Israel's Exit from Africa, 1973: The Road to Diplomatic Isolation

In 1973 25 Black African states severed diplomatic relations with Israel. This article examines the motives that brought the African countries to shun Israel and the manner in which the Israelis attempted to cope with their growing ‘pariahtude’. The African states sought to achieve unity on their continent, avoid their own isolation, and advance the international norms that they espoused. The Black African countries claimed that no hostility attended their decisions to break ties with Israel. Yet, as this article demonstrates, their imposition of a quarantine on Israel was an act of indirect violence. By early 1974 officials of the Israeli Foreign Ministry attempted a reformulation of policy toward Black Africa but could ameliorate in no effective manner the isolation imposed upon their country.     

Jewish immigrants from the Greater Middle East to France and Belgium: ethnic identity and patterns of integration

ABSTRACT

The present study focused on two groups of immigrant Jews from the Greater Middle East, Israel and North Africa, who currently reside in three cities in Europe: Paris, Brussels and Antwerp. By using mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative), I compared the two groups and found that each one has its own subethnicity: Israelis can be mainly characterized as belonging to the ethno-communal pattern: refer to themselves as secular and use symbols deriving from the non-Jewish environment while preserving several traditional Jewish customs and community affiliation. In contrast, North African participants for the most part conform to the normative-traditional pattern in that they maintain (traditional) beliefs, values and norms while conforming to Jewish customs and ceremonies. Regarding integration and acculturation, Israelis mainly utilize the separation strategy and very partial integration among native–born Jews and other Jewish immigrants. North African participants are more integrated with local native-born and immigrant Jews. Although the most common strategy in both groups is separation from non-Jewish locals, this strategy is more pronounced among North African immigrants who reside in Paris. Israelis residing in Belgian cities (primarily in Brussels) utilize the strategy of partial assimilation among local non-Jewish population.     

The Two-Stage Solution: Toward a Long-Term Israeli-Palestinian Truce

There is growing consensus among Israelis and Palestinians that the paradigm of pursuing a two-state solution through bilateral talks has reached a dead end. Yet the widely discussed alternatives to this supposedly expired model have not posed a credible challenge to it. Instead they have been confined largely to academic discussions among activists who enjoy little support in their societies; the proposals are more a reflection of widespread desperation than a serious movement to bring change. In the absence of a negotiated settlement to the conflict, one possibility, though currently remote, is that Israel and a future Palestinian state will establish a long-term truce that settles some disputes, such as over territory, while leaving other issues unresolved.     

Iran's Nuclear Program and the Israeli-Iranian Rivalry in the Post Revolutionary Era

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran led to a set of major shifts in the Middle East and an anti-Israeli stance became a central approach of the revolutionaries. Up to 1979, however, Tel Aviv had a close relationship with Tehran whose enmity with its Arab neighbours was anchored in a historical struggle for regional supremacy. Israel has remained an enemy of Islam and the Muslims for the revolutionary leaders and as Iran's power grew Israel's anxiety increased accordingly. A new division of power in the region and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons led to a direct rivalry between Iran and Israel and consequently many Israelis have come to regard Iran and its nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel that has to be halted. This article explores the roots of enmity between these two countries, scrutinizes the threats of a nuclear armed Iran for Israel and attempts to determine what kind of measures might work to convince Iran to renounce its nuclear program. The article has four sections with the first section covering the history of the relations and the origins of hostility between Iran and Israel. The second section provides a brief overview of how the division of regional power led to direct rivalry between Tehran and Tel Aviv. The third section details Iran's nuclear program and examines its threats to Israel and the last section covers the current sanctions debate over what type of measures might work to compel Iran to renounce its nuclear weapons.     

Unlikely relations: Israel,Romania and the Egyptian–Israeli peace accord

The history of Israel's turbulent relations with the Eastern bloc nations during the Cold War has one exception, Romania. Unlike other Warsaw Pact members, Romania did not sever relations with Israel following the 1967 war. Central to these relations was Romanian Communist leader Nicolai Ceausescu, who managed to establish himself as an important figure among both Arabs and Israelis. This article will examine Romanian–Israeli relations during the 1970s and especially Ceausescu's role in the Egyptian–Israeli peace negotiations. Recent Israeli and some Romanian documents released from the Israeli State Archive and the Begin Centre reveal much about Israel's attitude towards Romania and Ceausescu's involvement in the Middle East, and serve to shed light on a heretofore neglected aspect of Israeli foreign policy. Some of the main issues to be addressed are Ceausescu's influence on Egyptian and Israeli decision makers, Israel's prime motives in maintaining a close relationship with Romania, the importance of Romanian Jewry's position to Israel's policy vis-à-vis Romania and the extent to which these relations represented a back channel that facilitated some contact with the Kremlin. All these will be examined against the larger backdrop of the Cold War and the Arab–Israeli conflict.     

Consolidating right-wing hegemony: the Israeli election 2015

Following the premature collapse of an eclectic right-wing and centre-left government, Israelis went to the polls on the 17 March, 2015. Despite what appeared to be a clear-cut right-wing victory, the thirty-fourth government of Israel was constituted 14 May, 2015, over two months after incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apparent electoral triumph. This profile examines the contours of Israel’s recent election campaign and formation of a new government, assessing the triumphs and pitfalls of Israel’s major political parties during the election period. Similarly, this profile delineates the major political issues and dominant personalities featuring throughout the campaign. Subsequently, this profile traces the often-frantic coalition negotiations that led to formation of the thirty-fourth Israeli administration. Finally, the domestic and foreign policy implications of an increased hegemony of right-wing parties in the current government are outlined. Conversely, the narrow majority of the new government suggests ideological homogeneity may come with a price of increased political instability for Prime Minister Netanyahu.     

Between Homeland and Exile: Iranian Jewry in Zionist/Israeli Political Thought*

This article explores the contingent nature of Zionist/Israeli understandings of Iranian Jewry, a particularly important “Oriental” (Mizrahi) group that has not yet received the attention it deserves in critical scholarship. Central to the Zionist project has been a juxtaposition of the opposition between East and West, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, between Exile and Land of Israel. These oppositions can be read as extreme expressions of the desire to assimiliate the Jews into the Western narrative of enlightenment and redemption. When applied to Iranian Jews, however, these oppositions become replete with tensions and ambiguities. First I show how, during the first three decades of the state of Israel, Israelis situated the Shah's modernization programs as part of the “West”, thereby removing Iranian Jewry from an “exilic” space. I then explore how the 1979 Iranian revolution further challenged these axiomatic oppositions. Iranian Jews living in Israel posed a serious challenge to Zionism's axiomatic assumptions. Nurturing a distinct ethnic (Mizrahi) identity within the Jewish state, they resisted the majoritarian and homogenizing tendencies of Israeli hegemony and demonstrated the fractured nature of Jewish identities.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Anton La Guardia, War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land
Muhammed-Ali Zainy, The Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development or Decline
Leila Parsons, The Druze Between Palestine and Israel, 1947–49
Jane H. Bayes and Nayereh Tohidi, Globalization, Gender, and Religion: The Politics of Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts
Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society     

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.     

Remembering Paul Schiemann (1876–1944)

Abstract

This paper explores how population displacement operated in Lithuania in the immediate post-WWI period. In 1918 the disintegration of the old imperial polity led to the emergence of a Lithuanian state. Beyond the field of battle, the struggle to maintain the independence of Lithuania was characterised by an intense process of state and nation-building. All this hectic activity was accompanied by population displacement on a scale first witnessed in 1915–16.

Unlike the military campaigns, these state-building efforts did not come to an end in 1920. My argument is that population displacement presented the Lithuanian authorities with an opportunity to claim and to establish Lithuanian refugees as potential members of a new nation-state, thereby defining its spatial, demographic and cultural boundaries. The newly formed Lithuania offered a potential political homeland for tens of thousands of war refugees of various ethnic groups who had lived in the former north-western provinces before 1914, but who were displaced by war. According to rough estimates, the total number of Lithuanian refugees who settled in the Russian interior stood at 550,000 at the beginning of 1918. My paper explores their fate in the post-war period as well as official policies of the new Lithuanian state adopted towards the refugees.

The logic of the homogenising national state required that the refugees had to be persuaded or forced to abandon their divergent and multiple identities born in exile and rooted down in the single space of the national homeland. Nevertheless, the spatial pattern of ‘the homeland’ was still in flux, due to the border wars between Lithuania, Soviet Russia and Poland in 1918–20. As a result, some refugees were excluded from the ranks of Lithuanian citizenry. Their difficult situation was further aggravated by famine in Russia in 1921, which called for cooperation between Soviet Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Latvia. Thus, on the one hand, the refugees served as a focus for the propaganda of the belligerent states, while on the other hand their uncontrollable movement compelled governments to co-operate.

The paper is based on two collections of primary documents: the files of the Lithuanian Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs.     

‘The Children of the State’? How Palestinians from the Seven Villages Negotiate Sect,Party and State in Lebanon

In Lebanon, the fear of taw?īn makes nationalization of Palestinian refugees an anathema. Yet several groups of Palestinians have received Lebanese citizenship since 1948, most (in)famously those from the ‘seven villages’, a chain of Shi‘i villages on Lebanon's southern border that was incorporated into Palestine in 1923. The trajectory of their nationalization is usually presented as a straightforward consequence of top-down Lebanese electoral politics. This article augments this dominant perspective through a case study of the community from the village of Salha, now in Israel, that currently lives in Shabriha, a small town near the city of Tyre in South Lebanon. Adopting the ‘negotiated statehood’ framework, the article offers an agency-oriented, bottom-up perspective on the community's gaining of citizenship and shows how the people from Salha have acquired citizenship not merely to gain access to, but also to ensure a degree of independence from, the Lebanese state and political parties.     

Political Debates on Asylum Seekers during the Fraser Government, 1977–1982

Between 1977 and 1982, the Australian Government resettled over 54,000 Vietnamese refugees. It also admitted 2,059 Vietnamese asylum seekers who arrived by boat without state authorisation. Although the number of Vietnamese asylum seekers was significantly smaller than the number of Vietnamese refugees processed offshore in refugee camps, the unexpected arrival of these boat people stimulated debate in Parliament and in the press about an appropriate response. This article examines the language politicians used to describe Vietnamese asylum seekers and the arguments used to justify their inclusion or exclusion. The evidence demonstrates that the political rhetoric used in this period in Australia's immigration history cannot be solely categorised as inclusive or humane. Rather, the overall impression is one of resistance and pragmatism.     

Sites of repression and resistance: political space in refugee camps in Thailand

Refugee camps are frequently perceived as spaces of emergency and exception. However, they are also spaces where millions of people live their everyday lives, sometimes for extended periods of time. As such, refugee camps are political spaces where struggles over the right to influence life in the camps and shape how they are governed are continuously ongoing. In this context, what are the opportunities for political participation for refugees living in camps? How and to what extent are refugees able to carve out political space where they can engage with and affect their lives and their situations? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of refugee camps in Thailand. Drawing on Foucauldian analytics, the analysis demonstrates how key strategies employed to govern refugees, namely spatial confinement and development interventions are also creatively subverted by refugees and appropriated as bases for resistance and political mobilization. The article provides new insights into the relationship between power and resistance, demonstrating how specific technologies of governance create opportunities for subversion, reinterpretation, and appropriation.     

The Relations of the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan with Israel

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan became independent upon the breakup of the Soviet Union. Neither of these republics developed strong nationalist identities and it has been the task of their former communist leaders who are still in power to develop such identities while suppressing internal divisions. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have had a history of tolerance toward their respective Jewish populations, from which many have immigrated to Israel (and the United States) in recent years to unite with family or for economic reasons. Those republics view Israel Diaspora Jews as a source of investment and technological know-how as well as an avenue for better relations with the United States. Conversely, Israel, while considering Russian sensitivities in its relations with Central Asia, values the region as a market for Israeli products, a source for hydrocarbon resources and a way to counteract Iran as well as to seek a more favourable attitude in disputes with the Arabs.     

Under the gaze of the 'big nations': Refugees, rumours and the international community in Tanzania

In most academic literature refugees are portrayed either asthose who lack what national citizens have or as a threat tothe national order of things. This article explores the effectsof being excluded in such a way, and argues that Burundian refugeesin a camp in northwest Tanzania find themselves in an ambiguousposition, being excluded from the national order of things —secluded in the Tanzanian bush — while simultaneouslybeing subject to state-of-the-art humanitarian interventions— apparently bringing them closer to the internationalcommunity. The article explores the ways in which refugees in the camprelate to the international community. Ambiguous perceptionsof the international community are expressed in rumours andconspiracy theories. These conspiracy theories create a kindof ontological surety by presenting the Hutu refugees as thevictims of a grand Tutsi plot supported by ‘the big nations’.Finally, the article argues that refugees — being excludedfrom the nation-state and being subject to the government ofinternational NGOs — seek recognition from the internationalcommunity rather than any nation-state. This does not, however,destabilize the hegemony of the nation-state, as refugees perceivetheir own position as temporary and the international communityas the guarantor of a more just international order in the longrun.     

Arab Nationalism and British opposition in Dubai, 1920–66

The article examines the armistice talks between Israel and Jordan (March–April 1949) from the perspective of the UN mediator, Ralph Bunche, who coordinated them. The period described was stormy and complex: at its start, Israel took control of the southern Negev. Later, the two countries conducted formal talks in Rhodes, under Bunche's watchful eye, in parallel to informal negotiations, without UN involvement, in Jordan. The article, based to a large extent on Bunche's unpublished diary, explains why Bunche, who maintained rigorous control of all of the other armistice talks, behaved differently in this case, giving his post factum seal of approval to the Israeli takeover of the southern Negev and allowing Israel to pressure Abdullah to hand over the Triangle. The thesis is that Bunche, who could have put an end to the talks by resigning, or drawn the US into the crisis (as he did in the other rounds of negotiations), recognized the complexity of the relations between Israel and Abdullah and chose to act in a way that would prevent a new eruption of hostilities. In effect he was protecting Abdullah, who would have been likely to lose the West Bank to Israel in another round of fighting.     

An den Grenzen der Demokratie – Citizenship und Flucht

Current diagnoses of the crisis of democracy mostly refer to a specific type of mass democracy as it was characteristic of the second half of the 20th century. Its political space is the nation state. The presence of refugees in receiving countries now raises the basic democratic question: How can people participate in political decisions that determine their own living conditions? Refugees, lacking citizenship status, hardly have any formal political influence. The article discusses the relationship between democracy, citizenship, and forced migration in three steps. First, it presents the core arguments of the current debates on the crisis of democracy and outlines the main characteristics of democratic welfare capitalism. Thereupon, it analyzes current transformations of citizenship with regard to forced migration. It will be shown that citizenship is differentiated in the course of transnationalization and economization processes. Finally, the paper shows that potentials for democratization become visible when refugees come into view as “activist citizens” who politicize and scandalize the discrepancies between moral and legal norms as well as the limitations of democracy.     

缅甸的穆斯林与缅孟关系

罗兴加难民是历时甚久的政治冲突的旁观者.1992年,大约25万难民从缅甸的若开邦逃亡到孟加拉国,他们声称缅甸当局践踏人权.遣返工作于当年开始,截至1997年4月止,已有23万人被遣返.然而,1997年年中遣反计划暂停.缅孟双方似乎没有解决难民困境的政治意愿,遣返工作进展非常缓慢.除非迫不得已,否则孟加拉国政府决不情愿给予那些剩余的难民以种族上的平等待遇.2002年12月17-18日缅甸联邦总理丹瑞大将访问孟加拉国,这次访问进一步加强了两国之间的关系.近来缅甸政府表现出希望尽快接回至今仍滞留在孟加拉国难民营里的缅甸公民的意愿.     

The Practice of Ubuntu with regard to amaMfengu among amaXhosa as Depicted in S. E. K. Mqhayi's Ityala Lamawele

This article looks at how traditional amaXhosa extended Ubuntu to amaMfengu who arrived in their land as strangers and refugees during the 19th century. The article does this in the light of Mqhayi’s historical novel Ityala Lamawele, which illustrates the response of amaXhosa towards amaMfengu, who arrived in their land. More evidence of this response is sought from various historical sources. The manner in which the newcomers were embraced and integrated into amaXhosa forms the basis of this discourse. An explanation of the concept of Ubuntu is provided in this article. The article also provides a historical background of amaMfengu. Again, the article aims to contribute towards the promotion of African Renaissance and Pan-Africanism among the current and future generations.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Understanding Iraq , by William R. Polk. Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco , by David L. Phillips. Understanding Terror Networks , by Marc Sageman. Islamic Fundamentalism since 1945 , by Beverley Milton‐Edwards. Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism , by Judith Palmer Harik. Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab‐Israeli Conflict since 1967, Third Edition , by William B. Quandt. How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate, a Cross‐Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process , by Tamara Cofman Wittes, editor. Defending Israel: A Controversial Plan Toward Peace , by Martin van Creveld. Inheriting Syria: Bashar's Trial by Fire , by Flynt Leverett. The World According to Whitbeck , by John Whitbeck. Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa's Last Colony? by Toby Shelley.