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State and non-state actors across many protracted conflicts and prolonged occupations in the Middle East and North Africa have systematically targeted civilian infrastructures. We use the cases of the West Bank and Gaza, characterized by more than five decades of occupation and periods of intermittent violent conflict, to analyse how the targeting of water, energy, and agricultural infrastructures has created humanitarian crises and undermined civilian livelihoods. Our analysis draws upon an original database tracking the targeting of environmental and civilian infrastructures and on interviews with humanitarian organizations, government officials and civil society actors. The analysis shows how the targeting of infrastructure has differed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, damage to essential infrastructure and restrictions on infrastructure development are forms of slow violence that accumulate over time, carried out by both state authorities and settlers. In the Gaza Strip, recurrent violent conflict between Israel and Hamas has produced extensive destruction across all types of infrastructure, while the internationally-sanctioned blockade has hindered effective reconstruction. In both cases agriculture is the most frequently targeted sector, undermining livelihoods and connections to land, while damage to water and energy systems has limited economic activity and rendered civilian life increasingly precarious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the involvement of Palestinian women in video documentation as part of the project of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. It claims that the house/home is a site of anti-colonial struggle and that this development results from a specific socio-political situation and techno-ethical position. Based on analyses of the political situation in the West Bank, as well as consideration of films and interviews with Palestinian women who have been given cameras by B’Tselem, this article examines the ‘spatialization’ of visual activism: that is, the ways that Palestinian women’s participation is allied with sites where political resistance intersects with a gendered setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the state of ambiguity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under Israeli control since 1967. It states that Israel decline to withdraw from the territories or annex them, and has balked at declaring how it regards either the land or its inhabitants. It also states that Palestinians built their own structures and ran in municipal elections when the Israeli occupation authorities allowed them.

The article discusses the continued occupation of the Golan Heights and the West Bank by Israeli military forces after the June 1967 Six-Day War. Topics include the strategic significance of those territories for military defense, military and intelligence advantages against Syria due to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence on Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights, and the relation of the West Bank to the defense of Jerusalem and other population centers. The purported role of West Bank occupation in counter-terrorism efforts by the IDF is noted. Possible Palestinian statehood is addressed.

Construction as commemoration refers to the construction of new settlement outposts and the expansion of existing settlements to commemorate the loss of Israeli life in the occupied West Bank. Popular discourse surrounding this commemorative construction maintains that these acts are aimed at “sending a message” to Palestinian terrorists, asserting that Israeli settlers will stand fast in the face of violence. Settlements, however, grow regardless of what Palestinians do or do not do. In this paper, I argue that when viewed through the lens of settler colonial theory, construction as commemoration is revealed to not be aimed at sending a message to Palestinians, but rather at appealing to the hearts and minds of the Israeli public, and at providing cover for the Israeli government to openly support settlement growth regardless of international pressure. In contrast to commemorative acts like monuments and memorials which are aimed at symbolically controlling space, construction as commemoration results in the material, physical control of contested territory. The discursive framing of construction as commemoration maintains the fiction of a conflictual relationship between settlers and the Israeli government, which allows for settlement growth to continue, in the words of one informant, “with a wink and a nod” – with the tacit support of the Israeli government at the same time that it claims to try to rein the settlers in. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dominated by a Fatah/Palestinian National Authority coalition, West Bank politics is characterized by authoritarianism, factionalism and an accommodating policy vis-à-vis the Israeli occupier. These features are prominent parts of what Hisham Sharabi called neopatriarchy, a dysfunctional political system that leaves societies internally repressive and externally weak, marginalizing the young and accommodating colonial interests. The resulting alienation and dissatisfaction among young Palestinians have led to two kinds of reaction that bear on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict: a well-organized but leaderless popular resistance, and destructive, spontaneous outbursts of violence. The onus is on the elite to reform the political culture, as liberation from Israeli occupation will not by itself improve the dysfunctional organization of West Bank politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses perceptions of the Palestinian Authority’s post-2007 state-building project—popularly known as ‘Fayyadism’—by assessing academic and practitioner literatures on the topic, and by drawing on the findings of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at two sites in the West Bank: Balata and Jenin refugee camps. It argues that the ethnographic data reveals that despite the self-proclaimed institutional successes of Fayyadism, its achievements have failed to have a meaningful impact on the basic rights of Palestinians. These voices from below articulate the detrimental effects that Fayyadism has had on their resistance against Israel’s occupation, and by extension on their own protection and security. Criticisms focus on the absence of local legitimacy and accountability, and question the agenda of Fayyadism, its political basis and its trajectory as they relate to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research on contentious politics in the Middle East emphasizes the importance of repression and its effect on social movements, often manifested in demobilization and so-called ‘nonmovements’. This case study of West Bank Palestinian activism seeks to go beyond such outcomes. The current, youthful nonviolent Palestinian grassroots activism in the West Bank is persistent, despite repeated violent repression. Focusing on the interplay between context, practices, and networks, this article shows how an increasingly vocal and visible popular resistance movement has asserted itself despite facing double repression – from the occupying Israeli state and the Palestinian National Authority. In a highly repressive context characterized by widespread demobilization, especially among young people, the impetus for mobilization is not perceived opportunity, but rather existential threats. The analysis focuses on how long-term repression from the external occupier and the internal elite contributes to forming specific kinds of contentious practices and networks among young Palestinian grassroots activists. By deploying new and creative contentious tactics they partly succeed in challenging the Israeli occupation without risking sanctions from the internal Palestinian elite. They are also able to criticize this elite implicitly, bringing popular pressure to bear on it. However, while the strategic use of nonviolence has provided these activist environments with a degree of resilience in the face of repression, they are unable to mobilize on a wide scale as long as the Palestinian political elite does not support them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including democratic skills of residents of Judea and Samaria, religious Zionists on settlements, and security policy of Israel.

Like many nonstate military actors, Hamas has long provided social services to its constituents, but the mechanism by which charity leads to increased public support is poorly understood. This article argues that providing charity benefits nonstate actors not because it isolates recipients or acts as a bribe but because it allows organizations like Hamas to overcome the legacies of their own military activities and extremist ideologies. Service provision allows them to demonstrate that they are not merely soldiers or ideologues, but capable bureaucrats and managers as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a response to Eugene Kontorovich’s ‘Israel/Palestine — The ICC’s Uncharted “Territory”’. Kontorovich states that in order to exercise jurisdiction over Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the International Criminal Court (ICC) would need to determine that the Israeli settlements are indeed situated within the territory of Palestine, and proceeds to deftly present various procedural and substantive hurdles to the ICC making such a determination. His argument rests primarily on the (undisputed) fact that Palestine's borders are undefined. This article shares many of Kontorovich's premises and assertions, but disputes Kontorovich's analysis of the consequences of these premises and assertions; principally, it takes issue with the view that the absence of agreed borders for Palestine precludes the ICC from exercising jurisdiction with respect to the Israeli settlements. If one accepts as a point of departure that there is a state of Palestine, holding that the settlements are within its territory (internationally recognized as comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip), is not difficult. Israel’s effective control over the settlements does not detract from the international recognition of Palestinian sovereignty, both because that claim is not based on actual Palestinian control in the first place but on a legal entitlement; and because there is no competing assertion of sovereignty. At the same time, there is no doubt that the analysis in which this article and Kontorovich’s article both engage is based on an event which has generated far reaching legal consequences despite a weak factual basis: Palestine has apparently been recognized as a state capable of acceding to the ICC Statute, despite the fact that the effectiveness of its conduct is by its own admission significantly hindered by Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents news briefs, reprinted articles, statistics, and maps related to Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank as of Spring 2013. These include the article "The Occupation Returns to Center Stage" which appeared in the November-December issue of "Settlement Report" as well as a map of settlement activity in the E1 area of the West Bank published by the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO's) Negotiations Department. Topics discussed include Israeli relations with the U.S. and the role of Israeli settlement policies in Israel's 2013 elections.

This article foregrounds how international aid and the Israeli occupation intersect in the historically prosperous West Bank agricultural village of Jayyus; with most of its lands isolated behind the Israeli Wall, Jayyus is now aid-dependent. While material aid plays a larger role in sustaining the village, it is through "advocacy work" (a form of international aid largely unaddressed in the literature) that Jayyusis experience aid on a daily basis. The article examines the paradoxes of dependence and subordination seen from the vantage point of local communities under the jurisdiction of an occupying power and in the absence of a sovereign Palestinian state. Also shown is how the routinization of aid both obscures the ongoing status of occupation and has become an important mechanism that sustains it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents news briefs on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict as of January 2013. Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas appealed for the recognition of Palestinian statehood to the United Nationals General Assembly (UNGA). The Israeli government moved forward with plans to establish Israeli settlements in the West Bank despite objection from the international community. The Israel Defense Forces launched numerous airstrikes against the Gaza Strip in August and September 2012.

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

The article looks at the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), focusing on its rebuilding efforts in the refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank following the Israeli military's 2002 incursion. The author notes that UNRWA has been an important, positive help to Palestinians for several decades and says for that reason the agency has often been undermined and criticized by pro-Israel politicians from other countries. She recounts the agency's 2002 work in Jenin and argues that while that work was important, its success was limited by the liberal humanitarian paradigm followed by the agency, which focuses on individual refugees rather than the community and which fails to recognize their rights and the systematic oppression they face.

The article presents the resettling of 70,000 Israeli settlers inhabiting West Bank as a necessary part of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine in order to achieve peace. The perspectives of the Israeli citizens' and government's sympathy for the settlers is presented. An overview of the West Bank's history is provided including the motivations of its Israeli settlers to inhabit the West Bank and Israel founder David Ben Gurion's desire for Jerusalem, Israel to be the nation's capital. The author suggests methods for the Israeli government to persuade Israeli settlers on the West Bank frontier to resettle.

Excerpts from the articles "IDF Civil Administration Pushing for Land Takeover in West Bank," by Akiva Eldar, "In the Jordan Valley, Existence is Resistance," by Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, and "Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel's Policy in the Jordan Valley," by B'Teselem, are presented.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Palestine has seen complicated changes in its political circumstances, most notably the creation of Israel in 1948 and the 1967 war, where Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These events have created catastrophic political, economic and social facts which deeply affected the life of the Palestinian people. In this context, tourism became a political tool in the supremacy and domination of the Israeli establishment over land, and people, and an instrument for preventing the Palestinians from enjoying the benefits and the fruits of cultural and human interaction on which tourism thrives. Israel controls all access to Palestine (land and sea borders), most of the Palestinian water resources and all movements of people and goods from, to and within Palestine. This article assesses the role that tourism may play in promoting peace by presenting the Palestinian Initiative for Responsible Tourism - code of conduct - and its contribution to peace. In addition, issues of sustainability and the triple bottom line will be evaluated which could go a long way towards healing some of the divisions in the Palestinian/Israeli society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past 7 years, the author has conducted qualitative research projects revolving around the experiences of West Bank settlers. The political situation in Israel in general, and the West Bank in particular, has undergone rapid and dramatic political, military, and social changes during this period. In highly politically sensitive situations such as this, the researcher is faced with physical, professional, emotional, and ethical threats. This article presents a conceptual discussion and case illustration of the use of four types of reflexive positioning: (a) identification with respondents, (b) emotional enmeshment, (c) personal associations, and (d) auto-ethnography. These reflexive positions reduce risks to the trustworthiness of the research and transform threats into opportunities to enrich qualitative data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the West Bank region of Palestine during Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip, known as Operation Cast Lead. The author explains that there was a relative calm in the West Bank during this time due to political disillusionment and the control exercised by the Palestinian security services. The negative effect of the Israeli campaign on the Palestinian political system is examined. The article also discusses the conflict between the Palestinian political parties Hamas and Fatah. Demonstrations protesting the attacks are also talked about.

War landscapes have a particular sociology; they are also formed through distinct legal technologies. By examining the genealogy of trees as totemic displacements in the occupied West Bank I demonstrate how the Israeli/Palestinian war is deflected onto the landscape and how this deflection erodes the boundary between law and war. Dealing with issues of colonization, nationalization, and the way that these implicate landscape as a “natural alibi,” the article examines the intricate making of politics into nature. Further, it explores the ironic nesting of colonial processes from Ottoman, to British, to Zionist, and finally to the new Jewish settler society that seeks to unsettle the old colonial landscapes of this place. Utilizing a detailed interpretation of a range of interviews and participatory observations, the article unpacks the mutually constitutive relationship between law, technologies of seeing, and landscape, illustrating how this relationship is played out by various actors in the occupied West Bank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses political unrest between in Palestine. The U.S. supported parliamentary elections for Palestine, leading to political control by the Islamist faction Hamas. A civil war erupted between Hamas and the political party Fatah in Palestine, dividing the Gaza strip from the West Bank. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas opposed Hamas following a pustch by Hamas against Fatah.

This section covers items--reprinted articles, statistics, and maps--pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaxa Strip and the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Unless otherwise stated, the items have been written by Geoffrey Aronson for this section or drawn from material written by him for Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories (hereinafter Settlement Report), a Washington-based bimonthly newsletter published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. JPS is grateful to the foundation for permission to draw on its material [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents reprinted articles, statistics and maps pertaining to Israeli settlement activities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Discussion on the Israeli's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip; Plan of the Israeli ministry of agriculture to increase the number of illegal Jewish settlers living in the Jordan Valley area; Lessons from Israel's retreat from Gaza.

The article offers the author's insights regarding the future of the peace relations between Israel and Palestine. He mentions the reason that Palestinian Authority (PA) have lost their faith on the peace process which include the Palestinian control of only 18% of West Bank, the blockade on East Jerusalem to Arab citizens, and the continuous separation of Gaza Strip to West Bank. He states that the expansion of Israeli occupation in West Bank and Gaza Strip is the most bothersome of all. He says that intifada in 2000 was the cause of counter-violence by the Palestinian against the brutality of Israeli to their constituents. He concludes that peace is impossible unless Israelis stop further settlement expansion and Palestinians stop further violence.

Discusses the autonomy of Judaea in the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. Judaea under the Achaemenids; Judaea under the successors of Alexander; Consequences of changes in patterns of imperial administration; Autonomous districts of Syria-Palestine.

Presents a study which analyzed the effect of non-sovereignty on the electoral behavior of the West Bank Arab (WBA) community. Brief political background of the WBA community; Theoretical aspects of the electoral behavior in the absence of sovereignty; Integration of social conservatism with political mobility.

Presents an essay on the consequences of the intertwining of international and local affairs in the Palestine National Front (PNF). Soviet policy and the PNF; PNF and the national institutions; Collapse of the PNF; Left-right schisms in West Bank politics of the PNF.

Reports on the signing of the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian self-government in Gaza and Jericho on September 13, 1993. Middle East peace ceremony highlights; Clinton's cost-free policy; End of the American century.