After Oslo, a Paradigm Shift? Redefining Sovereignty, Responsibility and Self-determination in Israel‐Palestine

Since the Oslo Accords were signed in the mid-1990s, conflict resolution regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict has been guided by two conjoined premises regarding: (1) the identity and right to self-determination of the two ‘peoples’ involved, Jewish and Palestinian-Arab; and (2) Israel’s sovereignty, or lack of it, in different portions of Mandate Palestine. Although these twin premises are now treated as givens, in tandem they have paradoxically proved ruinous to the well-being of civilians living under occupation by fostering futile notions that peace can be achieved through geographic partition to serve these two rival ethno-national state projects. This approach is fundamentally flawed in basing its goals on the purported legitimacy of the Jewish-settler ideology that ethnically dismembered the ‘Palestinian people’ as conceived by the League of Nations and the British Mandate; and (2) in endorsing a derivative form of Palestinian-Arab ethno-nationalism that, in stressing the Arab character of a Palestinian state, has also become anachronistic in light of demographic realities presented by the advanced settler-colonial society now embedded in the Mandate geography. This article accordingly argues that partition to accommodate two peoples in one land would paradoxically recognize ethno-nationalism as legitimate in ways that will sustain their inherent ethnic biases and so perpetuate conditions disabling to a stable peace. Drawing on comparative political theory regarding the periodic reconstruction of ‘peoples’ and constructivist international relations theory regarding the nation-state premise for state sovereignty, this article proposes that these premises must be reassessed to suit the current condition of advanced settler colonialism in Mandate Palestine, which compels full geographic and political unification

The Feast of Saint Thomas Becket at Salisbury Cathedral: Ad Vesperas

Thomas Becket of Canterbury (1118 – 1170), an English financial clerk turned Archbishop of Canterbury, is considered one of the most significant figures in the conflict between clerical and secular powers during the Middle Ages. The archbishop was brutally killed in his own cathedral at the hands of four knights of King Henry II (r. 1154-1189). Thomas was quickly sanctified as a martyr and his cult and veneration commenced immediately following his death. The local veneration and esteem for Thomas was so strong in fact that the monks at Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, closed the cathedral immediately following his death, between January 1171 and Easter 1171, out of fear that someone would come and steal the body of the martyr away. Many people in Canterbury and throughout southern England were healed by the remains of Thomas’s body, with many miracles occurring through interaction with water and his blood. So many miracles took place that pilgrims began to flock to Canterbury Cathedral to experience the healing power bestowed by Thomas’s body. Two monks at Canterbury Cathedral were assigned to guard the tomb and make account of the miracles attributed to Thomas in the years following his martyrdom. Benedict of Peterborough was one of the monks. In the years following his death, Benedict wrote an entire office to Thomas suitable for a monastic institution, an effort that is hypothesized to have been composed either in the years 1173 or 1174 immediately after his canonization.. Thomas’s office, however, was later adopted by secular uses for application in secular institutions–that is, cathedral environments where the clerics do not take holy orders and are not cloistered. One such institution is Salisbury Cathedral. The secular use for southern England in the middle ages was the Sarum Use. Liturgical books for both Sarum and Roman Use included Thomas’s feast day in the Proper of the Time, and within the octave of Christmas. The placement of this celebration, among feasts otherwise devoted exclusively to the life of Christ and a few of his contemporaries, speaks of the impact that Thomas’s martyrdom had upon western Christendom. This thesis seeks to investigate the content and significance of the liturgy devoted to Thomas within the Sarum Use and its potential importance to the laity through their access to the procession preceding First Vespers. However, a reconstruction of the liturgical content of the entire feast day devoted to Saint Thomas Becket is outside the scope of this particular project, due to the necessity of having to consult all of the extant copies of liturgical books of the Sarum Use, such as Breviaries, Processionals, and Antiphoners. Therefore, a smaller scope seems feasible to attempt here. Thanks to the inclusion of a procession at First Vespers, the very first office for Thomas’s feast day of December 29th is an ideal starting place to begin to study the details of the Sarum use as it pertains to Thomas Becket. One great difficulty in studying Thomas’s First Vespers arises in the search for sources which include the feast. Because of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation in England, Thomas’s name and much of the material pertaining to his veneration were scratched out from medieval manuscripts of liturgical office books, as mandated by King Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547). This severs a direct connection for consulting sources between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. The fact that this happened in England also abruptly ended my original desire to reconstruct First Vespers in as original context as was possible. Since very few original manuscripts of the office exist on the Island, I looked to the earliest versions that could be found. These turn out to be liturgical books of secular use printed on the continent in the early sixteenth century, in Paris. Since books with the secular use seem to survive in the most complete form and are themselves based on the original monastic use in which the texts and music for Thomas’s feast were composed by Benedict in the twelfth century, the secular use has been chosen as the most desirable aspect for investigation. One other reason to use the secular use was the opportunity it provides to collate and contextualize the procession for First Vespers, the music it used, and the rubrics particular to Salisbury Cathedral, where two important parts are at play. At Salisbury there is an altar dedicated to Thomas Becket, and in medieval times the cathedral was home to secular clerics. For First Vespers, two antiphons–text and music–are apparently missing from Thomas’s feast in the 1531 Sarum Breviary. My attempt to rectify this omission necessitated consulting continental monastic manuscripts. Other considerations for this study in terms of reconstruction included the investigation of how the different feasts were ranked within the Breviary. Initially, of course, Thomas’s specific entry in the Breviary, within the Proper of the Time, was used to make a general outline of the feast. Sometimes the parts of the office within the Proper of the Time were difficult to fit in to the basic Vespers layout, because the office omits some of the expected parts of the service. If something was missing, the feasts for the common of the saints was usually able to supply the missing information. This piecing together proved much more difficult than was anticipated. This reconstruction served multiple purposes: to understand the difference of the Sarum use in medieval England in relation to the larger Roman Rite and to shed light on the importance of localized liturgical practices. As one of the most influential figures in medieval England, Thomas is a dynamic character who was not only venerated after death through the office written for his feast day–which was a mark of high regard–but also led an interesting life while he was on earth

Battle for the Campuses: Israel’s Lobby and the Suffocating Politics of Language

Steven Salaita, Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015)

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in international law

Occupation, colonialism, apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law

This study was commissioned and coordinated by the Middle East Project (MEP) of the Democracy and Governance Programme, a research programme of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. The genesis of this study was the suggestion made in January 2007 by Professor John Dugard, in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, that Israel’s military occupation displays elements of colonialism and apartheid. The Human Sciences Research Council commissioned this study to scrutinise Professor Dugard’s hypothesis from the perspective of international law. Over a period of 15 months, the team of scholars engaged in extensive research, discussion, and rounds of lively debate through seven drafts. The result is the consensus represented in this report, offered here for public discussion. Constructive criticism is welcomed, in order that shortcomings in this document may be addressed in a future edition. Although this study is essentially a legal document, observations from other disciplines are encouraged

Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium: Accelerating Evidence-Based Practice of Genomic Medicine

Despite rapid technical progress and demonstrable effectiveness for some types of diagnosis and therapy, much remains to be learned about clinical genome and exome sequencing (CGES) and its role within the practice of medicine. The Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research (CSER) consortium includes 18 extramural research projects, one National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) intramural project, and a coordinating center funded by the NHGRI and National Cancer Institute. The consortium is exploring analytic and clinical validity and utility, as well as the ethical, legal, and social implications of sequencing via multidisciplinary approaches; it has thus far recruited 5,577 participants across a spectrum of symptomatic and healthy children and adults by utilizing both germline and cancer sequencing. The CSER consortium is analyzing data and creating publically available procedures and tools related to participant preferences and consent, variant classification, disclosure and management of primary and secondary findings, health outcomes, and integration with electronic health records. Future research directions will refine measures of clinical utility of CGES in both germline and somatic testing, evaluate the use of CGES for screening in healthy individuals, explore the penetrance of pathogenic variants through extensive phenotyping, reduce discordances in public databases of genes and variants, examine social and ethnic disparities in the provision of genomics services, explore regulatory issues, and estimate the value and downstream costs of sequencing. The CSER consortium has established a shared community of research sites by using diverse approaches to pursue the evidence-based development of best practices in genomic medicine

Beyond occupation: apartheid, colonialism and international law in the occupied Palestinian territories

Beyond Occupation looks at three contentious terms that regularly arise in contemporary arguments about Israel's practices towards Palestinians in the occupied territories 14occupation, colonialism and apartheid 14and considers whether their meanings in international law truly apply to Israel's policies. This analysis is timely and urgent, as colonialism and apartheid are particularly serious breaches of human rights law and apartheid is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The contributors present conclusive evidence that Israel 19s administration of the Palestinian territories is consistent with colonialism and apartheid, as these regimes are defined in human rights law. Their analysis further shows that these practices are deliberate Israeli state policies, imposed on the Palestinian civilian population under military occupation. These findings raise serious implications for the legality and legitimacy of Israel's continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories and the responsibility of the entire international community to challenge practices considered contrary to fundamental values of the international legal order