The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Palestinian Socioeconomic Decline: A Place Denied

Palestinian society and economy are slowly being dismembered. The transformations in land, labor, demography, and society have been stunning. The current context has many dimensions but is defined primarily by Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian lands. That context is also defined by the deterioration of the Palestinian economy, a humanitarian crisis characterized in large part by levels of impoverishment and social decline that have no parallel during Israel's 36-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the destruction of ordinary life. Not since 1948, perhaps, have Palestinians faced such conditions of loss and dispossession. Left unaddressed (as they are by the current US road map), these conditions will not only preclude a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but also seriously constrain Palestinian socioeconomic recovery and development.     

Responsibility and National Memory: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem

How are Israelis to incorporate the Palestinian refugee problem in their national memory? Scholarly historical accounts of the 1948 period can play an important role in this regard. Benny Morris's account allows them to take responsibility while maintaining the integrity of their national identity. Shabtai Teveth's account allows them to avoid responsibility, but at the cost of ignoring mountains of evidence. Nur Masalha's account in contrast, burdens them with a responsibility that jeopardizes their national bond. It is reasonable to expect them to adopt the first and reject the second, but it is unreasonable to expect them to adopt the third, irrespective of its scholarly merits.     

Conflict Transformation and Civil Society: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh

If Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators ever agree on the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh, it will not necessarily resolve the long-running conflict, because any peace treaty would require the consent of the Karabakh Armenians, whose political representatives are currently excluded from peace negotiations. It is difficult to imagine the Karabakh Armenians consenting to such a treaty without a change in their perception of the Azerbaijanis. According to the theory of conflict transformation/peacebuilding, Nagorno-Karabakh’s civil society should be able to make a contribution to this change. Using the example of four Nagorno-Karabakh civil society organisations, this study shows how they positively or negatively influence conflict transformation.     

The Roles of Women in Contemporary Political and Revolutionary Conflict: A Thematic Model

Global population-level patterns in female participation in contemporary political and revolutionary conflict remain largely unknown as systematic empirical research in the area is lacking. Accordingly, this study systematically documented the participation of a comprehensive sample of women involved in conflict around the world. A statistically derived model of female participation is proposed that consists of four thematic roles representing specific patterns of activity: active, representing fighting and leadership activities; caring, representing traditional feminine tasks; support, representing logistically based tasks, and; ideological, representing activities that propagate the ideology of the group. The contribution of the model to theory, research, and practice is considered.     

Building ties across the Green Line: the Palestinian 15 March youth movement in Israel and occupied Palestinian territory in 2011

In 2011 Palestinian youth joined together across the Green Line, demonstrating grassroots solidarity and a challenge to the elite consensus in favour of the two-state Oslo process. The movement drew inspiration from the concurrent Arab Spring and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, organising joint demonstrations in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. However, the movement struggled to develop as a result of challenges regarding its objectives, strategy and representation, and of external threats from Israel and Palestinian political elites.     

Palestinian Suicide Terrorism in the Second Intifada: Motivations and Organizational Aspects

Suicide terrorism has developed into a widely used tactic, and arguably one of the major strategic threats facing some countries. This article explores various issues related to Palestinian suicide terrorism by presenting a two-phase model to explain the processes and factors underlying the development of Palestinian suicide bombers, and the execution of suicide bombing attacks. The model is applied to the case of suicide attacks that have occurred in the course of the first 21 months of the Second Intifada, from September 2000 to June 2002. The assumptions of the model are tested by taking an in-depth look into the various motives leading individual Palestinians to volunteer for suicide missions, and by discussing the activities and major functions of the organizations that have employed this modus operandi in the specified time frame. It will be concluded that while a counter-terrorism strategy aimed at targeting terrorist organizations may offer short-term gains, in the long run Israel will need to identify ways of removing or reducing the incentives that lead some Palestinians to volunteer for suicide missions.     

The attractiveness of the seemingly unattractive: An Israeli case

The aim of this article is to analyse what makes local government in Israel, which enjoys only minimal formal power, so attractive to many political parties and other organisations. The article offers a typology of the contestants in the local government electoral arena: old parties, parties attempting to penetrate local government from parliament and parties using local government to enter parliament. The primary goal of every type is then identified: party formation, institutionalisation and survival. From this typology an explanatory model is developed which looks at the local government as a ‘linkage agent’ from which the national parties can mobilise various important resources thus achieving their primary goals.     

Strategic Interaction Between Rebels and the State: A Study of the Maoist Conflict in Nepal

The “people's war” in Nepal during 1996–2006, led to two significant outcomes—the elimination of monarchy and political victory for the Maoists. These political outcomes raise important questions about the process of Maoist conflict in Nepal. While several studies on political conflict are concerned about “why” such conflicts happen, I focus on “how” the strategy of conflict unfolded in Nepal. In this article, I argue that strategic interaction between rebels and the state explain why the conflict led to negotiated settlement in Nepal. To discuss the sequence of rebel–state interaction, I introduce a game theoretic model. In addition, I show how territorial control, target selection, and levels of violence used by the rebels in comparison to the state are crucial in understanding the conflict process. The case study in this article analyzes the relevance of rebel–state interaction to reveal micro processes of political conflict and further suggests that negotiation can become an important tactical choice in resolving conflict.     

Lebanon in the context of regional politics: Palestinian and Syrian involvement in the Lebanese crisis

This article focuses on the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (epas) which form the central focus of the commitments made in the Cotonou Agreement, signed in 2000 by the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (acp) states. epas are part of a much wider trend witnessed since the creation of the World Trade Organization (wto), characterised by the proliferation of bilateral free trade agreements. The article argues that both the material and ideational interests of the EU need to be considered alongside the historical context of EU–acp relations. The EU is making a concerted effort to ‘lock in’ neoliberalism across the seven different sub-regions of the acp group by negotiating epas that include both reciprocal trade liberalisation and various ‘trade-related’ issues. In this way epas will go beyond the requirements for wto compatibility, resulting in a reduction of the policy space for acp states to pursue alternative development strategies. The article then considers the potential developmental impact of epas with reference to the negotiations with seven of the 15 member states of the Southern African Development Community (sadc). It is argued that the EU is promoting ‘open regionalism’, which poses a threat to the coherence of the regional project in southern Africa.     

Conflict in MPA programs: A comparison of delivery systems

This article reports the findings from a nationwide survey of MPA directors’ perceptions of their programs’ conflict. The survey explored the directors’ general perceptions of their programs’ conflict and perceptions of conflict associated with thirty programmatic areas. The survey was designed to test commonly held assumptions that programs delivered by political science departments, business schools, and unconventional structures are more conducive to conflict than independent departments and schools of public affairs and administration. The article also explores the relationship between conflict and program effectiveness.     

The Armenian Earthquake of 1988: A Perfect Stage for the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

Abstract

Natural disasters can sometimes have a tremendous impact on societies and can even contribute to the outbreak of violent conflicts. The onset of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is usually attributed to the lack of Soviet control over the periphery and the consequent ‘resurgence of ethnicity’. Based on an analysis of how the main political actors in Moscow and the Caucasus framed the 1988 earthquake in Armenia in opposition to each other, this essay shifts the focus from political history to environmental history to argue that the disaster, and the narratives revolving around its origin and meaning, can further explain the exacerbation of the conflict.     

A Tale of Two Kazakhstans: Sources of Political Cleavage and Conflict in the Post-Soviet Period

Departing from some prominent scholarship on Kazakhstani politics, the author argues that competition between financial–industrial groups over scarce economic and political resources—rather than inter-clan or centre–periphery rivalries—largely determines who gets what, when and how. While clan politics and regional grievances may still influence struggles over the distribution of power and wealth, their importance has diminished in recent years. Instead, observable political conflict has centred around competing financial–industrial groups, which represent the diverse, and at times clashing, interests of Kazakhstan's business and political elites.     

The violence of culture: the legitimation of the Israeli occupation of Palestine

This paper considers the ramifications of the fact that a majority of (Jewish) Israeli citizens no longer considers the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territory of the West Bank to be an ‘occupation’. Informed by qualitative research conducted in Israel and the occupied territory of the West Bank, the paper argues the case for understanding of this process of social legitimation as being rooted in complex structures of cultural processes and practices grounded in ideological and religious beliefs. Identifying Zionism as an ethno-national ideology, located within the wider ethno-national impulse of nineteenth century Europe, the paper further investigates a number of cultural processes that have led to the domestic justification and rationalisation of occupation in the Israeli public consciousness and consequently, the legitimisation of continued occupation. These cultural practices are inherently highly political, constituting a long-term strategy aimed at maintaining the occupation. The paper argues that this strategy is articulated not only by cultural practices of ethnonationalism and identity politics, but ultimately by various acts and facets of violence.     

Citizens' Learning,Involvement, and Participation in Decision-Making Under the Democratic Ethos: A Theoretical Framework and the Israeli Experience

Public administration literature usually assumes that citizens' participation in administrative decision-making (PDM) processes can improve public sector performance and trust. In this article, we question the universality of this assumption, arguing that PDM processes will have positive results in terms of performance and trust only when there are available channels to influence policy outcomes and democratic participatory behavior. We construct theoretical arguments based on a mechanism of social learning and illustrate them by reference to the case of Israel. The framework highlights the centrality and importance of culture and social characters for the study and planning of public administration reforms.