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Since the concept of nationalism first emerged on the world stage, universities have played a key role in its collective formation and dissemination to the masses. Established under challenging circumstances and subjected to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the wake of the 1967 war, Palestinian institutions of higher education have trodden a thin line between the training of human resources requisite to their national movement and compliance with the dictates of a military regime bent on curbing such aspirations. This research examines the various roles played by Palestinian universities in the ongoing struggle for national independence. Spanning from its inception to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, this collection of first-hand accounts, historical documents and critical analysis explores the evolution and adaptation of Palestinian higher education amidst three decades of social and political turmoil.

This article offers an anthropological look at sacred textuality by exploring the social and theological structure of Jewish religious nationalism in Israel and the West Bank. It argues that the study of sacred texts serves as a medium through which Jewish religious Zionists articulate what it means to return to an ancestral homeland. It demonstrates how the study of these sacred texts is implicated in the cultivation of two different structural modes through which religious Zionists relate to ideas of homecoming. On one side, homecoming rests in a revolutionary force of intellectual insight; on the other, it is expressed through the mystical and mysterious force of prophecy. In a broader sense, this article critiques the reticence of anthropologists to engage seriously with the broader theological ideas that are expressed through a textual medium that can be so much a part of the everyday experiences of individuals living in text-based societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the early spread of COVID-19 in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) in light of nationalism and sovereignty. For Palestinians, the spread of COVID-19 has been challenging due to domestic and regional interactions and limited sovereignty, undermining their ability to combat the virus. Israel, often without coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA), determined who could enter and exit the OPTs, including tens of thousands of Palestinians working in Israel, leading to an increased number of infections in the West Bank. The pandemic awakened Palestinian national sentiment, serving as a reminder of disunity and lack of sovereignty. Despite these challenges, we show that the Palestinian health system unsuccessfully attempted to overcome the crisis. The combination of economic [inter]dependence on Israel, lack of sovereignty, and nationalist resurgence help explain why the Palestinian health sector recorded thousands of cases following the second wave of the virus. COVID-19 has only further revealed how Palestinians could not practically operate independently from Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the State of Israel enacted a new constitutional law: 'BASIC LAW: ISRAEL-THE NATION STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE'. The Law reflects diverse Zionist ideologies which were nevertheless all 'land-centered' rather than state-centered from an early stage; it reformulates that intellectual tradition, however, promoting Jewish settlements in conditions of occupation and celebrates, for the first time, settlement as the prime and exclusive goal of the state. Partly to facilitate this goal, and to further blur borders, the law also contracts the meaning and status of Palestinians' citizenship in Israel, thus at least symbolically narrowing the (still significant) political-legal gap between these citizens and the Palestinians living in the West Bank. Finally, the Law seems to vacate the state from its ethical dimension and commitments as defined by its Declaration of independence (1948) — including its commitments to the democratic principles of political liberty for all and equality — thus manifesting the influence ruling and subjugating others through military government is having on Israel's constitutional framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

November 9, 2019 marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the physical and geopolitical barrier that divided Berlin and the East from the West. This event symbolically inaugurated the period of post-Cold War globalization. The birth of the World Wide Web that same year spurred on globalization and led many observers to believe that (national) borders had become passé. The zeitgeist seemed to promise a borderless world in which capitalism and democracy would flourish. However, instead, the last three decades have paradoxically borne witness to the proliferation, rescaling, and reinforcement of territorial and other types of borders – linguistic, religious, ethnic, class, racial, urban, cultural, digital, temporal etc. The contemporary preoccupation with borders and walls is the result of the "deglobalization" that is also, ironically, a global phenomenon – Brexit, Trump's border wall, Israel's concrete wall in the West Bank, xenophobia from South Africa to India to "Fortress Europe," and the growing power of right wing authoritarian leaders in several nations. The resurgence of (ethno)nationalism, racism, white supremacy, isolationism, populism, protectionism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and religious fundamentalism are all dialectical consequences of this global backlash. This is the subject of this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an ethnographic account of the professional activities of mental health practitioners, employed by the state's religious education system. I analyze various models implemented by practitioners for the purposes of preparing pupils for the state-mandated evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza and the West Bank. By focusing on the interaction between psychological and religious-national cultural frameworks I show how practitioners imbue familiar professional concepts with new meanings and create hybrid models of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the concept of nationalism first emerged on the world stage, universities have played a key role in its collective formation and dissemination to the masses. Established under challenging circumstances and subjected to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the wake of the 1967 war, Palestinian institutions of higher education have trodden a thin line between the training of human resources requisite to their national movement and compliance with the dictates of a military regime bent on curbing such aspirations. This research examines the various roles played by Palestinian universities in the ongoing struggle for national independence. Spanning from its inception to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, this collection of first-hand accounts, historical documents and critical analysis explores the evolution and adaptation of Palestinian higher education amidst three decades of social and political turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding on McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly's approach to the study of contentious episodes, we develop a conceptual framework to analyze front-stage politics in the light of back-stage cultural and interpretative processes, drawing upon the Chechen and the Palestinian national movements. We elaborate on Goffman's original notion of 'primary frameworks' to capture the influence of fundamental cultural templates, and his concept of 'keying processes' to capture the way primary frameworks are reworked in the dynamics of political contention. We then identify three central components of primary frameworks, namely, collective identity (the subject), what the subject does (the verb) and who or what is the object of those actions (the object). This article identifies the primary frameworks and keying processes of Chechens and Palestinians with relation to Russia and Israel, respectively. It then traces how they are played out in the heat of political contention as changes in the structure of political opportunities and threats unfold, and how they combine to drive a process of Islamization. We conclude by discussing how the subject-verb-object triplet of primary frameworks helps specify the dynamic interpretative work in political contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I examine the dialogic relationship between violence, performance and the attainment and enactment of masculinity among Palestinian male youths in Jordan and the West Bank. Focusing specifically on the poetics of masculinity embodied in and articulated through wedding celebrations, I explore the various ways in which repertories of indigenous wedding song and dance have been operationalised in the nationalist movement as a means of engendering acts of resistance and sacrifice to the nation. I argue that the engendering of resistance and violence as acts of manhood has been greatly facilitated by the performative transference of wedding songs and dances into politico-nationalist frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the formulation of national identity in Palestinian children by exploring their understanding of its paradoxes. Twelve Palestinian children were interviewed from cities, villages and refugee camps in the West Bank. The children express the multiple dimensions of national identity in terms of self and other; however these expressions are fragmented in nature. Furthermore, the findings indicate that national identity highlights children as geopolitical agents, rather than separate entities defined by time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Yosseph Shilhav's article in this issue of National Identities entitled 'Jewish Territoriality between Land and State' is an important addition to the literature on territoriality and national sovereignty. His carefully researched and insightful study of the religious affinity between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is especially timely because of the urgency that the present intifada has given to the debate within Israel over the political future of the West Bank and Gaza. What is most provocative, as well as innovative, is Dr Shilhav's thesis that the clash of opinion within Israel over the solution to the Occupied Territories is not, as commonly understood, a political debate between 'hawks' and 'doves', but is rooted in differences of religious interpretation concerning the 'sanctity of the Land'. It is with this thesis that I take issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The author inferred that in 1970, when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) managed to monopolize the political advantages of nationalism, the Islamists proposed an ideological, social, political and military alternative to the PLO model. It is also stated that the claiming of military operations of Islam on the part of Palestinians occupation is a new phenomenon. In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood leadership overview about the majority of Palestinians is presented.