Invitation
Muwatin’s 29th Annual Conference
“Strategic Thinking in the Time of Monsters and their Wars: The Status of Rights and Prospects of Liberation”
29 and 30 October 2024
The conference will be held on campus in Birzeit University and online
Muwatin’s 29th Annual conference aims to understand the Palestinian question in its broader regional and global context. In this ambit, the Israeli occupation is seen as a part of a global colonial system that has its proxies, who play different roles in multiple domains.
A variety of international and local experts and academics from various backgrounds and regions, from a wide range of perspectives will participate in this conference to discuss the broader context of the liberation battle, what the time of monsters revealed, and the creaking of international law. In addition to the interplay of internal tensions and external politics, regional failures, and lessons learned for the Palestinian National Project.
The conference will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, 29 and 30 October 2024, in a hybrid setting at Birzeit University on campus in Hall 234 at Muwatin Institute, and online at the same time. The conference will be broadcasted live on the Muwatin Institute channel on YouTube and through the Institute’s Facebook page, as well as the possibility of participation via Zoom, which requires registration previously by clicking here.
The platforms through which the conference can be accessed in the virtual space are:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MuwatinInstituteBirzeitUniversity (We recommend subscribing to the channel to receive reminders of the conference and any other updates.)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MuwatinInstitute1
Zoom Registration:
https://birzeit-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ec6oAT91RlGuxVGAVAaclw
Note: Simultaneous translation will be provided
Concept Note
Muwatin’s 29th Annual Conference
“Strategic Thinking in the Time of Monsters and their Wars: The Status of Rights and Prospects of Liberation”
To be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, 29-30 October 2024
The Palestinian people continue to suffer from colonization in its various manifestations, including displacement, settlement, occupation, looting of resources, exploitation, apartheid, and genocide despite the long struggle, remarkable heroism, and epic steadfastness they have shown. Much of this is accompanied by the reduction of liberation to symbols and secondary structures instead of people's emancipation, a splintered bio-politic, a hazy national project, and the absence of a unified resistance/national front. The reduction of liberation includes replacing the struggle for a homeland with one for a state and fragmenting that state whilst it is still nascent. These repercussions resulted in absenting liberation prospects, and a growing scepticism concerning national project, which was recently seen as a given postulate. Even in light of the growing unmasking of Zionist racism internationally, the transformation of Israel into a burden on its allies, the impressive global popular solidarity with the Palestinian people, and the shift to new thresholds of condemnation of the Israeli occupation and its practices within the instruments of international law, the Palestinian political structures are still unable to achieve any breakthrough towards emancipation and the realization of the rights of the Palestinian people.
The most recent wave of criminal onslaught is carried out while we, along with the rest of the world, witness symptoms of transformation in the world order. While there are still more questions than answers about this new global order, we have already witnessed some signs of struggle over its nature and its forces. Amongst these signs are, inter alia, the polarization of powers between and within countries, and the struggle of imperialist powers to maintain their status. However, on the other front, we also witness new transformations coupling the Palestinian emancipatory project with the new world order. This is evident in the wide support for the Palestinian people’s rights, which is expressed by the vision of those who stand in solidarity of the unity of the global struggle against the common source of economic, social, political, and environmental challenges facing humanity. These are embodied in the spread of poverty, unemployment, violent conflicts, multifaceted oppression, widening social and class gaps, the erosion of education and health systems, and the destruction of the environment. Thus, there is a need to reshape the Palestinian national project in a manner that strengthens its emancipatory component, enabling it to serve as an aspiration to broad popular segments around the world, and in a way that terminates any illusions of a possibility of achieving freedom in alliance and coordination with its enemies
The reality of the national project and the new world order share being part of a phase that Gramsci designates as “the time of monsters”; it is the time when the old is dying, and the new is struggling to be born. The monsters in this context are the forces of the old world order, which aggressively seek to maintain their threatened hegemony and survive while diminishing. The essence of the conflict does not lie in the creation, building, and consolidation – the birth of the new reality, but rather in the nature of the new-born – what it represents. The dying old is struggling to maintain the status quo with all its might. It uses force, wealth, power, and sway. It distracts efforts, expands wars and conflicts, destruction, and entrenches and reproduces racism, fragments identities in conjunction with local prejudice, exclusion, oppression, and disinformation. These forces are working hard to suppress the newborn, attempting to buy its loyalty in advance, lower its expectations, and keep it preoccupied in preserving its own survival that is threatened by hunger, thirst, violence, and terrorism. The alliance between the imperialist powers (who initiated the “war on terrorism”) and terrorists themselves is an indicator of how despicable these monsters are.
The danger posed by the “monsters” increases if it remains unchecked. It grows and ends with self-destruction and destruction of the world with it - this is exactly what precedes world wars. Imperialist forces increasingly resort to threats, posturing, military interventions, and proxy wars are expressions of this danger, which today reached the threshold of threatening to use nuclear weapons. Those promoting nuclear weapons are not from besieged North Korea, but rather NATO members, Russia, and, recently, the Israeli Prime Minister in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Suggesting, brazenly, the use of nuclear arms to deter Iran - a crowning of the Israeli monster’s trek. Even if the expression betrayed him - as Israeli speakers pointed out - this is the Freudian slip par excellence. Regardless to the tools, the drive for killing, destruction, ethnic cleansing, pushing the ongoing Nakba to new levels, and the genocide in Gaza is what defines the Israeli role at this stage. The brutal imperialist nature of Israel’s supporter states also surfaced and became clear, bypassing their traditional silence on Israeli crimes and declaring their readiness and desire to contribute to the war of extermination against the Palestinians.
There is another side to the story, the heroes who are actively confronting the monsters. Over the last two decades a counter front has emerged; wrought by progressive movements aspiring to change, justice, equality, freedom, and human dignity. Naturally, these forces have not emerged out of thin air; born out the forces the old regime suppressed and exploited, they were formed, and shaped by the cumulative transformations of previous experiences. The forces’ efforts to create change have taken various forms, used soft and hard methods, acted from within the system and from outside it, by trying to join it and by trying to stand against it, but these techniques have yet to mature. To contribute to maturing these techniques, in addition to monitoring the manifestations of the crisis of the failing (neoliberal) world order, we need to analyse it, and identify the essential features that must be changed and ensure the targeting of root-causes and not merely their manifestations. We need to demarcate the actual forces that must be confronted (and not suffice confronting their proxies), and identify and create organizational forms and structures that enable progressive forces to confront these monsters.
The central question that this conference seeks to address lies in understanding the radical transformations of what constitutes the confrontation, its elements, context and tools. Confrontation between emancipatory and hegemonic forces is not new, but the future context of the confrontation is. Hence, its understanding is a condition for the success of the struggle for emancipation. The “monsters” introduce new details, tools and limits to the confrontation daily. They utilise the many tools in their possession to change the rules of the game continually, and constantly create secondary theatres in an attempt to distract the efforts of the forces that challenge their hegemony. What is happening at the level of the instruments of different branches of international law, such as the two international courts at the Hague, points to the struggle of forces to contain these instruments.
Among multiple things can be pointed out, in addition to the demising neoliberal era of the capitalist system, is that neoliberalism has destroyed elements, which are central to modernity, like liberalism, the nation-state, and the centrality of territory (place). All these elements are foundational for the concept of national liberation, including the contemporary understanding of self-determination, the prevailing mode of political organization (parties), and the “glue” that forms a people. All these aspects are gradually diminishing. Therefore, it is likely that these features will not belong to the new world order, unless they acquire new forms, and significance that result from the reproduction of modernity’s features in post-modern formats. For the national liberation project, this means that adhering to the old understanding of national liberation without connecting it to global emancipatory agendas will serve the colonial project by suppressing and dwarfing national liberation (along with other emancipatory projects).
Such transformations will impact the Palestinian national project in direct and essential ways. Although the core of the project (emancipation) will stay the same, achieving it is dependent on the changing context. This implies the necessity of reshaping the project to apposite the new context. These transformations will have drastic implications on the place of democracy, which can keep diminishing until it becomes ineffective in the event of a shift towards oligarchic political systems. Otherwise, it will become more critical and central in the event of the success of emancipatory projects, and will enable moving beyond the liberal system; which limited democracy to its procedures, and beyond the neoliberal system, which limited procedures to processes of control and compliance.
Regarding human rights and its system, it will, in all cases, have a place on the agenda of the new world, unlike the Palestinian national project, which the reactionary camp seeks to abolish, and unlike democracy that was removed from the forefront of the global political scene. Despite the fact that the international human rights regime clearly failed to liberate people, or even to guarantee a minimum level of human dignity, human rights discourse will likely be adopted by both camps (conservative and progressive). It will probably continue to take an intermittent pattern among the conservative camp, and a discourse that often goes beyond it among the progressive camp, and, however, the struggle to gain legitimacy by both camps will force them to maintain a human rights discourse. Just as the status of human rights took a turn with the emergence of the neoliberal era, it is expected to transform again with its end. The nature of human rights and their system will become the concern of emancipatory forces: will the system include an emancipatory effect rather than playing the role of neutralizing conflicts and turning them into demands or pacifying tools that make promises and place hopes for a better future without confronting the obstacles to achieving just solutions, or even confronting the obstacles to a future altogether.
These questions take the Palestinian national project to a more complex space for two incompatible sets of causes that have similar consequences. The first set relates to the distortions and hardships that are characteristic to the demise of neoliberalism, which left its fingerprints on the Palestinian national movement. These include the transformations that led to the fragmentation of this movement and its division into two groups (national forces and Islamic forces), coinciding with neoliberalism’s fruition of identities (ethnic, sectarian, regional, and other) which contributed to the fading and disappearance of nationalist and class tendencies from the political scene. The second set relates to the occupation that belonged to the colonial era that preceded the era of national liberation (the third quarter of the last century), and today it belongs to the stage of decay of the neoliberal era. At this stage, neoliberalism resorts to utilising tools that it borrows from previous eras, because it cannot suffice with neocolonial tools. This need for old colonial tools made Israel a leading functional model of rotting neoliberalism. This is why threatened regimes overcome their reluctance to cooperate with the state that poses a clear threat to global security, since this state can provide a lifeline for expired regimes.
The above implies that researchers who study the Palestinian national project should pay attention to the handicap of limiting the analysis of the struggle against occupation by perceptions of classical colonialism (regardless to its settler colonial nature). Such a limitation, produces the risk of limiting national liberation to the national framework of striving for a state, and results in losing the ability to diagnose the transformations that have occurred in the Zionist project with its neoliberal transformations, and the subsequent transformations towards fascism that we witness today. Such framing will lead to defects in the process of directing the libertarian compass.
Rubrics
Muwatin’s 29th Annual Conference will discuss the above-mentioned issues in an ambit that looks at the Palestinian question in its broader regional and global context. In this ambit, the Israeli occupation is seen as a part of a global colonial system that has its proxies, who play different roles in multiple domains. These will be discussed under three main rubrics:
First Rubric: Diagnosing the crisis of the world order and its impact on the Palestinian national project. This rubric discusses the crisis of the existing world order, and the prospects of its survival of demise. It also discussed manifestations of the cracks that indicate its inability to reproduce itself, and the tools and options of conservative forces to get out of their crisis. Additionally, it seeks to examine possible effects on the Palestinian national project in light of the transformations taking place at the global level, which include the diminishing impact of international law at the backdrop of global transformations, and the failure of the international legal system in stopping the genocide in Gaza (as it failed to stop other manifestations of colonialism).
Second Rubric: Mechanisms that can impact world order transformations. This rubric aims to discuss the nature of the powers that are able to contribute to change, and the potential of the Palestinian national project’s involvement in the birth of a new world order. It also seeks to discuss the nature, tools, prospects, and place of emerging progressive and emancipatory forces, and their potential contribution to current transformations, as well as their relation to the Palestinian national project. In addition, this rubric seeks to examine the status of democracy in light of existing transformations and the agendas of the progressive forces. Moreover, it aims to discuss the prospects of human rights and their ability to form an emancipatory tool in the new world order, and ways to influence the international legal system to facilitate the achievement of these goals.
Third Rubric: Features of the Palestinian National Project in the future context. This rubric focuses on the requirements for the transformation, stability and success of the Palestinian national project in light of the existing international turmoil, and the internal transformations needed to absorb and influence them. It aims to examine what is required by Palestinians to avoid possible negative consequences of the world order transformations. It will also look into the scope of what Palestinians can do in order to maintain freedom and human rights in the centre of the Palestinian national project - a component of new alliances and engagement with global progressive forces – in parallel with confronting the ongoing colonial acts in creating “facts on the ground” such as displacement, land expropriation, and genocide.
Abstracts
Basem Ezbidi |
Friends and Foes of Palestine in the Anticipated World Order |
|
This intervention aims to outline the initial features of the anticipated international order from the perspective of its ability to influence the Palestinian situation (their rights and aspirations) on the one hand, and the ways in which that order can be employed by Palestinians to formulate a new perspective through which allies and opponents or friends and enemies are determined, in a formula that is consistent with the requirements of the new order, and in line with the requirements of liberation and emancipation on the other hand. The yearlong war of extermination in the Gaza Strip has had multifaceted effects, most notably its repercussions within the region, amidst intense competition between many regional and international powers over the fate of the region and the future of the international order as a whole. The prevailing international order, dominated by the United States and Western countries, has enabled Israel to obtain unlimited support and protection to implement its plans against the Palestinians in all issues and at all levels. Including concealing and justifying the crimes of genocide and the practices of racism and terrorism against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (including Jerusalem), and inside Palestine for decades. The international system has provided protection and support to Israel through entities and parties allied with Israel, consisting of groups, political parties, governments, and economic, military, and financial power centers, and in contrast, there are parties hostile to Israel, consisting of supporters of the Palestinians, who see Israel as a closed colonial state riddled with extremism and racism. |
Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim |
Palestine and the Global Order |
|
The paper revolves around the close connection of the Palestinian issue to the transformations accompanying the development and change in the contemporary international system. Its connection began with the collapse of the era of empires, specifically the Ottoman Empire, and the establishment of the League of Nations, which granted Britain a mandate that included a pledge to establish a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Britain helped and facilitated Jewish migration to Palestine with the rise of Nazism in Germany and the outbreak of World War II. With the end of the war and the establishment of the United Nations, which, according to the balance of powers, issued the Partition Resolution and later recognized the State of Israel on most of the Palestinian land. The Cold War ended with attempts that succeeded in integrating Israel through peace agreements with Jordan and the Oslo Agreement with the PLO and in normalizing its relations with its Arab surrounding. The war on Gaza Strip on 7 October gave Israel free rein to implement its plan for a final solution and to remove the issue from the agenda forever. The question that this intervention will try to answer is: will Israel succeed in implementing its goals and ending the issue forever? or will the current international system, which is experiencing a transitional phase from a unipolar world to a multipolar world, play a role in thwarting its plan and halting its project taking into account the state of conflict prevailing in the world’s vital region? |
Raef Zreik |
Palestine: Universal Morals and the Hypothesis of Double Standards |
|
There is often talk about the contradiction between the human rights values preached by the West and America in particular, on the one hand, and its absolute support for Israel, its occupation, and its trampling on the rights of the Palestinians, on the other hand. However, this phenomenon is neither new nor strange. Didn’t John Locke preach about freedom and own slaves at the same time? Didn’t Kant look at equality but look at the hierarchy of races? Can it be said that there is a contradiction between the two, and how can they be reconciled together? The intervention will attempt to understand the nature of this question and the question of what is called double standards and how can standards be non-double? |
Issam Makhoul |
Features of Fascism in Israel: Global Trends and the Local Structural Crisis |
|
The judicial coup was not the reason for the fascist transition in Israel, but rather it was the inevitable result of the maturation of the conditions for the fascist transition and the explosion of the deep and ongoing structural political and strategic crisis that preceded the elections, and stemmed from the crisis of the Israeli occupation and settlement project that reached its peak on the ground, and is no longer able to advance by the usual occupation methods under the cover of law, as long as the Palestinian people are strongly present on their land. The option of legalizing fascism, the war of extermination and displacement of the Palestinian people, and legitimizing their threat of a new Nakba deepened in public, before the eyes and ears of the world. The fascists seek to get Israel out of its structural crisis by ridding the occupation of the Palestinian people, instead of ridding the Palestinian people of the occupation. They rely in their project on pushing for a plan to finally resolve the conflict with the Palestinian people based on the surplus of Israeli power in the time of monsters, and the complicity of the official international system led by the United States of America, and the inaction and inability of others. According to the “decisive plan,” the Palestinians have two choices: either submit to the occupation, or be displaced, or die and be exterminated by the force of the unbridled occupation. Thus, the troubled Zionism entered a higher stage of blatant dictatorial and terrorist savagery, seeking to improve its positions and expand the scope of its functional role in the imperialist system “in the time of monsters.” |
Ibrahim Fraihat |
Genocide in Gaza: How the Region Understands and Responds with It |
|
There is no single Arab regional position towards the genocide in the Gaza Strip. Perhaps it is permissible to talk about a single sentiment of regret for the mass killing in the Strip, but the position is governed by several factors, including, the need to distinguish between the official and popular positions. The official Arab position stems from the regional equation, which is exhausted by the search for a "regional balance" in which the most important players are countries such as Iran, Turkey, Israel, the Gulf States, Egypt, and Jordan. This level is dominated by the struggle towards "expanding influence", which is represented by countries like Iran and its allies in the region versus "limiting Iranian influence", which is led by countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Emirates. There is a silent, absent bloc represented by countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Oman. As for the popular level, the vast majority of sympathizes with the tragedies befalling the Palestinians, it is paralyzed at the level of action due to the presence of other factors stronger than sympathy. Including, firstly, that the Arab citizen, after the defeat of the Arab Spring at the hands of the forces of the counter-revolution, has returned to his position of helplessness and being unable to act in the face of the powerful dictatorships that are trying to control all aspects of political life. Secondly, the ideologies that historically shaped the political positions of the Arab citizen have declined, and became divided in their positions regarding the genocide due to important factors, most notably the position regarding Syria and the “legacy of the Arab Spring” which created a sharp polarization that the Arab society is still suffering from to this day. This intervention will address the dilemmas that led to the paralysis of the Arab position at the official and popular levels and limited positions to the framework of “human sympathy” rather than an effective political position. |
Maha Abdallah and Tomaso Ferrando |
Food and Genocide: The Interplay between Zionist Ideology and Israel's Protracted War |
|
The paper looks into Israel’s methods of warfare over the past year against the Palestinian people, focusing on the use of starvation, famine, mass incarceration, torture and ill-treatment. By exposing these practices – which constitute violations of human rights, grave breaches of international law, and amount to internationally recognized crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide – the paper seeks to explore the reasoning behind Israel’s use of such tactics and frames them in the longer strategy that has been unfolding for over a century. In particular, it examines how these methods are intertwined with the Zionist ideology and the broader settler-colonial project aimed at eliminating and replacing the native (i.e., the Palestinian). To set the scene, the paper argues that the systematic and widespread starvation, famine, torture and ill-treatment of a significant component of the population could result in its destruction as a group, in whole or in part, while also further substantiating the intent element of destruction and elimination. In exploring that, the paper draws on Israel’s prolonged assault on Palestinian right to food, food sovereignty and self-subsistence, which aimed at the weakening of any and all forms of subsistence, autonomy and resistance, with the goal of establishing domination and replacing the native. Rather than an exceptional act of mass atrocity, the weaponization of food and food system is a permanent feature of the Zionist genocidal project that should have received attention from the international law community and international law long before the last year. The paper hopes to contribute not only to the emancipation of international law in theory and practice but, more importantly, to the emancipation of the Palestinian people and the land, restoring their dignity and integrity as fundamental pillars of their rights and liberation. |
Gentian Zyberi |
Using Permanent International Courts and Key International Human Rights Treaty Bodies to Demand the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People |
|
International law is an important tool for regulating State relations and for clarifying international legal rights and obligations at the international level. Especially over the last two decades, international law has been a key reference for addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the insistence of Palestine. That enhanced role for international law has been reflected in numerous resolutions by the UN Security Council and the General Assembly and in periodical UN reports. This paper analyzes the use of international law by the Palestinian authority to pursue its main cause, namely the self-determination of the Palestinian people and the end of Israeli occupation, by becoming a party to many international human rights and humanitarian law treaties and by engaging with the two permanent international courts, namely the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the main UN human rights treaty bodies, especially the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). The paper scrutinizes these Palestinian efforts from the early 2000s and the mixed responses they have received from various parts of the organized international community. The analysis is organized in three main sections. The first section tracks the engagement of Palestine with the ICC since January 2009, concerning ensuring individual criminal responsibility for the mass atrocities committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The second section tracks relevant cases and Palestine’s engagement with the ICJ, since the first advisory proceedings launched in late 2003, concerning the issue of self-determination and ending the Israeli occupation. The third, and final section, provides some reflections on what the engagement of Palestine with these permanent international courts and main UN human rights treaty bodies, especially CERD, can bring about concerning the right to self-determination and the end of Israeli occupation. |
Nadeen Al-Taher & Vasanthi Venkatesh |
|
International Law and Divestment Strategies: Counter-hegemonic Leveraging of Legal |
|
This research paper explores the potential for a counter-hegemonic reimagining of international law in the context of Palestinian liberation. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, decolonial critical race theory (CRT), and liberatory social movement frameworks, we critically examine power dynamics and resistance strategies within existing legal and political structures. Our analysis is grounded in first-hand experiences with our university divestment movement in a settler-colonial context (Canada). We interrogate whether the current global order represents a Gramscian interregnum, offering possibilities for transformative change, or merely an illusion perpetuated by entrenched hegemonic systems. By synthesizing theoretical insights with empirical observations, this study contributes to the scholarly discourse on law's role in emancipatory movements and offers practical insights for challenging oppressive legal structures. We assert that the crisis of the global order, particularly in the context of Palestine, presents a complex interplay of challenges and opportunities when viewed through the lenses of CRT, anti-capitalism and decolonial frameworks. While concerns exist about the potential for newly emancipated nations to perpetuate neoliberal systems against their own populations, a more nuanced analysis reveals that the struggle for Palestinian statehood offers significant positive potential for broader emancipatory movements. As such, the fragmentation of the nascent Palestinian state, while problematic for certain camps, can be viewed as a manifestation of the simultaneous struggle against neoliberal and colonial forces. This fragmentation, paradoxically, has led to a diversification of resistance strategies, encompassing legal, economic, and cultural dimensions, as evinced from our experience with the university divestment movement in Canada. |
George Giacaman |
US Support for Israel: Strategic Asset or Power of Zionist Lobbies? The War of Extermination as a Model |
|
This has been a debate for several years: Does the explanation for the US support for Israel, over the years, lie in its being a strategic asset, or the "spearhead of American imperialism", or does it lie in the power of the Zionist lobbies in the US and in the western countries in general? This paper argues that the problem of much that has been written about the topic lies in: 1. The starting point of many explanations for the reasons behind this relation, which sets from a universal view of the conflicts taking place in the world and the alliances accompanying it, neglects the facts and concrete evidence that contradicts considering Israel a strategic asset for the US, in order to “fit” this relation in a popular theoretical framework. 2. The formulation of the opposing position, that the support provided by the US is due, to a large extent, to the role of the Zionist lobbies, neglects a good number of "services" provided by Israel, in specific historical stages. However, these "services" are not enough on their own to explain the reasons for this support. 3. The paper will not argue that "the best of things is moderation," but rather that the thesis of “a strategic asset” cannot alone explain the nature of this relation in the face of clear contradictory evidence (which is often neglected), that such thesis does not suffice to explain the generous support for Israel over the years, and that the main reason for this support is the dynamics of internal politics in the US, as the war of genocide clearly demonstrated. |
|
|
Omar Qassis and Hadil Ayoub |
|
Ecological Imperialism and Capitalist Hegemony: Olives and Forests in Palestine |
|
There is only one imperialism- which is the latest articulation of capitalism- yet its impact on shaping the world takes many forms. The monster has many faces and tentacles, but the basic elements of its totality are unchanging. Ecological Imperialism is one of those forms. Ecological Imperialism is the process where settler states in their colonization of indigenous lands shaped and changed the landscape as part of the process of elimination and domination and for the purpose of raw material extraction for the benefit of metropolitan capital. After centuries of the expansion of capitalism and its many forms and faces, the planet’s delicate ecological balance is at ever increasing risks. Using two strategic case studies, on olive cultivars and afforestation we argue that the settler regime in Palestine is at the forefront of developing capitalist agriculture and by studying it we see the strengths and weaknesses of global capitalist hegemony. |
Gamze Erdem Turkelli & Thalia Kruger |
Responsibilities of Belgian Universities with regard to cooperation with Israeli Universities |
|
Belgian universities, like many universities in European and worldwide, have multiple cooperation agreements with Israeli universities. A part of this cooperation takes the form of agreements for student and staff exchange. Another part is collaboration in research projects, often funded by the European Union. Israeli universities' close ties with the State of Israel and complicity in its abuses of human rights and of international law has been sufficiently documented (e.g. Wind, 2024). These ties include the development of technologies and strategies to uphold the occupation. International law is clear that all States have an erga omnes obligation to not commit and not be complicit in the violations of peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens). The aim of our paper is to discuss the duties of universities within this legal framework. In Flanders (northern part of Belgium), an inter-university council has adopted a human-rights test for collaboration with foreign universities. At many Flemish universities, the collaboration with Israeli universities was one of the initial applications of this test. The test was conducted in the context of the human-rights violations in the Gaza Strip and occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel. The application of the test has caused tension and fierce opposition. We argue that universities have a link to States and thus are also bound by obligations of human rights law and international law, in particular peremptory norms. Even if funders such as the EU do not act to discharge their duty under international law, universities should still do so. |
Gilbert Achcar |
The Poverty of Arab Strategic Thinking in Confronting the Zionist State |
|
This intervention will discuss successive failed Arab strategies in confronting the Zionist state, be they strategies of states or of resistance movements in their wide variety, including the latter's reliance on the former as a feature of its poverty, in the light of the basic strategic considerations upon which any rational strategy must be built. |
Larbi Sadiki |
"Why didn't you knock on the tank walls? Why didn't you say anything?" |
|
The global stand for Palestine rebuffs the idea of reliance on Arab solidarity for liberation. The Arab establishment has been noted by its inaction. In fact, some would even suggest that there is a collusion between the Israel occupiers and some Arab regimes …The dichotomies involved warrant exploration and critical assessment against the backdrop of the genocidal war in the Gaza Strip and Israeli aggression against the West Bank. |
Faisal Darraj |
The Decline of Palestinian Popular Culture |
|
The initial goals of the Palestinian national movement promised liberation and the recovery of Palestine. Sometimes it went too far and saw itself as an Arab vanguard leading all Palestinians and Arabs, before those who said so became another image of official Arab political life, which is characterized by lifelessness and hostility to freedom, whether individual or societal. This is why the Palestinian national condition seems tragic, as the center that speaks in its name has become comfortable with its authority and has ignored the clearly effective national action. Palestinian factions recognize the center and seek refuge in it, just as the helpless person seeks refuge with a more helpless party. Thus, we can talk about the political decomposition of the national project, which is evident in the absence of an organic relationship between the people and the "leadership", and the transfer of helplessness from the center to its peripheries. The intervention addresses three phenomena: the general decline that characterizes the Palestinian national reality in its basic joints: political organizations, popular awareness, and the decomposition of the supposed political references. |
Belal Shobaki |
Reimagining the Palestinian National Project: Movement-ship versus Partisanship |
|
The dilemma of the Palestinian National Project was born at the moment when talk of building state institutions began in the pre-liberation phase. It became clear and apparent when the "state" institutions became concrete whereas the state remained an illusion. It was entrenched when some liberation movements turned into political parties, and it worsened when the Palestinian had a political party in a position of authority, in an authority that has no control over its own affairs, and in a state structure that is being gnawed by corruption, and by undemocratic practices that produced a hate speech, turning Palestinians against each other, while some are adapting to the occupation, and some are coordinating, and cooperating. This fragile Palestinian reality, whose features were not pursed on the economic and social levels in the previous section, cannot pose a threat to the Zionist settler colonial project, nor can it bend the transformations, to its advantage, in the anticipated world order. The most that Palestinians can achieve lies in refusing to surrender to the idea of adaptation under the slogan of realism, or cooperation with the occupation under the umbrella of pragmatism, and refusing to allow Israel to resolve it as it sees fit. And that is a risky step, especially with the absence of both a solid Palestinian land and a supportive reality, regionally and internationally. Building on this belief, this paper argues that the Palestinian’s capacity to move from the task of the prevention of conflict resolution by Zionism through ethnic cleansing, genocide, displacement and all policies of slow and effective violence to the task of stopping these policies as a first stage, and from there to push towards obtaining Palestinian rights as a later stage, requiring a complex process that begins with the superiority of the movement. The leftist must distinguish in the freedom of the person involved in the national project from activating the management of the commercial institution, so the occupation is not exempted from the intoxication of the act, the entire world is addressed subject to formation in a Palestinian language of investigation that opposes settler colonialism and racism, all partnerships and alliances on this basis, and drawing the dynamics on the ground to serve this goal. |
Joshua Sealy-Harrington |
Strategic Essentialism and the Limits of Liberal (and Critical) Thought in Palestinian Liberation |
|
This article will reflect on the past year of anti-Palestinian reprisal across North America, which I personally and severely confronted first-hand. The article will be situated at Columbia University and Toronto Metropolitan University, two institutions that specifically pride themselves on political dissent, and also, that I was directly affiliated with—the former as a doctoral student, and the latter as, at the time, a professor. Aligned with the theme of “strategic thinking”, the article will examine the uses/abuses of “identity” in socio-legal discourse and explore the political and tactical purposes to which identity is deployed. It will argue that:
|
