The Palestine Question: Themes of Justice and Power. Part I: The Palestinians of the Occupied Territories

Ever since 1948, Palestinian politics have been stymied by two conflicting drives: on the one hand the reality of an overwhelming imbalance of power, which mandates major concessions, and on the other a deep conviction of the unassailable justice of the cause, which refuses to accept the dictates of power. Oscillating between these two poles, Palestinians have been unable to develop a clear and consistent strategy. The first part of this essay, here, explores the ramifications of this dichotomy in the occupied territories, specifically with regard to the development of the Oslo process and the second intifada. A second part will explore how it plays out in the case of the Palestinians of Israel

Palestine, Apartheid, and the Rights Discourse

Since the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the oft-made analogy between the South African and Israeli cases has been extended to suggest the applicability to the Palestinian quest for justice through the rights discourse, arguably the most effective mobilizing tool in the anti-apartheid struggle. This essay explores the suitability of the rights approach by examining the South Africa-Israel analogy itself and the relevance of the anti-apartheid model to the three main components of the Palestinian situation: the refugees, the Palestinians of the occupied territories, and the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It concludes that while the rights discourse has many advantages, it cannot by its very nature -- the focus on law at the expense of historical context -- address the complexity of the Palestinian problem

Studies in the radiation chemistry of dilute aqueous solutions of simple gases

Imperial Users onl

Subject, Subjugation, and Subjectivity

This paper analyzes the ways in which complicity and dissent feed and subvert one another, or the ways in which the subjugated self becomes a political subject. The formative event of Palestinian collective identity is the loss of home and homeland in the aftermath of the Nakba of 1948. “The Catastrophe” divided the Palestinian community to two: Those who remained within the borders of the Israeli state and became Israeli citizens, and the Palestinian refugees, who came to establish the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and led an armed struggle. While examining the two narratives, I also explore two communal modes of resistance: Palestinians who struggled with a psychology of defeat, and came to challenge the authority of the state; and PLO supporters who began as members of a militant liberation movement, and ended up signing the Oslo Accords and contributing to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In short, complicity brought with it resistance, and resistance ended in complicity. If resistance ends in complicity, and complicity could turn into resistance, then the Palestinian is the example for where this interplay—between subjectivity and subjugation—takes place