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Trade and economic cooperation are often promoted through policy to facilitate post-conflict normalization. The Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ) model of duty and quota-free industrial regions is a policy tool initiated by the United States as a brokerage in promoting peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Indeed, a vast literature aims to evaluate the economic and political potential of trade liberalization. Yet the mechanisms of trade policy implementation in a post-conflict environment, its timing and underlying political motives, are critical but rather neglected factors, which design the prospects of trade incentives. We therefore question the effectiveness of the QIZ as a tool addressing post-conflict dynamics and ask whether its impact on Israel–Egyptian relations reflects the value of this policy or the circumstances of its implementation. Using mixed methods, this study presents and evaluates the implementation of the QIZ in Egypt since 2004 and its results, both economic and political, fine tuning the broader debate to focus on circumstances of implementation. This case study demonstrates the results of trade opportunity implementation as a reaction to threat rather than mobilization to realize post-conflict rapprochement or even to reap economic opportunity. Notwithstanding the forces of globalization, Egypt's pre and post-revolutionary internal political economy and delicate relations with Israel serve as the context for understanding the QIZ. This context facilitates contradicting political interpretations, with the QIZ simultaneously celebrated as an economic success, criticized as an Egyptian escape route from structural reforms, and accused as embodying a U.S.–Egyptian elite conspiracy, to coerce Egyptian economic normalization with Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural and religious concepts of space inform contemporary social and political identities, confirming the inherent embeddedness of borders in social life. This study analyzes concepts of borders and bordering processes in socially heterogeneous and politically sensitive environments, as portrayed in classic Jewish texts. Jewish-legal rabbinic writings dated from the first to the fifth century reveal perceptions of both concrete and metaphysical aspects of a territorial homeland and of social-spatial bordering. These perceptions are echoed in contemporary debates of national sovereignty and borders. Like most legal systems, Jewish law prefers clear spatial separations and creates dichotomous spatial-legal distinctions. Yet textual analysis through lenses of geopolitics and law reveals nuanced concepts of borders and surprising perceptions of flexible and permeable borders despite this preference for clarity. This adaptability stands in contrast to widespread presumptions of rigidity of religion. Classic texts enrich social and political discourse in multi-cultural societies, particularly regarding holy territory. Their interpretation offer prospects of de-linking concepts of sanctity from sovereignty, thus presenting innovative channels to perceive and experience one's homeland. Paradoxically, religious texts offer pragmatic geo-political insights, which could enrich contemporary discourse, challenged by over-simplistic perceptions of borders and bordering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ) model of border-located, duty and quota-free industrial regions is a policy tool designed to capitalize on cross-border cooperation to facilitate post-conflict normalization. Using mixed methods, this study presents and evaluates the implementation of the 1996 US initiated Israel-Jordan QIZ agreement and its social, economic and political impact, contributing to broader debates regarding the potential and limitations of post-conflict normalization through trade preference agreements. The Israel-Jordan QIZ framework no longer functions due to multiple circumstances. Yet there are lessons to be gained from the mechanisms of the QIZ implementation which contributed to the only minimal realization of its anticipated potential. We found that economic brokerage fostering trade and industry cross-border cooperation can serve one-sided economic interests while minimizing spillover to political or social realms, contrary to original intentions. The QIZ experience demonstrates the importance of self-motivation of each of the parties regarding specific cooperative ventures in realizing the potential of cross-border cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intermunicipal cooperation (IMC) in regions of social-economic and cultural heterogeneity may facilitate economies of scale and improve competitiveness and service delivery, but the insights of border and regional studies reveal its limitations in addressing disparities and generating development. This paper analyzes IMC prospects within peripheral regions of Israel, where municipal borders mark divides of prosperity, ethnicity and religion. Israeli policy promotes regionalism through IMC to facilitate intra-regional interdependence and development. Yet, institutionalized structures of cooperation have minimal impact on intra-regional disparities. Pervasive social borders undermine the prospects of IMC, as an insufficient substitute for necessary government investment in addressing historic roots of socioeconomic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflict resolution efforts of nearly seventy years between the Negev Bedouin and the State of Israel tend to focus on the main issue of disagreement--land ownership and its proof.1 Yet, beyond legal aspects of ownership, historical narratives, and culturally different values attached to land are used and manipulated in this conflict by direct and indirect players. Territorial conflict often lasts longer than the material benefits seem to merit due to added issues of identity and attachment, which develop over time.² Therefore, the legal lens is limited in addressing this complex: historic, political, social, economic, cultural, and ethnic conflict. Inter-cultural engagement between a modern state and a semi-nomadic people challenge the prospects of conflict resolution. This is similarly challenged in other contexts of the Middle East, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Political and ideological aspects, along with the factor of time, have further entrenched the regional Arab-Israeli conflict. These factors have increased the toll on the entire Negev population and environment--especially on the Bedouin population. The narrative of indigeneity is a recent strategy in this conflict, linking the Bedouin struggle with that of First Peoples, Aboriginals, and Native Americans.³ This context widens the narrow legal discourse currently employed in Israel regarding Bedouin land rights. However, the narrative of indigeneity has not been helpful in resolving this conflict. This context also contributes to prospects of comparative research. As the overall context of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict unfolds, the question of Bedouin indigeneity can also polarize and politicize the conflict--distancing the parties from urgent pragmatic compromises. Therefore, linking the narrative of indigenous people worldwide is unlikely a productive strategy in addressing the conflict of Bedouin land rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Border-management policies are designed to balance national interests of border control with the costs of monitored cross-border interaction. These policies, formulated by national authorities, are often based on constructed definitions and interests of national security rather than wider understandings of the components of human security. This is especially evident in post-conflict borders where local initiatives of economic, social and environmental cross-border interaction are posed to contribute to regional stability and security. This article analyzes civilian cross-border cooperation in the southern section of the Israel-Jordan border region, distinguishing between local and national perspectives regarding border management. Focusing mainly on Israel's policies the article demonstrates how despite the vision of good neighbourly relations and their potential contribution towards regional prosperity and stability, local cross-border initiatives have been inhibited in the name of national security. The case study demonstrates the mechanisms and ramifications of exclusive securitisation policies of post-conflict border management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]