Militarizing peace: why did the Israeli military spearhead the Oslo Accords?

This article deals with the question of why the Israeli military played a major role in the design and implementation of the Oslo Accords in the years 1993–2000 even though this process was originally initiated as a diplomatic move. It is argued that the explanation lies in the army's role in politically mobilizing the anti-Oslo front comprised of religious and peripheral groups, most of whom had a nationalist agenda, as a strategy to counter their resistance to the Accords. The ‘people's army’, through which many of these groups attained social mobility and which they had traditionally trusted, was inherently the most effective mechanism for achieving this goal. This role was further intensified in light of the government's social policies that made these groups ‘peace losers’. Political recruitment took the form of the army's role in designing the Oslo arrangements as military ones.     

A Reply to ‘Labour and Antisemitism: A Crisis Misunderstood’

In their 2020 Political Quarterly article ‘Labour and antisemitism: a crisis misunderstood’, Gidley, McGeever and Feldman argue that the Labour Party’s responses to its antisemitism crisis have been misguided because its understanding of antisemitism is wrong. We must look less at cases of individual antisemites and more at the ‘reservoir of stereotypes and narratives’, in which the long (but unacknowledged) history of left antisemitism has deposited its ideas—and from which they can be easily retrieved. This response challenges the reservoir concept as ahistorical, and culturally adrift, lacking the components necessary for cultural understanding—of being rooted, contextualised, complex and contradictory, evolving and regressing, but always home to inconsistent, yet coexisting, ideas and prejudices. The authors simply ignore the political dynamics of this crisis which have allowed antisemitism to be weaponised and made it all but impossible to have a calm, serious, rigorous reflection and public debate about antisemitism, and about Israel/Palestine. Such a debate is long overdue.     

Bridging the gap between town and gown: Local government expertise and the role of the university

This paper challenges the claim of the public administration community that universities are playing an important role in transferring public sector technology to local governments. We provide data from the Lower Mississippi Delta to show that graduate programs in public management and planning are not filling the severe expertise gap facing nonrnetropolitan counties and municipalities. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations on how universities can better fulfill their promise of technology transfer.