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The cross-Atlantic tensions between the British and American militaries throughout the nineteenth century resulted in their cultures being defined in opposition to each other. For the United States, it was the American experiences of frontier conflict, the Civil War, and republican-style imperialism that inspired the nation's military strategy, including the principles of foreign occupation. This article asserts that, on the contrary, the U.S. approach to occupation governance was greatly informed by a British model from the early twentieth century on. We contend that American failures in the occupation of the Rhineland after World War I prompted the interwar development of new strategies based on the British example. While this strategy may have been borrowed from the British, it was also subject to a retrospective mythbuilding that selected examples from American history that conformed to the new model, affording it a greater degree of subcultural legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its centrality as a locus of both occupation and resistance in Kashmir, the inquiry into time has received scant academic attention. This essay undertakes two lines of inquiry. First, it attempts to foreground the temporal extraction integral to the Indian state's matrix of control, arguing that its military occupation and settler-colonial project in Kashmir operates not only through the logics of spatial control but also through a control over time. The state has not only tried to erase people out of their own futures but also weaponized the idea of future itself—as a site of a permanent and multimodal extraction. Second, Kashmir's liberation praxis is anchored on a rejection of an occupational and settler-colonial temporal order and, through two ethnographic fragments, this essay explores enactments of alternate temporal imaginaries and consciousness and foregrounds multiple registers of "in-betweenness" within this imaginary. The essay redirects attention from future as an event or a discrete unit of time, and from its not-yetness, toward the intimate and everyday articulations and enactments of future—a complex ongoing process of becoming and unbecoming unfolding in the everyday. Thus the essay calls for reimagining "ruptures"—instead of "futures"—as a locus of liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary addresses three objectives: (1) to situate and contextualise the ongoing military assault on Gaza within longer colonial histories in Palestine; (2) to collate resources that can equip geographers—specialist and non‐specialist, academic and non‐academic—with resources to build decolonial politics on Palestine–Israel; and (3) to contribute to discussions on what we, as geographers, can do to support Palestinian calls for liberation. These objectives are informed by a strong conviction that now is not a time for equivocation or silence. Palestinians, both in Palestine and in exile, need robust support and solidarity. This commentary offers one example of the form this support and solidarity can take in the context of academia. It does so by calling forth our discipline's plural and deep commitment to justice and thoroughgoing critique of the deleterious power structures and colonial legacies that have brought us to this current moment of crisis in Palestine. This commentary addresses three objectives: (1) to situate and contextualise the ongoing military assault on Gaza within longer colonial histories in Palestine; (2) to collate resources that can equip geographers—specialist and non‐specialist, academic and non‐academic—with resources to build decolonial politics on Palestine–Israel; and (3) to contribute to discussions on what we, as geographers, can do to support Palestinian calls for liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New dynamics govern today's Middle East politics. At a time when Beijing has become a major player and the US perceives China as the sole credible threat to its global primacy, many Middle Eastern states play a triangulation game, offsetting Washington's pressure with deepening ties with China. In response, the US now sees the region through the prism of managing its rivalry with Beijing. The Biden administration's strategy is to identify key allies and integrate them into small networks to help protect American interests against Chinese influence. However, with such a strategy the US is setting itself up for frequent setbacks. Since those coalitions, based on the Abraham Accords, bypass the Palestinian issue, America's Arab allies often find themselves faced with escalation in the occupied territories, thus derailing the work of such networks. Besides, many of America's Middle East allies have no intention of getting embroiled in the US–Chinese tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decade before the First World War, Spain failed in its attempt to establish an independent role in the fierce competition between the French, British and German Empires for influence in the Western Mediterranean. The exercise of informal power by France and Britain forced Spain's Restoration elites to conform to British and French imperial interests in France's colonization of Morocco. The article suggests Spain's governing parties were unable to manage the essential mediating role for collaborating elites in informal empires, as defined by Ronald Robinson, between the demands of the imperial powers and the political pressures arising from changing social forces within the country. Spain's dilemma was an early example of the conflict that faced many newly independent colonies later in the twentieth century: how to reconcile the growing aspirations for national self-determination in a world dominated by competing imperial powers, themselves increasingly facing internal contradictions and crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

War always results in civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, architectural monuments and historic buildings. Systematic analysis of the current situation of historic sites in the occupied territories reveals fundamental problems and unresolved issues in preserving the heritage of areas that are not under the control of the Kyiv government. There are shortcomings in the regulatory framework of legal status, protection and preservation, as well as violations in the occupied territories. The activities ofvarious countries in determining the status of historical monuments are reviewed. Positive and negative aspects of the policy of protection and restoration of cultural heritage objects are outlined, and practical recommendations are made for improving the protection of historical monuments in the occupied territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author shares insight on terror attacks and the ethics of resistance to an oppressive authority. He cites the political speech delivered by South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela as a defendant in the Rivonia Trial in 1964, detailing the changing strategies and tactics of the African National Congress (ANC) in defiance of apartheid laws and resistance to oppressive authority, that included rejection of terrorism and a campaign of assaults against military personnel without violating their ideals. He notes the struggle of the ANC to create a South Africa in which black and white people lived together without hatred. In the case of the Middle East, he finds Israel's treatment as horrific to keep the Palestinian people under a brutal and humiliating military occupation.

This article examines the visual politics of complicity within war, conflict, and military occupation in International Relations (IR). By arguing that complicity is a social relation through which actors navigate violence while drawing on power and resources that are distributed unevenly, it explores the production, articulation, and reception of complicity within the Israeli television series Fauda , which addresses complicit behaviour under the Israeli occupation of Palestine. By building on Feminist IR's engagement with emotions, gender, and visual representations, this article provides a twofold contribution to the study of complicity in international politics. Firstly, the complicit entanglement between creators, distributors, and viewers of Fauda spotlights the cultural workers' role in shaping public knowledge of war, violence, and military occupation, particularly by creating and circulating cultural representations that facilitate the complicity of audiences with the violence that they consume through certain emotional logics (empathy, compassion, fear). Secondly, this article examines representations of complicity within Fauda to shed light on complicit actors' embodied experiences of navigating between different identities while caught in the middle of violence (perpetrator, victim, witness, bystander). To this end, this article develops our understanding of emotions, resistance, and domination in international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines fieldwork experience in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs). The research utilized participatory action research (PAR) and focused on a Palestinian community resisting demolition order for their homes in the South Hebron Hills. The paper addresses the critical difficulties faced during the planning and execution of fieldwork within a colonial regime that sustains Apartheid. This study aims to initiate a broader discourse within the sociological academic sphere regarding fieldwork encounters, their restitution, and the connections that academics establish and cultivate with the communities they engage with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1944 to 1945, the U.S. Department of War contracted with six universities, including Stanford University, to operate Civil Affairs Training Schools (CATS) for the Far Eastern theaters. Their mission was to prepare U.S Army and U.S. Navy officers with assignments to administer civil affairs in the anticipated occupation of Japan. This article focuses on two groups of "informants" that Stanford University sourced for language and area study instruction in its CATS program – first, Christian missionaries repatriated to North America after spending many years in Japan and second, Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) recruits from War Department incarceration camps. In response to Stanford University's inquiries, nearly 130 missionaries shared their first-hand experiences in Japan and offered suggestions on how civil affairs officers should engage with the Japanese. Some of these suggestions showed Christian biases that led to mixed reactions among the Stanford staff. Despite the challenge of bringing persons of Japanese ancestry to a campus with the U.S. government's exclusion orders in place, Stanford University managed to hire 23 Nisei as "language informants." Their work, however, largely consisted of leading language drills for student officers as "native speakers" rather than providing expert knowledge. This article highlights the circumstances and issues around the U.S. military's use of missionaries and second-generation immigrants for their linguistic and cultural knowledge of the enemy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The range-wide recovery of Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is one of the great North American conservation successes, with the Bald Eagle population in Florida contributing substantially to this recovery. Florida has one of the densest concentrations of nesting Bald Eagles in the lower 48 states and sustained a population monitoring program that spanned 45 yr. We used nest monitoring data from 1972–2017 to quantify changes in the size, extent, and productivity of the breeding Bald Eagle population in Florida. We documented an increase in the number of occupied Bald Eagle territories from 88 in 1973 to an estimated 1565 in 2017, with nests recorded in 64 of Florida's 67 counties by the end of the monitoring efforts. Mean annual growth rate in the number of occupied eagle territories in Florida was 5.5 ± 1.1% (SE). High reproductive rates, exemplified by a mean productivity of 1.13 ± 0.02 fledglings per occupied nest, a mean brood size of 1.54 ± 0.01 fledglings per successful nest, and the production of nearly 40,000 fledglings over a 45-yr period, translated into substantial gains for the state and southeastern US Bald Eagle population. Eagles have established a large, spatially expansive, and productive breeding population in Florida, one that exceeded the conservation objectives established when the species was state-delisted in 2008. These data provided key insights into the breeding ecology, recovery, and long-term stability of Bald Eagles in Florida. Given the predicted increase in the human population and landscape modification anticipated in the coming years, the conservation of the eagle population within Florida will require adaptive management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To resist the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Palestinian prisoners are smuggling sperm samples out of Israeli prisons to enable their wives to undergo fertility treatment. Bodies and bodily matter figure as central actors in this practice of resistance. In this article, I draw from fieldwork I conducted with Palestinian women and medical staff in the occupied West Bank to examine the tension between carcerality and matter(ing). I argue that bodies and bodily matter are constitutive of the relationship between oppression and resistance. I analyze how Israeli military authorities assign evidentiary status to Palestinian bodies and illustrate how Palestinian families challenge the Israeli carceral system through new modes of embodied resistance. This article demonstrates how intersecting forms of oppression shape and are being shaped by bodies and their materiality. It also suggests that theorizing the materiality of power from Palestine offers new ways of understanding the political work that bodies do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the legal obligations of Occupying Powers with regard to climate change adaptation for local populations and their environment under the law of occupation, specifically in the context of prolonged belligerent occupations. It focuses on the critical matter of water and food security, in light of the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events. After shedding light on the intricate issues that arise at the intersection of climate change and belligerent occupation, the article argues that the general obligations incumbent upon the Occupying Power under occupation law, when viewed through a climate lens, can be construed as addressing the heightened climate vulnerability faced by occupied populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law of belligerent occupation permits the Occupying Power to administer and use the natural resources in the occupied territory under the rules of usufruct. This provision has no counterpart in the provisions of humanitarian law applicable to non-international armed conflicts, which may suggest that any exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups is illegal. The International Committee of the Red Cross's updated 2020 Guidelines on the Protection of the Environment in Armed Conflict did not touch on this issue, and nor did the International Law Commission in its 2022 Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts, where it applied the notion of sustainable use of natural resources instead of usufruct. The present paper aims to fill this gap. It first reviews the development of the concept of usufruct and then studies whether the current international law entitles non-State armed groups with de facto control over a territory to exploit natural resources. By delving into the proposals raised by some commentators to justify such exploitation for the purpose of administering the daily life of civilian populations, the paper advocates for a limited version of this formula as the appropriate lex ferenda. In the final section, the paper discusses how situations of disaster, as circumstances which may preclude the wrongfulness of the act, may justify the exploitation of natural resources by non-State armed groups in the current international legal order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delineates the relations between the judicial overhaul launched by Israel's right-wing government in 2023 and the mechanisms of Israel's control over Palestinians, demonstrating that they are two parts of a regime change. The essay traces a series of changes in Israel's citizenship regime the past decade: the enactment of an anti-terrorism law and a nation-state law that defined the exclusive right of Jews to self-determination in Israel; the domestic application of surveillance and control practices developed in the occupied territories; and finally legislation allowing the revocation of Palestinians' citizenship and the de facto annexation of the occupied territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habitat selection studies facilitate assessing and predicting species distributions and habitat connectivity, but habitat selection can vary temporally and among individuals, which is often ignored. We used GPS telemetry data from 96 Gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the western Great Lakes region of the USA to assess differences in habitat selection while wolves exhibited resident (territorial) or non-resident (dispersing or floating) movements and discuss implications for habitat connectivity. We used a step-selection function (SSF) to assess habitat selection by wolves exhibiting resident or non-resident movements, and modeled circuit connectivity throughout the western Great Lakes region. Wolves selected for natural land cover and against areas with high road densities, with no differences in selection among wolves when resident, dispersing, or floating. Similar habitat selection between resident and non-resident wolves may be due to similarity in environmental conditions, when non-resident movements occur largely within established wolf range rather than near the periphery or beyond the species range. Alternatively, non-resident wolves may travel through occupied territories because higher food availability or lower human disturbance outweighs risks posed by conspecifics. Finally, an absence of differences in habitat selection between resident and non-resident wolf movements may be due to other unknown reasons. We recommend considering context-dependency when evaluating differences in movements and habitat use between resident and non-resident individuals. Our results also provide independent validation of a previous species distribution model and connectivity analysis suggesting most potential wolf habitat in the western Great Lakes region is occupied, with limited connectivity to unoccupied habitat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the display and circulation of furniture and decorative arts between Italy and its African colonies, and discusses the relationship between pieces conceived in the occupied territories, those defined for Italian households, and those envisioned to accompany Italians in their colonial endeavors. The circulation of these different pieces was thought to embody the "expansion of life horizons" characteristic of modernity. However, modernist designers worked alongside ethnographers through the delineation of distinct identities for the inhabitants of the Italian nation and those subjected to colonization, increasingly differentiating who was allowed to engage in the characteristically modern "expansion" and who was forced to remain fixed—as the defining hierarchy of the modern-colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to food and water are fundamental human rights, even in situations of military occupation, as the occupying power has the responsibility to ensure and respect these rights for the civilian population under its control. Israel has systematically violated the right to water and food of the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank for decades. The persistent violation of these rights has taken on an even more serious dimension in the case of Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli military intervention in the Strip in October 2023. The international community has the obligation to unequivocally position itself to investigate these violations of fundamental rights and put an end to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conflict between Israel and Palestine seems stagnant since 1948. In reality, it has experienced a profound territorial, strategic and political evolution. Israel's close alliance with the United States was forged in 1956, at the same time as with Saudi Arabia, as part of the American strategy for the region within the framework of the Cold War. In 1982, after the war in Lebanon, Israel's territorial expansion reached its limit and from then on it concentrated exclusively on the colonization of the territories occupied in 1967. The Oslo Accords attempted to provide a way out of the occupation by negotiating it with the Palestinians. but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected this solution. The Abraham Accords have attempted a different way out of the occupation, ignoring the Palestinians. The attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7 have also closed this route. Prime Minister Netanyahu has now opted for a military solution that will achieve no results and will lead to greater internal division and greater international loneliness for Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the implications of the regime change proposed in Israel during the early months of 2023. This unanticipated move by the government to concentrate power in the executive branch, curtail liberal democracy, and politicize the judiciary, though admittedly influenced by political models from Hungary and Poland, was in fact precipitated by Israel's military government in the West Bank. The "regime rationale" of this government in which there is no separation of powers has been normalized and institutionalized in Israel for decades, and the proposal to reshape Israel from within was driven by the same forces that promoted the belligerent occupation over the Palestinians. The similarities between the belligerent occupation and increasingly authoritarian rule in Israel are very striking, particularly in their emphasis on hierarchical governance, the instrumental use of laws, the disregard for ethical concerns, and the relentless pursuit of power as the central objective of the political realm. Thus, I maintain, Israel's encounter with what it has created in the West Bank threatens the democratic integrity of the "home country," and, moreover, this predicament has given rise to crises of identity and a sense of political homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how Israel, as a settler-colonial polity, uses and disseminates narratives pertaining to a Palestinian civil society and its resistance in order to further the settler-colonial project. For this purpose, the article is centred around a case study focusing on the six Palestinian civil society organisations that were designated 'terrorist organisations' in Israel and 'unlawful organisations' in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) as of late 2021.This case study shows that the inner logic of settler-colonialism, as it is organized around the principle of elimination, has been central to the designation of the six organisations. As the role of Palestinian civil society and political leadership has changed significantly in recent decades, the settler polity has been presented with an excellent opportunity to build and disseminate a false 'terrorist' narrative around the Palestinian civil society. Through different stages of expansion and dispossession, this narrative has been based on a perspective of exceptionalism and denial. As such, the construction of this narrative has served as an advancement of the erasure of native narratives, while at the same time legitimising the settler project itself and its utilised strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Research is a major aspect and fundamental component of many social struggles and movements for change' [Choudry, A. 2013a. "Activist Research Practice: Exploring Research and Knowledge Production for Social Action." Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes 9 (1): 128 151. doi:, 128]. For Palestinians, research and knowledge production are vital for their ongoing anti-colonial struggle. However, there are various factors that restrict these processes and create an unsafe environment to produce liberatory knowledge(s) related to political and social activism. Some of these factors are the colonisers' prolonged oppression of Palestinian thought, narrative(s) and theorising, which is exacerbated by an oppressive Palestinian Authority – essentially an authoritarian body governing the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; and the imposed hyper institutionalisation of academic and intellectual spaces, by donors' strategies which create a need to meet global academic criteria by Palestinian institutions. This article engages with research ethics as a specific aspect within the process of knowledge production and dissemination. It critically looks at procedural research ethics that frame research conduct, including data generation, data analysis and modes of dissemination. In Palestine, research is being conducted under settler colonialism, apartheid and repressive ruling authorit(ies). This poses unique conditions that challenge standardised institutional ethics procedures and existing power dynamics within academic and research institutions. Additionally, in Palestine, there is a situation of excessive research – that is almost entirely dependent on foreign funding and the avoidance of clashes with the ruling authorit(ies). Hence, research ethics could be used as a tool for objectification and violence normalisation [Abdelnour, S., and M. Abu Moghli. 2021. "Researching Violent Contexts: A Call for Political Reflexivity." Organization, 1–24]. The article argues that within the Palestinian context, institutionalised ethics procedures in universities and research institutions are almost never sensitive to the particularities of the context and/or the knowledge production and dissemination needs of a nation struggling for liberation. It also argues that utilising research ethics beyond standardised institutional procedures could be a tool for emancipation and the building of collective anti-colonial consciousness and critical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the transformation of Buddhist culture in the Jiangnan region (present-day southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang), driven by wartime disruptions during the transition from the Yuan Dynasty to the Ming. The Yuan Dynasty witnessed the flourishing of Buddhism, and in Jiangnan, the thriving Zen tradition carried on the legacy of the Southern Song Dynasty. Buddhism found many adherents among the affluent gentry class in Jiangnan, fostering a culture of generous charity that sustained and expanded Buddhism in the region. However, the conflicts toward the end of the Yuan Dynasty inflicted considerable damage on the temples, causing monks to flee. Temples, recognizable landmarks during conflicts, were susceptible to military occupation. Visiting Goryeo monks Muhak Jacho and Naong Hyegeun, and Japanese monks Mumon Gensen and Ginan, were forced to abandon their travels and return to their respective homelands, disrupting the once-thriving Buddhist exchange between Jiangnan and broader East Asia. The chaotic environment also fostered alliances between influential monks and regional powers, providing refuge for monks and an opportunity for both sides to forge beneficial connections. Anti-Yuan factions strategically protected revered monks, leveraging their influence to attract literati and intellectuals, who shared common ethical and spiritual values. This dynamic showcased the mutual benefits derived from such collaboration. Through an exploration of the interplay between politics, social forces, and Buddhism, this paper examines the impact of wartime turmoil on the development of Buddhism in the Jiangnan region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The modern female soldier has yet to be fully characterized as she steps up to fill new combat roles that have only recently been opened to women. Both U.S. and U.K. military operational research efforts are supporting a science-based evolution of physical training and standards for female warfighters. The increasing representation of women in all military occupations makes it possible to discover and document the limits of female physiological performance. Method An informal Delphi process was used to synthesize an integrated concept of current military female physiological research priorities and emerging findings using a panel of subject matter experts who presented their research and perspectives during the second Women in Combat Summit hosted by the TriService Nursing Research Program in February 2021. Results The physical characteristics of the modern soldier are changing as women train for nontraditional military roles, and they are emerging as stronger and leaner. Capabilities and physique will likely continue to evolve in response to new Army standards and training programs designed around science-based sex-neutral requirements. Strong bones may be a feature of the female pioneers who successfully complete training and secure roles traditionally reserved for men. Injury risk can be reduced by smarter, targeted training and with attention directed to female-specific hormonal status, biomechanics, and musculoskeletal architecture. An "estrogen advantage" appears to metabolically support enhanced mental endurance in physically demanding high-stress field conditions; a healthy estrogen environment is also essential for musculoskeletal health. The performance of female soldiers can be further enhanced by attention to equipment that serves their needs with seemingly simple solutions such as a suitable sports bra and personal protective equipment that accommodates the female anatomy. Conclusions Female physiological limits and performance have yet to be adequately defined as women move into new roles that were previously developed and reserved for men. Emerging evidence indicates much greater physical capacity and physiological resilience than previously postulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to food and water are fundamental human rights, even in situations of military occupation, as the occupying power has the responsibility to ensure and respect these rights for the civilian population under its control. Israel has systematically violated the right to water and food of the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank for decades. The persistent violation of these rights has taken on an even more serious dimension in the case of Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli military intervention in the Strip in October 2023. The international community has the obligation to unequivocally position itself to investigate these violations of fundamental rights and put an end to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how Russia's invasion and occupation of Ukraine has affected cultural property crime and how cultural property criminals have responded to those practical, social, political and economic changes. To do so, this online ethnography draws on netnographic data from 184 artefact-hunters across Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Greece, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, two artefact-dealers and one violent political operator, whose discussions spanned 19 online communities. It examines the legal fictions and legal nihilism of antiquities looters; the criminal operations of antiquities looters and antiquities traffickers in the occupied territories of Ukraine; the international networks of artefacthunters that facilitate the trading of equipment and antiquities, plus the movement of the artefact-hunters themselves and the conduct of their criminal operations. Thereby, it documents the pollution of Western markets with tainted cultural goods from the occupied territories of Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe and the contribution of Western consumers to the conflict economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tangible project of decolonization requires revolutionary hope to sustain it. Quite often, studies surrounding oppressed populations largely tend to theorize from a point of death, contributing to a culture of hopelessness and pessimism. This essay explores what happens when we theorize from a point of life and joy, specifically theorizing Palestinian resistance and place-claiming through the embodied sport of skateboarding—not in hopes of erasing death, but in hopes of providing a fuller view, and looking for ruptures wherein quotidian life seeps through coloniality as a form of resistance itself. Thinking through skateboarding as a subculture, I analyze a nonprofit organization, SkatePal and its media presence, using my theory and analytic: occupied joy. I argue that the skate scene in Palestine functions as a site of quotidian anticolonial and anti-imperialist resistance through reclaiming freedom of movement, resisting multiple effects of military occupation, and unsettling trauma spectacle through the play and joy associated with the immediate act of skating. In theorizing from life and bearing witness to the sense of agency that skateboarding restores in Palestinian youth, there is hope that the theory of occupied joy can do the same for other oppressed peoples, bringing us all tangibly closer to a more liberated world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israeli plans to partially annex West Bank territory have mainly been perceived as frustrating the two‐state solution, and as putting Palestine/Israel on a path leading to the one‐state alternative. This paper analyses partial annexation plans without assuming that the future of Palestine/Israel would necessarily abide by either statist resolution. It argues that by ostensibly distancing Israel's hold of the West Bank from an identifiable configuration of a belligerent occupation, partial annexation is offered to Jewish Israelis as a path for detaching the futurity of the two nations, and as a trajectory for normalising the Israeli state, without having to make what much of this public would see as painful concessions. It further explores settlers' objections to such plans, claiming that even a partial incorporation of West Bank territory into formal Israel is expected to erode the exclusivity of Jewish domination which Israel has been upholding in its settler‐colonial frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies show that the presence of companionship during childbirth leads to positive outcomes for women. This study investigates the protective effect of having a labor companion on obstetric violence in the health facilities of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Methods: A secondary analysis of a cross-sectional study of women who gave birth in five health centers in the occupied Palestinian territory up to 8 weeks following childbirth was performed. The presence of a labor companion was examined in relation to socioeconomic variables and physical abuse, verbal abuse or stigma or discrimination, failure to achieve professional standards, vaginal examinations, and pain relief. Results: According to the findings, the total number of women with a labor partner or a birth companion present at any stage during the labor process was 92% in the West Bank, and 77.4% in the Gaza Strip. According to the timing of support, 23.5% of women had a labor companion present during labor, childbirth, and after childbirth whilst in the hospital. Women who did not have labor companions were more likely than women who did to report at least one sort of mistreatment, such as unconsented procedures. Women with a labor companion were less likely to report abuse (16%) compared to women without labor companion. In terms of informed permission for procedures, 75% of women who did not have a labor companion had unconsented episiotomy. Conclusion: Labor companionship assists women by providing them with companions who are less likely to be mistreated during labor. Efforts should be made to best implement the presence of labor companions, including the duration of the labor companionship and women's preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a series of unsettling images from the Finnish Continuation War (1941–1944) and the memories of the war that these photographs construct for contemporary Finns. We argue that these images can be viewed through Alison Landsberg's (2004) notion of 'prosthetic memory', which underlines how visual media enable the acquisition of vivid memories of past events. The paper outlines how these long-ignored photographs narrate unexamined dimensions of World War II in ways that transform how Finns in particular remember the war. The images illustrate a neglected Finnish occupation of Soviet territories and the treatment of Russian civilians under Finnish rule. We argue that the images can provoke empathy for their experiences and therefor challenge traditional and nationalist Finnish war interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article invites the reader on a journey through the legal arguments that would confirm the application of the United Nations (UN) climate change regime to belligerent occupations. Although the regime is silent on this issue, its application should not be limited to peacetime due to the seriousness of global climate change and its adverse effects on the environment and living entities. A harmonious interpretation and application of the UN climate change regime and the law of occupation would allow Occupying Powers to ensure the safety and well-being of the civilian population and contribute to the protection of the Earth's climate system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination applicable to cases of belligerent occupation. Capitalizing on the responsibilities of the Occupying Power with respect to different categories of persons living in the occupied territory distinguished by their nationality, it looks at the contents of obligations stemming from relevant norms of the two regimes and their interplay. It also addresses questions of the adequacy, utility and limits of IHL and human rights in according protection from discrimination and inequality to the inhabitants of the occupied territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is a disease in which some cells of the body grow uncontrollably and occasionally spread to other parts of the body. With a group of more than 100 different types, cancer can start almost anywhere in the body. Defective cells may form a mass called a tumor which can be cancerous (malignant), which grows and spreads to other parts of the body, or benign that can grow but not spread throughout the body. In 2021, more than 10 million people died of cancer worldwide (1 out of 6 deaths). This paper has thoroughly investigated the cancer status in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), in terms of its various types; incidence; mortality; sex, age, and geography distribution; and potential causes. In the OPT, with a population of 5.35 million, cancer mortality was 14% in 2016, being the second cause of death after cardiovascular diseases accounting 30.6% of all causes of death. Cancer mortality in the OPT increased by 136% from 2000 to 2016, and by 14% from 2016 to 2020. In addition to other types of cancer in the OPT, its main types are lung (highest in males), breast (highest in females), colorectal (highest in both sexes), and leukemia (highest in children). The high rates of different types of cancer in the OPT can be attributed to various causes, including those related to environmental pollution, nutrition, stress, and lifestyle factors (smoking, lack of activity, increased dependence on technologies, etc.), whereas only 10–30% of cancer cases are attributed to genetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories" by D. Kretzmer and Y. Ronen examines the role of the Supreme Court of Israel in petitions against actions of the Israeli authorities in the occupied territories. The book argues that Israel's regime of military occupation is supported by a unique legal system, with the Supreme Court playing a major role in perpetuating the occupation. The book is divided into three parts, covering the legal framework, the land and people, and security measures and hostilities. It highlights the Court's tendency to prioritize Israeli interests over international law and human rights. [Extracted from the article]

The research investigates the reflections of the Talmudic thought of the current Israeli government on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It discusses the resorting to the texts of the Torah and the Talmud and their explanations in addition to the sayings of the rabbis in dealing with the Palestinian issue. These thoughts and references are considered the ruler and guide in shaping policies and the starting points of Israeli foreign policy towards the Arab countries. Based on these directions, Israeli thinking seeks penetration into the Arab and Islamic countries, non-recognition of Palestinian rights, and keeping the Palestinian political scene controlled by military occupation, widening Jewish settlements on the Palestinian lands. The research reviews the policies of the Israeli right-wing governments since their election in 2003 and their accumulated work to empty the agreements signed with the Palestinian National Authority of Palestinian national rights. Moreover, the research exposes the policies of Jewish settlement expansion and annexation of more Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank. It also details the Israeli policy of the Judaization of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque. These behaviors and procedures are based on the biblical Talmudic thought ruling these parties and the fatwas of Jewish rabbis. The research revealed the depth of the presence of the extremist religious dimension based on the texts of the Torah in Israeli thinking regarding the actions of confiscation and Building Jewish settlement in Palestine. It is also reflected in Israeli dealing with the Palestinian people as unfit for the land promised by God to the chosen people, i.e., the Jews, according to their beliefs. Thus, the religious dimension of the conflict from the point of view of the Israeli government is the master of domestic and foreign policy in dealing with the Palestinian people. The theses of keenness not to turn the conflict into a religious one is outdated. The religious strife has been open for a long by the Israeli occupation and its governments and rightwing parties in opposition and power. Therefore, the research recommends changing the direction of Arab and Palestinian dealings with Israel and confronting the Israeli project with its secular and religious ideology. It is to shift to the strategy of ending the extremist Israeli military and settlement occupation with the available means based on a comprehensive and unified Palestinian national project with its religious and national dimensions. The research recommends not relying on any change in the policies of Israeli governments toward True peace with the Palestinian people. It also recommends not to debt on international community proposals that cannot commit Israel to anything since its founding in 1948 until today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have Israel and the Palestinians failed to implement a 'land for peace' solution, along the lines of the Oslo Accords? This paper studies the application of strategic behavior models, in the form of games, to this question. I show that existing models of the conflict largely rely on unrealistic assumptions about what the main actors are trying to achieve. Specifically, they assume that Israel is strategically interested in withdrawing from the occupied territories pending resolvable security concerns but that it is obstructed from doing so by violent Palestinians with other objectives. I use historical analysis along with bargaining theory to shed doubt on this assumption and to argue that the persistence of conflict has been aligned with, not contrary to, the interests of the militarily powerful party, Israel. The analysis helps explain, from a strategic behavior perspective, why resolutions like the Oslo Accords, which rely on the land for peace paradigm and on self-enforcement, have failed to create peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of code-switching in recreating the place, Palestine, that contemporary Palestinian memoirist Ghada Karmi was expelled from by providing a close analysis of the code-switched expressions and the plurality of voices and perspectives that this linguistic and cultural phenomenon imply in her work Return: A Palestinian Memoir. While code-switching is a feature of diasporic writings, Karmi uses many code-switched expressions related to food, clothes, honorific titles and the historical event of Nakba so as to linguistically return to Palestine. However, Karmi's engagement with Palestine from past to present, her exploration of the political transformation of Palestine and her inability to feel connected to today's Palestine raises the spectre of co-existence between Palestinians and Israelis if Palestinian refugees return physically to Palestine. This possibility of co-existence between the two warring nations is further highlighted by Karmi's use of Hebrew code-switched words, which exist alongside code-switched words related to precolonial Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to make a contribution to ongoing debates in decolonial, indigenous, and island geographies through a case study of the Okinawan indigenous movement and its recent encounter with a neo‐nationalist, and in effect neocolonial, movement. The Okinawan indigenous movement emerged against the backdrop of the continuing US military presence on Okinawa Island, which is the direct result of the post‐war American military occupation and continues to be maintained by Japanese post‐colonial policies. In the early 2000s, the movement achieved indigenous recognition by United Nations human rights bodies, which have since issued recommendations to the Japanese government to implement protective measures for the islanders, including indigenous land rights measures that are hoped to alleviate the militarised colonial situation. Not only does the Japanese government continue to ignore the recommendations, but the Okinawan indigenous movement today also confronts a new form of neocolonialism. In the past few years, a group of neo‐nationalists and conservative politicians have initiated a countermovement against the Okinawan indigenous status. They have mobilised the unpopularity of the term 'indigenous people' in Japanese ('senjūmin') among Okinawans as a pretext for demanding the retraction of the recommendations. The case study shows that the different conceptualisations of decolonisation and indigeneity represent not only an analytical usefulness but also an empirical importance for they create a space in which these ideas can be (ab)used to both promote and hinder a decolonial pursuit of the reappropriation of colonised (is)lands. It illustrates a particular geopolitics of knowledge in which different actors mobilise different understandings of decolonisation and indigeneity for a decolonial or neocolonial end. The paper concludes with a discussion of the challenges for decolonial geographies that arise from the present study. This article aims to contribute to decolonial, indigenous, and island geographies through analysis of the Okinawan indigenous movement and its recent encounter with a neo‐nationalist movement. It illustrates a particular geopolitics of knowledge in which the ideas of decolonisation and indigeneity can be (ab)used to both promote and hinder the same decolonial project. The case study highlights decolonial challenges that continue to exist in the conceptual and practical applications of 'indigenous peoples' and their land rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the rise of the Israeli conservative movement, and examines the dominance of religious-Zionists within the movement. The article focuses on the ideology of Moshe Koppel, the chair of the Kohelet Policy Forum and a dominant figure in the conservative movement. Through an analysis of Koppel's political writings, this article presents Koppel's unique worldview, and demonstrates how it is a critique of the secular-Zionist hegemony, and also of the "classical" religious-Zionist worldview. The article argues that Koppel's ideology appeals to religious-Zionists, who have undergone a political crisis as a result of their failure to convince the general Israeli public to oppose the evacuation of Gaza settlements in 2005. Koppel's worldview addresses the need for religious-Zionists to justify their commitment to Jewish settlement in the Occupied Palestinian territories in a way that will appeal to non-Orthodox Jews as well. This is a key factor in the Israeli right's conscious attempt to achieve political hegemony in Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the peculiarities of the agricultural economy of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). Seven years of conflict has brought about an escalation of prices for food, fuel, and other necessities; farmers growing for subsistence, and even commercial enterprises, face a lack of transport, high costs, low prices and distant markets; investment is held back without safe access and insecurity severely limits people's ability to adapt. Many have migrated: those who remain on their land find it increasingly hard to provide for themselves, faced with unenviable choices such as the systematic slaughter of livestock and reduction of cultivated areas. Production will continue to fall, which will further push up food prices. There is an urgent need to support subsistence production and stabilise agricultural activities with concrete and timely assistance to the most vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinises the disastrous impacts of Israeli occupation on Palestinians in the Palestinian-Irish playwright Hannah Khalil's Plan D (2010) by decoding the diacritics of the Palestine Nakba of 1948. Plan Dalet was a Zionist master plan for the military occupation of Palestine and the plan became central to the Zionist expulsion of the Palestinians and Palestine Nakba in 1948. Khalil's play (Plan D) portrays a rustic family undergoing a crisis against a background of enforced mass deportation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. The playwright gives a voice to the victimised Palestinians as the play represents an indictment of ecological imperialism which weighs upon Palestinians who are crammed into unlivable ghettos. Khalil's attachment to her native environment shapes the portrayal of her characters and their environment which is exposed to demographical changes and distortion by reason of the Nakba. Psychologically, the play delves deeply into the tragedy of Palestinians who are forcibly deported from their farm houses to live in other ecological units such as the woods and outskirt camps and how they adapt to the new-found ecology as a survival mechanism aloof from the unscrupulous aggression of occupation. Put differently, it dismantles the diacritics of the plight of Palestinians and deconstructs projections of otherness in order to find an ecological outlet for them to rethink their life-threatening crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israeli soldiers dancing to global pop hits in the Occupied Palestinian Territories look like they are having fun, and there is always something entertainingly contradictory in watching army bodies circumventing the military codes. But the choreographic analysis of three viral videos from the 2010s reveals how dancing serves the Israel Defense Forces' territorializing and necropower strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we articulate a case from moral responsibility to assist Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We contextualize this responsibility by focusing on access to healthcare and the provision of vaccines against COVID‐19. We specifically present two arguments from responsibility, one that is global or cosmopolitan, and one that is country‐specific. For the latter, we focus on Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildlife movement ecology often focuses on breeders, whose territorial attachments facilitate trapping and following individuals over time. This leads to incomplete understanding of movements of individuals not actively breeding due to age, breeding failure, subordinance, and other factors. These individuals are often present in breeding populations and contribute to processes such as competition and pathogen spread. Therefore, excluding them from movement ecology studies could bias or mask important spatial dynamics.Loafing areas offer an alternative to breeding sites for capturing and tracking individuals. Such sites may allow for sampling individuals regardless of breeding status, while also avoiding disturbance of sensitive breeding areas. However, little is known about the breeding status of individuals attending loafing sites, or how their movements compare to those of breeders captured at nests.We captured a seabird, the brown skua, attending either nests or loafing areas ('clubs') at a multi‐species seabird breeding site on Amsterdam Island (southern Indian Ocean). We outfitted skuas with GPS‐UHF transmitters and inferred breeding statuses of individuals captured at clubs using movement patterns of breeders captured at nests. We then compared space use and activity patterns between breeders and nonbreeders.Both breeding and nonbreeding skuas attended clubs. Nonbreeders ranged more widely, were more active, and overlapped more with other seabirds and marine mammals than did breeders. Moreover, some nonbreeders occupied fixed territories and displayed more restricted movements than those without territories. Nonbreeders became less active over the breeding season, while activity of breeders remained stable. Nonbreeding skuas were exposed to the agent of avian cholera at similar rates to breeders but were more likely to forage in breeding areas of the endangered endemic Amsterdam albatross, increasing opportunities for interspecific pathogen transmission.Our results show that inference based only on breeders fails to capture important aspects of population‐wide movement patterns. Capturing nonbreeders as well as breeders would help to improve population‐level representation of movement patterns, elucidate and predict effects of external changes and conservation interventions (e.g. rat eradication) on movement patterns and pathogen spread, and develop strategies to manage outbreaks of diseases such as highly pathogenic avian influenza. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a return to the "old" (imperial, colonial) wars aimed at seizing the neighboring state's territories and resources, and the violent assimilation of its population. Russia has changed its objective from gaining political leverage over Ukraine to enlarging its territorial control, based on the geostrategic and geo-economic value of the land. This is because Russia was no longer able to employ its soft power, with a gray-zone conflict effectively keeping Ukraine in its geopolitical orbit. Drawing on fieldwork, process tracing, and document analysis, we explain the de-modernization of the political regime and the economies of previously and newly occupied territories of Ukraine, by the export of Russian institutions and the employment of tactics of societal destabilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in Israeli society faces polarization due to Arab-Israeli conflict, occupying territories, church-state issues, and legal concerns, and it reports that the protests against Netanyahu's judicial reform are threatening democracy's core values.

This article explores how the agricultural frontier in Brazil is conceived and how it has been historically shaped by broader socioeconomic changes. It considers the planning process linked to the Cerrado occupation during the military dictatorship (1964-85). The article analyses understandings of the frontier that connected it to concerns about 'demographic gaps' and shaped an agenda of state-led 'national integration' that neglected local populations. This analysis is linked to recent transnational real estate activities in Matopiba to document how control over the territory persists but is now driven by different protagonists and logics. We document how Brazilian agribusinesses, in association with transnational capital, have created transnational agricultural real estate companies and acquired land in frontier areas such as Matopiba. Although the violence of expropriation and deforestation persists, there are new financial mechanisms that condition the agricultural frontier and exert control over territory, quite unlike previous forms of state-led occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]