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This sociological study explores the past and current higher education (HE) experience of educationalists at Gaza’s universities and how this experience may be evolving in the shifting socio-political context in the Arab World. The thesis is motivated by three questions: 1. What are the perspectives of academic staff in the Faculties of Education at Gaza’s universities on their own past HE experiences? 2. What are the perspectives of students and their lecturers (academic staff) in the Faculties of Education at Gaza’s universities on students’ current HE experiences? 3. How do educationalists in the Faculties of Education at Gaza’s universities perceive the shifting socio-political context in the Arab World, and what current or future impact do they think it will have on the education context at Gaza’s universities? To examine these questions, I conducted an inductive qualitative study. Using 36 in-depth, semi- structured interviews which lasted between (90-300 min), I collected data from educationalists (15 academic staff; 21 students) at two of Gaza’s universities. Due to difficulties of access to the Gaza Strip, the participants were interviewed via Skype from Cambridge. Informed by the literature review, and triangulated with other research activities, such as reviewing participants’ CVs, browsing universities websites, and keeping a reflective journal, a thematic analysis was conducted on the interview data. Theoretically, although this study has benefited from conceptual insights, such as those found in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and in Pierre Bourdieu’s work on symbolic violence, it is a micro-level study, which is mainly data driven. The findings of this research show that in the past, educationalists were relatively more passive in terms of shaping their HE experiences, despite efforts to become resilient. In the present, students and their lecturers continue to face challenges that impact negatively on their participation and everyday life at Gaza’s universities. However, how the HE experience will evolve out of this context in the future is uncertain. The Arab Spring revolutions have had an influence on Gaza HE institutions’ campuses as they have triggered more awareness of students’ grievances and discontent. Because of some political and educational barriers, however, students’ voices are a cacophony; they remain split between “compliance” and resistance (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 471; Swartz, 2013, p. 39). Previously, Sara Roy (1995) rightly indicated a structure of “de-development” in the Gaza Strip (p.110). The findings from this research show that the impact of occupation and of the changes in the Arab World on the educational context in Gaza are more complex than previously thought. There is a simultaneous process of construction and destruction that is both external and internal to educationalists and which undermines academic work at Gaza’s universities. Based on this, the study concludes by explaining six implications of this complex structure for academic practice at Gaza’s universities, offering nine policy recommendations for HE reform, and highlighting six areas for future research.

This thesis examines the political trajectory of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) during the period from the 1982 eviction of the Palestinian factions from their headquarters in Beirut, to the 2006-07 division between Hamas and Fatah in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). During this period, the PFLP experienced a process of decline that resulted in its marginalisation within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the wider Palestinian national movement. This study addresses the issue of the PFLP’s decline by focusing on its own political agency to determine the role of policy and decision making, ideology and political narrative in the marginalisation process. This work therefore, on the one hand, aims at putting the PFLP’s decline into historical perspective, identifying it as a process rather than simply the effect of outstanding events as it is often argued. On the other, its goal is to ascribe to ‘subjective factors’, namely aspects directly linked to the PFLP’s agency, the adequate weight in determining its decline. This appears particularly significant as the weakening of the Palestinian left has been frequently explained as a by-product of global and local external or ‘objective’ developments such as the downfall of the Soviet Union or the emergence of political Islam. By providing a comprehensive and processual analysis of the PFLP’s decline, this study not only aims at complementing the literature on the Palestinian national movement, which still lacks a focused approach on the main Palestinian leftist force. It also aims at shedding light on a major cause, and its historical origins, of the current Palestinian political impasse, namely the absence of an alternative between Hamas and the PNA’s governing entities, both crippled by a legitimacy crisis and unable to progress Palestinian interests. By virtue of its close survey of the PFLP’s conduct, a further goal of this thesis is to address the historical role of the PLO and its de-facto heir, the PNA. What is evidenced is the double, and contradictory, role of the essential but also constraining framework that the PLO and later the PNA represented for the PFLP’s policies. The focus on the PFLP’s political agency allows the identification of a pattern in its policy which affected negatively its standing within the Palestinian national movement. Throughout the period addressed, policy fluctuation marked the PFLP’s action, undermining the effectiveness of its political line and jeopardising its political weight. The present study highlights how such a policy fluctuation pattern originated from major dilemmas and contradictions that the PFLP had to consider while producing its policies. The main dilemma, informing all other sources of tensions affecting the PFLP, has been defined as an ‘opposition-integration’ dilemma. In other words, the PFLP, while opposing the PLO leadership’s policies, first and foremost its quest for a diplomatic settlement with Israel under US patronage, needed to maintain its integration within the PLO regime, which represented an essential economic and political framework. This produced inconsistent, ‘fluctuant’ policies that prevented the PFLP from maintaining its political weight and stopping its marginalisation process. This opposition-integration dilemma was combined with other sources of tensions marking the PFLP such as: relations with other PLO opposition factions, relations with Arab partners, its contacts with Palestinian Islamists, the confrontation with the PNA after the 1993 Oslo accords or the internal divide between the exiled leadership and the cadres located in the OPT. The PFLP’s official publications, mainly retrieved from its mouthpiece, Al-Hadaf magazine, embodied the main source upon which this study relies. Beside this corpus of documents, other primary sources, such as documents issued by relevant actors, have been scrutinised, while all information has been read against the background of the wider academic literature currently available on the Palestinian national movement. This research also drew information from interviews with former and current PFLP members as well as with experts of the Palestinian national movement.

The following dissertation develops a theoretical framework for guiding the strategy of democratic states in successfully countering the hostilities of nationalistic substate terrorist organizations (NSTOs), and effectively manipulating the terrorist group’s (and its supporting elements’) decision-making calculus. In particular, the theory of strategic coercion has been chosen as a basis for formulating this framework, based upon: 1) the invaluable guidance it offers in dynamically drawing upon all instruments of national power—economic, diplomatic, military, etc.—to accomplish politico-strategic objectives; and 2) the unique insights it provides into making strategic moves aimed at influencing the choices taken by an adversary. However, strategic coercion theory as it currently stands is inadequate for applications against substate terrorist organizations. As a quintessential cornerstone for prescriptive policy in strategic studies, such a looming deficiency vis-à-vis one the most important security threats of the modern age is unacceptable. The new theoretical framework established in this dissertation—entitled the Balance Theory of strategic coercion—addresses this deficiency. The Balance Theory stresses that three key coercive elements of strategic coercion are fundamentally important for successfully ending the hostilities posed by NSTOs, being: A) Isolation of external/international support; B) Denial; and C) Isolation of popular support. It posits that these three aspects of strategic coercion serve as the sine qua non for success in countering an NSTO’s campaign of violence and effectively manipulating its decision-making process. Implementation of these three elements, moreover, must be pursued in tandem, taking care so as not to sacrifice one aspect for the other. The Balance Theory is tested through the employment of case-study analysis. In pursuing this end, both cross-case and within-case analyses are performed, accompanied by the utilization of the methods of focused, structured comparison. The cases examined are those of: 1) The United Kingdom versus Republican NSTOs (1969-2007); and 2) Israel versus Palestinian NSTOs (1967-present). The dissertation concludes with an examination of how the Balance Theory may provide insights for the formulation of counter-terrorism strategy against Al Qaeda in the current "War on Terror".