Israel, Palestine and Global Politics Figure 1: A crow flying over the Silwan Neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. Yoav Galai 2007 Course Description: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more than a persistent struggle for control over land or a religious clash. It also serves different functions for outside actors who inject the conflict with their own meanings and pursue their own interests. Conversely, the conflict is projected outwards, with ideas, identities and technologies emanating from the region travelling and impacting well outside of it. This course examines the Israel/Palestine conflict both on its own as well as through its intersections with wider actors and issues in global politics, drawing on a variety of scholarship to interrogate the different ways in which the conflict is globalised. Instructor: Dr. Yoav Galai Email Address: [email protected] Office Hours: By Appointment Course Seminars: Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, 17:20-19:00 Learning Outcomes: The main teaching outcome is for students to gain the ability to approach cross-disciplinary and cross-contextual analysis in international politics. Students will also gain an understanding of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the debates surrounding it and work to develop their critical assessment skills. Teaching Method: The course is built around academic texts and the interrogation of additional texts and source materials. Each week will start with student presentations that draw together the strands of the different readings as well as additional external readings and texts. Assessment: Students are expected to attend classes and actively participate in discussions. Students must read the required readings and give presentations on the recommended readings. Class presentations should critically analyse and contextualize the assigned readings, drawing on literature not listed in the syllabus. Class participation: 15% • Students should be actively involved in class discussions and to read ALL required reading. • One paragraph length “Blurb” framing the seminar subject, to be sent on the Monday (see seminar 16 for example) One short position Paper / editorial (600 - 800 words): 15% • Students will choose an event or series of ongoing events related to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and analyse it using the frameworks and contexts that we cover in the course. They will distribute the paper amongst the class in advance for discussion. • The position paper should be written as an editorial, advancing a clear argument and using conceptual tools in a clear, jargon free language. One Class presentation: 20% • Students will prepare a 15-minute class presentation that will analyse the course material from the given week. A good presentation should draw material from elsewhere in the syllabus as well as outside the syllabus and offer questions for further discussion. Final paper (4000 words): 50% • Research paper, the topic will be decided in consultation with the instructor. Course plan: Date Subject Blurb Presenter Position paper 1 9/1 Introduction - - - 2 11/1 Global Meanings of the - - - conflict, a first take: IR and beyond 3 16/1 Zionism 4 18/1 Colonialism 5 23/1 Palestinian Identity 6 25/1 Palestinian / Arab Nationalism 7 30/1 Al Nakba / War of Independence 8 1/2 Historiography and Nationalism 9 6/2 Palestinians Before and After 1967 10 8/2 Israel and 1967 11 13/2 Palestinians and Terrorism 12 15/2 Israelis and Terrorism 13 20/2 Palestinians and the Diaspora 14 22/2 Jews, Israelis and Diaspora 15 27/2 Mizrahi Jews 16 1/3 Ethnocracy 17 6/3 Resistance, Alliance 18 8/3 Europeans and the Conflict - 13/3 National Holiday -- -- -- 19 15/3 Indigeneity 20 20/3 Landscape and Conflict 21 22/3 Beyond Conflicting Narratives 22 27/3 Food 29/3 End of semester -- -- -- Week 1: Introduction Seminar 1 (9/1/2018): (required readings are marked by *) * Edward Said ‘On Palestinian Identity: An Interview with Salman Rushdie’, New Left Review, I / 160: https://newleftreview.org/I/160/edward-said-on-palestinian-identity-a- conversation-with-salman-rushdie * Deutscher, I. ‘On the Israeli Arab War’, New Left Review I/44 (July-August, 1967), available at: https://newleftreview.org/I/44/isaac-deutscher-on-the-israeli-arab-war Seminar 2 (11/2/2018): Global Meanings of the conflict, a first take: IR and beyond * Miller, B. Israel–Palestine: One State or Two: Why a Two-State Solution is Desirable, Necessary, and Feasible. Ethnopolitics, 15:4, (2016), 438-452. Ben-Yehuda, H. and Sandler, S. The Arab-Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years of Interstate and Ethnic Crises (SUNY Press, 2002), chapter 1, 5. Collins, J. ‘Global Palestine: A Collision for our Time’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 16:1 (2007): 3-18. Ron, J. Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), Conclusion. Week 2: Jewish Nationalism Seminar 3 (16/1/2018): Zionism * Zerubavel, Yael. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. University of Chicago Press, 1995, Chapter 2. * Raz-Krakotzkin, A. (2013). Exile, History, and the Nationalization of Jewish Memory: Some Reflections on the Zionist Notion of History and Return. Journal of Levantine Studies, 3:2, pp. 37-70. Stanislawski, M. Zionism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Kattan, V. From coexistence to conquest: international law and the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, 1891-1949, (London: Pluto Press, 2009) Chapter 1 Ram, U. (1995). Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The case of Ben Zion Dinur. History and memory, 7(1), 91-124. Seminar 4 (18/1/2018): Colonialism? * Shaffir, G. ‘Zionism and Colonialism: A Comparative Approach’ in Pappe, I. The Palestine/Israel Question: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 72-85. * Wolfe, P. Settler ‘Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, (2006), pp. 387-409. Gregory, D. The Colonial Present, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004), chapter 5 Veracini, L. ‘The other shift: Settler colonialism, Israel, and the occupation’, Journal of Palestine Studies 42:2, (2013). pp. 26-42. Ram, U. ‘The colonization perspective in Israeli sociology: Internal and external comparisons’, Journal of Historical Sociology 6:3 (1993), pp. 327-350. Week 3: Palestinian Nationalism Seminar 5 (23/1/2018): Palestinian Identity * Khalidi, R. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (available as e-book on CEU library), chapters 2, 7 Eid, M. Mahmoud Darwish: literature and the politics of Palestinian identity, (London: Tauris, 2016) chapter 4. Kimmerling, B. The Palestinian People: A History, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), chapter 4. Farsoun, S. K., and Aruri, N. Palestine and the Palestinians: A social and political history. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2006) chapter 1. Sa'di, A. H. Catastrophe, memory and identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity. Israel Studies, 7:2, (2002), pp. 175-198. Seminar 6 (25/1/2018): Palestinian / Arab Nationalism * Sayigh, Y. Armed Struggle and The Search for State, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), chapter 1. Dawisha, A. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), chapter 5. Baumgarten, H. (2005). The Three Faces/Phases of Palestinian Nationalism, 1948–– 2005. Journal of Palestine Studies, 34(4), 25-48. Farsoun, S. K., and Aruri, N. Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History, (Coulder, CO: Westview Press, 2006), chapter 4. Week 4: 1948 Seminar 7 (30/1/2018): Al Nakba / War of Independence * 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 * Teveth, S. ‘Charging Israel with Original Sin’ in Commentary (1 September 1989) https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/charging-israel-with-original-sin/ Abdel Jawad, S. ‘The Arab and Palestinian Narratives of the 1948 War‘, in Rotberg, R. I. Israel and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double Helix (Bloomington: University of Indian Press, 2006), pp. 72-114. Hoffman, A. My Happiness Bares no Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 52-64; 305-312. Sa'di, A. H., and Abu-Lughod, L. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the claims of memory, (New York, Columbia University Press, 2007), Introduction. Seminar 8 (1/2/2018): Historiography and Nationalism * Brunner, J. (1997). Pride and memory: Nationalism, narcissism and the historians' debates in Germany and Israel. History and Memory, 9(1/2), 256-300. * Renan, A. ‘What is a Nation?’ in Bhabha, H. Nation and Narration (Cambridge: Polity, 1990). Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. ‘Necropolitical Debris: The Dichotomy of Life and Death’ State Crime Journal 4:1 (2015), pp. 34-51. Rogan, E. L. and Shlaim, A. (Eds) The War for Palestine (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007). 1948 in the national historiographies of Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi (chapters 5-10), Pick one chapter. Ram, U. "Zionist Historiography and the Invention of Modern Jewish Nationhood: The Case of Ben Zion Dinur’, History and memory 7:1 (1995), pp. 91-124. Hirsch, M. B "From Taboo to the Negotiable: The Israeli New Historians and the Changing Representation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem." Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 2 (2007): 241-258. Week 5: 1967 Seminar 9 (6/2/2018): Palestinians Before and After 1967 * Raz, A. The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), chapter 4. * Degani, A. Y. ‘The Decline and Fall of the Israeli Military Government, 1948–1966: a case of Settler-Colonial Consolidation?’, Settler Colonial Studies, 5:1 (2015), pp. 84-99. Jamal, A. "In the shadow of the 1967 war: Israel and the Palestinians." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2017): 1-16. Segev, T. (2007). 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East.