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While it is frequently invoked, the archipelago is such a vague concept that its deployment in fields such as island studies is only productive when the contingency of its use is specified. In this article, we examine the concept itself and then consider the use of the archipelago as a metaphor and/or model for a future Palestinian state. The creation of the modern nation-state of Israel in Palestine in 1948, various Israeli military actions, and (often related) public and private developments of former Palestinian lands has resulted in a substantial proportion of Palestinians fleeing to neighbouring countries (chiefly Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria). Those Palestinians who have remained have largely been confined to territorial isolates within the Jewish state. These isolates have frequently been understood and analogised as 'islands' within Israel, and the aggregation of these isolates has been variously referred to and/or represented as an archipelago. This article examines the development of this metaphoric interpretation of the Palestinian community within Israel in Anglophone, Arabic, and Francophone discourse, and characterises the contortions necessary to imagine Palestinian territories as archipelagic. The conclusion returns to consideration of the notion of the archipelago itself and of its usefulness in island studies and other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is published as part of the Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography special issue 'Palestinian Futures Anticipation, Imagination, Embodiments', edited by Mikko Joronen, Helga Tawil-Souri, Merav Amir & Mark Griffiths. The almost 100 Israeli checkpoints that are located inside the West Bank and on its 'border' with Israel play a particularly important role in the architecture of occupation. They represent key political technologies that are used to monitor, discipline and/or selectively limit the mobility of Palestinians. In this paper, I analyse the ways in which the design of the newly relaunched Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem represents a certain specific 'checkpoint future', materialized in the continued 'evolution' of Checkpoint 300, its machines and 'façade of legitimacy': a future in which the Israeli military regime controlling the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) is kept in place and the checkpoints and their inherent violence are increasingly normalized. Furthermore, I argue that this 'checkpoint future' does not lead to a less violent or arbitrary checkpoint regime. This remaining presence of violence should not be framed as a failure, instead, the continued presence of violence, analysed here as experienced and expressed in the arbitrary functioning of the checkpoint machines, as well as the 'legitimised façade' of Checkpoint 300 are intrinsically bound and an expression of the same violent future: a future with an enduring Israeli military regime in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research about Palestinians in Israel during the period of military rule from 1948 to 1966 describes them as acquiescent and primarily focuses on the mechanisms of control imposed by Israel. This article examines the role played by improvised sung poetry in Palestinian weddings and social gatherings during this period, and it assesses the contribution that this situated art form made to asserting this community's agency. Ḥaddā' (male) and Badāaʿa (female) poet-singers are considered as agents of cultural resilience, songs as tools and weddings as sites of resilience and resistance for Palestinians who lived under Israeli military rule. Folk poetry performed by Ḥaddā' and Badāaʿa is identified as a form of cultural resilience and resistance rooted in Palestinians' cultural heritage. The data signal the persistence of resilience, dignity and rootedness in the land and identity, as well as demonstrating the risks of such resilience and of resistance actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the difficulties for children and youth in attaining an education while living under Israeli military occupation. It focuses on three Palestinian students in the West Bank who shared their experiences with the author about their trials of getting to and staying in school, their limited opportunities for gaining higher education, and their sense of well-being, to demonstrate the impact of military occupation on their daily student life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Banksy's new controversial project, the Walled Off installation-hotel, in Bethlehem, Palestine, can be productively interrogated in terms of what the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek calls the 'architectural parallax', as a site where the fundamental antagonism (the class struggle) in the context of the Palestinian struggle for freedom is played out. Structured around a few major architectural contradictions, Banksy's new project in Bethlehem raises critical questions about the contradictions of post-Oslo Palestine within the neoliberal economic realities of the global capitalist system. The Walled Off hotel thus exposes the contradictions or ideological discrepancy between, on the one hand, the free mobility of ideas and capital which made such an installation-hotel possible in the first place, and on the other, the restrictions on the mobility of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation and Zionist settler-colonial regime. As an architectural parallax, Banksy's Walled Off hotel inscribes the Palestinian struggle for freedom within a radical egalitarian dimension, that Žižek refers to after Hegel as 'concrete universality'. This allows first, for recognizing the immanent universal dimension at the core of Palestinian particular identity. Second, it makes it possible to link the Palestinian struggle for freedom to other struggles around the world not simply by drawing parallels between them around identity politics, but as the obverse sides of the same class struggle that cuts through various disposable communities and nations within the neoliberal global capitalist system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where soldiering activities include administrating civilians, humiliating behaviors may become commonplace. Our goal was to assess frequency and correlates of Israeli soldiers witnessing or committing humiliating behaviors toward the civilian Palestinian population (CPP). Results indicate that among veterans, 17.4% of men and 10.2% of women (n = 151) had either participated or witnessed the degradation of CPP. Posttraumatic stress, dissociation, previous aggression against CPP, combat experience against Palestinians, and current reserve duty service predicted witnessing or participation in humiliating civilians. The study questions the ability of the Israeli army to refrain from inhumane behavior against civilians and suggests means to eradicate such behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact that Operation Spring of Youth, carried out by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on 10 April 1973 had on Lebanon. IDF Special Forces infiltrated the heart of Beirut and eliminated three senior members of the Black September organization, perpetrator of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. While Israelis celebrated the successful military operation, the Lebanese mourned. Following the Israeli raid, the Lebanese government resigned, and an armed conflict erupted between the Lebanese army and the Palestinian organizations, leading to both domestic and inter-Arab crises. When these clashes ended, the Lebanese government had been unable to enforce its authority over Palestinian organizations, and Lebanon's weakness was publicly exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports about the Intifada ("surge" in Arabic), which suddenly broke out in December 1987. It was a civilian resistance by the Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (the Occupied Territories) since 1967. It was expressed in agitation, symbolic displays, labor, commercial, and general strikes, road blocks and mass demonstrations, acts of violence that included mainly hurling stones but also petrol bombs, and occasional use of explosives and firearms against Israeli soldiers, policemen, and civilians. Such activities were accompanied by frequent acts of terror against Arabs who were suspected of collaboration with Israel. The Intifada inflamed the political controversy within the Jewish population about the future of the occupied territories. The Israel Defense Force had conducted six wars with regular or mostly regular armies, with a national consensus regarding goals, ways and means of combat. Now it was engaged in a quasi-war against a rebellious population, while the Israeli public was divided about its objectives, ways of dealing with the uprising, and the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The perception of a war that is not really a war and the ideological-political clash of attitudes blurred the definition of military service during the Intifada.