TTHIS ISSUEHIS ISSUE PPALESTINE ALESTINE

Volume 14 - Number 2

February – March 2018£4

THIS ISSUETHIS ISSUE:: PALESTINE PALESTINE ●● New regional alliances and the Palestinian New regional alliances and the Palestinian struggle struggle ●● Is Trump the Grinch who stole Palestinian Christmas? Is Trump the Grinch who stole Palestinian Christmas? ● ● Gaza in a wheelchair Gaza in a wheelchair ●● Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’? Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’? ●● Palestinian youth formations Palestinian youth formations ●● Palestinian Palestinian musical experiments musical experiments ● ● Bringing Arab musicians to British stages Bringing Arab musicians to British stages ● ● The SOAS Palestine The SOAS Palestine Studies book series Studies book series ● ● Palestine as an academic field of study Palestine as an academic field of study ● ● PLUSPLUS Reviews and events Reviews and events in Londonin London

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Ms Janet RadyJanet Rady Fine Art

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Dr Sarah StewartSOAS

Dr Shelagh WeirIndependent Researcher

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EditorMegan Wang

ListingsVincenzo Paci

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Volume 14 – Number 2February–March 2018

Nabil Anani, Gaza, 2014. Mixed media on canvas, 110 X 93 cm. Courtesy of Zawyeh Gallery and the artist

Volume 14 - Number 2

February – March 2018£4

THIS ISSUETHIS ISSUE:: PALESTINE PALESTINE ●● New regional alliances and the Palestinian New regional alliances and the Palestinian struggle struggle ●● Is Trump the Grinch who stole Palestinian Christmas? Is Trump the Grinch who stole Palestinian Christmas? ● ● Gaza in a wheelchair Gaza in a wheelchair ●● Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’? Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’? ●● Palestinian youth formations Palestinian youth formations ●● Palestinian Palestinian musical experiments musical experiments ● ● Bringing Arab musicians to British stages Bringing Arab musicians to British stages ● ● The SOAS Palestine The SOAS Palestine Studies book series Studies book series ● ● Palestine as an academic field of study Palestine as an academic field of study ● ● PLUSPLUS Reviews and Reviews and events in Londonevents in London

February – March 2018 The Middle East in London 3

LMEI Board of Trustees

Baroness Valerie Amos (Chair)Director, SOAS

Professor Stephen Hopgood, SOAS

Dr Dina Matar, SOAS

Dr Hanan MorsyEuropean Bank for Reconstruction

and Development

Professor Scott Redford, SOAS

Dr Barbara ZollnerBirkbeck College

LMEI Advisory Council

Lady Barbara Judge (Chair)

Professor Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem

H E Khalid Al-Duwaisan GVCOAmbassador, Embassy of the State of Kuwait

Mrs Haifa Al KaylaniArab International Women’s Forum

Dr Khalid Bin Mohammed Al KhalifaPresident, University College of Bahrain

Professor Tony AllanKing’s College and SOAS

Dr Alanoud AlsharekhSenior Fellow for Regional Politics, IISS

Mr Farad AzimaNetScientifi c Plc

Dr Noel BrehonyMENAS Associates Ltd.

Professor Magdy Ishak HannaBritish Egyptian Society

Mr Paul SmithChairman, Eversheds International

4 EDITORIAL

5INSIGHTIsrael, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates: New regional alliances and the Palestinian struggleAdam Hanieh

7PALESTINEIs Trump the Grinch who stole Palestinian Christmas? Ryvka Barnard

9Gaza in a wheelchairYasmeen El Khoudary

10Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’?Mazen Masri

12Palestinian youth formations: a critical counter-narrativeLucy Garbett

14Th e new in the old: Palestinian musical experimentsRafeef Ziadah

15Marsm: bringing Arab musicians to British stagesAdam Hanieh

17Th e SOAS Palestine Studies book seriesGilbert Achcar

18Palestine Research Seminar Series: Palestine as an academic fi eld of studyDina Matar

20REVIEWSBOOKSTh e Naqab Bedouins: A Century of Politics and ResistanceDina Matar

21Political Islam in Tunisia: Th e History of EnnahdaCharles Tripp

22BOOKS IN BRIEF

25EVENTS IN LONDON

Contents

4 The Middle East in London February – March 2018

EDITORIALEDITORIAL

Old City, Jerusalem, 2016. Photograph by Akbar Khan

The year 2018 marks 70 years since the Nakba (the ‘catastrophe’) that saw the dispossession of

hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, their dispersal outside their homeland and the loss of a large part of that historic homeland. Th is year begins with more uncertainty concerning the fate of the Palestinians and their rights following US President Donald Trump’s announcement recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; the announcement seemed to confi rm a blatant disregard for Palestinian rights and the peace process.

Th e Insight article in this issue, penned by Adam Hanieh, places the announcement within the wider regional context, including the increasingly open political alliance between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. He suggests that while this alliance is not a new development, it has received a major push in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2010/11 and must be taken into account when considering US actions.

Ryvka Barnard addresses the

implications of Trump’s decision on Palestinian Christmas and the tourism industry, particularly in Bethlehem. She notes the decreasing number of tourists and the increasing restrictions on movement, the number of land grabs and violence at the hands of the military and settlers. She reminds us that this is not the fi rst time Christmas has been cancelled in protest. Yasmeen El Khoudary writes that the Trump announcement has overshadowed news of the reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. In her opinion the response to the announcement in Gaza shows that the Palestinian cause is bigger than any political party.

Mazen Masri brings in his expertise in law to question Israel’s self-defi nition as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’ and suggests the need to approach the defi nition not only as a legal text, but as a product of the relationship between law and politics.

Addressing the topic of youth formations in Palestine, Lucy Garbett argues that despite repressive tactics

employed by both Israel and Palestinian authorities, youth movements in Palestine provide a critical counter-narrative to the Palestinian political reality.

Turning to artistic endeavours, Rafeef Ziadah discusses the work of a new generation of Palestinian singers/songwriters who are bringing the new to the old, experimenting with diff erent genres to produce distinctly contemporary sounds. Th is piece is followed by an interview with Khaled Ziada of Marsm, a company that organises events designed to showcase the diversity and evolution of the Arab music scene to audiences in the UK.

Th en Gilbert Achcar gives details of the Centre for Palestine Studies’ (CPS) new book series, the fi rst such series in English dedicated to Palestine Studies. And fi nally, Dina Matar follows with an article that profi les some of the research students who have presented their work at the annual CPS research seminar series, which is entering its sixth year.

Adam Hanieh, Dina Matar, SOAS

Dear ReaderDear Reader

© A

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The 6 December announcement by US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital

of Israel and move the US embassy to the city has thrown Middle East politics into renewed turmoil. Political and religious leaders around the world have condemned the move, with hundreds of protests organised in major cities across the globe. Spiralling demonstrations throughout Palestine itself have been met with violent repression – at the time of writing nine Palestinians have been killed in these clashes, with thousands more wounded or arrested. Palestinian political leaders have pledged to boycott relations with US offi cials in the wake of the decision, and widespread calls from across the political spectrum are demanding a break with the moribund

strategy of a US-sponsored negotiations process. Reminiscent of the Second Intifada of the early 2000s, Palestinian media has presented non-stop coverage of all of these protests and debate. Th ere can be little doubt that the ramifi cations of the US announcement will be felt for many years to come.

Yet a major issue that has received little attention in commentary around these developments is the wider regional context: most particularly, the increasingly open political alliance between Israel and the two leading Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While not a new development – it has been a longstanding objective of US Middle East policy for decades – it is one that has received a major push in the wake

of the Arab uprisings that spread across the Middle East from 2010 onwards. An unprecedented shift in the relations between these three states is evident over the past few years, marked by a growing convergence on the key political questions facing the Middle East region.

Most signifi cant to this emerging political alliance has been the question of Iran. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have waged an increasingly bellicose campaign against Iran’s regional infl uence. In the wake of the Arab uprisings, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sought to project themselves as the key hegemonic powers throughout the rest of the region. Th e US has provided strong support for this eff ort, including the endorsement and arming of the Saudi-led war against Yemen that began in 2015, as well as conspicuous encouragement of the Gulf states in their attempts to steer political transitions in other Arab states. All of this has been fully aligned with the orientation of the new US administration.

Israel, Saudi Arabia and Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates: the United Arab Emirates: New regional New regional alliances and alliances and the Palestinian the Palestinian strugglestruggle

Adam Hanieh lists signs of growing cooperation between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the ramifi cations for Palestine

An unprecedented shift in the relations between these three states is evident, marked by a growing convergence on the key

political questions facing the Middle East region

President Donald Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia talk together during ceremonies, 20 May 2017, at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Offi cial White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

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INSIGHTINSIGHT


Th e single major obstacle to any attempt to force a deal on the Palestinian leadership remains the aspirations

of the wider Palestinian population

Reinforcing this political convergence between the two Gulf states and Israel, numerous military, diplomatic and commercial ties have become evident over recent years. In late March 2017, Israeli newspapers reported that Israeli and UAE pilots fl ew alongside one another during the Iniochos exercise, a joint military training session held in Greece between 27 March and 6 April. Th is was not the fi rst time such joint exercises took place. In August 2016, Israel and the UAE also met at the US Air Force’s Red Flag aerial combat exercise in Nevada. Th e public nature of these exercises points to the increasingly brazen openness of military coordination between Israel and the UAE – something that would have not been possible a few short years ago.

Relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia are also increasingly public. Israeli media reported in mid-2015 that the two countries had held fi ve clandestine meetings since early 2014. In June 2015, the then-director general of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Aff airs, Dore Gold, spoke together with retired Saudi general Anwar Eshki in a public event at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations. Eshki, who has served in the Saudi foreign ministry, also led a delegation of Saudi academics and businesspeople to Israel in 2016 where they met with leading Israeli politicians and military fi gures. Similarly, in May 2016, former Israeli National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror held a public discussion with the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Such public appearances could not have happened without the approval of the Saudi ruling family.

Moreover, regional negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia almost certainly took place as part a 2017 decision by Egypt to transfer two islands in the Red Sea to Saudi control. Th e proximity of these islands to Israel, and the fact that they could aff ect Israel’s shipping routes, means that the agreement represents – at least at a de facto level – Saudi consent to the 1979 Peace Agreement between Egypt and Israel, which guaranteed Israel full maritime rights in the Red Sea.

Such military and diplomatic relations between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are further strengthened by commercial ties – most notably in the security, surveillance and high-tech sectors. Israeli media and the international business press have documented the sale of Israeli security and military hardware to both Gulf states over recent years, including the participation of Israeli fi rms in Abu Dhabi’s mass-surveillance system, Falcon Eye, installed throughout the emirate in 2016. Even Israel’s largest private military company, Elbit Systems, is reported to have sold missile defense systems to Saudi Arabia through its US-based subsidiary Kollsman Inc.

Whether these new regional partnerships played a direct role in giving a green light to Trump’s Jerusalem announcement is not yet public knowledge, but they were undoubtedly an important factor within the calculations of US policymakers and Trump himself. Th e fact that Trump’s son-in-law and special advisor, Jared Kushner, had engaged in months of shuttle-diplomacy between Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Washington in the lead up to the announcement makes Saudi advance knowledge extremely likely. Despite a verbal condemnation, the Kingdom has made no attempt to utilise its considerable fi nancial and political infl uence to pressure the Trump administration to reverse the decision.

In this context, the widely-reported

existence of a new US ‘peace plan’ negotiated with the support of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman presents a major challenge to Palestinian politics. Such a plan is said to diff er little from the current territorial status quo – formal recognition of a Palestinian state on parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip currently controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA), denial of the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and continued Israeli control over border crossings and the Palestinian economy. In the current environment it would be extremely diffi cult for the Palestinian leadership to give their consent to any new deal. Nonetheless, given the considerable political and fi nancial connections between the PA and the Gulf states, we can expect that signifi cant pressure will be brought to bear on the Palestinian leadership to accept any proposed deal. Indeed, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has made almost weekly visits to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states through the latter part of 2017 – presumably linked to the behind-the-scenes negotiations around such a plan.

All of this points to how the emerging Saudi-UAE alliance with Israel will profoundly shape the future of the Palestinian national struggle. Th e single major obstacle to Trump’s Jerusalem announcement and any attempt to force a deal on the Palestinian leadership remains the aspirations of the wider Palestinian population – including the millions of Palestinian refugees scattered across the Middle East. Whether Palestinian rights are ultimately subordinated to the interests of this new pan-regional alliance remains an open question.

Adam Hanieh is a Reader in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, and an advisory board member of the Centre for Palestine Studies (SOAS). His most recent book is Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (Haymarket Books, 2013)


PALESTINEPALESTINE

At the beginning of December, thousands gathered in Bethlehem’s Manger Square for the annual

celebratory lighting of the giant Christmas tree. But this year, only days aft er it was lit, the sparkling lights were shut off . It was an act of protest and mourning over Donald Trump’s announcement that the USA would ‘recognise’ Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. A few days later, the Palestinian mayor of Nazareth announced that he would follow Bethlehem’s lead, saying: ‘[Trump’s] decision has taken away the joy of the holiday, and

we will cancel the festivities this year.’ In the meantime, people took to the streets to protest against Trump and his support for Israel’s colonisation. Christmas cheer was replaced by tear gas and bullets.

It isn’t much of a stretch to see Trump as the Grinch who stole Palestinian Christmas this year. In Palestinian cities like Nazareth, occupied Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Christmas is not only about festive joy. It is also one of the most important economic periods of each year: high season for tourism.

So when the Christmas lights went dark, Palestinian shop owners and hotel operators worried about dwindling arrival numbers and cancellations. Tourism’s success relies heavily on expectations of safety and calm. Th at uneasy correlation points to one of the complications of a tourism industry running under occupation.

While tourist arrivals have increased in the past years, the occupation continues to become more entrenched. Palestinians face ever-increasing restrictions on movement, land grabs and violence at the hands of the military and settlers. All the while, Israel benefi ts economically and politically from every tourist arrival, as its tourism operators deft ly move in to the spaces where Palestinians have been blocked out. Even

Is Donald Trump Is Donald Trump the Grinch who the Grinch who stole Palestinian stole Palestinian Christmas?Christmas?

This is not the fi rst time Palestinians have cancelled Christmas as a means of protest. Ryvka Barnard describes the symbolic and economic consequences of such a move

In Palestinian cities Christmas is not only about festive joy. It is also one of the most important economic periods

of each year: high season for tourism

‘Bethlehem Wall’, 2009. Photograph by Tracy Hunter

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While many Palestinians would undoubtedly rather have celebrated a festive Christmas, there seems to be consensus

that the demonstrations are an unavoidable necessity

though most tourists visit Bethlehem, most of their money ends up with Israeli hotels, Israeli travel agents and Israeli tour guides. Palestinian tour operators can only hope for left over scraps, but mostly just end up with the wear and tear on their roads as the tourist buses pass through.

Th is bleak picture gives context to the otherwise surprising cancellation of Christmas. Creating an illusion of safety and calm for tourists happens at the expense of downplaying the dire conditions that Palestinians face, putting on a happy face while the boot of military occupation bears down on their necks. Why even bother, if you don’t get much in return anyway?

But cancelling Christmas does not necessarily signal despondency, and in fact has a powerful historical antecedent especially fi tting to recall on this year of anniversaries.

At the beginning of December 1967, Israel was already several months into its occupation, and busily making plans to run its fi rst holiday season in Bethlehem. Now that Israel controlled Nazareth, Galilee, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it could fi nally off er a full pilgrimage tourism package to the thousands of Christian pilgrims who had already been coming each year. Th e economic benefi ts of the expanded territory exceeded expectations: in the fi rst year of the occupation, tourist arrivals to Israeli ports increased by over 56 per cent.

Beyond the economic opportunity, Israel was keen to use the highly mediatised Christmas events in Bethlehem to whitewash its occupation. By 1967, Christmas ceremonies were already televised and broadcast around the world. Israel wanted to use the platform to present itself as a benevolent coloniser and a caretaker of Christian sites. But this was a performance that would only be possible if the local population could be seen joyfully participating in the charade.

Palestinians were not prepared to play the part. Israel arranged an elaborate set of decorations and celebrations in Manger Square, complete with a tree donated by the Jewish National Fund, and a performance by the Israeli police choir. But international media coverage from Jerusalem and Bethlehem reported low turnout of the local Palestinian population, attributing it to leafl ets and Arabic media calls for Palestinians to boycott the Israeli-run operations. On top of that, saboteurs reportedly managed to cut some of the wires for the television broadcasts that Israel depended on so highly.

Such incidents recurred over the years and increased as Palestinians became more brazen in their opposition to Israeli rule. Th ese strategic disruptions of Israel’s tourism charade reached a head in 1987, when the collective mobilisation erupted into a full popular uprising. In 1988, the First Intifada was still in full eff ect, and the Unifi ed National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) called for a general strike on 24 December in a communiqué: ‘We extend felicitations to our Palestinian Christian brothers and urge them to make do with observing the religious rituals’ (i.e. not to participate in the Israeli-sponsored festivities). Th e Christmas strike was mirrored in Nazareth, much to the dismay of Israeli offi cials.

Th e Palestinian refusal to celebrate Christmas publicly created a public relations crisis for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, which released a desperate press release trying to position itself as the protector of the pilgrims against Palestinian agitators: ‘Nothing has changed in the intrinsic meaning of Christmas in Bethlehem, and no secular municipal action will either dampen the religious fervour of the pilgrims or mar their freedom of worship.’ Th e Israeli military governor of Bethlehem demanded that Palestinian merchants put up their Christmas decorations and tried to force them to open their souvenir shops, but to no avail. Th e press reported that aside from the religious rites, the streets were full of Israeli soldiers and empty of Palestinian residents, sending a clear message that

Palestinians would not be coerced into pretending all was fi ne under occupation.

Th ese communal actions did not ultimately end the occupation, but they certainly had an undeniable impact. By the end of the First Intifada, Israel was struggling to maintain the economic and social cost of its intense repression, and tourism numbers had dropped to lows that proved catastrophic for the Israeli tourism industry. Along with the economic eff ects, Palestinians had succeeded in using mediatised spaces – such as Manger Square at Christmas – to broadcast their struggle. Th is resulted in an awakening for many people around the world who saw fi rst-hand what Israeli repression looked like, and began to identify with the Palestinian struggle for justice.

Now, three decades later, Palestinians again (or still) fi nd themselves in an untenable situation. While many Palestinians would undoubtedly rather have celebrated a festive Christmas, there seems to be consensus that the demonstrations are an unavoidable necessity and a source of communal strength. But it is hard to see if the stamina exists to make them into more than the frustrated eruptions that they are now. Th e First Intifada was made possible by years of organising and coordination beforehand; preparation has been diffi cult this time around due to both Israeli repression and repression from the Palestinian Authority.

One of the lessons of the First Intifada is that symbolic gestures, like the cancelling of Christmas, were not used primarily as anchors for speeches in the UN, but were the refl ection of a broader resistant will on the streets of Palestine and the world over. What will come of it this time around is yet to be seen.

Dr Ryvka Barnard has a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from New York University, where she specialised in the politics of tourism production in the occupied West Bank. She is currently the senior offi cer on militarism and security campaigns at the London-based charity War on Want


PALESTINEPALESTINE

In September 2017, the two million Palestinians in the open-air prison that is Gaza glimpsed a shy ray of

hope that smuggled its way through 11 ongoing years of blockade. Despite a legacy of unfulfi lled promises that have made them wary of falling victim to false hope, ‘this time it’s diff erent’ was the mantra of the desperate crowds. Indeed, it did seem diff erent: Egyptian-led talks between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) were positive, and offi cial delegations from the PA, Egypt, the UN, and EU Border Mission in Rafah made several high profi le trips to the Strip. Optimism reached a peak on 12 October when Hamas and the PA signed an agreement in Cairo in which the former handed over control of the Gaza Strip to the latter. Jubilant protesters took to the Midan al-Jundi al-Majhool (Unknown Soldier Square) in Gaza City, which had previously become a bitter reminder of the internal Palestinian division aft er Hamas took down the statue of the soldier in 2007.

Weeks went by without any substantial developments or noticeable changes on the ground. Th e familiar feelings of isolation and disenfranchisement quickly returned to Gaza, where hope for political reconciliation had less to do with an actual agreement between Hamas and the PA and more to do with ending the siege, allowing freedom of movement, the payment of salaries, and an increase in electricity hours (currently, an average household in Gaza gets a total of six hours of electricity per day). In fact, news of the reconciliation was more closely monitored by Palestinians in Gaza than any other place, given the deep impact the division has had on their lives.

Within a few weeks, and much to the convenience of the opposing parties, Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem completely overshadowed news about the reconciliation. Protests and demonstrations erupted throughout the Arab World and Palestine, where clashes with Israeli soldiers took place throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem. Protesters threw rocks at soldiers from behind the security border wall in the ‘buff er zone’ that separates Gaza from Israel. Trump’s speech had made them disregard the promises (now proven false) to improve the inhumane life that they were living, and to instead risk that life by clashing with soldiers in the buff er zone. More than 600 Palestinians were injured and four were killed, among them Ibrahim Abu Th urayya who was shot in the head. Images of Abu Th urayya quickly disseminated over the internet; he was a double amputee in a wheelchair.

What could have led the breadwinner for a family of 11, who lost his house and his legs in an Israeli raid during the

2008/2009 Israeli onslaught on Gaza, to risk his life once more? Th e answer lies not just with him, but with Gaza. Two million people who have been continuously isolated by the world for 11 years, whose lives are plagued everyday by the most minute details, still believe in a cause greater than their own suff ering.

It is safe to say that due to travel restrictions imposed by Israel, the vast majority of Gaza’s youth have never set foot in Jerusalem. Yet, their resistance on the border proved that their many disabilities are overcome by their will to live or die for a cause they believe in. While this resilient will is not new to Gaza, which has long been acclaimed for being the pounding heart of Palestinian resistance, this time it is diff erent. It sends a clear message to Hamas and the PA that Palestinians will not be silenced with temporary solutions to their everyday problems, and that the Palestinian cause is indeed bigger than all political parties.

Yasmeen El Khoudary is an independent London-based researcher and writer specialised in Palestinian history and cultural heritage. She’s currently writing a book on the modern history of Gaza

Gaza in a wheelchairGaza in a wheelchair

Yasmeen El Khoudary on Hamas and the PA, Ibrahim Abu Thurayya and why Gaza has long been seen as the beating heart of Palestinian resistance

What could have led the breadwinner for a family of 11, who lost his house and his legs in an Israeli raid during the

2008/2009 Israeli onslaught on Gaza, to risk his life once more?

Port of Gaza, May 2014. Photograph by Ramez Habboub

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In late December 2016, John Kerry, then Secretary of State under President Obama, gave his last speech on the

Israeli-Palestinian confl ict lamenting the lack of progress in the so-called ‘peace process’. One of the themes of his speech was the need for a two-state solution, for ‘it is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state.’ ‘Jewish and democratic’ is Israel’s constitutional self-defi nition in its constitutional Basic Laws. But what does this mean?

While most authors defend and justify this defi nition based on the right of

self-determination, some highlight its contradictory nature. However, I suggest that in order to fully grasp its meaning, we need to understand the defi nition not just as a legal text, but also as an idea that is the product of the intimate relationship between law and politics.

One way to think about the meaning of the defi nition is through constitutional

theory, or, more specifi cally, the idea of ‘the people’. Constitutional theory (or theories) grounds the democratic legitimacy of a constitutional order on the idea that ‘the people’ governs itself through the exercise of popular sovereignty. ‘Th e people’ in this context is the self in the exercise of self-governance, which is one of the most basic ideas in

When explored through the prism of the existing constitutional order, we see that ‘the people’ in Israel can only include Jews, which excludes 20 per cent of the citizens who are Palestinian

Israel as a ‘Jewish and Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’?democratic state’?

Mazen Masri interrogates Israel’s self-defi nition as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’ and the implications such a defi nition has for a proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict

In Israel, as in other settler-colonial states, the state acts as the tool of a settler society in confl ict with an indigenous population. Photograph by Yakov Afl alo


democracy. In this regard, one would ask: ‘who is the people in Israel?’

Rather than assume that everyone who is a citizen in Israel is included in ‘the people’, inclusion in or exclusion from ‘the people’ should be explored through the prism of the existing constitutional order – the existing constitutional principles, laws, policies and practices. An examination of the diff erent facets of the constitutional regime focussing on how political power is generated and exercised by the state and its organs can help identify the source of ultimate political power that exercises sovereignty, and thus who is included in ‘the people’.

If we take this approach, we will see that ‘the people’ in Israel can only include Jews, which excludes 20 per cent of the citizens who are Palestinian. Starting with the Declaration of Establishment of the State of Israel, its legal signifi cance and the narratives it provides, it is clear that ‘the people’ can only be Jewish. Immigration and citizenship laws and policies which play an important role in shaping ‘the people’ indicate a similar outcome. Th e Law of Return (1950), which grants any Jew and their family members automatic citizenship, and the extreme restrictions on granting citizenship to Palestinians, demonstrate an obsession with demography and the preservation of a Jewish majority.

Another key area is political representation, which is important in shaping the relationship between the governors and the governed. Also here the defi nition of the state plays an important role. Basic Law: Th e Knesset and other associated statutes set acceptance of the Jewish and democratic character of the state as a condition for participation in parliamentary and local elections, and even registration of political parties. Th is defi nition also plays a role in the processes of constitution making and constitutional amendment, and how legislation is enacted, interpreted and reviewed by courts, and the role that the ‘Jewish and democratic’ defi nition plays in each of these areas.

Th e study of law, however, cannot be isolated from its broader context, which in our case is settler-colonialism. Indeed, Israel adopts many policies that could be described as settler-colonial, where the state acts as the tool of a settler society in confl ict with an indigenous population. Given that settler-colonialism is best understood as a structure – that

is, not just a passing event but rather a founding principle or a way of ordering state and society – the logic of settler-colonialism is carried on into the settler state. It is therefore crucial to focus on the relationship between settler-colonialism and the law: how settler-colonialism shapes the development of Israeli constitutional law, and how law, in turn, operates to give eff ect to the logic of settler-colonialism in the form of establishing and reinforcing the settler-nation and dissolving the native population.

Th ese settler-colonial dynamics are visible in most policy areas: they are visible in the narrative presented in the Declaration of Establishment of the State of Israel, they are clear in how citizenship and immigration laws seek to reduce the size of the native population, and also clear in the justifi cations for restricting the right to participate in elections.

Th ese observations raise signifi cant questions about the nature of the regime in Israel. If 20 per cent of the citizenry are not part of ‘the people’, that means that the refl exive identity between the governors and the governed is broken. It cannot be seen as democratic and providing equality for all. In addition to the implications for the 20 per cent who are Palestinian, these observations also raise questions about placing the preservation of the ‘Jewish and democratic’ character at the heart of the peace process, as highlighted by John Kerry. If maintaining such undemocratic

realities is the main goal of the two-state solution, there are serious doubts about whether it could indeed be seen as a ‘solution’.

Th is article draws from Th e Dynamics of Exclusionary Constitutionalism: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State (Hart Publishing, 2017)

Th ese observations raise questions about placing the preservation of the ‘Jewish and democratic’

character at the heart of the peace process

Mazen Masri is a Senior Lecturer at the City Law School, City, University of London. His areas of teaching and research are constitutional law and public international law with special interest in comparative constitutionalism, constitutional theory, human rights law and equality. His book, Th e Dynamics of Exclusionary Constitutionalism: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State (Hart Publishing, 2017), was shortlisted for the Peter Birks Book Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship


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Since 2011 Palestinian youth movements have been critiqued as being reactionary forces to specifi c

policies or for identifying with specifi c campaigns over a short period of time. In recent years however there has been an interesting shift in youth organising towards long-term community work, rather than protests or specifi c campaigns. Th ese formations have appeared despite an increasingly diffi cult period for Palestinian political movements. Th ey off er an important counter-narrative to the Palestinian political reality, yet face a ceiling in their impact and ability to develop into

more institutionalised forms. Th is ceiling is largely due to systematic practices by Israel that impede any group or individual from growing into a powerful force of infl uence.

Th e use of the term ‘youth movements’ has been debated with regards to its usefulness as a term in various Palestinian circles and its emergence as a separate category. It was generally not until aft er the Arab uprisings that there was a visible labelling of Palestinian youth movements, and it is important to note that there is no homogenous ‘Palestinian youth movement’.

In 2011, in response to the uprisings in Tunisia, a group of Palestinian youth

created a Facebook page and called for a demonstration in solidarity with the uprising. In response, Palestinian security forces called for a demonstration at the same time in support of Palestinian political prisoners, a standard tactic used to diff use support for demonstrations critical of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Several individuals showed up to Al Manara Square in Ramallah and raised a Tunisian fl ag; they were swift ly arrested. Later, another demonstration was called for, this time in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt. Over 3,000 people attended and marched through the streets of Ramallah calling for the fall of Mubarak. Inspired by the successes of uprisings elsewhere, this loose ‘movement’ occupied Al Manara Square on 15 March 2011, naming themselves Hirak 15 Athar, or the ‘March 15 Movement’. Th eir central demands included elections to the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO)

Focus has shift ed to long-term work, like building alternative education structures and knowledge production platforms,

translating work from Hebrew and supporting cultural production that is independent from Israeli or international funding

Palestinian youth formations: Palestinian youth formations: a critical counter-narrativea critical counter-narrative

Lucy Garbett describes how Palestinian youth movements off er a critical counter-narrative despite repression tactics intended to stifl e their infl uence

Hungry for freedom protest in support of Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike in Israeli jails, Haifa, 2011. Photograph by Mohamed Badarne


Palestinian National Council (PNC) for every Palestinian – no matter where they live – and an end to the division between Fatah and Hamas.

Few tangible gains were achieved on this particular occasion. However, the event spurred the emergence of other groups such as Palestinians for Dignity, which subsequently called for regular protests in Ramallah. Protests were organised against the visit of Shaul Mofaz, the former Israeli Minister of Defence and Vice Prime Minister. Other targets included US Aid, or, during hunger strikes by Palestinian political prisoners, the Red Cross.

Since then, many of these groups have fi zzled out. But from these experiments loose networks have formed which have strengthened links and connections between Palestinians across 48 territories (both north and south), the West Bank and Jerusalem. Campaigns on single issues have been the primary focus of many of these groups, such as the campaign against the Prawer Plan. In turn, many of these youth groups and movements have been criticised for being unable to work in a consistent manner or articulate a holistic vision or set of demands beyond an initial knee-jerk reaction.

Over the past three years there has been a shift in the work being conducted by youth who participated in these events. Focus has shift ed to long-term work, like building alternative education structures and knowledge production platforms, translating work from Hebrew, supporting cultural production that is independent from Israeli or international funding, opening collectives in the form of cafes or agricultural work, volunteering to work in areas outside of urban bubbles (such as Ramallah) and establishing committees to work on specifi c issues. Such work goes beyond the geographical barriers imposed by Israeli colonialism and notions of individualism siphoned through neoliberal policies. It also attempts to break free of the hegemony of foreign funding and prove that political and community work does not require a sponsor. More interestingly, some of these groups have been experimenting in small-scale long-term work that has tried to de-centre itself from Ramallah to engage

with a wider geographical area and diff erent class segments of Palestinian society.

Th ese formations are ‘holding the fort’ in an increasingly diffi cult period for Palestinian political movements. Th ey off er an important counter-narrative and conduct essential work on issues of boycott and normalisation while also developing their own models and structures despite the political vacuum. However such youth groups are kept from becoming more tangible organised forces by restrictions and repression tactics used by Israeli forces and increasingly by the PA as well.

Tactics used by the Israeli government include pre-emptively targeting Palestinians who exhibit inspiring or strong leadership qualities through a variety of measures. Th ese most commonly include the practice of administrative detention – a detention without charge or trial. Individuals can be arrested for six months at a time, which can then be renewed indefi nitely.

In Jerusalem, several activists were handed deportation orders to leave the city. Dahoud Al Ghoul, from the Silwan neighbourhood, was involved in strengthening community links and activities in a neighbourhood targeted by colonial-settler expansion projects. He was handed a deportation order for six months, which he complied with, disrupting the community work and groups he was involved in nourishing. Aft er the six-month deportation order expired, it was

renewed by Israeli authorities for another six months before Al Ghoul was placed under administrative detention.

Th is tactic was then used by Israeli authorities against Samer Abu Eisheh and Hijazi Abu Sbeih; both were handed deportation orders to leave their hometown of Jerusalem for several months. Th ey resisted such orders and held a protest tent, garnering public support, projecting fi lms and holding discussions in the courtyard of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Th ey were subsequently arrested by Israeli forces from the compound and kept in administrative detention.

A similar case of a Jerusalemite Palestinian is that of Saleh Hammouri, who – aft er serving a seven-year sentence in Israeli jails – faced a series of repressions by the Israeli state. In January 2016, Hammouri’s spouse was issued a deportation order while she was six months pregnant. In August 2017, Hammouri was placed under administrative detention for six months, which has recently been renewed. Such tactics and their impacts on daily life rarely receive coverage, yet their repercussions are well studied by Israeli forces and are aimed to break the will to resist, crippling anyone who may play an inspiring role in their communities.

Th e cases of Al Ghoul, Abu Eisheh and Abu Sbeih, and Hammouri parallel the 463 Palestinian political prisoners currently held in administrative detention and the other 6,154 political prisoners in Israeli jails. Any evaluation of Palestinian movements must take into consideration the extraordinary conditions in which they operate. Th is includes intensive repression and surveillance by Israeli forces and the security coordination of the PA as well. Such youth movements and formations cannot be expected to compensate for a national liberation movement, though they do play an important role in the current political vacuum.

Any evaluation of Palestinian movements must take into consideration the extraordinary conditions in which they

operate. Th is includes intensive repression and surveillance by Israeli forces and, increasingly, the PA

Lucy Garbett is a London-based Palestinian from Jerusalem. She recently completed her MSc in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London


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Palestinian music, poetry and literature are intrinsically connected to the national narrative,

oft en refl ecting themes of liberation, dispossession and resistance. In a situation where their very existence is denied, Palestinian cultural production plays a signifi cant role in asserting identity; songs in particular become an incubator for memories of homeland and attitudes surrounding exile and return. Artists grapple with presenting new, innovative forms of music while contending with a legacy of liberation songs that permeate Palestinian cultural production.

Building on the creative and boundary-breaking work of an earlier wave of female artists, such as Kamilya Joubran and Rim Banna, a new generation of singers/songwriters are bringing the new to the old, experimenting with diff erent genres to produce a distinctly contemporary sound. At times breaking from explicitly political themes, the variety in such artistic experiments is expanding the repertoire of Palestinian music. Although still suff ering from a lack of resources and limitations to freedom of movement, many artists are producing original materials that have become widely available due to social media. Six female artists stand out for their contribution to this new body of work.

Th e fi rst of these is the well-known artist, Sanaa Moussa, who specialises in preserving Palestinian folk songs. She focusses primarily on studying and collecting women’s songs, especially those that depict daily life in historic Palestine. When recreating these songs Moussa preserves their melodies, working with

musicians to add new arrangements. Her two albums Ishraq and Hajess accentuate her captivating voice.

Terez Sliman is another independent musician with a unique vision and exceptional voice. In collaboration with Yazan Ibrahim, Sliman has performed musical pieces inspired by the works of Arab poets; for example Salat (Prayer) has lyrics from ‘A History Torn Apart in the Body of a Woman’ by Syrian poet Adonis. Sliman has been one of the fi rst to mix Arabic spoken-word poetry with music. In an exciting new project, she teamed up with Portuguese singer Sofi a Portugal and instrumentalists Rui Ferreira, Hélder Costa and André Oliveira to form Mina, a company that has expertly reworked traditional songs from the Mediterranean region. Her album Almond Blossom, in collaboration with musicians from the Golan Heights based group Toot Ard, has won awards for independent music.

Vocalist and fl autist Nai Barghouti

has been singing classical Arabic with a mastery of technique well beyond her young age. However, it is her new experiments integrating jazz into her range that are capturing attention. Her fl uency in the classical canon, the introduction of jazz and Barghouti’s considerable vocal talent make her a name to watch.

Ruba Shamshoum is a graduate of Dublin’s Newpark Music Centre in jazz performance. Her debut album Shamat is a daring mix of genres producing a distinct sound. Th e Palestinian, Dublin-based singer/songwriter has collaborated with a host of Ireland’s contemporary jazz and folk musicians to infuse her Arabic texts with innovative compositions and break musical boundaries. You can hear the various infl uences through each composition.

Amal Kaawash began her music career with the band Jafra for Palestinian Songs in Beirut, before becoming an independent singer/songwriter. She studied Arabic singing at the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music and has collaborated with local and international musicians, the latter of which include Naqsh group (Ramallah), Opgang 2 (Denmark), in addition to the renowned Ahmad Qaabour (Lebanon).

Th is is, of course, not an exhaustive list of Palestinian independent female musicians, but rather an introduction to some of the new genres, themes and experiments taking place; there is much to explore. While some of the artists do occasionally perform in the UK, many face travel restrictions making it important to support their art even if only virtually.

Rafeef Ziadah is Lecturer in Comparative Politics of the Middle East in the Politics and International Studies department, SOAS University of London

The new in the old: The new in the old: Palestinian musical experimentsPalestinian musical experiments

Rafeef Ziadah briefl y outlines the innovative new works of six female Palestinian singers and songwriters

Building on the creative and boundary-breaking work of an earlier wave of female artists, a new generation of

singers/songwriters are bringing the new to the old


Marsm: bringing Arab Marsm: bringing Arab musicians to British stagesmusicians to British stages

Khaled Ziada is the founder and director of Marsm.

Can you tell us the background to Marsm and the motivations behind the project?

Marsm was established in 2014, three years aft er a tremendous wave of social protests erupted across the Middle East. Th ese uprisings had, and are still having, a powerful impact on the cultural scene in many Arab countries. We saw the emergence of a number of very interesting independent artists and bands, expressing in a cultural form the social and political demands of the time while pushing musical boundaries in new and creative ways: the creation of a new wave of home-grown Arabic rock and the sheer creativity of young hip-hop producers are just two examples. We felt it was necessary to connect with these artists, and contribute to their increased exposure outside of the Middle East. Not to mention, we feel there have been few promoters willing to face the challenge of logistics and the acquisition of the visas necessary to bring these incredible acts to the stages they deserve.

For the Arab community in the UK this was also very important – and many people don’t realise the diverse nature of this community. For the non-Arab community we wanted to provide them with open, welcoming and intriguing spaces, providing opportunities to recognise both similarities and diff erences in musical performances, styles or aesthetics. It’s always been important to us to support and connect diff erent communities and musical groups with one another – across national boundaries in the Arab world and within music genres in the UK – and also bring them closer to the new music developing in the region itself.

How has the response been?

We’ve had an incredible reaction, a great turnout for artists such as Cairokee, Mashrou Leila, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, Kamilya Jubran, Yasmine Hamdan, Lena Chamamyan, and many others. One of the things I’m most excited about is our ability to bring UK audiences these really cutting-edge musicians who are not afraid to experiment with styles and genres – combining traditional Arabic music, jazz, hip-hop, rock, reggae, electronic music, spoken word and Indie music in innovative ways. Marsm has also provided an important space for Arab artists in the UK to perform alongside musicians from the region. It’s very exciting to see these interactions on stage. In doing this, we’ve been able to reach out to very diff erent parts

of the Arab community, including smaller sub-cultures that oft en get missed in much of the corporate music scene. We’ve also been encouraged by the incredible support we’ve been receiving in our collaborations with venues such as Th e Barbican, Scala, Cadogan Hall and Rich Mix, every one of them very keen to hear more ideas and projects for the future.

How do you see Marsm fi tting into the wider Arab cultural space in the UK?

Th ere are a lot of very impressive Arab

cultural events in the UK, including many festivals and established organisations. Th ese events draw big crowds and really show the interest that is out there as well as the growing cultural engagement of the Arab community. We think of all these

Adam Hanieh interviews Khaled Ziada about Marsm, a company that organises events designed to showcase the diversity and evolution of the Arab music scene to audiences in the UK

Marsm has provided an important space for Arab artists in the UK to perform alongside musicians from the region… in doing this, we’ve been able to reach out to diff erent parts of the Arab

community, including smaller sub-cultures

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47Soul at Village Underground in October. Photograph by Greg De Wode

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At a time when the offi cial political process reinforces divisions, the music scene is insisting on the unity

of the Palestinian people across bordersevents as being complimentary to building the Arab cultural scene. Our events are ongoing throughout the year, and I think this allows us to bring a wider variety of independent artists that may not otherwise get a platform. Th ere are formidable obstacles for many of the emerging artists in the Middle East. Part of Marsm’s goal is to address these obstacles through increasing the exposure of artists to the cultural scene here in the UK.

Aft er three years of Marsm, how do you see the state of cultural production in the Middle East?

I’ve mentioned the amazing creativity

we’ve seen emerge in recent years, very much connected to the Arab uprisings of 2011. But this sits in tension with the corporatisation of Arab music and the control of much of the region’s cultural production by a handful of very large media conglomerates, mostly located in the Gulf. On one hand, I think independent artists are helping to challenge this monopolisation and the blandness of much of the music we see on Arab TV screens. It’s one of the most innovative spaces in terms of presenting social critique and challenging some of the ‘taboos’ that exist in our societies. It’s not just about a political message; it’s also about being willing to experiment with diff erent styles and modes of performance. Arab independent artists are having a big impact on the music scene in Europe and elsewhere and are also infl uenced in really creative ways by musical developments outside of the Arab world. Highlights from recent years include seeing bands like DAM, Labess and Rasha Nahas play some of Glastonbury’s biggest stages, and Toot Ard taking on a European tour for the launch of their new album.

On the other hand, we’re also seeing independent artists face a worrying rise in government censorship. While some bands have been outright banned from playing, censorship has increasingly taken the more subtle form of intimidation, humiliation, and harassment. Given that this comes in inconsistent and unpredictable waves, artists are forced to constantly be alert and reassess

the capacity of their music, a process that is emotionally, physically and fi nancially draining.

And Palestinian artists?

Th e music coming out of Palestine

is an essential part of the trends in the wider Arab world. We’ve had a whole generation of Palestinian youth grow up under the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority, and who have felt their voices marginalised. One of the ways we see this marginalisation challenged is through music – it’s happening in really creative and diverse ways, presenting political and social themes through fusions of diff erent musical genres. It’s also fascinating to see how much of this music works against the entrenched divisions that have been created among diff erent parts of the Palestinian people: the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and Palestinian citizens of Israel. At a time when the offi cial political process reinforces these divisions, the music scene is insisting on the unity of the Palestinian people across borders. Palestinian citizens of Israel, in particular, have been at the forefront of much of this innovation and creativity, leading in the production of hip-hop and other genres.

What’s next for Marsm?

Th e calendar for 2018 is fi lling up fast! While we average about 30 events a

year, a lot of our upcoming focus lies on strengthening our connections with UK festivals and European promoters. Th ere is oft en immense work in bringing in a large band from the Middle East, the more they get to play – both in the UK and Europe – the happier we (and they) are! We try to do what is needed to mediate risk and increase opportunities, which is something that comes with mutual rewards.

Our current focus could be narrowed down to our spring programming, which we’re all very excited about. Firstly, we’re looking into increasing our focus on Arabic jazz musicians and ways to incorporate them in London’s bustling jazz scene. Secondly, we’ve teamed up with renowned Sufi fi gures Bachar Zarkan and Rachid Gholam, who together with two brand-new commission ensembles will be revisiting and reimagining classic Sufi works. Last but not least, it would be hard to hide our excitement about our upcoming concert with Naseer Shamma at Th e Barbican.

Stay updated with Marsm’s upcoming events and shows at www.marsm.co.uk

Adam Hanieh is a Reader in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, and an advisory board member of the Centre for Palestine Studies (SOAS). His most recent book is Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (Haymarket Books, 2013)

Maurice Louca performs with Lekhfa for its London debut show. Photograph by Greg De Wode

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From the time it was founded in March 2012, the Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS) at SOAS engaged in negotiations

with various publishers in view of creating a book series under its editorial responsibility. An agreement to this eff ect was fi nalised in March 2014 with I.B. Tauris, the London-based publisher well known for its wide coverage of the Middle East.

Th e ‘SOAS Palestine Studies’ book series was thus created as a scholarly peer-reviewed series, the fi rst of its kind in English wholly dedicated to the fi eld of Palestine Studies.

Th e foreword to the series emphasised the following:

Th e complexity and the unparalleled diversity of contemporary Palestinian locations and situations help to explain Palestine’s ‘disproportionate’ status and account for the abundance of publications on Palestine and its people. And yet, surprisingly, there has until now been no university-based English-language book series specifi cally dedicated to Palestine Studies. Th e SOAS Palestine Studies series…seeks to fi ll this gap. Th is series is dedicated to the contemporary history, politics, economy, society and culture of Palestine and the historiographic quarrels associated with its past.Th e subject of Palestine has aroused intense passions over several decades. On such a topic it is very diffi cult to exclude passion, and the pretension to be ‘neutral’ is oft en disqualifi ed by both sides. But we will make sure that none of our books stray beyond the realms of intellectual integrity and scholarly rigour. With the Palestine Studies series we hope to make an important contribution towards a better understanding of this most complex topic.

Th e inaugural book in the series came out in the summer of 2016: Toufi c Haddad’s Palestine Ltd: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory, a book whose hardback edition sold out and which will be coming out in a soft cover edition in 2018. It was followed in the autumn of 2016 by Joseph Farag’s Politics and Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story. Th e third book in the series came out in November 2017: Sharri Plonski’s Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space. Th e next candidates on the list of publication are Peter Manning’s Representing Palestine: Media and Journalism in Australia since World War I and Farah Aboubakr Alkhammash’s Speak Bird, Speak Memory (on Palestinian folktales). One more approved manuscript, Elian Weizman’s Hegemony, Law, Resistance: Struggles Against Zionism in the State of Israel is currently in the process of being updated (all three last-mentioned titles are provisional). In total, out of 16 completed manuscripts submitted to the series, and therefore to the arduous process of peer-

reviewing, only six have been approved – a consequence of the high standard that the SOAS Palestine Studies book series set itself from the start.

Th e CPS is confi dent that it will be able to carry on building the reputation of the series as a key scholarly publication in the Palestinian subfi eld of Middle East studies by attracting many more excellent manuscripts in the years to come, as the study of Palestine keeps developing. Manuscripts on the wide range of Palestine-related topics are welcome. Th ese include: political economy of Palestine and the Israel-Palestine confl ict; international relations and diplomacy; regional politics and social movements; international law and statehood; political terrorism and ideology; nationalism and identity; postcolonial, literary and cultural studies; diaspora, exile and refugee status; art, fi lm and visual culture.

For more information, or to submit a proposal, please contact:

Louise Hosking, LMEIEmail: [email protected]: 020 7898 4330

Gilbert Achcar is Series Editor and Chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies

The SOAS The SOAS Palestine Palestine Studies book seriesStudies book series

Gilbert Achcar outlines the signifi cance of the SOAS Palestine Studies book series and lists some forthcoming topics and titles

Th e ‘SOAS Palestine Studies’ book series was created as a scholarly peer-reviewed series, the fi rst of its kind in English

wholly dedicated to the fi eld of Palestine Studies

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One of the highlights of the academic calendar is the now annual Palestine-focussed

research seminar series organised by the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS, for UK doctoral students at diff erent stages in their research. Since its inception in 2012, the seminar series has hosted approximately 50 research students, refl ecting the increasing interest in the fi eld. It highlights the signifi cance of Palestine as an academic fi eld of study and the variety of research approaches and methods that move beyond the traditional focus in studies of Palestine, such as economics, politics, international relations and history.

Along with historical studies, emerging scholars are working on diverse areas such as the politics of travel, tourism, new modes of colonialism, farming as resistance, human rights education, cultural interventions and heritage, Palestinian women’s bodies and cultural politics. Aside from the opportunity for the students to present their work and receive feedback, the seminars provide an informal, yet intellectually challenging, platform beyond the thematic-focussed conferences or seminars where research is traditionally presented.

Below are profi les of some of the research students who have presented at

these seminars at SOAS over the past two years.

Muna Dajani is a research student at the LSE where she studies the ways in which the Galilee has been a central focus of the Jewish-Israeli land-acquisition eff orts and plans since the 1940s. Her work shows that the area, populated by its Palestinian inhabitants aft er the 1948 Nakba, had been subjected to several policies and laws used by the Israeli state to tighten control on Palestinian land use and ownership while facilitating Jewish expropriation and encroachment. Such layers of dispossession, she suggests, are inscribed onto the landscape, provoking new and transformed approaches by the inhabitants to reclaim and maintain the ownership of their lands – and their identity. Dajani focusses on the ways in which the farming community in Al Battuf Valley in the Galilee construct a political subjectivity to claim land and identity through the appropriation of water infrastructure, the protection of land against confi scation and a determination to remain in the agricultural sector despite conditions

of exclusion and dispossession. She argues that examining the role of sumud (‘steadfastness’ or ‘staying on the land’) as a form of cultural resistance in the livelihood practices of Al Battuf Valley highlights advocacy tactics carried out by the farming communities and underlines how these tactics can be termed subtle acts of everyday resistance.

Yara Hawari is a research student at the University of Exeter. She draws on oral history and Indigenous Studies to examine how Palestinians are using memories and shared narratives in spaces of indigenous resistance in Haifa and the Galilee. Looking beyond acts of collecting and archiving, she focusses on commemorative activities and projects led by various civil society actors and addresses how oral history plays a central role in these practices. Her research is based on in-depth interviews, informal conversations, participant observation and textual analyses gathered between 2013-2016. Her research contributes to a gap in the literature and demonstrates that oral history can be an important tool in the struggle for liberation.

Since its inception in 2012, the seminar series has hosted about 50 research students

Palestine Research Palestine Research Seminar Series: Seminar Series: Palestine as an academic Palestine as an academic fi eld of studyfi eld of study

Dina Matar provides a snapshot of some of the studies presented during the Palestine-focussed research seminar series at SOAS


Mai Abu Moghli has completed her PhD at the UCL Institute of Education. Her work focussed on human rights education (HRE) in Palestinian Authority (PA) schools in the West Bank, providing a critical view of HRE within a context of colonial occupation, authoritarian national ruling structure and oppressive social practices. Her research addressed the reasons behind the introduction of HRE in PA schools in the West Bank, investigated how stakeholders make meaning of and implement HRE and examined the relationship between HRE and the struggle for political and social change. Mai conducted her fi eld research in the West Bank over six months, generating data using ethnographic methods. Her thesis highlights the importance of indigenous knowledge and shows that HRE in PA schools is fl attened, de-contextualised and de-politicised to serve the ruling party, perpetuate oppressive socio-cultural practices and structures and implement donors’ agendas. HRE in PA schools does not allow for students’ engagement in human rights praxis, thereby limiting their ability to dismantle structures of domination and oppression.

Feras Khatib, a journalist and political analysis, is completing his PhD at SOAS. His work fi lls a signifi cant gap in the literature on media and Palestinians in Israel. In fact, despite a burgeoning scholarship on transnational satellite channels in the Arab world and their connection to political events, only a very few scholars have addressed the relationship of these channels with Palestinians, especially the Palestinian minority in Israel; their exposure to the issues of the Arab world through satellite channels created a unique situation that is worthy of further research. How are Palestinians in Israel represented in satellite television? How do they relate to it? In his research, Feras examines how Arab transnational media has been mediated/accommodated/translated into the ethno-national media of the Palestinians in Israel. Most importantly, his work contextualises the dialectic relations between both media in the socio-political context of the Israeli state, which is oft en described as dominating the Palestinian minority through identity policies of control, security and exclusion. On a broader scale, he argues that the relationship that exists between the nation

state and minority groups living within them infl uences the way in which the minority utilises its own media and how they view and engage with transnational media.

Sinead Murphy is a part-time PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at King’s College London. Her work broadly focusses on Arabic speculative fi ction in English translation, a genre that encompasses science fi ction, the supernatural and the more fantastical modes of narrative. In her analysis of contemporary iterations of speculative aesthetics in Arab literature written in or translated to English she maps out their antecedents in a long-standing tradition of fantasy in Middle Eastern literature. As part of her research, she has studied the work of Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour and the visual iconography of Sansour's short fi lm Nation Estate (2009), exploring how Sansour employs a visual language that combines distinctively Palestinian imagery with tropes and motifs of science fi ction.

Some of the researchers interviewed for this article suggested that the seminar could become an institutionalised annual event that initiates and solidifi es

a network of Palestinian scholars – particularly because of the need for scholars working on Palestine in the UK to be better connected and informed about the wider work on Palestine and to provide support and knowledge that can be relied on when needed.

Th e next CPS research seminar will take place on 2 February 2018.

With thanks to Mai Abu Moghli who contributed to this article.

Dina Matar is head of the Centre for Global Media and Communication, SOAS, and serves on the LMEI Board of Trustees and the advisory board of the Centre for Palestine Studies

Th e seminars provide an informal, yet intellectually challenging, platform beyond the thematic-focussed conferences or

seminars where research is traditionally presented

Feras Khatib Sinead Murphy


REVIEWS: BOOKSREVIEWS: BOOKS

The Naqab Bedouins: The Naqab Bedouins: A Century of Politics A Century of Politics and Resistanceand Resistance

By Mansour Nasasra

Reviewed by Dina Matar

Columbia University Press, May 2017, £49.95

The Naqab, the southern region of historic Palestine, is increasingly becoming an established site of

interest and research within Palestine studies and, more broadly, studies of marginal groups in the Middle East that off er diff erent approaches towards understanding Bedouin lives beyond those Orientalist ones that dominated scholarship up to the 1990s. Mansour Nasasra’s book falls within this expanding scholarship and contributes to it by providing a fresh narrative of Naqab Bedouins that presents them as active agents under Ottoman, British and Israeli military rule. Building his argument on the notion of power as relational and resistance as an intentional act, Nasasra chronicles Bedouin history and politics across the last century and addresses acts of resistance as diverse and dispersed, but as centrally concerned with confronting state hegemony and settler colonialism.

Nasasra deconstructs the passive, non-resistant Bedouin stereotype that has underlined much of the Israeli scholarship on the Naqab Bedouins as well as other writings about them. By foregrounding agency in his study, he shows that the indigenous community adopted a wide and varied range of methods of resistance, including non-violent, political and cultural forms that spanned a century and that gathered pace from the beginning of Israeli military rule until today. For his book, Nasasra draws on British and Israeli archival materials

balanced by oral history approaches in order to describe diff erent periods of Naqab history while emphasising the means of resistance deployed by those Palestinians who remained aft er the mass Nakba expulsion of 1948. His depiction of the Naqab Bedouins is of a community engaged in a continuous everyday struggle with the state, thus pre-empting any arguments suggesting that the increasingly visible and publicised indigenous acts of resistance by this community are a new phenomenon attributed to younger generations and, as such, are non-representative of the Naqab Bedouin community’s so-called historical amicability to the Israeli regime. In his readable and well-sourced account, Nasasra shows that the Bedouin community has constantly challenged power, employing every possible mechanism to affi rm its right to place, the continuation of its cultural identity and the community’s right to political voice.

Broadly speaking, the book, though focussing on the Naqab Bedouin, contributes towards an emerging de-colonising research agenda revolving around themes of knowledge production from below that speak back to dominant colonial narratives about the Naqab. From the beginning, Nasasra prepares the reader for the conclusion which suggests that while the Israeli brand of settler-colonialism has displacement and replacement at its roots, indigenous and native people pose a serious challenge

to settler states by continuing to live on their land, refusing to relinquish their historical claims and engaging in non-violent forms of resistance ranging from non-cooperation with Israeli military rulers to public protests against the infamous Prawer plan in 2013.

By considering power as relational, Nasasra debunks arguments that the Naqab Bedouin were passive and powerless, depicting them instead as active actors in their history. For Nasasra, the most eff ective tactic was non-cooperation with Israeli military rule, which with time would evolve into more politically organised actions to gain more rights.

What broader lessons can be learned from these acts against a powerful settler-colonial entity such as Israel remains an unanswered and diffi cult question, particularly for Palestinian refugees unable to return to their homeland and other Palestinians living under extreme conditions of settler-colonial practices. What is answered, however, is the question of who the Naqab Bedouins are and why it is important to rewrite their history.

Dina Matar is head of the Centre for Global Media and Communication, SOAS, and serves on the LMEI Board of Trustees and the advisory board of the Centre for Palestine Studies


At the 10th Congress of Ennahda in May 2016 its founder and leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, announced

that ‘Ennahda has changed from an ideological movement engaged in the struggle for identity to a protest movement against the authoritarian regime and now to a national democratic party.’ Th is is essentially the trajectory that Anne Wolf describes and analyses eff ectively in Political Islam in Tunisia: Th e History of Ennahda, with the major part of the book taken up by Ennahda’s antecedents and its earlier incarnations.

Ennahda, now one of the major players in Tunisian politics (indeed it is presently the largest single party in the Tunisian parliament, following the disarray and fracture of Nidaa Tounes), had modest origins, but those origins were in some respects characteristic of enduring features of Tunisian society and politics. As Wolf brings out well in the introductory chapter, Islamic values have inspired zealous reforming modernists in recent Tunisian history and functioned as a refuge from authoritarian and arbitrary government, whether by colonial or by local elites. At the same time, these values have corresponded to a certain social conservatism that has nevertheless been open to the expression of diff erence.

Th ese are all themes that have characterised the movement that began modestly in the late 1960s as al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group), and was to become the increasingly well-defi ned and well-organised Harakat Ennahda

(the Renaissance Movement) in the late 1980s. Led by Rachid Ghannouchi it came to represent a distinct trend in Tunisian political society, disciplined and capable of mobilising signifi cant numbers. It was for this reason that both the organisation and the ideas behind it inspired the enmity of the autocratic regimes, fi rst of Habib Bourguiba and then of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

As Wolf graphically and movingly recounts, this Tunisian version of ‘the years of lead’ meant the imprisonment, torture, blacklisting and exile of thousands of members of and sympathisers with Ennahda, as well as their families. In a country where criticism of the president could bring the charge of treason, the periodic waves of repression were ferocious – made all the more so by the fear in the presidential palace that Ennahda could tap into forces within Tunisian society that the governing elites themselves could not touch.

Wolf takes us through this harrowing sequence of events. In doing so, however, she also skilfully demonstrates how Ennahda, by becoming the pre-eminent representative of ‘political Islam’ in Tunisia, combined within itself all the many tendencies that feed into this general position. Even before it was offi cially recognised or licensed as a political party (in 2011 aft er the overthrow of Ben Ali) Ennahda was showing all the characteristics of a political party that was nominally defi ned by its ideology, but where the practical implications of that ideology were variously interpreted. Ghannouchi tried to steer a course that would keep the organisation together, guarding against

major internal division as much as against the demoralising eff ects of political persecution. Th is was not made any easier by the experiences of exile, prolonged imprisonment and powerlessness. Naturally these gave rise to rather diff erent views among various groupings about what an Islamist organisation should be trying to achieve in Tunisia.

Wolf brings out this tension between discipline and plural expression, developing it convincingly in her account of the eff ects of the dramatic events of 2010/2011 on Ennahda. Th e Revolution opened up opportunities that enabled Ennahda to emerge as the largest party in the fi rst free elections held in Tunisia, becoming the leading member of a coalition government (‘the Troika’) that held power until the autumn of 2013. As her detailed analysis indicates, power brought with it its own challenges, some of which defeated Ennahda as a party of government. But it also indicated to many wary Tunisians and to an even warier regional and international audience that an Islamist party could relinquish power and re-enter the democratic fray in most respects as a routine political party, neither more virtuous nor more dogmatic than other political players in Tunisia.

Charles Tripp is Professor Emeritus of the Politics of the Middle East and North Africa at SOAS, University of London and is currently working on a study of the rethinking of republicanism in Tunisia

Political Islam in Tunisia: Political Islam in Tunisia: The History of EnnahdaThe History of Ennahda

By Anne Wolf

Reviewed by Charles Tripp

Hurst, June 2017, £30.00

REVIEWS: BOOKSREVIEWS: BOOKS

t the 10th Congress of Ennahda in


Th e dispossession and forced migration of nearly 50 per cent of Syria’s population has produced the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Th is book places the current displacement within the context of the widespread migrations that have marked the region throughout the last 150 years. Syria itself has harboured millions from its neighbouring lands and been shaped by these diasporas. Dawn Chatty explores how modern Syria came to be a refuge state, focussing fi rst on the major forced migrations into Syria. Drawing heavily on individual narratives and stories of integration, adaptation, and compromise, she shows that a local cosmopolitanism came to be seen as intrinsic to Syrian society. She examines the current outfl ow of people from Syria to neighbouring states, arguing that the resilience and strength of Syrian society bodes well for successful return and reintegration.

January 2018, Hurst, £20.00

Syria:Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge StateThe Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State

By Dawn Chatty

How would it feel to build homes on land stolen from you? Th is bitter toil is the daily reality for many Palestinians. Th rough a narrative based on many conversations with these workers and their families, Matthew Vickery explores the rationale, emotions, thoughts and consequences of such employment. Coupled with an analysis of the Israeli government’s role in the settlement employment sector, the author exposes the nature of these practices as a new, insidious form of state-sponsored forced labour. Exploring how such practices might be challenged, Employing the Enemy paints a picture of how and why people collude with their own oppression, and why a solution to the Israel/Palestine confl ict which provides dignity and rights for all is so urgently needed.

July 2017, Zed Books, £14.99

Employing the Enemy:Employing the Enemy:The Story of Palestinian Labourers on Israeli The Story of Palestinian Labourers on Israeli SettlementsSettlementsBy Matthew Vickery

BOOKS IN BRIEFBOOKS IN BRIEF

Th e contradictory trends of the ‘post-Arab Spring’ landscape form both the backdrop to, and the focus of, this volume on the changing security dynamics of the Persian Gulf, defi ned as the six GCC states plus Iraq and Iran. Th e political and economic upheaval triggered by the uprisings of 2011, and the rapid emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in 2014, have underscored the vulnerability of regional states to an intersection of domestic pressures and external shocks. Th e initial phase of the uprisings has given way to a series of messy and uncertain transitions that have left societies deeply fractured and ignited violence both within and across states. Th is volume is a comparative study of how security in the Persian Gulf has evolved and adapted to the growing uncertainty of the post-2011 regional landscape.

November 2017, Hurst, £25.00

The Changing Security The Changing Security Dynamics of the Persian GulfDynamics of the Persian GulfEdited by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen


Th e press is central to our understanding of the development of free speech, civil society, political life and cultural expression. Th is volume presents twelve detailed studies dealing with cases drawn from the Middle East and North Africa in the period before independence (c.1850-1950). Th ese studies explore the emergence of this important medium, its practitioners and its function as a forum and agent in political, social and cultural life in the Middle East. In taking up this focus, the collection argues that the press is both a vector and an agent of history that facilitates entrée into the complex process of political, social and cultural transformation that the region was undergoing during this critical period.

December 2017, Edinburgh University Press, £80.00

The Press in the Middle East and The Press in the Middle East and North Africa, 1850-1950:North Africa, 1850-1950:Politics, Social History and CulturePolitics, Social History and Culture

Edited by Anthony Gorman, Didier Monciaud

Against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy and human rights. Th e government’s ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past fi ve years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times. Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the heart-wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is a mosaic of fi rst-hand testimonials from the frontlines.

June 2017, Harper Collins, £18.99

We Crossed a Bridge and It We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Trembled: Voices from SyriaVoices from SyriaBy Wendy Pearlman

Since 2002 Sunni jihadi groups like Jaysh al-‘Adl have been active in Iranian Baluchistan, yet the region remains relatively stable. Th is book shows that the key reason for this is Tehran’s cultivation of good relations with Sunni ulama in the Sarbaz area in Baluchistan, a policy that began aft er WWII. Dudoignon demonstrates how this confessional network, through its hegemony in eastern Iran and its alliance with the Kurdish-born Muslim Brothers, has prevented the rise of Sunni radicalism in Iran since 1997 through the promotion of a ‘Sunni vote’. It highlights, too, the capacity of the Islamic Republic to transform a nascent ‘Sunni community of Iran’ into an asset, through Ayatollah Khamenei’s policy of ‘national union and confessional concord’.

July 2017, Hurst, £60.00

The Baluch, Sunnism and the The Baluch, Sunnism and the State in Iran:State in Iran:From Tribal to GlobalFrom Tribal to GlobalBy Stéphane A. Dudoignon



Aimée Israel-Pelletier examines the lives of Middle Eastern Jews living in Islamic societies in this political and cultural history of the Jews of Egypt. By looking at the work of fi ve Egyptian Jewish writers, Israel-Pelletier confronts issues of identity, exile, language, immigration, Arab nationalism, European colonialism and discourse on the Holocaust. She illustrates that the Jews of Egypt were a fl uid community connected by deep roots to the Mediterranean and the Nile. Th ey had an unshakable sense of being Egyptian until the country turned toward the Arab East.

December 2017, Indiana University Press, £22.37

On the Mediterranean and On the Mediterranean and the Nile:the Nile: The Jews of EgyptThe Jews of Egypt

By Aimée Israel-Pelletier

Th is history of Palestine in the last decade of the Ottoman Empire reveals the nation emerging as a cultural entity engaged in a vibrant intellectual, political and social exchange of ideas and initiatives. Employing ethnography, rare autobiographies, and unpublished maps and photos, Th e Great War and the Remaking of Palestine discerns a self-consciously modern and secular Palestinian public sphere. New urban sensibilities, schools, monuments, public parks, railways and roads catalysed by the Great War and described in detail by Salim Tamari show a world that challenges the politically driven denial of the existence of Palestine as a geographic, cultural, political, and economic space.

August 2017, University of California Press, £24.95

The Great War and the The Great War and the Remaking of PalestineRemaking of PalestineBy Salim Tamari


Published in honour of Professor Yasir Suleiman, this collection acknowledges his contribution to the fi eld of language and society in general, and to that of language analysis of socio-political realities in the Middle East in particular. Presenting a range of case studies relating to the role of language in the Middle East, each shows that the study of language unearths deeper processes relating to political affi liations, social behaviour and transnational as well as religious and sectarian identities. It also explores questions related to the power of language as a socio-political instrument, and addresses current issues that facilitate an understanding of the evolving intersections in the areas of language and politics in the modern Middle East.

January 2018, Edinburgh University Press, £80.00

Language, Politics and Society Language, Politics and Society in the Middle East:in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Yasir SuleimanEssays in Honour of Yasir SuleimanEdited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer Alnajjar


Events in LondonEvents in LondonLISTINGS

THE EVENTS and organisations listed below are not necessarily endorsed

or supported by The Middle East in London. The accompanying texts and images are based primarily on information provided by the organisers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the compilers or publishers. While every possible effort is made to ascertain the accuracy of these listings, readers are advised to seek confirmation of all events using the contact details provided for each event.

Submitting entries and updates: please send all updates and submissions for entries related to future events via e-mail to [email protected]

BM – British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG SOAS –SOAS, University of London, Th ornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

LSE – London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2 2AE

FEBRUARY EVENTS

Th ursday 1 February

7:00 pm | Taq Kasra: Wonder of Architecture (Documentary) Organised by: Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS. Directed by Pejman Akbarzadeh. First-ever documentary fi lm on the world's largest brickwork vault and the symbol of the Persian Empire in the Sasanian era (224-651 AD), when a major part of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) was part of Persia. Produced by the Persian Dutch Network, in association with Toos Foundation, and partially funded by the Soudavar Memorial Foundation. Followed by a Q&A with the director Pejman

Akbarzadeh and Vesta Sarkhosh-Curtis (BM). Admission free. Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7898 4330 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/

Friday 2 February

10:30 am | Annual Palestine Research Seminar Organised by: Centre for Palestine Studies and Centre Global Media and Communications, SOAS. Admission free. Pre-registration required. MBI Al Jaber Seminar Room, London Middle East Institute, SOAS, MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square, London WC1B 5EA. T 020 7898 4330 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/

Saturday 3 February

5:30 pm | Saved from the ISIS bonfi re (Talk) Father Nageeb Michaeel. Organised by: Gulan. Doors open at 5:00pm. Father Nageeb will talk about his work protecting and preserving the ancient texts he rescued from the Dominican monastery in Mosul from the advance of ISIS. Includes an exhibition of photographs by Richard Wilding showing Father Nageeb and the rescued library. Tickets: £10 entry on the door. St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL. E [email protected] W www.gulan.org.uk

Sunday 4 February

11:00 am | Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 (Panel Discussion) Ian Black (journalist and LSE), Ahmad Samih Khalidi (St Antony’s College, Oxford and Geneva Center for Security Policy, Geneva), Yossi Mekelberg (Regent’s University London and Chatham House). Organised by: how to: Academy.

Ian Black in conversation with Yossi Mekelberg and Ahmad Samih Khalidi on the key issues highlighted in his new history of Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel from 1917 -2017. Tickets: £39.99/£25/£15. Th e Tabernacle, 35 Powis Square (off Portobello Road), London W11 2AY. E [email protected] W www.howtoacademy.com

Monday 5 February

5:00 pm | Red Crescents: Race, Genetics, and Sickle Cell Disease in Turkey and Aden (Seminar) Elise Burton (University of Cambridge). Organised by: Department of History, School of History, Religions & Philosophies, SOAS. Near & Middle East History Seminar. Convener: Ceyda Karamursel (SOAS). Admission free. Wolfson Lecture Th eatre, Paul Webley Wing (Senate House), SOAS. T 020 7898 4602 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/history/events/

7:30 pm | Words for the Silenced of Iran (Reading) Organised by: Exiled Writers Ink. An evening focusing on writing about and from those imprisoned in Iran, including the launch of the 2018 tour of Nazanin’s Story, the Howell Productions play about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff e. An Exiled Writer’s Ink Agit Lit event, in coordination with Amnesty International, with readings from Iranian writers in Iran and from Nasrin Parvaz and Ziba Karbassi in exile. Tickets: £5/£3 EWI 2018 members and asylum seekers. Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2 9BX. E [email protected] W www.exiledwriters.co.uk

Tuesday 6 February

5:45 pm | Th e Dynamics of

LHM Arab Hall ©The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Image courtesy of Will Pryce. An Arabian Feast at Leighton House: 1,001 Flavours, Stories and Sounds from Syria (see March Events p. 30)


CENTRE FOR IRANIAN STUDIES – SCHOLARSHIPSSOAS, University of London, is pleased to announce the availability of several scholarships in its Centre for Iranian Studies (CIS).

The Centre, established in 2010, draws upon the range of academic research and teaching across the disciplines of SOAS, including Languages and Literature, the Study of Religions, History, Economics, Politics, International Relations, Music, Art and Media and Film Studies. It aims to build close relations with likeminded institutions and to showcase and foster the best of contemporary Iranian talent in art and culture.

MA in Iranian Studies

CISlaunc interdisciplinary MA in Iranian Studies, which will be off ered

Thanks to the generosity of the Fereydoun Djam Charitable Trust, a number of Kamran Djam scholarships are available for BA, MA and MPhil/PhD studies.

For further details, please contact:

Scholarships Offi cer E: [email protected]: +44 (0)20 7074 5091/ 5094W: www.soas.ac.uk/scholarships

Centre for Iranian StudiesDr Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (Chair) E: [email protected] T: +44 (0)20 7898 4747 W: www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis

MA in Iranian StudiesDr Nima Mina (Department of the Languages and Culture of the Middle East) E: [email protected] T: +44 (0)20 7898 4315 W: www.soas.ac.uk/nme/programmes/ma-in-iranian-studies

Student RecruitmentT: +44(0)20 7898 4034E: [email protected]

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Exclusionary Constitutionalism: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State (Lecture) Mazen Masri (City, University of London), Brenna Bhandar (SOAS), Nimer Sultany (SOAS). Organised by: London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI), Centre for Palestine Studies and Centre for Jewish Studies. Talk by Mazen Masri on his book Th e Dynamics of Exclusionary Constitutionalism: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State (Hart Publishing, 2017) What does Israel's defi nition as a 'Jewish and democratic' state mean? How does it aff ect constitutional law? How does it play out in the daily life of the people living in Israel? Chair: Adam Hanieh (SOAS). Part of the LMEI's Tuesday Evening Lecture Programme on the Contemporary Middle East. Admission free. Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7898 4330/4490 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

Wednesday 7 February

5:00 pm | Can distributed ledger technology save Palestinian/Israeli cross-border transactions? (Seminar) Priscilla Toff ano (IMF and LSE). Organised by: Department of Economics, SOAS. Toff ano looks at whether cross-border transactions between the West Bank and Gaza (WBG) and Israel could be settled via a distributed ledger platform that avoids the correspondent banking system entirely, and the costs and benefi ts involved. Admission free. Alumni Lecture Th eatre, Paul Webley Wing (Senate House), SOAS. T 020 7898 4737 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/economics/events/

6:00 pm | Kurdish Women Fighters: A Path Out of Patriarchy? (Lecture) Güneş Murat Tezcür (University of Central Florida). Organised by: LSE Middle East Centre. Over the last three decades, tens of thousands of women have joined the ranks of the PKK and its affi liated organisations. What factors explain their violent mobilisation despite life-threatening risks? Admission free. Pre-registration required. Room 9.04, 9th Floor, Tower 1, 1 Clement's Inn, London WC2A 2AZ. T 020 7955 6198 E s.sfeir@

lse.ac.uk W www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/


5:30 pm | Aspects of Seljuk Architecture (title tbc) (Seminar) Richard McClary. Organised by: Department of the History of Art & Archaeology, School of Arts, SOAS. Research Seminar in Islamic Art. Convener: Anna Contadini (SOAS). Admission free. Room B111 (Brunei Gallery), SOAS. E [email protected] W w w w.s oas .ac .uk/ar t /e vents /ressemislamicart/

Friday 9 February

12:00 pm | Brand Geopolitics? Turkish Airlines and Turkey's Geopolitical Representations (Seminar) Lerna Yanık (Kadir Has University, Istanbul). Organised by: SOAS Modern Turkish Studies Programme (London Middle East Institute) and sponsored by Nurol Bank. Admission free. MBI Al Jaber Seminar Room, London Middle East Institute, SOAS, MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square, London WC1B 5EA. E [email protected] / [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

1:15 pm | Reviving Piabrm: digitally reconstructing a Carian-Egyptian grave stela of the 6th century BC (Gallery Talk) Organised by: BM. Joanne Dyer, Alexandra Villing (BM). Admission free. Room 13, BM. T 020 7323 8000 W www.britishmuseum.org

7:00 pm | Stacey Dooley – Face to Face with ISIS (Documentary) Organised by: Frontline Club. Screening of a new BBC documentary followed by a Q&A with presenter Stacey Dooley and director Joshua Baker. One year on from her fi rst visit to Iraq, Stacey joins Shireen – a 23 year old Yazidi woman who was held as a sex slave for over two years by the so called Islamic State. Tickets: £12.50/£10. Pre-booking required. Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ. T 020 7479 8940 E [email protected] W www.frontlineclub.com

7:30 pm | "I Dreamed An Island": Exploring Crossroads between the Mediterranean, North Africa

& Beyond (Concert) Piers Faccini. Singing mostly in English but also in French, Italian dialects and Arabic, Faccini’s music is a celebration of cultural diversity and pluralism. With Malik Ziad, an Algerian musician who sings and plays guembri lute as well as Algerian mandole. Part of the SOAS Concert Series. Tickets: £3 donation. Pre-booking required W www.eventbrite.co.uk Brunei Gallery Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7898 4500 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/music/events/concerts/

Saturday 10 February

11:00 am | Digital workshop: Egyptian photo booth Organised by: BM. Turn yourself into a pharaoh, an Egyptian god and other characters using a range of digital technology. Activity lasts 30–45 mins. Admission free. Samsung Centre, BM. T 020 7323 8000 W www.britishmuseum.org

Monday 12 February

6:00 pm | Decoding the Ancient Babylonian Musical System (Lecture) Richard Dumbrill (Th e Institute of Musical Research, Royal Holloway and Senate House, University of London). Organised by: Anglo Israel Archaeological Society jointly with the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. Admission free. Lecture Th eatre G6, Ground Floor, Institute of Archaeology, University College, London WC1H OPY. T 020 8349 5754 E [email protected] W www.aias.org.uk

7:00 pm | Th e Hungry 1890s: A Prelude to the Constitutional Revolution (Lecture) Stephanie Cronin. Organised by: Th e Iran Society. Admission free for Society Members plus one guest. Pall Mall Room, Th e Army & Navy Club, 36-39 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JN (Dress code calls for gentlemen to wear jacket and tie). T 020 7235 5122 E [email protected] W www.iransociety.org / www.therag.co.uk

Tuesday 13 February

6:00 pm | War Is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon Sami Hermez (Northwestern University, Qatar). (Seminar) Organised by:

Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London. Hermez examines how people live between periods of confl ict. What do everyday conversations, practices, and experiences look like during these moments? How do people attempt to fi nd a measure of certainty or stability in such times? Admission free. Pre-registration required. K1.28, King's Building, Strand Campus, London WC2R 2LS. E [email protected] W www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/mems/events/


11:00 am | Tiny Owl Tales by Rumi (Reading) Also at 1:30pm. Part of Imagine Children's Festival. For ages 4 – 7. Experience the ancient Iranian art of pardekhani. Storyteller Alia Al Zougbi tells tales of Th e Parrot and the Merchant and Th e Jackal Who Th ought He Was a Peacock by the legendary Persian poet Rumi. Tickets: £6 child (includes one accompanying adult). Level 3 Function Room, Level 3, Blue side, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. T 020 3879 9555 W www.southbankcentre.co.uk

7:00 pm | Th e Traditional World of Islam: Man & Nature and Circling the House of God: Refl ections on the Hajj by Martin Lings (Film) Organised by: Th e Prince's School of Traditional Arts & Th e Temenos Academy. 6:30pm for 7:00pm. A screening of two fi lms, 27 and 35 minutes long, with Q&A. Tickets: £7/£5 conc. (cash only)/full-time students with student ID card free. Pre-registration required. Th e Prince's School of Traditional Arts, 19-22 Charlotte Road, London EC2A 3SG. T 01233 813663 E [email protected] W www.temenosacademy.org

7:00 pm | Inana's Descent to the Nether World (Concert) Organised by: ICONEA (International Council of Near-Eastern Archiomusicology), the Institute of Musical Research and Royal Holloway. A one-of-a-kind concert combining the recitation of Sumerian mythology with Japanese Noh theatre. Chancellor's Hall, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. Tickets: £15/£8


conc. Pre-booking required E [email protected] / www.iconea.org


5:45 pm | Th e Travels and Plant Collections of Aucher-Éloy, Oman, 1838 (Lecture) Shahina Ghazanfar (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew). Organised by: MBI Al Jaber Foundation. Pierre Martin Remi Aucher-Éloy was the fi rst person to make a comprehensive collection of plants from northern Oman (then called the Immamat of Muscat). Th ese, and his other collections from the Orient, provided a major source of material for the eminent Swiss botanist, naturalist and explorer, Pierre Edmund Boissier. Part of the MBI Al Jaber Foundation Lecture Series. Admission free. Pre-registration required. MBI Al Jaber Seminar Room, London Middle East Institute, SOAS, MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square, London WC1B 5EA. E [email protected] W www.mbifoundation.com

Friday 16 February

Various Times | Before Summer Ends (Film) Debut feature from director Maryam Goormaghtigh. Until 22 February. Aft er fi ve years of studying in Paris, Arash has struggled to adapt to life in France and has decided to return to Iran. In the hope of changing his mind, his two friends take him on one last trip across France. Tickets: £9/£7 conc./£5 off -peak. Bertha DocHouse, Curzon Bloomsbury, Th e Brunswick, London WC1N 1AW. T 0330 500 1331 E info@

dochouse.org W http://dochouse.org/

Monday 19 February

5:00 pm | Th e Timurid Vocabulary of Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire of the Sixteenth Century (Seminar) Christopher Markiewicz (University of Birmingham). Organised by: Department of History, School of History, Religions & Philosophies, SOAS. Near & Middle East History Seminar. Convener: Ceyda Karamursel (SOAS). Admission free. Wolfson Lecture Th eatre, Paul Webley Wing (Senate House), SOAS. T 020 7898 4602 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/history/events/

7:00 pm | Kamran Djam Annual Lecture at SOAS: Jinns to Germs Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi (University of Toronto). Organised by: Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS. First of two lectures (second lecture on Tuesday 20 February) by Tavakoli-Targhi on Scientifi c Tropes in Modern Iranian Politics in which he will explore the use of modern scientifi c tropes in Iranian political, cultural and historical discourses from the late nineteenth century to the present. Th e fi rst lecture explains how a nineteenth-century public health crisis prompted the deployment of a wide-range of medical and microbiological concepts to recount Iran's history and to off er prognosis and diagnosis of national, social and political ills. Lecture to be preceded by a reception at 6:00pm in SG37 (ground fl oor, Paul Webley Wing, Senate House). Admission free. Djam Lecture Th eatre (DLT),

SOAS. T 020 7898 4330 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/

Tuesday 20 February

5:30 pm | Kamran Djam Annual Lecture at SOAS: Engineering Governmentality Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi (University of Toronto). Organised by: Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS. Second of two lectures by Tavakoli-Targhi on Scientifi c Tropes in Modern Iranian Politics. In his second lecture Tavakoli explores the concurrent political ascendency of Shi‘i clerics and the national prominence of engineers and engineering schools in the aft ermath of the 1979 Revolution. Admission free. Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7898 4330 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/


1:15 pm | Pharaohs and the Mediterranean world (Gallery Talk) George Hart (independent speaker). Organised by: BM. Admission free. Room 12, BM. T 020 7323 8000 W www.britishmuseum.org

6:00 pm | Law and Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism in the Arab Spring (Book Launch) Nimer Sultany (SOAS). Organised by: School of Law, SOAS. Event to mark the publication of Nimer Sultany's Law and Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism in the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2017). Welcome note: Carol Tan (SOAS). Discussants: Paul O’Connell (SOAS), Martin Loughlin (LSE), Lynn Welchman (SOAS). Chair: Samia Bano (SOAS). Admission free. Wolfson Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/law/events/

7:00 pm | In the service of religion? Th e display of ‘science from the Islamic world’ in the museum (Lecture) Silke Ackermann (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford). Organised by: Islamic Art Circle at SOAS. Chair: Scott Redford (SOAS). Admission free. Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 07714087480 E rosalindhaddon@

gmail.com W www.soas.ac.uk/art/islac/

7:30 pm | Bedouin and Arab Women in Israel Today (Lecture) Sarah Abu-Kaf, PhD (Ben Gurion University). Organised by: Spiro Ark and sponsored by the Pears Foundation. Annual Spiro Tribute Lecture. Th e Bedouins, a minority in Israel, face confl ict between old nomadic customs and modernity with one of the issues being the status and role of women. Tickets: £15 (box offi ce)/£12 (website). JW3, 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3 6ET. T 020 7433 8988 E [email protected] W www.jw3.org.uk / www.spiroark.org

Monday 26 February

5:00 pm | Title TBA (Seminar) Hugh Kennedy (SOAS). Organised by: Department of History, School of History, Religions & Philosophies, SOAS. Near & Middle East History Seminar. Convener: Ceyda Karamursel (SOAS). Admission free. Wolfson Lecture Th eatre, Paul Webley Wing (Senate House), SOAS. T 020 7898 4602 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/history/events/

7:00 pm | Idols and Figural Images in Islam: A Brief Dive into a Perennial Debate (Lecture) Christiane Gruber (University of Michigan). Organised by: Gingko in association with the London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI). Lecture exploring some of the questions and debates concerning idolatry and fi gural representation from the beginning of Islam until today. Admission free. Pre-Registration required E [email protected] Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7823 2312 W www.gingko.org.uk / www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

Tuesday 27 February

5:45 pm | Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space (Lecture) Sharri Plonski (SOAS). Organised by: London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI) and the Centre for Palestine Studies. Lecture by Sharri Plonski to mark the publication of her book, Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space (I.B. Tauris,

Before Summer Ends (see February Events below)


2018) in which she investigates Palestinian communities living inside the Jewish state, and their attempts to disrupt, resist and reshape the physical and symbolic borders that discipline their lives. Chair: Gilbert Achcar (SOAS). Part of the LMEI's Tuesday Evening Lecture Programme on the Contemporary Middle East. Admission free. Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7898 4330/4490 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

6:00 pm | Revolutionary Social Contracts and Long-Term Legacies: Comparing Former and Current Revolutionaries in Dhufar and Western Sahara (Seminar) Alice Wilson (University of Sussex). Organised by: Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London. Wilson examines how revolutionary social contracts create long-term legacies in challenging political conditions of military defeat and protracted exile. Admission free. Pre-registration required. Nash Lecture Th eatre (K2.31), King's Building, Strand Campus, London

WC2R 2LS. E [email protected] W www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/mems/events/

EVENTS OUTSIDE LONDON

Friday 2 February

5:00 pm | Understanding Political Islam: In Search of the Islamist Other, 1973-2013 (Seminar) Francois Burgat (Aix Marseille University). Chair: Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s). Organised by: Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Admission free. Investcorp Lecture Th eatre, St Antony's College, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF. T 01865 284780 E [email protected] W www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

Friday 9 February

5:00 pm | Palestine: Th e Reality (Film) Organised by: Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Film

screening followed by a discussion with the director Karl Sabbagh and Avi Shlaim (St Antony’s). Chair: Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s). Admission free. Investcorp Lecture Th eatre, St Antony's College, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF. T 01865 284780 E [email protected] W www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

Tuesday 13 February

3:00 pm | Sectarianism and Identity Among Syrian Refugees in Jordan (Lecture) Sarah Tobin. Organised by: Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) in partnership wtih the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Sussex. Tobin looks at how the sectarian orientations and localised histories of Syrian refugees have an understudied potential to create new forms of divisiveness in Jordanian society. Admission free. Arts C, Room C333, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RH. T 020 7969 5296 E [email protected] W http://cbrl.org.uk

Friday 16 February

5:00 pm | De Gaulle in Beirut: Th e Chehab Experiment, 1958-1964 (Seminar) Anne Sa’adeh (Dartmouth College). Organised by: Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Chair: Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s). Admission free. Investcorp Lecture Th eatre, St Antony's College, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF. T 01865 284780 E [email protected] W www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre


2:00 pm | Women and the Struggle for Democracy in Iran (Seminar) Mariam Memarsadeghi (Tavaana). Organised by: Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Women’s Rights Research Seminar. Chair: Nazila Ghanea (Oxford University). Admission free. Board Room, Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF. T 01865 284780 E [email protected] W www.sant.ox.ac.uk/

Paperback240 pgs | 216 x 138 mm£16.99 | 9781784532727

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The Practice of News in the Twenty-First Century

How do the media cover the Middle East?

Through a country-by-country approach, this book provides detailed analysis of the complexities of reporting from the Arab World. Each

chapter provides an overview of a country, including the political context, relationships to international politics and the key elements

relating to the place as covered in Western media.The authors explore how the media can be used to serve particular

political agendas on both a regional and international level. They also consider the changes to the media landscape following the growth of

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Edited by Zahera HarbThTh PP titi ff NN ii thth TT tt FFii tt CC tt

REPORTING THE MIDDLE EAST

‘a valuable contribution to existing literature on issues of media representation from and of the Arab world’

- Dr Dima Saber, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research


research-centres/middle-east-centre

Friday 23 February

5:00 pm | Th e challenges of healthcare in Gaza (Seminar) Richard Guy (Oxford University Hospitals), Omar Abdel-Mannan (Paediatrician), Debbie Harrington (Consultant Obstetrician). Organised by: Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Chair: Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s). Admission free. Investcorp Lecture Th eatre, St Antony's College, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF. T 01865 284780 E [email protected] W www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

MARCH EVENTS

Th ursday 1 March

5:30 pm | Digitising the past: Th e Growing Archival movement in Amman (Seminar) Jessica Rose Holland. Organised by: Department of the History of Art & Archaeology, School of Arts SOAS. Research Seminar in Islamic Art. Amman has a host of archival digitisation projects underway, in national institutions, foreign public institutions and private collections; ranging from photographs stretching back 70 years through to multi-media records of past exhibitions at the city’s cultural institutions. Convener: Anna Contadini (SOAS). Admission free. Room B111 (Brunei Gallery), SOAS. E [email protected] W w w w.s oas .ac .uk/ar t /e vents /ressemislamicart/

Friday 2 March

7:30 pm | An Arabian Feast at Leighton House: 1,001 Flavours, Stories and Sounds from Syria Organised by: Leighton House Museum in collaboration with Sakbeh. Doors open at 7:00pm. Leighton House Museum presents its fi rst ever supper club. Guests will enjoy an array of dishes from Syria while learning of their provenance and culinary infl uences. With live music from the region by Yara Zeitoun. Part of the BBC Civilisations Festival.

Tickets: £45/£40 (early-bird). Pre-booking required W www.eventbrite.co.uk Leighton House Museum, 12 Holland Park Road, London W14 8LZ. T 020 7602 3316 / 020 7471 9160 W www.leightonhouse.co.uk

Tuesday 6 March

5:15 pm | Philippine Migration to the Middle East and Migrant International Activism (Seminar) Robyn Magalit Rodriguez (University of California, Davis). Organised by: LSE Middle East Centre. Part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Network. Rodriguez looks at how, through the International Migrants Alliance (IMA), migrant activists have been able to draw attention to issues facing Filipino migrants in the Middle East. Admission free. Pre-registration required. Room 9.04, 9th Floor, Tower 2, LSE, Mobil Court, London WC2A 2AZ. T 020 7955 6198 E [email protected] W www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/

5:45 pm | Ethics as a Weapon of War: Militarism and Morality in Israel (Lecture) James Eastwood (Queen Mary University of London). Organised by: London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI), Centre for Palestine Studies and Centre for Jewish Studies. Eastwood launches his new book Ethics as a Weapon of War: Militarism and Morality in Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2017). What role does ethics play in modern-day warfare? Is it possible for ethics and militarism to exist hand-in-hand? Part of the LMEI's Tuesday Evening Lecture Programme on the Contemporary Middle East. Admission free. Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7898 4330/4490 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

Wednesday 7 March

6:00 pm | Salman's Legacy: Th e Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia (Talk) Madawi Al-Rasheed, (LSE Middle East Centre), Steff en Hertog (LSE), Michael Farquhar (King's College London). Organised by: LSE Middle East Centre. King Salman of Saudi Arabia began his rule

in 2015 confronted with a series of unprecedented challenges. Th is talk launches the edited volume Salman’s Legacy, which interrogates this era and assesses its multiple challenges. Admission free. Pre-registration required. Wolfson Th eatre, New Academic Building, LSE, 54 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LJ. T 020 7955 6198 E [email protected] W www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/

Th ursday 8 March

4:00 pm | Findin Qumran Cave 1Q Artefacts (Lecture) Joan Taylor (King’s College, London). Organised by: Anglo Israel Archaeological Society jointly with with the Palestine Exploration Fund. Admission free. Pre-registration required T 020 7323 8181 W www.britishmuseum.org BP Lecture Th eatre, Clore Education Centre, BM. T 020 8349 5754 E [email protected] W www.aias.org.uk

6:30 pm | Centre for Palestine Studies Annual Lecture Elias Khouri. Organised by: Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS. Th is year's annual lecture will be delivered by the novelist, playwright, critic, and prominent public intellectual Elias Khouri. Chair: Gilbert Achcar (SOAS). Admission free, Brunei Gallery Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 020 7898 4330 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cps/

7:00 pm | Dirar Kalash (Performance) Organised by: Th e Mosaic Rooms. Sound artist Dirar Kalash performs a live set at Th e

Mosaic Rooms. Th e Palestinian multi-instrumentalist combines sound video and movement in his performances which are inspired by daily life. Admission free. Th e Mosaic Rooms, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Tower House, 226 Cromwell Road, London SW5 0SW. T 020 7370 9990 E [email protected] W http://mosaicrooms.org

Saturday 10 March

10:00 am | Th e 2018 British Association for Turkish Area Studies (BATAS) Spring Symposium Organised by: BATAS in association with the London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI). Annual symposium which aims to bring together a diverse range of topics relating to Turkey and its cultural/geopolitical area. Tickets: £10 non-members/£3 BATAS members/ full-time students free. Pre-registration required. T 01962 889014 E [email protected] W http://batas.org.uk/ / www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

Monday 12 March

5:00 pm | Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Th e Fatimid View of the World (Seminar) Yossef Rapoport (Queen Mary University of London). Organised by: Department of History, School of History, Religions & Philosophies, SOAS. Near & Middle East History Seminar. Convener: Ceyda Karamursel (SOAS). Admission free. Wolfson Lecture Th eatre, Paul Webley Wing (Senate House), SOAS. T 020 7898 4602 E ck17@

Ouroboros, 2017 (fi lm still) by Basma Alsharif. Courtesy of the artist and Gallerie Imane Farès. The Gap Between Us (see Exhibitions, p. 33)


TUESDAY LECTURE PROGRAMME ON THE CONTEMPORARYMIDDLE EAST SPRING 2018

6 FebruaryThe Dynamics of Exclusionary Constitutionalism: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State

Mazen Masri, City UniversityOrganised jointly with the Centre for Palestine Studies and the Centre for Jewish Studies

13 FebruaryReading Week

20 February *5:30pm startKamran Djam Annual Lecture at SOAS

Scientifi c Tropes in Modern Iranian Politics: Engineering GovernmentalityMohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, University of Toronto

Organised jointly with the Centre for Iranian Studies

27 FebruaryPalestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space

Sharri Plonski, SOASOrganised jointly with the Centre for Palestine Studies

6 MarchEthics as a Weapon of War: Militarism and Morality in Israel

James Eastwood, Queen MaryOrganised jointly with the Centre for Palestine Studies and the Centre for Jewish Studies

TUESDAYS 5:45 PMKhalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS University of London, Russell Square WC1H 0XG

Admission Free - All Welcome

For further information contact:London Middle East Instutute, SOAS University of London, MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square,

London WC1B 5EA. T: 020 7898 4330 E [email protected] W: www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/

LONDON MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTESOAS University of London


soas.ac.uk W www.soas.ac.uk/history/events/

Tuesday 13 March

6:30 pm | Towfi gh Magazine: a satirical newspaper (Lecture) Abbas Towfi gh. Organised by: Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF). Abbas Towfi gh is known as one of Iran's foremost satirists and was the editorial cartoonist for the renowned Towfi gh Magazine. Th e magazine was the most popular satirical newspaper in Iran but it was eventually banned by the Shah's regime in the early seventies. Lecture in Persian. Tickets: £10 Pre-registration required. Asia House, 63 New Cavendish Street, London W1G 7LP. T 020 3651 2121 E [email protected] W www.iranheritage.org

Wednesday 14 March

7:00 pm | Decagonal and Quasicrystalline Geometry in the Architecture of Medieval Persia and Its Infl uence in the Greater Islamic World (Lecture) Peter J. Lu (Harvard University). Organised by: Islamic Art Circle at SOAS. Th e Seventh Bahari Foundation Lecture in Iranian Art and Culture. Chair: Scott Redford (SOAS). Admission free. Khalili Lecture Th eatre, SOAS. T 07714087480 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/art/islac/

Th ursday 15 March

5:45 pm | Title TBC (Lecture) Chris Doyle (CAABU). Organised by: MBI Al Jaber Foundation. Part of the MBI Al Jaber Foundation Lecture Series. Admission free. Pre-registration required. MBI Al Jaber Seminar Room, London Middle East Institute, SOAS, MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square, London WC1B 5EA. E [email protected] W www.mbifoundation.com

6:30 pm | Th e Arab/Persian Binary: histories of culture and confl ict in the Persian Gulf (Lecture) Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet (University of Pennsylvania). Organised by: Department of International History, LSE. Arabs and Persians have historically been placed in a binary and oppositional relationship. Th is clash of ethnicities becomes

especially prominent in the Persian Gulf, where migrants, sailors, indigenous communities, and laborers have intermingled and forged a unique and multi-ethnic culture that defi es facile categorisation. Chair: Roham Alvandi (LSE). Admission free. Hong Kong Th eatre, Clement House, LSE. T 020 7955 6043 E [email protected] W www.lse.ac.uk/Events/

Friday 16 March

12:00 pm | Architecture and Identity from (Ottoman) Empire to Nation State: Th e emergence of modern Izmir (Seminar) Kalliopi Amygdalou (Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), Athens). Organised by: SOAS Modern Turkish Studies Programme (London Middle East Institute) and sponsored by Nurol Bank. Admission free. MBI Al Jaber Seminar Room, London Middle East Institute, SOAS, MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square, London WC1B 5EA. E [email protected] / [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

Monday 19 March

5:00 pm | Neither Wilson nor Lenin: Toward an Intellectual History of the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 (Seminar) Hussein Omar (University of Oxford). Organised by: Department of History, School of History, Religions & Philosophies, SOAS. Near & Middle East History Seminar. Convener: Ceyda Karamursel (SOAS). Admission free. Wolfson Lecture Th eatre, Paul Webley Wing (Senate House), SOAS. T 020 7898 4602 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/history/events/

Wednesday 21 March

6:30 pm | We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (Book Launch) Wendy Pearlman (Northwestern University). Organised by: LSE Middle East Centre. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, Pearlman's book features a collection of intimate wartime testimonies from a cross-section of Syrians whose lives have

been transformed. Discussant: Malu Halasa (writer and editor). Admission free. Pre-registration required. Room 9.04, 9th Floor, Tower 2, LSE, Mobil Court, London WC2A 2AZ. T 020 7955 6198 E [email protected] W www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/

7:00 pm | Making fakes and copies of antique rugs in Turkey (Lecture) Vedat Karadag (Turkey). Organised by: Oriental Rug and Textile Society, UK. Doors open at 6:00pm. A talk by talk Vedat about new developments in the making of fakes in carpet making in Turkey and elsewhere. Tickets: £7 non-members/£5 students. Membership of one year for 11 events at £20 Th e Church Hall Conference Room, St. James Church, Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL. T 020 7639 7593 E [email protected] W www.orientalrugandtextilesociety.org.uk

Th ursday 22 March

5:00 pm | We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (Lecture) Wendy Pearlman (Northwestern University) Organised by: London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI). How can we make sense of the tragedy in Syria? Pearlman shares a selection of voices from her book We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (HarperCollins 2017) to explain the origins and evolution of the Syrian confl ict, as well as what it has been like for the ordinary people who have lived its unfolding. Admission free. MBI Al Jaber Seminar Room, London Middle East Institute, SOAS, MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square, London WC1B 5EA. T 020 7898 4330/4490 E [email protected] W www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/

Tuesday 27 March

7:00 pm | Th e Preventable: Israeli Fantasies and Techniques of Population Expulsion (Lecture) Amira Hass (Haaretz). Supported by: Th e Mosaic Rooms/A. M. Qattan Foundation and London Review of Books. Edward W. Said London Lecture 2018. ‘As Israeli politics loses its last traces of shame and sheds the fi nal, tattered remains of its liberal pretensions, the danger of more audacious mass

expulsions of the Palestinians from their land is growing.’ – Amira Hass. Tickets: £14/£8 conc. Pre-registration required. Ondaatje Th eatre, Th e Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR. T 020 7370 9990 E [email protected] W http://mosaicrooms.org

EVENTS OUTSIDE LONDON

Friday 2 March

5:00 pm | Religious Freedom in Turkey (Seminar) Alexandre Toumarkine (INALCO, Paris), Ceren Lord (Sasakawa Fellow, Oxford) and Katja Triplett (University of Göttingen and the Oriental Institute). Organised by: Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Chair: Laurent Mignon (St Antony’s). Admission free. Investcorp Lecture Th eatre, St Antony's College, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF. T 01865 284780 E [email protected] W www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

Friday 9 March

5:00 pm | Israel and Palestine: Why Britain Should Recognize the Second State (Seminar) Sir Vincent Fean KCVO. Organised by: Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Chair: Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s). Admission free. Investcorp Lecture Th eatre, St Antony's College, 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF. T 01865 284780 E [email protected] W www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

EXHIBITIONS


Ongoing | Kaveh Golestan Series of portraits, taken between 1975 and 1977, that document sex workers from the former red light district, Shahr-e No, in Tehran, Iran where Golestan witnessed ‘the social, fi nancial, hygienic, behavioural and psychological problems that exist in everyday society … magnifi ed.’ Exhibition


on for twelve months. Tickets: See contact details below. Boiler House Level 2 West, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. T 020 7887 8888 E [email protected] W www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/

Until 10 February | disPLACED Contemporary Arts ReSearch Unit, an interdisciplinary research platform, presents a group exhibition in the P21 Gallery. Upstairs on the ground fl oor, the exhibition brings together artists whose work evokes a wide range of responses to the title theme ‘disPLACED’. Downstairs, Alissar McCreary presents the culmination of her seven-year research into her experience of displacement as a Lebanese refugee. Admission free. P21 Gallery, 21-27 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD. T 020 7121 6190 E [email protected] / [email protected] W http://p21.gallery

Until 10 February | Upright Animal Inaugural exhibition of London-based painter Selma Parlour. Th rough the gossamer-like application of the oil, so intrinsic to her practice, the artist enables colour to appear as a veil rather than a skin, subtly revealing each decision she makes. Her works show how abstract painting can be mediated by its related processes and conventions. Admission free. Pi Artworks, 55 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EG. T 020 7637 8403 E [email protected] W www.piartworks.com

Until 1 March | Hustling Fourth exhibition of the Algerian-born Paris-based artist Mohamed Bourouissa. Informed by the discourses of identity politics, Bourouissa takes the conventionally white American culture of cars and Western and presents us with its appropriation by a black community. Admission free. kamel mennour Gallery, 51 Brook Street, London W1K 4HR. E [email protected] W www.kamelmennour.com

Until 18 March | Surrealism in Egypt: Art et Liberté 1938 – 1948 Th e UK’s fi rst comprehensive exhibition about Art et Liberté, a radical collective of artists and writers based in Cairo. Th e exhibition tracks the history of

the group and explores the socio-political motivations that drove the collective, presenting more than 100 paintings, photographs, drawings, archival documents and fi lm. Tickets: £10/£8. Tate Liverpool Albert Dock, Liverpool Waterfront, Liverpool L3 4BB. T 0151 702 7400 W www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-liverpool

Until 24 March | Plan for Feminist Greater Baghdad, a solo exhibition by Ala Younis Exhibition by the Kuwait-born, Jordan-based artist, writer and curator Ala Younis, composed of two installations that explore Baghdad’s modernist monuments and architecture. Th e original installation anchors itself within the history of a Baghdad gymnasium named aft er Saddam Hussein that was designed by Le Corbusier. Th e second installation brings to the fore the contributions made by female artists, architects and other infl uential characters to the development of Baghdad and its modern monuments. Admission free. Delfi na Foundation, 29/31 Catherine Place, London, SW1E 6DY. T 020 7233 5344 E info@delfi nafoundation.com W www.delfi nafoundation.com

Until 28 March | Remembering the dead in Bahraini Shia

Cemeteries As an unstudied aspect of Bahraini life and illustrating the diversity of Muslim practice in Bahrain and the Gulf, artefacts, graves, and cemeteries are represented in the exhibition by images and a small display of material culture, collected as part of a larger project recording historical gravestone inscriptions on Bahrain. Admission free. Th e Street Gallery, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4ND. E [email protected] / [email protected] W https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/iais/events/exhibitions/

Until 31 March | Th e Gap Between Us First UK solo exhibition by artist and fi lm-maker Basma Alsharif, an LA based artist of Palestinian descent whose work negotiates a new relationship with what it means to create art about Palestine. Featuring three key works from diff erent periods of the artist’s practice. Th e exhibition’s central work will be Ouroboros (2017) Alsharif ’s fi rst feature length fi lm, screened here in a gallery context for the fi rst time. Admission free. Th e Mosaic Rooms, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Tower House, 226 Cromwell Road, London SW5 0SW. T 020 7370 9990 E [email protected] W http://mosaicrooms.org

Wednesday 7 March

Until 6 May | Counter Investigations, Forensic Architecture A survey exhibition of the work of Forensic Architecture, an independent research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. In recent years Forensic Architecture has undertaken a series of investigations internationally into state crimes and human rights violations, spanning events within war zones, and instances of politically and racially motivated violence and killing outside of military confl ict. Tickets: £1 Day Membership/Members free. Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Th e Mall, London SW1Y 5AH. T 020 7930 3647 E [email protected] / W www.ica.art

Video still showing two bombs in mid-air fractions of a second before impact in the Al Tannur neighbourhood in Rafah, Gaza on 1 August 2014. Knowing the distance between the photographer and the exact place where the bombs hit allowed Forensic Architecture to locate a scaled image plane within the 3D model of the neighbourhood and determine the shape, size, and make of the bombs. Image courtesy of Forensic Architecture, 2015. Counter Investigations, Forensic Architecture (see Exhibitions, p. 33)


For further details, please contact:

Develop an understanding

of the complexities of modern and

contemporary Palestine

Explore history, political structure,

development,

culture and society

Obtain a multi-disciplinary overview

Enrol on a flexible, inter-disciplinary

study programme

NEWMA PALESTINE STUDIES

Photograph © Iselin-Shaw

www.soas.ac.uk

Dr Adam HaniehE: [email protected]

February – March 2018 The Middle East in London 35February-March 2014 The Middle East in London 35

An intensive five-week programme which includes two courses: an Arabic Language Course (introductory or intermediate) and another on ‘Government and Politics of the Middle East.

FEES

Session (5 weeks) Programme fee* Accommodation fee**

24 June–26 July 2013 (two courses) £2,500 from £300/week

* Early bird discounts of 10% apply to course fees before 1 March 2013.

** Accommodation fees must be paid by 1 March 2013 to secure accommodation. Please check our website from mid-October 2012 for confi rmed prices.

For more information, please contact Louise Hosking on

[email protected]. Or check our website www.soas.ac.uk/lmei

Middle East Summer School24 June – 26 July 201323 June-24 July 2014

* An early bird discount of 10% applies to course fees before 15 April 2014.

** Rooms can be booked at the Intercollegiate Halls which are located in the heart of Bloomsbury: www.halls.london.ac.uk.

LH2

y

18 June - 19 July 2018

Beginners Arabic (Level 1)

Beginners Arabic (Level 2)Th is course is a continuation of Beginners Arabic Level 1. It completes the coverage of the grammar and syntax of Modern Standard Arabic and trains students in reading, comprehending and writing with the help of a dictionary more complex Arabic sentences and passages.

Culture and Society in the Middle East Th is course examines the major cultural patterns and institutions of the MENA region. It is taught through a study of some lively topics such as religious and ethnic diversity, impact of the West, stereotyping, the role of tradition, education (traditional and modern), family structure and value, gender politics, media, life in city, town and village, labour and labour migration, the Palestinian refugee problem and Arab exile communities, culinary cultures, music and media, etc.

Th is course provides an introduction to the politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It gives on a country by country basis, an overview of the major politicalissues and developments in the region since the end of the First World War and addresses key themes in the study of contemporary Middle East politics, including: the role of the military, social and economic development, political Islam, and the recent uprisings (the ‘Arab Spring’).

Government and Politics ofthe Middle East

18 June-19 July 2018 (two courses)

An intensive five-week programme which includes a choice of two courses: a language one (Persian or Arabic, the latter at two levels) and another on the 'Government and Politics of the Middle East' or 'Culture and Society in the Middle East'.

To qualify for entry into this course, students should have already completed at least one introductory course in Arabic.

Th is is an introductory course in Modern Standard Arabic. It teaches students the Arabic script and provides basic grounding in Arabic grammar and syntax. On completing the course, students should be able to read, write, listen to and understand simple Arabic sentences and passages. Th is course is for complete beginners and does not require any prior knowledge or study of Arabic.

Beginners Persian (Level 1)Th is is an introductory course which aims to give the students a reasonable grounding in the basics of Persian grammar and syntax as well as to enable them to understand simple and frequently used expressions related to basic language use. Th ey will be able to hold uncomplicated conversations on topics such as personal and family information, shopping, hobbies, employment as well as simple and direct exchanges of information related to familiar topics. By the end of the course they will also progress to read simple short texts.

TimetableCourses are taught Mon-Th u each week. Language courses are taught in the morning (10am-1pm) and the Politics and Culture Courses are taught in two slots in the aft ernoon (2:00-3:20 and 3:40-5:00pm).

£2,700

* An early bird discount of 10% applies to course fees before 30 April 2018. A discount of 15% applies to SOAS alumni and 20% to SOAS students.

(one course) £1,400

A limited number of partial tuition fee waivers of up to 50% off the fee are available for SOAS’s current students on a fi rst come, fi rst serve basis (please enquire).


Kamran Djam Annual Lectures at SOAS

Centre for Iranian Studies, London Middle East Ins tute

Scien fi c Tropes in Modern Iranian Poli cs

Professor Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, University of Toronto

19 and 20 February 2018

Lecture One: Jinns to Germs 7.00pm, Monday 19 February, Djam Lecture Theatre (DLT). Preceded by a recep on at 6.00pm in SG37 (ground fl oor, Paul Webley Wing, Senate House)

Lecture Two: Engineering Governmentality 5.30pm, Khalili Lecture Theatre

SOAS University of London, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

Admission Free - All Welcome

Enquiries Tel. No. 020 7898 4330 E-mail [email protected]

Website www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/

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