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This research project explores the colonial hegemony and pedagogical contradictions imbedded within the process of collective-national identity development among Palestinian students in the Israeli formal educational system through inductive examination of the dialectical interplay between the three agents of the formal educational process; namely, the formal curriculum, the students and the teachers. The study utilised Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) as a qualitative research method and used three sets of data: (a) the formal curriculum of history used in grades 7-12 in Palestinian schools in Israel, (b) in-depth qualitative interviews with 7 History Palestinian teachers who are officially employed by the Israeli government and teach Palestinian students in the segregated Palestinian schools in Israel, (c) in-depth interviews with 14 Palestinian college students who are graduates of this formal educational system. The three sets of data were analysed separately, then compared and contrasted to depict an overall picture of the findings of the study

The main argument of this paper is informed by the realization that, despite its significance as critical alternative to colonial psychology, out of all branches of academic Western mainstream psychology taught in Arab and Palestinian universities, community psychology as a sub-discipline is noticeably marginalized and under-recognized. Community psychology has a formative quality and the potential to make contributions to the emancipation and liberation of marginalized communities, as opposed to many problematic forms of historical and contemporary enactments of mainstream colonial psychology in the Arab World (Makkawi 2009; Soueif and Ahmed 2001). Following a historical trend in postcolonial situations, universities in the Arab World continue to import and uncritically apply Western constructions of knowledge, including psychology, and the intellectual legacy of European colonialism continues to dominate these academic institutions (Abouchedid 2006). This intellectual hegemony of colonial knowledge in Arab universities renders the enactment of critical psychology in general and community psychology in particular – both in academe and in community settings – a challenging undertaking. In this paper, I draw upon an emerging program of critical community psychology at Birzeit University in Palestine, arguing that envisioning critical psychology in the Arab World in general is better conceived through critical community psychology as an emerging alternative to colonial psychology. There is no formally recorded history of the inception of community psychology in Palestine. However, early manifestations of community psychology in the Palestinian colonial context can be traced back to various phases of community grassroots organizing and action during the anti-colonial struggle for self-determination. The vision and praxis of the newly established master's program in community psychology at Birzeit University evolved from and were inspired by earlier forms of community grassroots action during the first Palestinian Intifada in the occupied West Bank and Gaza (WBG) in 1987. While this paper highlights the recently developed master's program in community psychology as an exemplar of critical psychology in the Arab World, I focus on the roots of community psychology in the Palestinian community long before its formal academic inception. I start by describing the colonial condition in Palestine with particular attention to the occupied WBG, where this specific case of community psychology enactment is being implemented. The focus is placed on academic psychology and the legacy of colonial knowledge inherited

The recently emerging concept of community engagement is better conceived as a context dependent concept. However, when examining the case of native communities living in colonial situations, community engagement by universities of the colonial authorities fail to capture the level of grassroots organizing among students of the colonized communities as a form of community engagement, albeit community engagement from the margin. The Palestinian community in Israel, lives in a colonial situation in its own homeland where the Israeli universities have been established as an integral part of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine. As the Palestinian formal educational system, hegemonic and identity blurring, the Palestinian Student Movement in the Israeli universities is conceived as a grassroots form of community engagement intending to reconstruct and reassert a shared sense of collective-national identity among the Palestinian students within the Israel campuses. Furthermore, Palestinian student activists are involved in community grassroots organizing and action within their own home communities and places of residence. This form of grassroots organizing and political action by members of colonized communities, calls our attention to re-conceptualization of the conventional understanding of the concept of university-community engagement.

An article published in : Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice; vol.3, no. 4, Dec. 2012, pp. 71-72 ; In this presentation I explore and discuss the importance and relevance of community psychology as a paradigm in understanding the dialectics of oppression and mental health in occupied Palestine, specifically in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. I survey key historical turning points in the Palestinian context and advance an argument for a critical and liberating community psychology. I end by presenting a program of community psychology we are in the process of developing at Birzeit University. Rather than presenting another review of the international development of community psychology, for the purpose of understanding the specific context of Palestine it is suffice to state that community psychology as praxis involves the scientific study of people within their particular socio-political environment while using this knowledge to help improve the mental health of individuals, groups and communities (Orford, 1992). Community psychology, as a sub-discipline within psychology, emerged when critical psychologists realized that the genesis of mental health disorders among members of the oppressed and marginalized communities are rooted in the objective conditions of oppression, discrimination, injustice and social deprivation within their social environment. Similar to Paulo Freire's (1970) pedagogy of the oppressed and liberation education, community psychology may as well be perceived as the psychology of liberation of the oppressed. The Latin American model of liberation social psychology (Burton, 2004) provides an ideal framework to understanding and arguing for the necessity of critical community psychology in occupied Palestine. In 1948, the state of Israel was established consequential to an ethnic cleansing campaign leading to the mass explosion of more than two thirds of the indigenous Palestinian population, leaving a fragile minority behind (Morris, 1989). In 1967 the remaining of historical Palestine, namely the West Bank and Gaza Strip, were occupied by the Israeli invading army. Since 1967 the two populations of Palestinians in historic Palestine have been divided by the virtual "green line" living under two contradictory political conditions; one group as formal Israeli citizens and one under military occupation. Palestinian refugees in exile account for the remaining half of the Palestinian people and they are about five million today spread between refugee camps in neighboring Arab countered and in the west. In this paper we discuss community psychology and mental health among the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the first two decades of resisting occupation, the Palestinian people in the West Bank and community level committees, including student unions, women groups, labor unions and a wide variety of professional organizations. In the foundation of this sense of community and collective responsibility was a spectacular drive for volunteerism and contribution to the public good and the national cause. When the first Intifada erupted in 1987, it was these grassroots organizations and community groups that carried out and sustained the struggle and provided the needed social and psychological support to victims of political violence.

This paper sets forth an argument delineating the significance and imperative need for an emerging paradigm of critical community psychology as an indispensable approach to understanding and alleviating the conditions of poor community mental health, which follow prolonged colonialist oppression in occupied Palestine, specifically in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. I assess key historical turning points in the Palestinian socio-political context as they pertain to community mental health in general and advance an argument for the urgency of shifting our community mental health practices towards those consistent with a critical and liberatory version of community psychology. The current stagnation in community mental health practices is manifested by the disconnection between the wide variety of 'training projects' conducted by myriad NGOs on one hand, and accumulating reductionist, positivistic and individualistic research about the effects of military violence on psychological well being on the other. I conclude this paper by describing a masters program in community psychology which has recently developed at Birzeit University in an effort to contribute to the overdue process of transformation of the currently stagnant state of community mental health practices in Palestine

This research project explores the colonial hegemony and pedagogical contradictions embedded within the process of collective-national identity development among Palestinian students in the Israeli formal educational system through inductive examination of the dialectical interplay between the three agents of the formal educational process; namely, the formal curriculum, the students, and the teachers. The study utilised Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) as a qualitative research method and used three sets of data: (a) the formal curriculum of history used in grades 7-12 in Palestinian schools in Israel, (b) in-depth qualitative interviews with 7 History Palestinian teachers who are officially employed by the Israeli government and teach Palestinian students in the segregated Palestinian schools in Israel, (c) in-depth interviews with 14 Palestinian college students who are graduates of this formal educational system. The three sets of data were analyzed separately, then compared and contrasted to depict an overall picture of the findings of the study.

This paper explores the dialectical relationship between nationalism and feminism in the experience of a group of Palestinian women student-activists in Israeli universities. An overview of the history of Palestinian women's involvement in the national movement leads to the conclusion that the Palestinian Intifada in 1987 was a turning point in articulating a feminist-nationalist agenda among Palestinian women activists in the West Bank and Gaza and inside Israel. Qualitative interviews with 11 Palestinian women student activists in Israeli universities reveal two intertwined themes of nationalism and feminism. Participants clearly challenge their male dominated political organisations to espouse a progressive social-political agenda focusing simultaneously on national and gender forms of oppression. ; peer-reviewed

An article published in : The Australian Community Psychologist, vol. 24, no. 2, November 2012, pp. 135-142 ; At first sight there appear to be, internationally, many diverse, radical, manifestations of community psychology. However, community psychology has gradually become decreasingly diverse and decreasingly radical the more it has become academically and professionally established and evangelised and it is now endangered as a critical alternative to the disciplinary ideologies, theories, procedures and practices of mainstream psychology. As a consequence, the interests of people whose lives are most characterised by immiseration, suffering, social injustice and oppression are increasingly blighted and increasingly threatened. However, these reactionary developments were and are not inevitable and can be reversed by those collectively committed to community critical psychologyIn this paper, despite many differences in our constituting contexts, approaches and work, we come together in solidarity as community critical psychologists to emphasise our common commitment to the development and enactment of community critical psychologies, and our common opposition to the dominant community (acritical) psychologies. The ordering of terms is significant here. We are committed to the wider spectrum of critical psychologies which expose and contest community injustice and misery rather than to the subset of community psychologies which are critical in standpoint. We are critical in relation to oppressive and unjust societal arrangements but also critical in relation to community psychologies, and other manifestations of 'psy', which collude with or actually construct and maintain oppression and injustice. Although the concept of community is central to community critical psychology, it is remarkable how seldom and howsuperficially the notion of community has been subjected to critical – that is, historical, political and ideological – critique by community psychologists who use the term (Fryer & Laing, 2008; Kagan, Burton, Duckett, Lawthom, & Siddiquee, 2011). In dominant discourses, community is usually positioned either as a 'safe', 'warm', and 'friendly' 'place' or as one which is marginal, amoral, anomic, foreboding, forbidding and frightening. Because the uncritical construction of community can lead to a justification for processes of 'othering', exclusion and apartheid-construction through boundary drawinge