests this two‐stage model of social capital and political capital and their effects on democratization using survey data from eight Latin American nations. Results find that civil society engagement in 2004 affected political capital variables, which, in turn, had positive effects on system‐level democracy measures in 2010. The article thus shows that political capital serves as an intervening variable between social capital and democracy and democratization.     

Shaping Social Activism in Post-Soviet Russia: Leadership,Organizational Diversity,and Innovation

A political scientist investigates the weakness of civil society in post-Soviet Russia, asking how these limitations manifest themselves in practice and how they influence the ability of social activists to reach out to the public, form coalitions, and advocate for new government policies. In an examination of environmental organizations from the mid-1990s to the present based on interviews with activists, materials produced by the organizations, and social scientists' analyses, three distinct patterns of organizational development are identified. The mechanisms linking political, economic, and cultural characteristics to patterns of organizational development within civil society are analyzed in this case study.     

Understanding Arab civil society: functional validity as the missing link

The study of civil society in the Arab region has been riddled with normative expectations largely derived from the experiences of civil society in other countries. While the region continues to endure a democratic deficit, it is also home to myriad civil society organizations working on a range of issues. The missing link when theorizing about Arab civil society has been in considering its functional validity in the eyes of the activists themselves. This article utilizes insights from focus groups with activists in Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq and Syria to propose a typology of the functional validity that civil society offers to Arab activists. Despite the criticisms that the concept of civil society has faced in the region, activists continue to find validity in the work they are doing. The typology proposed here presents a fivefold validity of action through neutrality, mobilization, democratic claim, access to funds, and representation for civil society activists. By bringing in empirical evidence from the activists themselves we can move away from normative expectations about civil society towards a better understanding of the various functions that civil society organizations are fulfilling in different contexts across the region.     

Mapping Civil Society in the Middle East: The Cases of Egypt,Lebanon and Turkey

This article comparatively assesses the meaning of civil society in Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey, by utilising the results of a study conducted among civil society actors. In recent decades, civil society has become integral to discussions of political liberalisation. At the same time, there is a growing rift between international democracy promotion through investment in civil society and the more critical literature on the relationship between the two. This article makes three contributions to these debates by comparing the actual experiences of civil society actors. First, it argues that the boundaries between states and civil societies are indeterminate, making it problematic to expect civil society organisations alone to become catalysts for regime transformation. Second, it shows that expectations of monolithic generation of civic values through civil society organisations do not reflect the actual experience of actors in this realm. Finally, it argues for taking into consideration other sources of mobilisation as potential contributors to meaningful political and social transformation.     

Networks of Trade Protest in the Americas: Toward a New Labor Internationalism?

In the mid-1990s, for the first time in the history of the Americas, truly hemispherewide collaboration among labor organizations became possible. Yet this new political opportunity structure has not brought actors together in an undisputed new labor internationalism. This article focuses on two key sources of contention among labor organizations in the context of free trade mobilizations between 1990 and 2004: the discussions about coalition building with other civil society actors and the debates about including a social clause in trade agreements. It argues that transnational collective action occurs parallel to the continued relevance of national-level claims and targets, and that this simultaneity represents a real source of challenges, for scholars and labor organizations alike. Based on social network data and qualitative interviews in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and the United States, the article analyzes the actions taken by labor organizations, and how these changed through time.     

Palestinian state‐building: police and citizens as test of democracy

This article explores police‐society relations by assessing the impact of current state‐building efforts by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. The article presents an outline of the emerging civilian policing model and its wider implications for citizens’ rights and the dominant political order. The specific focus of the paper rests on an examination of the potential tensions associated with the perceived need for strong coercive security structures (including the civil police) as part of state‐building efforts and the desire by the population for increased freedom and pluralism. This issue is further complicated by the ambiguous nature of the current experiment in limited autonomy underway in those areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Israeli redeployment has taken place.     

The Indian Movement and Political Democracy in Ecuador

This article examines the implications of the Ecuadorian Indian movement for democratic politics. During the 1990s, the movement successfully fostered indigenous and popular participation in public life, influenced government policies, and became a contender in power struggles. But in the institutional domain, the participatory breakthrough had mixed effects. While the movement fulfilled functions of interest representation and control of state power, its involvement in a coup attempt demonstrated that its political socialization had not nurtured a sense of commitment to democracy. The evidence is discussed by reference to the proposition that civil society actors may or may not contribute to democracy. The article argues that the study of the democratic spinoffs of civil activism requires a context-specific approach that considers the particularistic orientations of civil associations and pays attention to their definition of means and ends, the institutional responses evoked by their initiatives, and the unintended consequences of their actions.     

Whose Land? Land Tenure in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Palestine

The present article aims to uncover the different meanings attached to land ownership in Palestine during the late Ottoman and British Mandate eras and to show how a ‘modern’ understanding of ownership was imposed on the local population, particularly the fellahin (peasants), without a consideration of their needs and traditions. Many widespread claims are challenged, first and foremost the one according to which, at the time of the partition of Palestine (1947), ‘over 70 percent’ of it did not ‘legally’ belong to the local Arab majority, but to the British Mandate power, an assumption that has had political, cultural and social ramifications that have lasted until the present day.     

The Sephardi and Oriental Jews of Haifa and Arab-Jewish relations in Mandate Palestine

Abstract

This article examines the development of the relations between Jews and Arabs in Haifa during the British Mandate period from the perspective of the Sephardi and Oriental Jews (Mizrahim). It focuses on the two Sephardi neighborhoods in Haifa: Ard al-Yahud and Harat al-Yahud. The article examines the character of the shared Jewish-Arab space that existed in both these mixed neighborhoods, which were inhabited by both Jews and Arabs. The character of this spatial system was exposed during the course of a local political struggle to secure representation for the Sephardi and Oriental Jews and to improve their social condition, as well as during periods of security tension. The article also examines the attitude of the Sephardi leadership toward the ‘Arab question’, and discusses the manner in which everyday life in Ard al-Yahud and Harat al-Yahud manifested the existence of an Arab-Jewish identity during the Mandate period.     

Re-conceptualizing civil society in rentier states

ABSTRACT

Civil society is typically understood as weak or irrelevant in Gulf rentier states, the assumption being that rent-derived wealth allows the state to co-opt or repress associational life. However, for all these claims about the relationship between rents and civil society, rentier state theory relies on a number of assumptions regarding the nature of civil society itself, specifically that civil society is, by definition, independent of the state, formal and public in organization, and pro-democratic in orientation. This article examines where relaxation of these assumptions allows us to better understand the political activities of civil society groups in Gulf rentier states, even as co-optative and repressive governance tactics continue to limit space for political activity. Instead of focusing on traditional forms of civil society, we should instead search for those parts of Gulf society that fulfil the function of civil society in terms of societal entities that act collectively to pursue a political purpose (including both engagement with the state over policy matters and debates on moral and social societal norms).     

欧盟委员会与公民社会关系的变迁与反思

随着欧盟治理的民主合法性危机的突显,欧盟委员会积极地把公民社会组织纳入欧盟政治过程中。本文通过对欧盟委员会有关公民社会的文件的系统分析,指出欧盟委员会与公民社会(组织)之间的关系近年来发生了变迁,这主要体现在:一方面,欧盟委员会从只关注咨询利益集团,转而突出广义的公民社会组织乃至"相关各方"的纳入;另一方面,从只关注公民社会组织的提供信息和专家知识的作用,也就是说对输出合法性的贡献,转而突出公民社会组织的参与对消除欧盟"民主赤字"、促进欧盟治理的输入合法性的作用。最后,文章对欧盟委员会纳入战略中存在的问题,诸如促进参与民主的真实性、公民社会组织概念的泛化与空洞化以及公民社会组织的代表性等,进行了批评性评价。