Recognising there are political elements to any campaign of militant violence makes it less ‘terrifying’ for society and is crucial in developing measures to constrain it.
The latest war in Gaza brought not only vast human suffering but devastation to its already pummelled built environment. Yet UN-sponsored reconstruction is proving agonisingly slow.
The war in Gaza did not only wreak huge damage on the strip—it added to the polarisation of Israeli society too.
The structural violence, economic inequalities, and pervasive injustice that characterise Palestinian society under occupation have created a crisis of the spirit.
Open Bethlehem is a campaign to revive Bethlehem's legacy as a diverse, culturally rich, and entrepreneurial city, after decades of being suffocated by occupation.
A two-state solution is still possible in Israel and Palestine, but it will take a more aggressive strategy - one that focuses on the religious-nationalist right on both sides, and on concrete steps towards nation-building in Palestine.
For a century, the Zionist colonization of Palestine has proceeded primarily on the pragmatic principle of the quiet establishment of facts on the ground, which the world was to ultimately come to accept. It has been a highly successful policy.
The World Bank’s relationship to occupied Palestine is an unusual one, and one that has not been particularly effective in terms of its stated goals. This is partly due to limitations of its mandate and of the ‘development for peace’ paradigm.
In Palestinian refugee camps, the right of return now encompasses, and stands for, a wider universal demand for freedom, dignity and rights - including the right to go back or to stay, and to move across borders.
International attention is focused on Gaza thanks to the brutal Israeli offensive, but the real problem has always been daily life under occupation.
A review of Omar (2014), the most recent offering from the Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, which portrays the reality of life under occupation.
Plain and simple sadness is a natural human reaction to the killing in Gaza. But we are told such emotional reactions must be politically calibrated.
