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Arab-Israeli Conflict Syllabus

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Arab-Israeli Conflict Syllabus Ginsburg Ingerman Overseas Students Program Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Between Israel and Palestine: Old and New Political Debates 13-5-421 Dr. Yonatan Mendel (with the assistance of Mr. Eran Hakim) Email: [email protected] Phone / Mobile: 052-8523107 Office hours: Thursday, 12:00-13:00 Office location: Building #: 72 Room #: 647 Course Description: In this course we will study the main political junctions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will connect them to their reincarnations in contemporary times in Israel/Palestine. This will include analysis and study of the politics, popular culture and daily life of Israelis and Palestinians living in Israel/Palestine. Among the themes that will be studied are the negation of the diaspora as a central theme of political Zionism, the Arab-Jewish identity, Palestinian national feelings and the Nakba, Israel and the memory of the Holocaust, the evolution of political parties and ideas in Israeli and Palestinian politics, and past and previous negotiations for peace. The course will include cultural products relating to the societies in Israel/Palestine, including movies, songs and advertisements. Course Objectives: The course highlights the way current political and cultural elements in the life of Israelis and Palestinians are offshoots of previous processes that shaped the Palestinian and Israeli identity, the sense of belonging, the collective memory and horizons of expectations. Thus, we will focus on past political events in Palestine through its influence on present socio-political realities of Israeli and Palestinian societies. We will strive to uncover the roots of the contemporary political 'axioms' in Israel/Palestine and the perception of the 'Other'. Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this course, students should be able to: 1. Understand the processes that resulted in the creation of Israel in 1948 and in the Palestinian Nakba. 1 2. Analyse the leading Israeli and Palestinian political streams, and connect them to their origins in the pre-state period. 3. Critically study current modes in Israeli and Palestinian cultures: including the role of the military and security, fear and hatred towards the 'Other', sentiments of localness, indigenousness and foreignness in Israel/Palestine, etc. 4. Comprehend the mutual relations between political realities and cultural products, vis-à- vis the Israeli-Palestinian case study. 5. Summarize the different solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the way they ignore or correspond with the needs of each of the communities Field of Education and Discipline: Politics History Sociology Course Structure: Lecture: 13 Total # of Credits: 2 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System):4 Teaching Method: The course will be conducted through a combination of formal lectures, class discussion and debates related to political and cultural products (including watching movies and TV series, listening and analysing music/songs and advertisements, studying newspapers' headlines, etc.) in Israel/Palestine. The lectures will be based on weekly reading assignments, and the discussions on the cultural products will also be based on academic literature. Each student will have to present (in the last few classes) on a cultural product and its relation to the topics covered in the course. Course Requirements Compulsory attendance: YES Pre-requisites: - Structure of Final Course Grad 1. Participation 20% 2. Midterm Exam - 3. Final Paper 60% 4. Student presentation 20% 100% Note: - Work handed in late, will not be graded! 2 - Penalties and course policies should be clearly articulated (i.e. students will have their final grade lowered an entire grade level if they miss more than 2 class meetings unexcused) -Language of instruction is English Time required for individual work: in addition to attendance in class, the students are expected to do their assignment and individual work: 3 hours of reading each week 5 hours of work on the presentations 20 hours of work on the final paper Those expectations are approximate and correlate with the module's ECTS. Course Schedule Layout: THE MADNATORY READINGS ARE INDICATED WITH A STAR * Week no. 1 Weekly subject title: Introduction to the course Weekly brief description: This will include the rationale of the course, discussion about politics and culture, the 'sensitivities' of discussion on Israel/Palestine. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Penguin Books, 2000). Laqueur, Walter and Barry Rubin (eds.) The Israel-Arab Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 2008) Week no. 2 Weekly subject title: The origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: pre-Zionism Weekly brief description: We will cover the situation in Israel/Palestine before the rise of Zionism. This will include discussions and readings on the society in Palestine in the 19th century, the 'Old Yishuv' (Ha-Yishuv Ha-Yashan), * Penslar, Derek J. “Herzl And The Palestinian Arabs: Myth and Counter-Myth,” Journal of Israeli History 24(1), 2005, 65-77. Theodor Herzl, “The Jewish State”, in: Arthur Hertzberg (ed.), The Zionist Idea (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), pp. 204-226 Salim Tamari, Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008) 3 Week no. 3 Weekly subject title: The origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: When Zionism and Palestinians Met. Weekly brief description: We will study the beginning of the Zionist movement and the ways in which it influenced the perceptions of Jews in Palestine and outside, and changed the social and political reality in Palestine / Eretz Yisrael * Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 9-34. * Kimmerling, Baruch and Joel Migdal Palestinians: The Making of a People. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 240-261. Avineri, Shlomo. “Zionism as a National Liberation Movement,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, 10 (1979), pp. 133-144. Week no. 4 Weekly subject title: The origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The conflict Weekly brief description: We will study the relations between Jews and Arabs during the British mandate, and the way in which the heatening conflict (in the 1920s-1940s) have shaped the identity of Israelis and Palestinians * Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), pp. 121-160. * Yonatan Mendel, “Re-Arabising the De-Arabised: The Mista‘aravim Unit of the Palmach,” in A. Bernard, Z. Elmarsafy, and D. Attwell (eds.), Debating Orientalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 94-116 Swedenburg, T. Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939, Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2003), pp. 1-23 Week no. 5 Weekly subject title: The creation of Israel / The disaster of Palestine Weekly brief description: We will study the way the 1947-1948 events are studied, perceived, imagined and recalled by Israelis and Palestinians. * Morris, Benny. A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale University Press., 2008), pp. 392-420 4 * Rashid Khalidi, “The Palestinians and 1948: the underlying causes of failure”, in: Rogan and Shlaim (eds.) The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 12-36 Hever, Hannan. “Territoriality and Otherness in Hebrew Literature of the War of Independence”, in Silberstein, Laurence Jay and Robert L. Cohn (eds.) The Other in Jewish Thought and History: Constructions of Jewish Culture and Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1994), pp. 236-257 Week no. 6 Weekly subject title: The million immigrants: Jewish immigration from Arab countries and the shaping of Israeli society Weekly brief description: We will study the immigration of Arab-Jews: Jewish people leaving in Arab countries to Israel. We will discuss the ways in which these immigrants who were both Arabs and Jews were treated when arriving to Israel, while touching both material and cultural aspects of this encounter * Aziza Khazzoom, “The Great Chain of Orientalism, Jewish Identity, Management and Ethnic Exclusion in Israel”, American Sociological Review 68 (August 2003), pp. 481- 510 * Bernstein Deborah and Shlomo Swirski, “The Rapid Economic Development of Israel and the Emergence of the Ethnic Division of Labour,” The British Journal of Sociology 33, No. 1 (March 1982), pp. 64-85. Motti Regev and Edwin Serussi, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 49-70. Week no. 7 Weekly subject title: Palestinian exile and the birth of the refugee problem Weekly brief description: We will study the forming of refugee camps and of exile consciousness among Palestinians leaving in Europe and North America. We will discuss the 1948 and 1967 Wars, the attempts to “come back”, and the current situation * Dawn Chatty. Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 180-230. * Karsh, Efraim. “The Palestinians and the Right of Return”, Commentary 111, No. 5 (May 2001), pp. 25-31. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 61-131, 237-253, 286-296. 5 Week no. 8 Weekly subject title: Israeli politics: mainstream and radical political thinking in Israel Weekly brief description: We will study the emergence of political parties in Israel,
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