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The research leverages yearly variations in climate variables, such as rainfall and temperature, across the West Bank from 1999 to 2018 to assess their influence on individuals' decisions to stay in the agricultural sector. The main findings suggest that an increase in rainfall in the previous year is associated with a higher proportion of workers in the agricultural sector, especially in regions where agriculture is the primary economic activity. Temperature variation is also an important factor. An increase in the maximum temperature will generally have a negative effect on the supply of labor in the agricultural sector, while an increase in the minimum temperature may have a positive effect. However, this effect varies across different regions of the West Bank, reflecting the diverse agricultural practices and irrigation methods employed. The study also examines two potential mechanisms through which climate change affects labor decisions: agricultural labor migration to the Israeli labor market and how climate shocks affect agricultural wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between rural livelihood transformations and the land struggle in the West Bank between 1979 and the Oslo Accords. During this period, the Israeli adoption of the state land doctrine opened a new terrain of struggle, prompting specific responses among Palestinian rural communities. Bringing Agrarian Political Economy and Agrarian System Analysis in dialogue with Settler Colonial and Indigenous Studies, and relying on an extensive fieldwork, it analyses drivers and outcomes of de-agrarianization and semi-proletarianization in the villages of Al-Walaja and Wadi Fukin, showing how wage work in Israel contributed to uproot Palestinians from their land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study aimed to assess the relationship between management commitment, psychological empowerment, and job performance among Palestinian academic employees in higher education institutions. A multi-wave survey was utilized and 665 academics were recruited from several public and private universities in West Bank, in which the stratified sampling method was adopted to select universities. Findings demonstrated that participants reported moderate levels of management commitment and job performance and agreeable levels of psychological empowerment. Management commitment and psychological empowerment positively correlated with job performance (p < 0.01). However, management commitment had a direct influence on job performance and management commitment had a relationship with psychological empowerment (p < 0.01). Thus, strategies should be carried out to enhance management commitment and psychological empowerment to improve job performance among academic staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the poetic expressions of a traumatic event experienced by poet Ibrāhīm Abū Ṣyām of the Gdērāt al-Ṣāneʿ tribal group, which was expelled in 1952 from al-Lgiyyeh in the northern Negev to the southern West Bank. Forty days later the tribe was returned to Israel, but not to the area from which it had been expelled. Instead, it was resettled in the eastern Negev. The article presents two poems that tell of this expulsion and return, examining them in their diverse contexts and interpreting their subtle symbolism by drawing on the history and culture of the Negev Bedouin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late British Mandate period until 1967, a cohesive system of social and political arrangements took shape among the people of the Hebron district in the West Bank. This system, referred to here as the Hebronite alliance, was born of a continuous crisis and played a central role in cultivating harmony and co-liability among the people of the district and its expatriates. It promoted them as a collective and individuals and shaped the distinct pro-Hashemite character of the Hebron region. The strength of the alliance stemmed from the adoption of a unique social contract and a new regional 'Hebronite' identity that was a stable anchor for many Palestinians caught between the competing Palestinian, Jordanian, and pan-Arab national identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2002, Israel started the construction of a 708-kilometer wall to control the Palestinian territories. The Wall offered a massive canvas, which the Palestinians used to develop graffiti and murals. The artwork and graffiti are location-specific, ephemeral, transitory, and unstable. This paper aims to document, archive, and analyze discourse and themes emerging from the artwork that developed on the Wall between 2018 and 2022. The analysis of these images has revealed that, while the purpose of building the Wall was to curb and stifle their resistance, Palestinians turned it into a platform where they were able to express their commitment to national resistance, freedom, justice, love, poetry, business, and even personalization of their own stories. The Wall has also attracted international solidarity and sparked a new protest movement called "struggle tourism", focusing on the Palestinian presence in the region's physical, moral, and political landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically re-examines the narrative that the Israeli system of spatial control has an exclusive negative impact on the West Bank economy. It focuses on the burgeoning fuel smuggling industry, which grew to constitute nearly one-third of the total consumed fuel in the West Bank by 2018. The article posits that the impacts of Israeli control on West Bank-Israeli economic relations involve an interplay between structural top-down imposition and Palestinian agency exerted from below. Drawing from documentary evidence and semi-structured interviews conducted with smugglers, Israeli, and Palestinian policymakers, the research reveals a paradox, finding its theoretical explanation in borderland studies. The barriers and fragmentation meant to oppress Palestinians create opportunities for new Palestinian economic beneficiaries. The article traces the emergence of smuggling networks that expand Palestinian-Israeli connections and cooperation. It concludes considering how the structure-agency interplay, which characterizes the Israeli colonial structure, affects the study of Palestinian political economy under Israeli occupation. This includes the influence of smuggling on supply, demand, pricing, and power hierarchies within the West Bank's fuel sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aims to investigate the impact of academic achievement on child labor. The study utilizes survey data collected from Palestinian children in the primary grades (5th–9th) in West Bank schools. The results show that increasing a child's academic achievement is significantly associated with decreasing the probability of a child's paid work in the following period. Our findings varied among children according to their gender, age, and locality type. Our analyses are subject to different specifications, including two-stage least squares (2SLS) to account for potential endogeneity. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the opportunity cost of dropping out of school is low for students with poor school outcomes. Further analysis indicates the role of the family-supportive environment as a mediator between academic success and child labor-supply decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizenship is a contested term and its meanings and implications vary according to the socio-political and historical context in which it originated and continues to be practiced. This research explores the conceptualisation of citizenship among different groups within the Palestinian education system. The research utilises qualitative research methods such as interviews, focus groups, policy document analysis, and classroom observations. The findings of the research reveal that citizenship represents a unique relationship between the individuals and the homeland. Moreover, this research demonstrates how politics and culture affect citizenship conception. It also demonstrates how the absence of Palestinian statehood affects the perception towards citizenship amongst the participants in this research. The study concludes that the existing definitions of citizenship could be adapted, rather than merely adopted from other contexts when applied to the unique Occupied Palestinian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural heritage (e.g., historic buildings, memorials and museums) has been used to construct and negotiate various identities and meanings in the present, specifically in the context of nation-states. In transforming the past into heritage, however, States may disregard other histories-ones which deviate from the historical narratives they promote. In this paper, I discuss the case of the Heritage Plan, Israel’s official cultural heritage policy. Specifically, by using the discursive approach, I expose and assess cases of silencing competing histories which would challenge the history promoted by the Heritage Plan. My findings suggest that, in addition to privileging Jewish heritage, the Heritage Plan is used as a mechanism for erasing competing, non-Jewish histories. This article presents three case-studies of silencing: the first investigates the Druze heritage center; the second inquires into Israeli heritage practices in the West Bank; the third examines the Castel national heritage site associated with the 1948 war. The analysis of these cases reveals how the Heritage Plan is guided by ethnic and religious factors, whereby heritage assets are not necessarily promoted according to their full historical value, but are instead used to sustain current power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the normalisation of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on the part of their inhabitants. Focusing on the so-called 'non-ideological' settlements that evolved from ideological outposts into middle-class suburbs over the last three decades, this study engages spatial politics in Israel/Palestine in general, and the transformations of the settlement project in particular. Based on ethnographic research in the region, I argue that the acceptance and normalisation of the settlements among Israelis is closely related to their affective and aesthetic experiences. I focus on the co-production of space/territory, affect and aesthetics to show how physical transformations of the settlements since their establishment have turned many of these key nodes of the Israeli occupational apparatus into family-friendly communities, thus erasing the violence of the Israeli control over the Palestinians from settlers' lives. I further demonstrate that these notions are not disrupted even by one of the most prominent symbols and technologies of the occupation, the fence/wall. This study thus contributes to understanding of how the interplay of spatial, territorial, aesthetic and affective practices works to normalise colonial conquest and domination by making their manifestations seemingly natural and even appealing on the part of the privileged segments of the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the recognized borders of Israel, in the shadow of the West Bank settlement enterprise, a new frontier is in the making. Central planning has designated the space as a burgeoning metropolitan region, and, in a parallel process, a network of Jewish-only settlements has been established. This study asks how the settlement push is narrated to the Israeli public, and thereby adds the Naqab to previous studies exploring the link between colonial settlement and suburbia, and more specifically with the community-settlement model. It analyzes audiovisual material produced by two Zionist organizations and finds that the new frontier is narrated as a space for reenactment of the mythic pioneer trope, and that this ideal is mediated in relation to the new neoliberal ethos of Israel as the "start-up nation." The study moreover expands on the interplay of geographic scales, thus adding an important contribution to scholarly understanding of contemporary settler-colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilizes self-reported data on exposure to conflict, collected in the West Bank, to examine the exposure effect of house raids or arrest of household members on child behavior. We show that exposed children are more likely to engage in violent behavior. We also show that the exposure effect is independent of gender and that its magnitude is greater for older children. We propose that altering personality traits, mainly exacerbating neuroticism is a channel through which exposure to conflict affects children's behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 10,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel - approximately half of whom are women - cross the Green Line on a regular basis to study at universities in the West Bank. Challenging views that would dismiss these cross-border flows as illustrative of their relatively privileged legal, material and socio-economic status as citizens, this paper engages the concept of mobility capital as well as the work of feminist scholars on the capital investment strategies of women and minorities to reveal the more limited capacity of Palestinian citizens to cross the Green Line as well as the defensively-oriented mobilising strategies which they have adopted not only to move but to maintain their presence, access their rights, and secure their future livelihoods in Israel. Arguing that these cross-border student mobilities should be seen as both a counter-hegemonic and 'stacked' form of capital accumulation that is heavily reliant on the bridging work of informal networks, this paper seeks to advance recent calls to centre settler colonialism within the field of mobilities while drawing attention to the more complex interconnections that exist between mobility and capital in the everyday life struggles of indigenous communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s, Palestinian agronomists, activists, and farmers turned land reclamation into an anti-colonial project in the West Bank. Drawing on technical studies, interviews, and fieldwork, this article argues that anti-colonial reclamation is a composite of modernist engineering, peasant tradition, and international Leftist thought. Palestinian experts and voluntary work activists used reclamation to confront colonization and build a political collective to sustain territorial struggle. Today, this legacy shapes plans for landscape transformation and efforts to revitalize village agriculture. Reclamation highlights the importance of agricultural interventions in Palestinian anti-colonialism and reveals connections between seemingly disparate agrarian and Indigenous struggles against dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increased application of settler colonial theory to analyse settler colonial contexts, critical scholars have highlighted its inadequacies – primarily, that it has marginalised Indigenous knowledge and agency. Palestinian scholars have questioned the paradigm's ability to fully capture the particularities of the Israel–Palestine -context. This paper seeks to contribute to these critiques by exploring Palestinian youth's interpretations of settler colonialism in the West Bank. It draws on qualitative research that explored Palestinian youth's views on and experiences of human rights. This article suggests that Indigenous analyses of settler colonialism seem more relevant to Palestinian youth than the settler colonial analytic. These, along with consideration of the interplay between neoliberalism and -colonisation, may better assist them to understand and articulate settler -colonialism and strategise against it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the trends in archaeological research and the state of conservation of archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria between 1993 and 2022. The absence of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation resulted in the establishment of two parallel bodies that have been responsible for the issue, with no connection between them. In the Israeli-controlled territory, academic involvement declined with only a handful of new excavations. In the Palestinian-controlled territory, many new studies were conducted with foreign assistance, primarily to strengthen Palestinian national identity. An assessment of the state of conservation indicates significant damage as a result of development and antiquities theft. In this region, where the future remains uncertain, relics of the past and the research of these relics appear to have sustained irreversible damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the concept and limitations of deinstitutionalization as a principle and practice derived from Western paradigms, and how it has been problematically implemented in non-Western settings, -including the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It begins by reviewing the international literature on deinstitutionalization of people with mental health illnesses/disabilities. It then examines the Palestinian experience with deinstitutionalization in the West Bank with an eye to its many limitations, in order to propose alternatives to successfully relocate people with -mental health disabilities from hospitals to their communities, and to ensure for them a dignified life. The essay ends with an emphasis on this need in the -Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories given the ongoing daily reality of Israeli military occupation and apartheid, which have had dire effects on Palestinians' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pharmaceutical care is an essential component of healthcare services, and patient satisfaction with these services is crucial for improving overall health outcomes. We aimed to evaluate patient satisfaction and perception with pharmaceutical care services provided at public and private hospitals for outpatient pharmacies. This study can provide insights into the quality of pharmaceutical services provided in both settings and identify areas for improvement. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional 1-month study was conducted in three hospitals in Nablus city in the Northern District of West Bank, Palestine. Participants were a convenience sample of outpatients who attended the study-selected hospitals (two public and one private). A sample of 30 patients from each hospital was selected with a total of 90 patients. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess socio-demographics pharmacist-related issues, waiting and working time, and medication availability. Results: A total of 90 patients were recruited. The overall level of patient satisfaction with pharmaceutical health services was moderate with a mean of 3.24 out of 5. Females represented 58.9%. The most prevalent age was (30–39) years (30%). There was a statistically significant difference in patient satisfaction with pharmaceutical services regarding working time between the morning and evening shifts (p value = 0.009) in favor of morning shift. No statistically significant differences in satisfaction with pharmaceutical treatments based on socio-demographics (age, gender, marital status, education level, family income, employment status, and living place), were found. Nearly, 70% of patients indicated having problems getting the medicine on their last visit to the hospital pharmacy. Only 66.7% of patients expressed satisfaction with the pharmacies' operating (working) hours. Conclusions: Patient satisfaction with pharmaceutical care services could be enhanced by involving pharmacists in patient-oriented training and informing patients about the role of pharmacists. Patient satisfaction in the evening shift might be improved by establishing a system for continuous evaluation and improvement of pharmaceutical care services in hospitals to ensure the highest quality of care for patients in addition to implementing technology such as electronic prescribing and medication management systems that can improve the accuracy and efficiency of pharmaceutical services in hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) principles have emerged as the template for e-waste policies, centered on establishing regulated collection and recycling channels. Originating in the global North, these policies are increasingly adopted in the global South where e-waste is primarily 'managed' by the informal sector, centered in spatially defined hubs. These formal systems fail to achieve collection quotas, while further marginalizing informal recyclers by delegitimizing their access to e-waste. We suggest an alternative hub-centered approach to e-waste reform based on eight years of research and advocacy within the Israel-West Bank e-waste system. We offer several converging rationales for centralizing hubs in e-waste policies and a case study demonstrating an integrated hub-driven package of business, enforcement, and cleanup measures. While the unique complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian case offer an exceptional window into the dynamics of a hub-driven approach, similar packages might shape e-waste policy reform throughout the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, Palestine has been the subject and recipient of significant humanitarian and development aid. This article critiques the humanitarian and developmental assistance provided by major donors in Palestine, with a particular focus on the E-1 area in the central West Bank, highlighting its depoliticisation and the misdiagnosis of the context of Palestine as a post-conflict situation, and showing how aid has had an adverse effect on Palestinians. This article, drawing on the Do No Harm approach, argues that aid has not only been ineffective in achieving its stated goals, but has also harmed Palestinians by entrenching the occupation and advancing settler colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic reached all parts of historic Palestine around the same time, but by the end of December 2021, only 29.02 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were fully vaccinated compared to 63.82 percent of Israelis (including Palestinians with Israeli citizenship). The mortality rate from COVID-19 in the West Bank and Gaza was also higher, with 941.84 deaths per million, compared to 887.20 in Israel. This essay argues that these differences are a direct result of Israel's COVID-19 response policies toward the Palestinians throughout the pandemic, as well as its ongoing siege of Gaza and its military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The analysis is framed through the lens of necropolitics, defined as the use of political power to decide who lives and who dies. Using the four waves of the COVID-19 pandemic across historic Palestine as a case in point, the essay focuses on the different political states in which Israel abused necropolitical power: the states of emergency, exception, siege, and acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview, Amahl Bishara speaks with Nidal Al-Azza, director of Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, based in Bethlehem, and Rula Nasr-Mazzawi, a psychologist and founding member of Addar for Culture and Art, based in Nazareth, about their organizations' collaborative initiatives. Al-Azza and Nasr-Mazzawi address displacement as an experience shared by most of the Palestinian people, including refugees and internally displaced people. They discuss their organizations' innovative joint work to bring together Palestinian youth from across colonized Palestine, and the importance of connecting youth in face-to-face encounters to combat the fragmentation imposed upon Palestinians and to challenge stereotypes they may have of each other. Finally, they share how the Dignity (Unity) Intifada of 2021 heightened awareness for Palestinians across many locations about the unity of the Palestinian struggle and the role that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship play in Palestinian uprisings. Conducted in Arabic in December 2022 via Zoom, the interview was translated and edited for length and clarity. Reflecting the language of the interviewees, it uses '48 territories to refer to the lands Israel occupied in 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about Israel's West Bank settler-colonial project from the standpoint of settlers who are of Mizrahi origin (i.e. Jews of African or Middle Eastern descent). While historically predominantly Ashkenazi (i.e. Jews of European descent), with time many Mizrahim have moved to the West Bank and joined the settlement project. And yet, there is more or less scholarly silence regarding the existence of Mizrahi West Bank settlers, and when they are addressed, their motivations are reduced to simplified "economic" considerations; in a way that devoids them of political consciousness compared to their Ashkenazi counterparts. While there has been an immense body of work dealing with ethnic tension between settlers and the indigenous population, by centering the experience of a particular group of Mizrahi settlers, this article examines how internal ethnic tensions within the society of settlers play into and are transformed in the settler-colonial process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at challenging the widely accepted argument that Israel has failed to enforce the law on Jewish communities in the West Bank. It argues instead that, since the 2000s, there has been a gradual creation of two armies within the Israel Defense Forces: alongside the 'official' army, a 'policing' force has emerged in the Israeli-controlled West Bank. Although it is ostensibly subordinate to formal political authority, it has become a quasi-militia force, relied on by both standing forces and local militias, executing a policy which often oversteps official procedures. Its main unofficial task is to entrench Israel's grip on the West Bank in the form of informal annexation, without resorting to an internationally unacceptable formal annexation. Thus, this army operates in a grey manner, in a duality of official and unofficial forms of action, while claims about failure in law enforcement are what legitimize the duality of this structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sector social workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories experience loss and trauma on a daily basis. Study objectives were to: (a) assess levels of three mental health outcomes and (b) examine workplace correlates among Palestinian social workers in the West Bank. Results revealed alarmingly high percentages of workers who met clinical thresholds for somatic symptoms (70.9%), distress (34.7%), and anxiety (19.3%). Multivariate regression models explained 25–32% of outcome variance. Job stress, exposure to violence, and job satisfaction were significant in two models, and physical health was significant in three models. Policy, practice, and future research implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting the employment of indigenous peoples has been a key strategy of economic development in settler colonial states. Israel's framing of occupied Palestinian labour in its economy has mirrored this approach, with an implicit claim that it contributes prosperity to the Palestinians. What this false promise hides is how employment and the economic incorporation of indigenous people can become a source of ongoing dispossession in and of itself: a kind of dispossession that is driven by workers' economic inclusion rather than being remedied through it. Based on ethnographic research among Palestinians from the occupied West Bank who work in Israel, this article explores the multiple dispossessions that result from such labour. The article explains how a neoliberal settler economy utilizes a meritocratic regime of indigenous employment to execute a colonial logic of domination. As access to jobs in the settler economy is made conditional on workers' political docility and their continued absence from communal life, the labour regime aims to turn Palestinian livelihood and Palestinian nationhood into mutually exclusive aspirations: it strives to undermine the Palestinians' capacity for social reproduction and anticolonial resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local authorities in Palestine are the service providers for solid waste management. Given that the organic fraction is the largest in municipal solid waste, and with ineffective management policies, the study of attitudes and behavioral aspects of personnel involved are very-important parameters in developing an effective waste management system and assisting policymakers in rectifying these policies. This study aims to assess the attitude of local authorities (LAs) in the southern West Bank of Palestine towards organic municipal solid waste composting and the factors that affect their attitude. The data was gathered via a structured questionnaire from all local authorities in the study area. The results showed that the local authorities' attitude toward organic solid waste composting is low and can be considered dissatisfactory since only 36.5% of the local authorities are planning for composting compared to 63.5% who are not. The results also showed that municipal solid waste composting is significantly affected by nine factors, including financial capacity, proper machinery, enough refuse collection vehicles to collect solid waste fractions separately, availability of area of land to be used for composting, familiarity with composting systems, staff previous-experience in compost production, acceptance of the rapid composting system, staff training in compost production, and believe that solid waste composting is within the LAs' responsibility. Implications: The generation of municipal solid waste is growing continuously due to the population growth leading to increased methane emissions, adding more pressure on the landfills which are facing political and social restrictions for expansion in Palestine. In addition, there are severe restrictions imposed on the import of chemical fertilizers. Therefore, composting the organic fractions of solid waste can, to a large extent, extend the life of the landfills and compensate for the shortage of fertilizers in the market. Moreover, it will encourage organic farming and reduce methane emissions as well. Further, it can contribute to achieve the objective of the national strategy on solid waste management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ninety-seven spices of seven different types were collected from different retailers in the West Bank of Palestine and were analysed for fungal contamination, specifically aflatoxigenic Aspergillus spp. and Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) levels. Aspergillus was found in 89% samples analysed. Ground red chilli had the highest average number of fungal colonies. In decreasing order, mixed spices (57%), cardamom (53%), red chilli (52%), chicken spices (50%), sumac (47%) and pepper (38%), were contaminated with Aspergillus species. Aspergillus niger and A. flavus were dominating Aspergillus species in 37% and 23% of food samples analysed, respectively. Of the 11 tested isolates, 82% were identified as aflatoxin-producers. AFB1 was detected in 40.2% of the samples analysed with a mean value of 2.09 ± 3.20 μg/kg. Red chilli powder followed by chicken spices and cardamom recorded the highest levels (6.98, 3.55 and 1.48 μg/kg, respectively). Twenty-two of the spices (23%), were above the European Union's maximum limit of 5 μg/kg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the implications of the continued spread of Covid-19 on the political, economic and security challenges that confront Jordan. It argues that the country's response to the pandemic constitutes a significant juncture in the counter-revolt and counter-reform in the region. The reactions of the Jordanian government unfolded as a process of power consolidation in the office of the appointed prime minister while weakening the democratic institutions, organized socio-political dissent and civil society. Through this policy, the Government has sought to pre-empt popular demands for political reforms and participation in a context where the rentier social contract has become unsustainable. The deferred Israeli plan to formally annexe parts of the West Bank represents serious threats to the tenuous balance in the country and its century-long security strategy. Although the survival of the Hashemite Kingdom has been at stake many times throughout its history, the post-Covid-19 confluence of challenges is unique. The country's reliance on a conventional security-driven approach may not just fail to address the problem but could increase the risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Menstrual health is important for adolescent girls and is particularly compromised in displaced communities due to restricted access to information and lack of private spaces to manage menstruation. Menarche is the biological and social milestone of girls' adolescence, marking the onset of puberty and confirming womanhood in many communities. It also marks a difficult transitional period influenced by socio-cultural beliefs and expectations. Menstrual preparedness is critical for this transition, and the lack of accurate, timely, age-appropriate information might impact current, and future reproductive health and well-being. This paper investigates the menstrual preparedness status of adolescents living in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Jordan. These are long-term refugee camps characterised by a variety of social, economic, and political constraints affecting the health of women and girls. We conducted 39 in-depth interviews and 23 focus-group discussions with adolescent girls. The study reveals inadequate menstrual preparedness among the participants, especially in pre-menarche. Among the barriers to adequate menstrual preparedness is a predominance of practical concerns, such as the use of sanitary pads and hygienic practices, socio-cultural norms that promote secrecy and taboo around menstruation, and divergent notions of timeliness of information among girls, their mothers, and teachers. The study contends that addressing the taboo around menstruation requires joint efforts by the family, school, and social services. Menstrual preparedness should begin early and encompass biological, practical, emotional, and psychological components. The paper advocates for Comprehensive, Contextually Relevant, Timely Menstrual Preparedness (CCTMP) policies and initiatives, empowering adolescent girls, their mothers, and educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients on maintenance dialysis therapy are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 and its complications. This study aimed to assess the incidence, epidemiological characteristics, and mortality rate of COVID-19 among maintenance dialysis patients. This retrospective observational chart review study included 548 patients from all dialysis units in the West Bank of Palestine who acquired COVID-19 between 5 March 2020, and 11 August 2021. We collected data on patients' demographics, clinical features, and outcomes. A multivariable logistic regression model was used to assess independent risk factors for COVID-19-related mortality. The incidence of COVID-19 among maintenance dialysis patients was 35.3%, as 548 out of 1554 patients have tested positive during the study period. Patients on haemodialysis were three times riskier to get infected than those on peritoneal dialysis (37% vs 11.3%). Half (50.2%) of infected patients required hospitalisation, and 24.5% were admitted to an intensive care unit, while the mortality rate stood at 26.8%. Old age, male sex, central venous catheter use, comorbid diabetes, smoking, and having an RH negative blood group type were determined to be significantly associated with increased risk of mortality. In conclusion, the incidence of COVID-19 among Palestinian maintenance dialysis patients was notably high, especially among haemodialysis patients. High rates of hospitalisation, ICU admission, intubation and death were observed, and predictive factors for COVID-19-related mortality were identified. Therefore, the implementation of strict infection control measures and promotion of home dialysis are warranted to reduce the infection rate. The incidence of COVID-19 among Palestinian maintenance dialysis patients was notably high; more than one-third of the total dialysis population acquired COVID-19, with haemodialysis patients being three times more likely to get infected compared to their peritoneal dialysis counterparts. The mortality rate among maintenance dialysis patients was 26.8%, more than 25 times higher than that of the general population. The risk of mortality was significantly increased with age, male sex, smoking, diabetes, and having central venous catheter as vascular access for haemodialysis. Strict infection control measures, as well as the promotion of home dialysis, are necessary to reduce the risk of infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing occupation in Palestine involves structural colonial oppression over the native population, depriving Palestinians of fundamental human rights. The set of political, social, economic, and environmental factors that result from the occupation has a lasting direct and indirect effect on the well-being of the children exposed to systematic violence. In this study, we explored the effect of systematic violence and military oppression in a group of 22 school-aged youths (M = 12.2; SD = 2.69, 45.5% girls) living in the West Bank. We identified factors associated with children's maladjustment to potentially traumatic environments and survival skills following a socio-ecological lens. Data were collected through biographical participative interviews. The TCA identified six themes: the pervasiveness of the Israeli violence; the unexpected costs of the pandemic; victims and perpetrators of intra-community violence; everyday acts of happiness (or normalcy); support from families, peers, and community; subverting negative situations, and fighting back. Children emerged as continuously engaged in adjustment and readjustment to inhuman living conditions, making normal what is abnormal in their development. The study draws attention to the political antecedent and determinants of the Palestinian children's actions and reactions to violence, highlighting the impossibility of exploring children's growth while avoiding political and human rights implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at cement as a vital material in the process of urbanization. It specifically addresses urban metabolism, examining the intricacies of the cement circulation network in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) during the post-Oslo period. Because of Israel’s near-total control of land and natural resources in the oPt, there is still no fully integrated Palestinian cement plant there, making the Palestinian construction sector highly dependent on imports from Israel’s Nesher cement factory. This article argues that controlling the circulation of cement constitutes sovereignty over the processes of urbanization. In the current context, the cement circulation system that is effectively controlled by Israel is characterized by exhaustion, resulting in Palestinian urban geography’s perennial metabolic insufficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2016 Bir Zeit University elections Hamas' women launched two videos in which un-veiled, western-dressed young girls urged viewers to vote for Hamas. The videos sparked a passionate debate: Religious forces accused the girls of being 'westernized' and abandoning the norm of Islamic modesty; while secular forces accused them of promoting a form of women's empowerment linked to their success in accommodating religious values to secular ones. The debate mirrors scholarly works on Islamist women's subjectivity that tend to adhere to the dominant liberal analytical frames and lack a clear problematization of the relationship between Islam, gender, and new forms of liberal and secular sensitivity, as Islamic practices, secularization, and neo-liberal projects are seen as opposed. Most of the literature that analyzes women within Islamist movements overlooks the historical and economic trajectories that have operated to shift the relation between gender, sexuality and religion. In 2017, I conducted extensive field research in the Occupied Palestinian Territories among Hamas women with the objective to unwrap the relationship between Islamism and the secular/neo-liberal and nationalist project instituted in the West Bank. By taking distance from the assumption that religion and secularism are opposing poles of a binary, this article provides an understanding of Hamas women's shifting subjectivities in the encounter with new forms of secular modernity, an encounter that signifies a shifting understanding of the categories of secular and religious, and which I analyze through a new understanding of women's bodies and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public policy field generally answers the question as to what a government should or should not do. In the case of Palestine, the Water Reform Process has however been characterized by a gap between the design of policies and their implementation that reinforced a status quo and has severe negative impacts on water service policymaking. This gap derives from geopolitical realities created by the Israeli Occupation including the full control of Area C and of 85% of the water resources along with restrictions on Palestinian extraction and transport of their own water resources. A consequence and cause of this formulation–implementation gap is a fragile water governance structure and an undermining of the two-state solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional communities have wide knowledge and experience of wild plants as natural resources that have historically been important for food, medicine, spiritual and hygienic uses. These communities have over generations developed knowledge, skills, beliefs and practices related to the natural environment that they are a part of. This type of knowledge is defined as Traditional Ecological Knowledge and is critical in the understanding of cultural heritage. Palestine encompasses a unique cultural heritage regarding wild plant use. The village of Artas, south of Bethlehem, has been researched by ethnobotanists and anthropologists as early as the 1930s, where studies illustrate the profound rooted connection Palestinian villagers held with their natural surroundings, and how social coherence around the outdoor life was entrenched in the local culture. The results of this study indicate that foraging wild plants was traditionally a social activity, and the villagers attach a lot of meaning to these plants due to their medicinal and nutritional value, but also as a part of their surrounding environment around which their lives revolved. The Israeli occupation since 1967 progressively caused a shift from a centuries-old common-pool resource to a restricted area, which eliminated the access to ancestral land and will possibly diminish future levels of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper captures the labor market consequences of the Gaza Blockade (2007–), a politically motivated and unanticipated event that provides a rare opportunity for a natural experiment. I am aided by the fact that the West Bank is a natural comparison group for examining the Gaza Blockade. Using a difference-in-difference framework, I find that, relative to domestic workers in the West Bank, those in Gaza experienced an additional 11% point increase in the unemployment rate and an additional 13–20% reduction in real wages. The long-term effect (3 years later), on real wages was at least 1.5 times larger. Rising wage inequality was another consequence of the Blockade, which manifested itself in an upsurge in industry wage differentials and to a lesser extent, the skill premium. This paper also discusses the impact of the crisis on the sectoral composition of the Gazan economy, particularly as a result of the severe contraction of non-service industries in the private sector. While the Gaza Blockade constitutes an extreme case of a massive economic shock and a radical departure from the close economic integration experienced in earlier decades, the results of this study can nevertheless serve to shed light on how other open economies are likely to respond to the increasingly common imposition of restrictions on trade and factor mobility such as economic sanctions, visa restrictions, and trade wars. The effects of such barriers to trade and labor mobility are particularly dire in the absence of labor reforms designed to mitigate their adverse effects. KEYWORDS: Middle East; conflict; economic development; labour; wages; trade [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those working in the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector often claim that sport can, and does, make a difference. This article assesses this claim in the context of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Attention is given to the 'peace' component within the SDP initialism and on what 'peace' means in this conflict. An assessment is made of the work of thirteen organisations engaged in peacebuilding in this region. The article identifies that many of the sport-for-peace schemes involve Israelis and Palestinians/Arabs within Israel with few schemes seeking to involve Palestinians who live in the West Bank, in Gaza or in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. It is concluded that sport is not an appropriate vehicle for peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians because there is no peace – a necessary precursor for reconciliation. Realpolitik, in the form of Israeli territorial expansion and the Palestinian struggle for basic human rights, leaves sport-for-peace schemes attempting to build a bridge too far.1 体育促进发展与和平组织（SDP）的官员声称, 体育运动能够并且确实发挥了巨大作用。本文在巴以冲突的背景下对这一说法提出质疑。文章认为该组织"SDP"中的字母缩写 "P"代表的"和平", 但"和平"在这场冲突中苍白无力。一项对参与该地区体育促进和平建设的十三个组织的评估显示, 许多体育促和平项目只涵盖了以色列境内的以色列人、巴勒斯坦人或阿拉伯人, 而居住在西岸、加沙或邻国难民营的巴勒斯坦人几乎都未能参与到项目中来。文章得出结论, 体育不适合作为在以色列和巴勒斯坦两国人民之间进行和平建设的工具, 因为和平是双方达成和解的必要前提, 而该地区并无和平可言。以色列领土扩张问题尚未解决, 而且巴勒斯坦人民的基本人权尚无保障, 在这样的现实政治环境下, 试图通过用体育促和平为两国牵线搭桥的想法, 目前看来是不切实际的 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited water resources are among the main obstacles to development in Palestine. This research investigates farmers' perceptions and willingness to use treated wastewater (TWW) for irrigation. Despite the availability of large quantities of TWW, just 11% of the interviewed farmers use it in irrigation. Just 24% of them confirmed that they had participated in awareness workshops related to TWW, but 75% stated they would be willing to use TWW for irrigation. We find that the main obstacles to the use of TWW in irrigation are availability of freshwater, non-availability of TWW and psychological aversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the connection between politics, archaeology, and biblical historiography by focusing on a specific archaeological site, Tel Shiloh, centrally located in the West Bank. Tel Shiloh illustrates the popular conviction that the contested contemporary ethno-religious and socio-political situation of the West Bank originates from the Bible. The four excavations at Tel Shiloh have contributed in sometimes subtle but often in explicit ways to the massive effort of linking the biblical mention of Shiloh with today's geopolitical ambitions of the state of Israel in the militarily occupied West Bank. The most recent link includes ambitious plans for building Tel Shiloh into an enormous tourism attraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cataract surgery, quantity and quality, is an indicator of ophthalmic care. A comprehensive assessment of cataract surgical services has never been carried out in Palestine, including West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The objective of this study was to estimate the cataract surgical rate in 2015 to and to explore the modes of payment and referral systems. A cross-sectional study conducted between June and August 2016. Medical Directors from Cataract Surgical Centres in Palestine were interviewed using a structured questionnaire to extract data on cataract output and surgical techniques. Additionally, data were collected on modes of payment for cataract services. The cataract surgical rate was calculated by dividing the total cataract output in 2015 by the estimated population of Palestine in millions. In 2015, 9908 cataract surgeries were carried out in 22 centres. The cataract surgical rate was 2,117 operations per million population. Phacoemulsification was the most common technique (73.4%), however in government centres 67% were performed by extracapsular cataract extraction. In the Gaza Strip, 56.6% of cataract surgeries were operated at government centres, and 42.8% were operated at NGO centres while in West Bank, only 12% of cataract surgeries were operated at government centres, with two-thirds of cataracts diagnosed at governmental centres being referred to private and NGO centres. Seventy eight percent of cataract surgeries were funded by insurance, of which the government insurance scheme contributed 65%. The cataract surgical rate in Palestine falls short of the required WHO target. The majority of cataract surgeries are funded by insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work professionals experience job-related stressors often associated with compromised mental health. In low-resource, conflict settings, such as the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), structural and environmental obstacles pose additional challenges. This qualitative study identified stressors faced by 237 Palestinian social workers, current organizational strategies to reduce worker stress, and recommendations for new strategies. Content analysis identified 12 categories of stressors within five domains: role-related, interpersonal, organizational, societal, and miscellaneous. Current stress reduction efforts are perceived as ineffective, but numerous suggestions were offered for new initiatives. Implications for policy, practice, and research are discussed. Practice Points Palestinian public sector social workers face a litany of stressors at multiple levels, including role-related, interpersonal, organizational, and societal. In addition to the types of workplace stressors typically associated with social worker burnout and secondary traumatic stress, Palestinian social workers must also contend with stressors related to operating in a low-resource setting and under Israeli military occupation. While the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development is limited in its capacity to address many of the structural factors that contribute to worker stress, opportunities exist to promote worker well-being at an organizational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the factors that influenced the trends in archaeological excavations in Judea and Samaria during the decade attending the 1967 Six-Day War. Examination reveals a close connection between the political trends in Israel as they pertained to Judea and Samaria and the archaeological excavations undertaken in this region. When a prime minister appeared to consider Judea and Samaria an inseparable part of the state of Israel archaeologists followed (Meir). But when prime ministers regarded Judea and Samaria as territory that would be returned to the Jordanians (Eshkol and Rabin), the archaeologists stopped excavating in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a mixed-method design, the study investigated gender and context differences within the domains of agency, life satisfaction, affectivity, and symptoms of trauma. Two-hundred-fifty Palestinian children from cities, villages, and refugee camps (M = 11.58, SD = 1.49) completed four self-reported measures, Multilevel Student's Life Satisfaction Scale, Children's Hope Scale, Children's Impact of Event Scale, and Positive and Negative Affect Scales. Based on drawings and walk-along interviews with 75 children (M = 10.27, SD = 1.38), thematic analysis was performed to detect gender and context-specific differences regarding all the variables, which assisted in the interpretation of quantitative findings. Findings showed higher girls' satisfaction in the dimension of school (MD = 1.497, p<.05) and higher values of negative affect (MD = 1.192, p<.05). Correlation analysis revealed that older girls displayed lower levels of life satisfaction, positive emotions, arousal symptoms, and agency (p<.05). Children living in the West Bank reported higher levels of agency (MD = 1.898, p<.05) in comparison to those in Gaza. The comparison of urban, rural, and refugee camp participants yielded significant differences concerning children's satisfaction with their lives (MSLSS: F (2, 245) = 10.69, p <.001) and positive emotions (F (2, 245) = 6.49, p =.002). Six themes emerged from the TA: girls' feelings of insecurity and uncertainty; gender gaps in mobility and accessibility to public spaces; education as a mean for equal rights; perceived gender inequality; environmental unpredictability in the context of Gaza; unstable social and environmental conditions in the refugee camps. We explored participants' strategies of resistance to endure adverse living conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does exposure to events that transgress accepted norms, such as killing innocent civilians, prompt the psychological and emotional consequences of moral injury among soldiers? Moral injury is associated with negative emotions such as guilt, shame and anger, and a sense of betrayal and is identified among veterans following exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIE). We experimentally investigate how PMIE characteristics affect the intensity of MI and related negative moral emotions in participants with varied military experience. We conducted three controlled, randomized experiments. Each exposed male respondents with active combat experience (Study 1) and varied military experience (Study 2) to four textual vignettes describing PMIE (child/adult and innocent/non-innocent suspect) that transpire at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank. In study 3, we exposed participants to two scenarios, where descriptions of police officers enforcing COVID 19 restrictions confronted lockdown violators. Participants assigned to vignettes describing killing an innocent civilian exhibited more intense levels of shame and guilt than those assigned to vignettes describing killing a person carrying a bomb. Religiosity and political ideology were strong predictors of guilt and shame in response to descriptions of checkpoint shootings. These effects disappeared in Study 3, suggesting that political ideology drives MI in intergroup conflict. Background and PMIE-related characteristics affect the development of moral injury. Additionally, lab experiments demonstrate the potential and limitations of controlled studies of moral injury and facilitate an understanding of the aetiology of moral injury in a way unavailable to clinicians. Finally, experimental findings and methodologies offer further insights into the genesis of moral injury and avenues for therapy and prophylaxis. In three controlled experiments among participants with varied combat experience, morally injurious events characterized by killing innocent suspects triggered a greater degree of moral injury and related moral emotions than events characterized by killing non-innocent suspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to evaluate two methods for the topic modeling of multilingual document collections: (1) machine translation (MT), and (2) the coding of semantic concepts using a multilingual dictionary (MD) prior to topic modeling. We empirically assess the consequences of these approaches based on both a quantitative comparison of models and a qualitative validation of each method's potentials and weaknesses. Our case study uses two text collections (of tweets and news articles) in three languages (English, Hebrew, Arabic), covering the ongoing local conflicts between Israeli authorities, settlers, and Palestinian Bedouins in the West Bank. We find that both methods produce a large share of equivalent topics, especially in the context of fairly homogenous news discourse, yet show limited but systematic differences when applied to highly heterogenous social media discourse. While the MD model delivers a more nuanced picture of conflict-related topics, it misses several more peripheral topics, especially those unrelated to the dictionary's focus, which are picked up by the MT model. Our study is a first step toward instrument validation, indicating that both methods yield valid, comparable results, while method-specific differences remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a critical analysis of the two maps that were included in the 'Deal of the Century' (DoC) which delineates the territory of the so-called 'State of Palestine'. It examines in detail the proposed new partitioning of historic Palestine among Israelis and Palestinians and defines rules and constraints over who will be living where and aspects of mobility in the area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. The paper argues that territorial injustice has been done to the local Palestinian residents and the West Bank. Should the DoC be implemented, the so-called 'State of Palestine' as envisioned will be fragmented into three main enclaves and smaller ones and turned into a landlocked state. These enclaves will be connected with each other via bridges and tunnels. The entire area of historic Palestine west of the Jordan River will be placed under Israeli control, leaving the 'State of Palestine' without any type of basic sovereignty. It is argued that this will not end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict but will escalate it for many years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is published as part of the Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography special issue 'Palestinian Futures Anticipation, Imagination, Embodiments', edited by Mikko Joronen, Helga Tawil-Souri, Merav Amir & Mark Griffiths. The almost 100 Israeli checkpoints that are located inside the West Bank and on its 'border' with Israel play a particularly important role in the architecture of occupation. They represent key political technologies that are used to monitor, discipline and/or selectively limit the mobility of Palestinians. In this paper, I analyse the ways in which the design of the newly relaunched Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem represents a certain specific 'checkpoint future', materialized in the continued 'evolution' of Checkpoint 300, its machines and 'façade of legitimacy': a future in which the Israeli military regime controlling the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) is kept in place and the checkpoints and their inherent violence are increasingly normalized. Furthermore, I argue that this 'checkpoint future' does not lead to a less violent or arbitrary checkpoint regime. This remaining presence of violence should not be framed as a failure, instead, the continued presence of violence, analysed here as experienced and expressed in the arbitrary functioning of the checkpoint machines, as well as the 'legitimised façade' of Checkpoint 300 are intrinsically bound and an expression of the same violent future: a future with an enduring Israeli military regime in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a particular futural logic prevalent in Israel's practices of governing Palestinian life in the West Bank: the governmentalizing of possibility through anticipation and uncertainty. We draw on long-term fieldwork focused on different West Bank contexts – checkpoints, farmland access and house demolitions – where governing functions via prospective futures that call people to anticipate and become attuned to lived uncertainty. Empirically, the article demonstrates the ways that Israel's governmental techniques instrumentalize threatening and ominous possibilities to manage the conduct of Palestinians by means of military orders, permit restrictions and bureaucratic processing. Conceptually, the article theorizes the governmentalization of futures as dynamic on two distinguishable planes – the everyday and the existential – that shape Palestinians' anticipation and attunement as they relate to multiple and crucial domains of life: dwelling, livelihood, reproduction and mobility. The argument is thus made that futures are governmentalized where subjects are situated in conditions of uncertainty in which they anticipate the threatening possibilities ahead – namely, the unpleasant eventuality that 'could happen'. Anticipation in this arrangement, we further argue, can progress Israel's settler-colonial project in Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]