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Israel and Palestine
Primary Researchers:
Paul James and Damian Grenfell
Global-Local Database for Israel-Palestine
Places such as Aceh, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya supposedly
stand for the past, with violence in these localities represented
as re-assertions of identities tied specifically to faith and place.
It is with the Middle East however that we find clearly persistent
and engrained tendencies for a Eurocentric projection of generalized
fear and inferiority. With even the 'Middle East' a label that situates
Europe at the centre of the world, the prejudiced projection of Arab
cultures frequently frames media representations, government policy
and military strategy, from Afghanistan to Iraq and to the site of
conflict of consideration here, Palestine and Israel.
The contesting claims over the territory known as Palestine and the
new nation of Israel are of course the centre of much international
debate. While our interest includes the fuller history of the formation
of the modern nation of Israel, it is particularly the contemporary
period beginning with the second intifada that is the focus for research.
Like Aceh, it is a conflict that is represented as intractable, and
like Bosnia, as if the violence is singularly propelled by long-held
prejudices that are triggered by the close proximity of different
ethnic and religious groups. Not only do such representations ignore
the ways in which different communities, both those within in the
old walls of Jerusalem as well as across the territory, have found
sustainable ways of living with difference in the past, they also
ignore the sheer complexity of the societies involved in this conflict.
One of the principle aims of the study is to trace the insecurity
of the region so as to consider the ways in which the identities of
conflicting parties—Israeli soldiers, orthodox Jews and Hamas
fighters—are far more layered in contradictory complexity than
depicted in popular arguments about a clash of civilisations or a
clash of fundamentalisms. This would work to both break apart the
recurring representation of masked anonymous figures making pledges
to die in the name of nation and Allah which have come to dominate the
representation of one side of the conflict, and the anonymous and
homogenized Israeli military-machine on the other. The tremendous
influx of Russian migrants into Israel over the last decade, the different
interpretations of Judaism, and the differences between those of faith
and the secular within Israeli society all dislodge projections of
Israel as being a monolithic and uniform entity that seeks to simply
decimate the Palestinian people and control the Arab world beyond.
Yet equally the existence of entire Palestinian towns and cities within
Israel, often which seek as communities to overcome prejudice to become
part of that nation-state rather than separate from it, also challenges
the mono-dimensional view that Palestinian politics and opposition
takes a single direction. A first research trip was made to the region
in 2005, meeting with university and civil society organizations across
the contested territories, with further research to be undertaken
over coming years.
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| Sources of Insecurity ©Copyright
2004 |
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