After the 1994 Oslo Accords, Palestinians were hopeful that an end to the Israeli occupation was within reach, and that a state would be theirs by 1999. With this promise, international powers became increasingly involved in Palestinian politics, and many shadows of statehood arose in the territories. Today, however, no state has emerged, and the occupation has become more entrenched. Concurrently, the Palestinian Authority has become increasingly authoritarian, and Palestinians ever more polarised and demobilised. Palestine is not unique in this: international involvement, and its disruptive effects, have been a constant across the contemporary Arab world. This book argues that internationally backed authoritarianism has an effect on society itself, not just on regime-level dynamics.
Abstract How can peace initiatives facilitate authoritarian practices? Peace initiatives that do not address the root causes of conflict, and maintain structural violence, can facilitate authoritarian practices through both material and discursive mechanisms. I use the recent steps towards normalization and, in some instances, peace agreements between Israel and a number of Arab states to make this argument. I examine this dynamic across Gulf Cooperation Council states with varying authoritarian practices and ties to Israel. This paper contributes to our understanding of the impacts of illiberal peace and how it functions, transnationally and at varying levels within and outside state authority.
AbstractArab social science scholarship, and IR in particular, has been systematically underfunded and sidelined by governments across the region. As such, IR scholars in the Arab world have struggled to produce scholarship in hostile and authoritarian environments, let alone address efforts to decolonise. Of the few initiatives of indigenising social science that exist in the Arab world, the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) and its founding institution, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), are the main examples. In this intervention, I will review the attempts to indigenise and decolonise IR within these institutions. I focus on how the DI is implementing three main approaches: increasing access to the discipline, rethinking how we teach IR, and facilitating theory production from the region. I demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the three abovementioned approaches by drawing attention to performative measures on the part of regional scholars, and pretending localism on the part of scholars in the Global North, which together help to perpetuate neomarginalisation. The shortcomings discussed permeate and distort attempts to decolonise the discipline within the Arab world.
The Palestinian Authority today is facing enormous pressure. Lack of international and regional political support, coupled with declining economic support and internal legitimacy, has led to a situation in which the PA's days may be numbered. This is especially true given Israel's seeming commitment to eminent annexation of much of the PA's promised territory. But Palestinian society today has undergone immense transformation since 1994; Palestinians are more fragmented, demobilized, and politically stagnant than ever before. If the Palestinian Authority collapses, and its formalized institutions which have overtaken Palestinian society for the past two decades disappear, how will Palestinians respond? Will the territories degenerate into violence, or will Palestinians coordinate to undertake strategies to organize a Palestinian response? This brief review Palestinian public opinion on preferences for non-violent strategies versus violent strategies, and examines what variables impact this dynamic.
Since the announcement of the U.S.-brokered "Abraham Accord" between Israel and the United Arab Emirates two weeks ago, state officials in all three countries have portrayed it as an unprecedented step toward bringing "peace" to the region. The agreement stipulates that the UAE will recognize and normalize relations with Israel — the first Arab state to formally do so since Egypt in 1978 and Jordan in 1994 — in exchange for the "suspension" of Israeli annexation plans in the occupied West Bank. This means that the two countries will open up trade, facilitate cultural ties, and increase military and security coordination with each other. Despite the showmanship around the accord, these relations are actually not new; there has long been under-the-table normalization, to various degrees, between many Arab states and Israel. However, this act of official normalization, which breaks the ranks of the Arab League, threatens not only to sideline the Palestinian cause but also to have severe repercussions for Arab societies across the region. Until now, the act of official, public normalization has always hinged upon progress in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For instance, it was only after the 1993 Oslo Accords that Arab regimes began opening up trade offices and other relations with Israeli institutions, under the pretext that they were encouraging the peace process. When the negotiations had clearly failed by the time of the Second Intifada in 2000, many Arab states withdrew their normalizing overtures. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, reiterated Arab commitments to the peace process by asserting that normalization would be contingent on the creation of a Palestinian state. Today, that policy has been thrown out the window. Despite being tangential to the conflict and never having been at war with Israel, the UAE has gone against the standard set by the Arab League by delivering normalization without any meaningful concessions from Israel. It essentially frittered away one of the few remaining bargaining chips left on the Arab side and paved the way for other countries in its axis — including, potentially, Bahrain and Sudan to do the same. Israel can claim to the international community that it has given up something important by "suspending" annexation (even as Netanyahu insists the opposite to his constituents). But this assertion is laughable: annexation is not a date on the calendar but an ongoing process that continues unfettered, de facto if not de jure. So what exactly have the Emiratis achieved?
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has perhaps never been so embattled, polarizing, or internally fragmented. In the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the PA has cut itself off from Gaza, and reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah continues to be elusive. Regionally, the PA has never been as alienated from its Arab allies. New leadership in key states, such as Saudi Arabia, eager to kowtow to the Trump Administration and find common ground with Israel on the issue of Iran, has led to disastrous shifts in Arab policy and discourse on Palestine. The rush to normalize with Israel is on, emboldening the Israeli occupation forces. Increased repression in these normalizing states also means a near systematic state-level campaign of repression aimed at curtailing pro-Palestinian voices. Internationally, the rise of right-wing fascistic elements in a number of countries has narrowed the opportunities available to the PA to apply pressure on Israel. Moreover, the frequent charge of anti-Semitism, so often a disingenuous red herring, has become a useful tool to silence voices of opposition regarding the Israeli occupation, leading to unprecedented attacks on free speech and freedom of assembly in the US, UK, Germany, and elsewhere. Thus, even though the Israeli occupation is increasingly unpopular amongst the public, "lawfare" strategies have had the effect of chilling activism on Palestine, including sometimes successful attempts at passing anti-BDS legislation. Most important in these current conditions is the further rightward shift of the US in regard to Israel-Palestine, with Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the reins. Together they have decimated international institutions and allowed Israel to behave with even more impunity than it had enjoyed previously. As such assaults on Palestinians intensify, the PA finds itself losing key reservoirs of support. Yet in the face of these myriad challenges, the PA has not sought to repair or strengthen relations with its own people or those who advocate for them. Rather, it has become increasingly authoritarian, to the detriment of Palestinians and their relationship with those claiming to represent them. Though the PA may continue to operate and be recognized as the de facto authority in the occupied West Bank despite the local, regional, and international geopolitical transformations described above, as this state of affairs continues it may lose all relevance in the negotiation process and as a representative of the Palestinian people. This commentary first discusses the disconnect between the PA and the Palestinian citizens under its control. It then examines how international involvement, in particular increasingly harmful US policy, has helped to shore up this disconnect, as such involvement has rendered the PA progressively repressive and divisive. This has made political activism in the OPT more difficult. However, while the PA is at a critical and daunting juncture, this moment can be used to restructure state-society relations between the PA and Palestinians, both in the OPT and the diaspora. Palestinian civil society also has the chance to unify in its fight against both the occupation and the harmful PA leadership. Unless such developments occur, dynamics of stagnation and futile politics will likely continue.
In a time of resurgent populism and white nationalism in the West, Massoud Hayoun's book When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family's Forgotten History is a daring and rejuvenating book. Massoud Hayoun is a young journalist based in Los Angeles who has worked for Al Jazeera English and Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown online while writing a weekly column on foreign affairs for Pacific Standard. Written in the form of a historical memoir, Hayoun, who identifies himself as a Jewish Arab, traces his family history before and after World War II to illustrate how Jewish Arabs were maliciously separated from their societies and how their identities were used in a game of colonial domination. He argues that Jewish Arabs lived and worked alongside their Muslim and Christian Arab neighbors in relative peace until colonialism, white supremacy and Zionism disrupted Arab society and fractured it into various groups, which, among other things, separated the identity of Arab from Jew.
This paper argues that both the institutions and the social cohesion of Palestinians in Jerusalem were dealt a heavy blow following the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. The Palestinian Authority increasingly demobilized Palestinians within Jerusalem and eroded traditional institutions. Nevertheless, the Israeli occupation's intention to repress Jerusalemites by shutting down their organizations has inadvertently opened up new opportunities for collective action. Since then, Jerusalemites have begun reviving traditional institutions and working to address Israeli policies. This article incorporates new quantitative and qualitative data on the most recent waves of protest to make the argument that social cohesion is crucial to understanding protest capacity in East Jerusalem today.
