Concept Paper: The Palestinian Refugee Problem and the Right of Return

This "concept paper" by Joseph Alpher and Khalil Shikaki, was written with the participation of the following members of the Joint Working Group on Israeli-Palestinian Relations: Gabriel Ben-Dor, Ibrahim DaWrak, Yossi Katz (MK), Ghassan Khatib, Moshe Ma'oz, Yezid Sayigh, Ze'ev Schifi and Shimon Shamir. The Introduction is by Herbert C. Kelmanand Nadim N. Rouhana, co-chairs of the Working Group, a project of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Weatherhead Center for International Aflairs, Harvard University (1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-picar@cfia.harvard.edu ).     

Property and Human Rights in Cyprus: The European Court of Human Rights as a Platform of Political Struggle

It has become accepted that, during the Soviet period, Turkey ‘ignored the plight’ of the Crimean Tatars, who were brutally deported to Central Asia by Stalin in 1944. This narrative of Turkish indifference with respect to the Crimean Tatar ‘question’ overlooks a corpus of material that tells something of a different story. This corpus is literary. The Crimean Tatars figured centrally in Pan-Turkist poems and pulp fiction novels as protagonists whose victimization by the Communist regime was represented in order to provoke outrage and action, not silence and passivity. These literary texts seek to elicit in the reader what can be called ‘irredentist solidarity’, a convergence of fellow-feeling that involves a total identification of the Other as the same.     

美国法律史研究中有关私人产权的几个问题

美国法律对私人产权的保护 ,并不等于私有财产神圣不可侵犯。美国法律史研究表明 ,这个国家的法律不是只保护既得权利 ,而是更倾向于保护动态产权 ;它不是只保护私人产权 ,而是对公共权利也相当重视 ;它不是只保护现有产权 ,而是在创造新产权上也敢于进行尝试。为了经济增长和社会发展 ,美国法律并不畏惧必要时限制私人产权。正是由于在私人产权和社会经济的长远利益之间保持了一定的平衡 ,美国经济的发展才走出了一条相当成功但不是没有问题的道路     

Agricultural Property Rights and Political Change in Nicaragua

This study focuses on Nicaragua's transition from a revolutionary state to one oriented toward democracy and the market, through the political lens of agricultural property rights. The national agenda on property rights after 1990 was dominated by elaborate arrangements to accommodate kinship-based factions of the agroindustrial elite, core Sandinista constituents, rural labor groups, and demobilized peasant combatants. Bargains, legislative initiatives, and constitutional reforms failed to clarify legal ambiguity over coveted assets. Persistent conflict thereby became embedded in official efforts to design a robust property regime. The case of Nicaragua suggests comparisons with other countries where protracted confrontation and social violence over property rights pose serious threats to unconsolidated democratic institutions.     

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.     

Religious Geopolitics of Palestinian Christianity: Palestinian Christian Zionists,Palestinian Liberation Theologists,and American Missions to Palestine

The introduction of Protestantism into the Middle East by American missionaries in the nineteenth century met with limited success while the responses and internalizations of local converts proved incredibly diverse. The two resultant theological descendants are Palestinian Christian Zionists and Palestinian Liberation Theologists. The article provides a short history of these two movements and highlights influential voices through interviews and media analysis. This article argues that hybrid religious identifications with nation and place has transcended, in some cases, political struggle for territory.     

Explaining Political Islam: The Transformation of Palestinian Islamic Movements

This article aims to present a comprehensive explanation of the development of Islamic political movements among the Palestinians. It focuses specifically on the analysis of three Islamic movements: two that are active among the Palestinians of Israel (e.g. the 1948 territories)—the Southern Islamic movement and the Northern Islamic movement—and the Hamas movement that is active among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Through the analysis of these movements, the authors have identified three different major strategies used by the movements under consideration: The ‘politics of acceptance’ by the Southern Islamic Movement, the ‘politics of difference’ by the Northern Islamic Movement, and the ‘politics of resistance’ by Hamas. Four factors together constitute the basis for a multi-layered explanation of the different approaches adopted by political Islam: the context, the public orientation, the leaders' movements' preferences and the interpretation of the religious text.     

The Asian Rejection?: International Refugee Law in Asia*

The majority of Asian states have not signed onto the major international refugee law instruments which promote refugee recognition and protection. Yet, second to Africa, the Asian region has had the highest number of refugees since the Second World War. Three explanations are usually offered to explain this puzzle —“good neighbourliness”, “economic costs” and “social disruption”. In this article I argue that each is flawed in important ways and then develop an alternative by explaining how limited Asian involvement in the drafting of international refugee law has led Asian states to reject Eurocentric refugee recognition practices.     

The Struggle Against Oppression Everywhere: The Global Politics of Palestinian Liberation

This article situates the Palestine Liberation Organization in an international network of liberation movements in the 1960s and 1970s. As such, it is a transnational history of the early days of the Palestinian liberation movement, whereas most scholars have treated that movement inside the confines of the long-running Arab–Israeli conflict. By analyzing the intellectual and political linkages between the PLO and other liberation movements in Algeria, Cuba, and Vietnam, the article seeks to reframe the Palestinian struggle in the context of other postcolonial struggles of that era.