In this article, we analyze the European Union’s (EU) approach to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, showing that there is a wide gap between its normative opposition to the occupation, Israel’s expanding settlement project, and the EU’s foreign trade policy. Our argument is not only that there is no evidence of norm diffusion from the EU to Israel, but that within the EU itself there is no diffusion from the normative political stance to the EU’s economic interests. The Israeli case suggests that
Studies have shown that human rights education (HRE) can help promote democracy and social progress by empowering individuals and groups and pushing governments to fulfill their obligations towards residents. Assuming that such assessments are accurate, I argue that the successful application of human rights education requires much more than what is generally discussed in the scholarly literature: adjustments to curriculum, additional resources, and adequate teacher training programs. Using Israel as a case
This essay analyzes the impact of Israeli unilateralism—specifically that of its settlement project—on the two-state solution. After exploring the relationship between unilateralism and power, the authors show, inter alia, that in-migration has accounted for about half the settlement growth since the international embrace of the land-for peace formula in 1991, that the level of in-migration does not fluctuate according to government composition (right or left), and that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have spurred rather than inhibited settlement expansion.
In the Israeli media, the message conveyed to Hebrew-speaking audiences has been that the uprisings in the Arab world are clashes between ethnic, religious or tribal groups. This depiction fits well within the representational framework of Israel as an island of civilization surrounded by savages. Th is conceptual framework serves to determine Israel’s regional policies, both with many of its neighboring countries and with the Palestinians.
For some time now I have been pondering the closely knit relationship between democracy and colonialism. Notwithstanding the widespread conception among democracy theorists that there is a contradiction between the two, in this paper I contend that colonialism has served as a crucial component in the historical processes through which modern democracies were created and sustained.
“No other advanced technology country has such a large proportion of citizens with real time experience in the army, security and police forces,” reads a glossy government brochure entitled Israel Homeland Security: Opportunities for Industrial Cooperation.
Focusing on the flow of funding to human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), we begin in this article to broach one of the least studied issues pertaining to transnational regimes—namely, their material underpinnings.
Much has changed during Israel’s 40 years of occupation of Palestinian territory. Within the past six years Israel has, on average, killed more Palestinians per year than it killed during the first 20 years of occupation. Those who help manufacture public opinion within Israel claim that the dramatic increase in Palestinian deaths results from the fact that the Palestinians have changed the methods of violence they employ against Israel, and that Israel, in turn, has also begun using more violent means.
In this article I attempt to uncover some of the causes leading to the dramatic changes that have taken place over the past four decades in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Drawing attention to the way in which the Palestinian inhabitants have been managed, my central thesis is that the occupation’s very structure, rather than the policy choices of the Israeli government, has led to the shifts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘social space’, this paper attempts to lay bare how human rights NGOs attain the power needed to bring about social change. The paper argues that the strategies NGOs employ cannot explain their social and political impact for the basic reason that many NGOs use the same strategies and yet there is a large power differential among them.
