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This essay examines Hamas's pragmatic adaptability and its decentralized leadership structure in order to offer insight into the movement's decision to attack on October 7, 2023. It hones in on Hamas's decision-making processes since it gained control of Gaza in 2007, situating the discussion within regional and international attempts to contain the movement into mainstream politics. The essay presents a critique of this approach to Hamas since 2007, highlighting regional and international failures to engage with Hamas as both a resistance movement and governing -authority. Ultimately, the essay aims to clarify the complex interactions between Hamas's leadership model and regional actors that preceded the October 7 events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a testimony of transcribed WhatsApp messages and phone calls exchanged between the author in the West Bank and her relatives in Gaza from December 2023 to February 2024. Through this digital medium, the author feels connected to her family and their harrowing survival of genocide and displacement. The testimony recounts the hardships her relatives endure repeatedly evacuating areas in Gaza coming under Israeli attacks, as well as their daily desperate searches for food, wood for fire, and medicine. But it is also a testament to the human capacity to adapt and to hope, even in the face of overwhelming death and suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the concept and limitations of deinstitutionalization as a principle and practice derived from Western paradigms, and how it has been problematically implemented in non-Western settings, -including the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It begins by reviewing the international literature on deinstitutionalization of people with mental health illnesses/disabilities. It then examines the Palestinian experience with deinstitutionalization in the West Bank with an eye to its many limitations, in order to propose alternatives to successfully relocate people with -mental health disabilities from hospitals to their communities, and to ensure for them a dignified life. The essay ends with an emphasis on this need in the -Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories given the ongoing daily reality of Israeli military occupation and apartheid, which have had dire effects on Palestinians' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic reached all parts of historic Palestine around the same time, but by the end of December 2021, only 29.02 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were fully vaccinated compared to 63.82 percent of Israelis (including Palestinians with Israeli citizenship). The mortality rate from COVID-19 in the West Bank and Gaza was also higher, with 941.84 deaths per million, compared to 887.20 in Israel. This essay argues that these differences are a direct result of Israel's COVID-19 response policies toward the Palestinians throughout the pandemic, as well as its ongoing siege of Gaza and its military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The analysis is framed through the lens of necropolitics, defined as the use of political power to decide who lives and who dies. Using the four waves of the COVID-19 pandemic across historic Palestine as a case in point, the essay focuses on the different political states in which Israel abused necropolitical power: the states of emergency, exception, siege, and acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Amahl Bishara speaks with Nidal Al-Azza, director of Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, based in Bethlehem, and Rula Nasr-Mazzawi, a psychologist and founding member of Addar for Culture and Art, based in Nazareth, about their organizations' collaborative initiatives. Al-Azza and Nasr-Mazzawi address displacement as an experience shared by most of the Palestinian people, including refugees and internally displaced people. They discuss their organizations' innovative joint work to bring together Palestinian youth from across colonized Palestine, and the importance of connecting youth in face-to-face encounters to combat the fragmentation imposed upon Palestinians and to challenge stereotypes they may have of each other. Finally, they share how the Dignity (Unity) Intifada of 2021 heightened awareness for Palestinians across many locations about the unity of the Palestinian struggle and the role that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship play in Palestinian uprisings. Conducted in Arabic in December 2022 via Zoom, the interview was translated and edited for length and clarity. Reflecting the language of the interviewees, it uses '48 territories to refer to the lands Israel occupied in 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at cement as a vital material in the process of urbanization. It specifically addresses urban metabolism, examining the intricacies of the cement circulation network in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) during the post-Oslo period. Because of Israel’s near-total control of land and natural resources in the oPt, there is still no fully integrated Palestinian cement plant there, making the Palestinian construction sector highly dependent on imports from Israel’s Nesher cement factory. This article argues that controlling the circulation of cement constitutes sovereignty over the processes of urbanization. In the current context, the cement circulation system that is effectively controlled by Israel is characterized by exhaustion, resulting in Palestinian urban geography’s perennial metabolic insufficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a close reading of the first geography textbook printed by the Ministry of Education after the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950. Examining the Hashemite regime's early curricular attempts to incorporate its new Palestinian citizens, refugees and otherwise, the article highlights the tactics used to achieve these ends, namely a topographic centralization of Jordan, an erasure of human geography in favor of a natural one, and the foreclosure of other forms of national attachment and belonging. The discussion seeks to expand our understanding of one of the most significant narrative materials confronted by Palestinians in the aftermath of the Nakba, seeing in it a possible mechanism by which to understand the challenges to Palestinian demands for a self-determined education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes a uniquely thorough study of the first generation of Palestinians to have lived the whole of their lives under occupation. Findings from group interviews and large, representative surveys of men and women from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in 2011 draw a complex portrait of day-to-day life both currently and historically, including: widespread political activism that they continue to prize; high levels of exposure to often demeaning political violence and restriction of movement; limited access to basic resources, low employment stability and poverty; high levels of social cohesion, but also of lack of safety, political instability, fear for the future, stress, and feeling broken. Most were not optimistic in 2011 about the peace process but remained, confident in their ability to manage what the future brings. The findings also show that each of the three territories has unique types and levels of challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from February 16-May 15, 2014, including in regard to diplomacy, peace negotiations, violence in Gaza, Israeli settlers in the West Bank and the peace process. The role that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry played in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, including in regard to the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmud Abbas' requirement of the release of Palestinian prisoners to continue negotiations, is discussed.

An interview is presented with the Palestinian political prisoner of the West Bank, secretary-general of the political organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) Ahmad Saadat. When asked how prison has changed him, he mentions observing politics with more detachment. He discusses the 2006 Israel takeover of the Jericho, West Bank prison from Palestinian Authority (PA) control. He comments on his efforts to form a Palestinian national resistance to Israel while in prison.

The article reports on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from November 16, 2013 through February 15, 2014, including in regard to diplomacy. The role that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry played in efforts to establish peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict is discussed. An overview of the impact that Israeli settlers in the West Bank, Palestine have on efforts to establish peace is provided. Armed conflict between the Israeli military and Gaza Strip, Palestine including Israeli aerial bombing, is also discussed.

The current academic and legal campaign to constitutionalize Israel as a state that is both 'Jewish and democratic' amounts to an act of national self-deception, rooted in the collective inability or unwillingness to accept that discriminatory policies toward the non-Jewish minority contradict democratic processes, on the part of that country's Jewish majority. The author addresses the recent efforts to create an Israeli constitution by the consent of the Jewish majority that would legitimatize the denial of equal citizenship rights for non-Jewish citizens. Because Israeli Jews have constructed opposition to the 'Jewish and democratic' model as 'extremism,' Palestinian citizens of Israel are forced to limit their resistance to passive rejection of the concept, refusing to acquiesce in their own subordination and denying moral legitimacy to the system that discriminates against them.

The following excerpts were taken from the 'life history' of Um Jabr Wishah, one of seven 'life histories' collected as part of an oral history project, as yet unpublished, of seven women living in various parts of the Gaza Strip who were old enough to have clear memories of the pre 1948 period. The women were selected on the basis of some previous knowledge of them and their stated willingness to take part in the project. The 'histories,' collected over the last six months of 2001, range from 25,000 to 40,000 words and cover the narrators' everyday life and experiences through the successive wars and disruptions as well as their thoughts about the future. Each woman was interviewed a number of times, with the tape of each interview transcribed and translated before the following interview. The memories were set down exactly as they were told; the only 'editing' consists of integrating details or elaborations supplied during subsequent interviews at the appropriate chronological place. The life histories were collected by Barbara Bill, an Australian who worked with the Women's Empowerment Project of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program starting from 1996, and Ghada Ageel, a refugee from a Gaza camp now working on her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern politics at the University of Exeter in England. Um Jabr, who was in her early 70s at the time of the interviews, has been living in the al-Bureij refugee camp since 1950. Future issues of JPS will carry excerpts from Um Jabr's story regarding the 1948 war and about organizing prison visits in the 1980s and 1990s.

Placing Israel's separation wall in the continuum of the Zionist project in Palestine since the late nineteenth century, this essay sees the wall as the latest component of long-held policies of exclusion, control, and containment. In particular, it sees the wall as the culmination of Israel's quest to deal with its 'native problem,' which had been largely solved with the 1948 war, but which returned full force with the 1967 conquests. The author traces the evolution of Israel's approach to this problem, from 'partial integration' (and direct military rule) to separation (with indirect military rule and limited Palestinian self-government); settlement and land alienation have been constants. After deconstructing Sharon's current policy, the essay ends by examining Palestinian options for confronting a bleak future, focusing in particular on an as-yet inchoate strategy of nonviolence, campaigns for enforcing international law, and nurturing the most important potential alliance in the struggle against occupation: the Israeli peace camp.

Israel's disengagement plan is widely hailed by the international community, led by the United States, as a first step toward the final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. This essay is a refutation of that view. After presenting the current situation of Gaza as the result of deliberate Israeli policies of economic integration, deinstitutionalization, and closure, the author demonstrates how provisions of the plan itself preclude the establishment of a viable economy in the Strip. Examining the plan's implications for the West Bank, the author argues that the occupation, far from ending, will actually be consolidated. She concludes with a look at the disengagement within the context of previous agreements, particularly Oslo--all shaped by Israel's overwhelming power--and the steadily shrinking possibilities offered to the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Sharon commissioned the report in June 2004, largely in response to U.S. accusations that Israel was not keeping its promise to freeze settlement activity and dismantle illegeal outposts in the West bank. The seven-month investigation--complicated by the dispersion of information among various government bodies and the stonewalling of many officials--was conducted by Talia Sasson, a former chief state prosecutor. Sasson also wrote the report (the 'Opinion Concerning Unathorized Outposts') and the fifty-page summary of the 'findings, conclusions, and recommendations' from which the excerpts below are taken. Bolding, italicization, and underlining are as in the original. The full report and summary are available on the Web site of the Prime Minister's Office at www.pmo.gov.il.

A selection of articles are presented reprinted from other publications such as "Al Jazeera," "Al-Monitor," and "The Guardian." They discuss topics related to Palestine studies such as missing Palestinian bodies from the Arab-Israeli conflict, the volatility of the Palestinian economy, and the political aspects of smartphones and mobile data services in the West Bank.

The article presents news updates related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinian Arabs, and the peace process. Topics discussed include violent incidents in the West Bank, raids by the Israeli Defense Forces in occupied territories, and popular support for peace negotiations under the administration of President Mahmud Abbas.

The article presents photographs of demonstrations in Gaza City and other events related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including a protest in Hebron, the West Bank, and the construction of housing units in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

This article foregrounds how international aid and the Israeli occupation intersect in the historically prosperous West Bank agricultural village of Jayyus; with most of its lands isolated behind the Israeli Wall, Jayyus is now aid-dependent. While material aid plays a larger role in sustaining the village, it is through "advocacy work" (a form of international aid largely unaddressed in the literature) that Jayyusis experience aid on a daily basis. The article examines the paradoxes of dependence and subordination seen from the vantage point of local communities under the jurisdiction of an occupying power and in the absence of a sovereign Palestinian state. Also shown is how the routinization of aid both obscures the ongoing status of occupation and has become an important mechanism that sustains it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a series of reprinted articles that deal with Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights Palestinian territories. These articles include "Bibi's Tried-and-True Settlement Weapon," by Laura Friedman, "The Israeli Settlers Who Make Unlikely Peace Activists," by Khaled Diab, and "The Rise of Settler Terrorism," by Danial Byman and Natan Sachs. Other topics include anti-Muslim violence and settler eviction.

Excerpts, statistics and reprinted articles concerning settlement activities in the West Bank as of the Autumn of 2012 are presented. Contents include an excerpt from the article "Refuting YESHA Chairman Dani Dayan's Myths About Settlements," by Lara Friedman, a reprint of the article "No Occupation, No Problem: Levy Commission Recommends Moving Toward De Facto Annexation," taken from the July-August 2012 issue of "Settlement Report," and statistics on new settlement areas forming in Greater Jerusalem.

A reprint is given of the conclusions and recommendations from the "Report on the Legal Status of Building in Judea and Samaria," released by the Israeli Commission to Examine the Status of Building in Judea and Samaria, also known as the Levy Commission, on July 9, 2012. In it the application of international law is examined in regard to continued Israeli construction and expansion in the West Bank.

Excerpts are presented from the July 16, 2012 memorandum "State Responsibility in Connection with Israel's Illegal Settlement Enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," written by Ingrid Jaradat Gassner with the organization al-Haq, discussing the legal frameworks for Israel's extra-territorial settlements.

The article offers news briefs related to the Arab-Israeli conflict as of June 2012. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged letters on the peace process. Jewish settlers in Migron, West Bank were shifted to a different location. Palestinian prisoners in Israel ended a hunger strike for better conditions and an end to detentions without trial.

Photographs of Palestinian Arabs are presented, portraying topics including protesters supporting prisoner Hussam Khader, repression by the militant organization Hamas of demonstrators against Israeli confiscation of land, and the marking of Nakba Day in Ramallah, West Bank.

Excerpts of news articles related to Israeli settlement of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights are presented, including "Settlement Thrives as Diplomacy Stalls" and "Don't Shoot, We're Settlers," both by Geoffrey Aronson, and "'Judaizing' Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem, With Backing From Americans," by Jeff Halper.

Several excerpts are presented from articles and other documents on Israeli settlements, including "Peacemaking Efforts Running on Empty" from the newsletter "Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories," a statement from the Israeli citizens' group Peace Now titled "Givat Hamatos: A New Jewish Settlement in Occupied Jerusalem," and "West Bank Villagers' Daily Battle With Israel Over Water" by David Hearst from the "Guardian" newspaper.

The article presents an overview of events in the Middle East and elsewhere that are related to the Arab-Israeli conflict and particularly to the situation of the Palestinians for the August through November 2011 period. It summarizes the visit of Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas to the United Nations General Assembly to apply for recognition of Palestinian statehood and the various international responses to it. It recounts the freeing of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by the Palestinian group Hamas and the negotiations that led up to it. It lists incidents of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as cross-border incidents.

Several photographs are presented of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including an olive oil production worker in Gaza City, a political rally in the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, and demolition of a well in the West Bank village of Bayt Kahil.

The article looks at the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), focusing on its rebuilding efforts in the refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank following the Israeli military's 2002 incursion. The author notes that UNRWA has been an important, positive help to Palestinians for several decades and says for that reason the agency has often been undermined and criticized by pro-Israel politicians from other countries. She recounts the agency's 2002 work in Jenin and argues that while that work was important, its success was limited by the liberal humanitarian paradigm followed by the agency, which focuses on individual refugees rather than the community and which fails to recognize their rights and the systematic oppression they face.

Excerpts from the articles "IDF Civil Administration Pushing for Land Takeover in West Bank," by Akiva Eldar, "In the Jordan Valley, Existence is Resistance," by Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, and "Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel's Policy in the Jordan Valley," by B'Teselem, are presented.

News briefs related to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza strip and West Bank are presented. Topics discussed include Palestine's efforts to become a member of the United Nations, the foreign policy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the possible effect of new taxation rules on residency rights in East Jerusalem.

A chronology is offered listing multiple events regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict between November 16, 2010 and February 15, 2011. Attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on the northern border of the Gaza Strip against Islamic Jihad members on November 18 are described. The Israeli Knesset's proceedings regarding referendum votes for ceding territory in peace negotiations on November 23 are mentioned. The containment efforts of a forest fire on Mount Carmel on December 3 are mentioned, noting the combined work of Palestinian Authority and Israeli firefighters.

Excerpts from articles are given describing the Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Articles include "Egypt at Center Stage," from the January-February 2011 issue of "Settlement Report," a fact sheet on demolitions of the Khirbet Tana village by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in February 2011, and "U.S. Taxpayers Are Paying for Israel's West Bank Occupation," by Akiva Eldar from the November 16, 2010 issue of "Ha'Aretz."

The article presents news briefs regarding tensions and diplomacy surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict between November 16, 2010 and February 15, 2011. The launch of U.S.-based incentives to Israel to cease West Bank settlement construction is described. Efforts of the Palestinians to gain international recognition as a state in the United Nations are mentioned. The lack of prisoner release negotiations between the parties during the period is also mentioned.

The article presents articles and statistics related to Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Materials discussed include "Freeze or No Freeze, Palestinians Find Work in Settlements," by Selim Saheb Ettaba, originally published in the October 7, 2011, issue of "Agence France Presse," "How the States Helped Right-Wing Groups Settle East Jerusalem," by Nir Hasson, originally published in the November 7, 2011, issue of "Ha'Artez," and "The Case of Shaykh Jarrah: Updated Version," a report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published in October 2010.

The article presents information on conflict and diplomacy between Palestinians and Israels between August 16 and November 15, 20101. Topics discussed include Israel's blockade on the city of Gaza and the efforts of U.S. president Barack Obama to encourage talks between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. A summit held in Washington, D.C., on the military activities of Hamas on the West Bank is also reviewed. The author comments on Obama's communication with leaders of Arab countries, including Egyptian president Husni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan.

The article presents at items which discuss Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of Palestine, including reprinted articles, maps, and charts of statistics. Excerpts from articles are presented, including "The Lesser Known Settlement Freeze Deal," by Michael Sfard, and "Top Ten Myths Likely to be Heart From Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat in Washington This Week," by Americans for Peace Now. A letter to U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton from the YESHA Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria & Gaza is also presented.