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Izrael należy do tych państw, których położenie ma „wartość polityczną”. Znaczenie przypisywane obszarowi, który zajmuje, związane jest przede wszystkim z genezą i historią narodu żydowskiego oraz jego religią, w depozyt której Erec Israel została wpisana na trwałe i na zasadzie centralnego miejsca. Swoją „wartość geopolityczną” obszar ten zmienił wraz z pojawieniem się ludności arabsko-muzułmańskiej. Jej osiedle nie się stanowiło zwrot kulturowy w historii regionu. W artykule dokonano: 1) próby określenia relacji zachodzących między judaizmem a przestrzenią życia jego wyznawców, 2) przedstawienia geograficzno-politycznych i religijnych uwarunkowań życia Żydów w diasporze w kontekście odbudowy ich siedziby narodowej, 3) analizy przyczyn, przebiegu i konsekwencji zmian usytuowania geopolitycznego Izraela w powiązaniu z przeobrażeniami jego struktury terytorialno-religijno-narodowej, 4) określenia wpływu tych przeobrażeń na zachowanie uczestników stosunków międzynarodowych. Israel belongs to the countries whose location has „ political value”. Though sma ll in term s of area and population, it is an important subject in the global political system. However, it does not owe this position to its activities in the international arena, measured by its participation in regional or local international structures. At the core of this situation is the geographical factor. Today it belongs to a group of factors de - termining the processes of international interactions (but not executing these processes), i.e. impacting them indirectly and creating reasons, not organis ing and initiating processes. Even though this factor is characterised by the relativity of its influence on international position and conduct of countries, stemming from the variability of its functions, it is also one of the most persistent factors. Wit h regard to Israel, it consists mainly of location (geopolitical location) and, paradoxically, given the aforementioned size of the country, its territory (borders) and the spatial, ethnic and religious diversity related to it. Due to its geographical loca tion between Europe, Africa and Central and Eastern Asia, the lands belonging to the modern Israel are well - placed to play a function of a natural bridge between cultures, nations, religions, languages. Despite this purpose, this area divides the Middle E astern countries instead of uniting them. Focusing the spatial and political behaviours of the countries in this region, it engages actors from outside the region into Middle - Eastern politics, including universal powers (able to act globally in all fields of international relations, e.g. the United States), sectoral powers (active in selected areas, e.g. Saudi Arabia) and regional powers (e.g. Egypt). The importance attributed to the said area, however, is associated primarily with the origins and history o f the Jewish nation (and state), as well as its religion, which gave this land to Israel for good and as a central location. The area, located at the intersection of important routes, elevated its „ geopolitical value” with the influx of Arab and Muslim pop ulation, whose settlement in the absence of exiled Jews was a real cultural turning point in the history of the region. The intersection of the most important religions, including Christianity, made this land a goal in expansion of European powers, determi ned to liberate it from the „ infidels” since the Middle Ages. This important stronghold was a place of interest for all regional powers, both in ancient and modern times. The well - established, over 1300 - year presence of Arabs in the region was shaken by th e immigration of Jews, well theoretically and politically grounded in Zionism, which lead to another fundamental change in the spatial, religious and ethnic structure of the area. A thickening network of Jewish settlements, the Holocaust, the compensation to surviving Jews, and finally the attempts by various powers to subjugate this politically „ unformed” territory resulted in the determination of part of the international community to normalise the issue of Jewish statehood. The success of establishing a national seat for Jews was accompanied by the defeat of the lack of the same decision for Palestinian Arabs. The division of Palestine, assuming the creation of the Jewish state, was rejected not only by its Arab inhabitants, but also by the neighbouring c ountries, becoming a hotbed of armed conflict between Jews and Arabs, which took on global repercussions. The failure to set the State of Palestine and unformed autonomy in the areas which are to be national seat for Palestinian Arabs result in the fact t hat the formation of Israel territory and its religious – national structure has not finished yet. The article has attempted to: 1) define the relations between Judaism and the life space of its believers, 2) present geopolitical and religious conditioning of life of Jews in diaspora in the context of the restoration of their national seat, 3) analyse the causes, the course and the consequences of changes in geopolitical placement of Israel in connection with the transformations of its territorial - religious - national structure, 4) define the impact of these transformations on the behaviour of the international relations participants.

The nine months of negotiations agreed last summer by the US mediators and the two parties ended on 29 April 2014. US Secretary of State John Kerry has since announced a pause in US facilitation activities. Yet, a definitive breakdown or failure of the Middle East peace talks bears far-reaching risks. Even if the mediators were to succeed in effecting a restart of talks, there is scant hope of bridging the rifts within the year envisaged – at least if the previous approach were to be maintained. That will lead to a further consolidation of the one-state reality that has long since emerged between the Mediterranean and River Jordan. Germany and its partners in the European Union must face up to the alternatives: either a much more robust approach to propel the talks to a two-state solution, or insistence on equal political, economic and cultural rights for all in the territories controlled by Israel. (author's abstract)

Immer wieder wird in Deutschland kontrovers diskutiert, ob, wann und warum israelkritische Positionen zum Nahostkonflikt nur kaschierter Antisemitismus seien.Peter Ullrich beleuchtet neue Perspektiven: Einerseits haben Lernprozesse der vergangenen Jahrzehnte dazu geführt, dass die linke Nahostdebatte in Deutschland heute komplexer und ausgewogener ist denn je. Andererseits bleiben doch die Gefahren für eine universalistische linke Position erkennbar. Immer wieder droht der Umschlag ins Partikulare, sei es in Form von Antisemitismus, Rassismus, Islamfeindlichkeit oder extremer Überidentifikation mit Konfliktakteuren.Aus wissenssoziologischer und diskursanalytischer Perspektive untersucht der Autor verschiedene Aspekte des deutschen Blicks auf den Nahostkonflikt.

Linke Nahostdiskurse im Spannungsfeld von Erinnerungszwang und Erinnerungsabwehr. Immer wieder wird in Deutschland kontrovers diskutiert, ob, wann und warum israelkritische Positionen zum Nahostkonflikt nur kaschierter Antisemitismus seien. Peter Ullrich beleuchtet neue Perspektiven: Einerseits haben Lernprozesse der vergangenen Jahrzehnte dazu geführt, dass die linke Nahostdebatte in Deutschland heute komplexer und ausgewogener ist denn je. Andererseits bleiben doch die Gefahren für eine universalistische linke Position erkennbar. Immer wieder droht der Umschlag ins Partikulare, sei es in Form von Antisemitismus, Rassismus, Islamfeindlichkeit oder extremer Überidentifikation mit Konfliktakteuren. Aus wissenssoziologischer und diskursanalytischer Perspektive untersucht der Autor verschiedene Aspekte des deutschen Blicks auf den Nahostkonflikt.

US-Außenminister John Kerry beendete am 6. Januar 2014 seine zehnte Vermittlungsreise innerhalb von zwölf Monaten nach Nahost, ohne dass sich die beiden Konfliktparteien Israel und Palästina bislang auf eine Rahmenvereinbarung für Verhandlungen zur Konfliktregelung verständigen konnten. Ziel der seit August 2013 stattfindenden israelisch-palästinensischen Gespräche ist es, innerhalb von neun Monaten eine Regelung zum Endstatus zu erarbeiten. Auch zwanzig Jahre nach Beginn direkter Verhandlungen in Oslo im Jahr 1993 erscheinen die Aussichten auf eine tragfähige Konfliktlösung eher gering. Zweifelsohne stellt das Oslo-Abkommen von 1993 eine historische Zäsur im israelisch-palästinensischen Konfliktverlauf dar, da beide Seiten erstmals direkt miteinander verhandelten, sich gegenseitig anerkannten und der Notwendigkeit einer umfassenden Friedensregelung im Grundsatz zustimmten. Doch bereits bei der Umsetzung des Osloer Friedensplans zeigte sich, dass die dafür vorgesehenen Instrumentarien schrittweiser Verhandlungslösungen nicht ausreichten. Der zwei Jahrzehnte andauernde Verhandlungsprozess war sowohl von Konfliktverschärfung als auch von verschiedenen Bemühungen zur Konfliktregelung gekennzeichnet. Da keiner der wesentlichen Akteure für ein Scheitern des Oslo-Prozesses verantwortlich gemacht werden will, könnte die momentane, international breit abgestimmte Vermittlungsinitiative der USA die Chance bieten, eine konstruktive Vereinbarung zu erreichen. Dies wäre zwar mit Zugeständnissen beider Konfliktseiten verbunden, würde aber insbesondere den Palästinensern massive Abstriche ihrer ursprünglichen Zielvorstellungen abverlangen. Neue Vereinbarungen sollten auf der Durchsetzung des Völkerrechts basieren, realistische und klare Ziele sowie nachvollziehbare Anforderungen an alle Beteiligten enthalten.

This thesis is engaged in characteristics of new antisemitism as a new phenomenon in international relations and examining presence of its attributes in past two UN conferences against rasism. The aim of the thesis is to prove presence of new antisemitism in field of institutionalised international relations.

Am 29. November 2012 hat die Generalversammlung der Vereinten Nationen Palästina als Beobachterstaat anerkannt. Innerhalb des VN-Systems ergeben sich daraus zusätzliche Verfahrensprivilegien. Darüber hinaus hat der Beschluss keine unmittelbare Auswirkung auf den völkerrechtlichen Status Palästinas. Er erleichtert den Palästineserinnen und Palästinensern aber den Zugang zu wichtigen internationalen Organisationen und Organen. So ist denkbar, dass der Internationale Strafgerichtshof Ermittlungen wegen möglicher Kriegsverbrechen in den palästinensischen Gebieten aufnimmt. Insgesamt sollten die Konsequenzen der Resolution jedoch nicht überschätzt werden. (Autorenreferat)

Ethical aspects of food products have become increasingly important for Western European consumers. One example of such ethical consumption attributes are “peace products”, commodities produced in peaceful economic cooperation between members of conflicting parties in areas of political conflict. In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we investigate the willingness to pay of consumers from four European countries for two food products which are jointly produced by Israelis and Palestinians. We conduct a cross country web survey including a choice experiment addressed to the four European countries. Preference heterogeneity with regard to the willingness to pay for peace building products is taken into account by including survey questions on lifestyle factors, attitudes towards Israel, Palestine and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, personal and social norms as well as socio-demographics. Using random parameter logit models we find that consumers in Great Britain and Germany are willing to pay a premium first off all for European products compared with products from Israel or the Palestinian Territories alone. The willingness to pay for Israeli/Palestinian peace products is lower compared to the surplus for European products. But the cooperation product is favored instead of a single county product, just from Israel or the Palestinian Territories. Hence, cooperation in the form of joint production of peace products would generate benefits.

Die Veränderungen in der arabischen Welt, besonders in Ägypten, haben eine neue Situation geschaffen und alte Gewissheiten erschüttert. Der Palästinakonflikt konnte davon nicht unberührt bleiben. Er hatte immer eine lokale, regionale und globale Dimension, deren Interaktion und Gewichtung verschieden waren und sind. Wegen der Spiegelbildlichkeit des Konflikts sind beide Parteien zwar unterschiedlich, aber doch gleichermaßen betroffen. Dies soll im folgenden Beitrag demonstriert werden. Aus eher methodologischen Gründen untersuchen wir zunächst Implikationen für Israel und darauf für Palästina.

In recent years German media coverage of the Middle East conflict has been accused of an anti-Israeli bias that reinforces old, widely held prejudices and stereotypes about Jews and supports the common accusation that Israel misuses the tragedy of the Holocaust to justify anti-Palestinian policies. In particular, there is the accusation that during and after the Gaza War the media portrayed Israel as the aggressor while minimizing Palestinian terrorism.There is still no systematic research on this topic, however. The present paper is intended to help correct this deficiency by presenting the results of a content analytical study comparing the coverage of the Gaza War and the Second Intifada by a group of highly regarded national German quality newspapers: Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau and Tageszeitung.We analyzed a representative sample of 396 articles from these papers, covering the entire political spectrum from right to left, using the following dimensions: (1) portrayal of the conflict parties’ behavior, (2) evaluation of their aims and actions, and (3) punctuation of the conflict and portrayal of victims.We found that the media coverage of both conflicts was much more complex and differentiated than assumed by critics, and during the Gaza War the German quality press also did its best to avoid shifting to the Palestinian side. If the German press stimulated anti-Israeli or even anti-Semitic attitudes, this was due more to a “boomerang” effect than to any anti-Israel bias in news coverage.

There is increasing criticism of Israeli policies in the German public that in political discourse is frequently attributed to a resurgence of anti-Semitic attitudes. As one of the factors assumed to be responsible for this, publicists have pointed to the impact of media reportage. Scholars have criticized the coverage of the Middle East conflict as biased in favor of the Palestinians, and even documentaries about the Holocaust have been accused of reproducing the “Nazi view” of the Jews and thus of encouraging anti-Semitic stereotypes.This criticism should be taken seriously. Nevertheless, there is little empirical research on how criticism of Israel is related to anti-Semitism, how the media report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how media audiences react to this media coverage, and whether Holocaust documentaries actually have a "boomerang effect" that encourages anti-Semitism.The present paper outlines the theoretical and methodological basis and design of an ongoing research project intended to answer these and other research questions.

The topic of this Bachelor Thesis is a role of the European Union in a conflict betweet the State Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It includes a sketch of a historical activity of European states in the region, but mainly it pursues the actual situation. It brings up a review of both bilateral and multilateral relations between the EU and either the State Israel or the Palestinian Authority. The Thesis also contains an analysis of the most actual events in the region, to whom also a question of Arab revolutions in 2011 is included. In the final part a possible future outlook is presented and recommendations for the EU's prospective activities are projected.

My thesis are firstly concerning the historical development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to be able evaluate properly the Operation Cast Lead, its effects and impact on the further evolution of the Palestinian-Israeli relations. In this part, I focus on the preferable forms of the conflict solution (two-state solution, bi-national/one-state solution, three states solution with independent state of Israel, Gaza annexed to Egypt and the West Bank in federation with Jordan, or possible economic peace). Besides that, I pay attention to the international actors who were involved in the conflict (solution). Afterwards, I am describing the Operation in detail, its flow and impact on the positioning of other countries and international society as whole towards the conflict. As the end, I am offering my proposal of conflict resolution with its positives and strengths, at the same time I am demonstrating the disadvantages and critics of other possible solutions. Moreover, I am suggesting the criteria for the choice of potential mediators (after the historical evaluation). As conclusion, I argue, that the operation targeted at getting rid of the terrorist leaders is not sustainable solution to this conflict and therefore it is necessary to look deeper for long-term solutions leading to the peace on the Middle East.

After the Third Reich was defeated, the expression of openly anti-Semitic attitudes was, to be sure, discredited in the German public, but anti-Semitism did not, however, disappear entirely. It was instead camouflaged in various ways, and even found socially and politically compatible expression in the criticism of Israeli Palestine policy.Previous research in this area gives evidence that modern anti-Semitism represents a complex formation constituted from a variety of facets which range from classical (manifest) anti-Semitism via latent anti-Semitism, secondary anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism to the use of Israel-criticism as a medium where anti-Semitic attitudes can be expressed in a seemingly unsuspicious way. However, it can be assumed that not all criticism of the Israeli Palestine policy is motivated by anti-Semitic attitudes. It may be motivated by pacifist attitudes and/or human rights considerations as well.The present paper discusses some theoretical and methodological issues of a forthcoming research project, which aims to investigate how the various facets of anti-Semitism can be measured, how they combine in individual attitude patterns, how these patterns are disseminated, and how criticism of Israel motivated by anti-Semitism can be differentiated from other forms of criticizing Israel.

Main point of my thesis is to analyse the possible variants and plans of solutions the conflict between Israel and Palestine and also the main reasons why both sides are not able to achieve agreement and why niether of plans were not implemented. I do not try to decide which side is right but to provide objective view of conflict and its solutions.

Mit der israelischen Luftoffensive am 27. Dezember 2008 als Antwort auf die Raketenangriffe der Hamas auf israelische Siedlungen begann der Gaza-Krieg - eine neue Eskalation im seit über 60 Jahren andauernden Konflikt zwischen Israel und den Palästinensern in Nahost. Die Auseinandersetzung ist derart vielschichtig und verworren, dass eine Lösung in ferner Zukunft zu liegen scheint. Die Januar-Ausgabe 2009 der Reihe „Recherche Spezial“ bündelt die aktuellsten Literatur- und Forschungsnachweise, die die zahlreichen Aspekte rund um den Nahostkonflikt beleuchten. Dabei wird das Hauptaugenmerk auf die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Israelis und Palästinensern gelegt und die nicht selten kriegerischen Streitigkeiten zwischen Israel und den arabischen Nachbarstaaten außen vor gelassen., The Gaza war began with the Israeli air offensive in response to rocket attacks from Hamas in Gaza on December 27, 2008 – a new escalation in the over 60 years long, ongoing, prolonged, Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The confrontation is by nature multi-faceted and ambiguous, indicating that a solution lies in the distant future, if at all. The January 2009 edition of Research special offers a collection of the most current literature and research references shedding light on the multitudinous aspects surrounding the Mideast conflict. The central topic is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and the frequent warlike conflicts between Israel and neighboring Arab states.

Will mathematics be useful in overcoming the crisis in the Middle-East Area? The classical decisions methods are based only on numbers and do not include qualitative aspects which can add important and significant meanings to the subject. Furthermore, Mathematics is often reviled and considered unpleasant or difficult to be comprehended and so social researchers prefer to have nothing to do with it. The recent development of Fuzzy Logic has opened the possibility of new applications in situations in which both numbers and adjectives are important and have to be treated, simultaneously and on an equal standing; a mathematical theory where the traditional concept of true or false can be enriched by true and false. A Fuzzy Cognitive Map of the conflicts in the Middle-East has been realized and has been used to evaluate the failure of diplomatic and political efforts with the consequent onset of war and conflict. The paper is the result of the uncommon but joint effort between mathematicians, social researchers, sociologists and information experts.

By discontinuing their war against Israel in the late 1970s, the surrounding Arab states made room for the resumption of a different, new/old war, which first erupted prior to the Arab-Israeli interstate war: the civil war between the Jewish-Zionist settler society and Palestinian Arabs, a war over Palestine. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not one, but rather two conflicts, both of which are complexly and inextricably linked in a number of ways. Zionist Jews in Palestine (or the pre-1948 Jewish autonomy in the country) and later the state of Israel have been a permanent party to these conflicts. In contrast, the "Arabs" – or the Palestinians and the Arab states surrounding Palestine – have been changing parties to the overall conflict and its many different wars., Indem sie ihren Krieg gegen Israel beendeten, ermöglichten die umgebenden arabischen Staaten seit Ende der 1970er-Jahre die Wiederaufnahme eines anderen, neuen und zugleich alten Kriegs, der schon vor den zwischenstaatlichen Kriegen mit Israel geführt worden war: des Bürgerkriegs zwischen der jüdisch-zionistischen Siedlergesellschaft und den palästinensischen Arabern, eines Kriegs um Palästina. Der arabisch-israelische Konflikt bildet nicht einen, sondern eher zwei Konflikte, die auf komplexe und untrennbare Weise miteinander verbunden sind. Zionistische Juden in Palästina und ab 1948 der Staat Israel sind durchgängig eine Seite dieser Konflikte gewesen. Die „Araber" – oder besser: die Palästinenser und die arabischen Staaten, welche Palästina umgeben – sind veränderliche Parteien des Großkonflikts und seiner vielen Teilkriege gewesen.