#Prof Rashid Khalidi

[marcogiovenale]

prof. rashid khalidi about plo, izrhell, and a palestinian state

#ProfRashidKhalidi #RashidKhalidi #PLO #PalestinianState #Gaza #zionism #genocide #genocidio #Palestine #Palestina #massmurders #warcrimes #starvingpeople #starvingcivilians @ICJ @ICC#izrahell #israelterroriststate#Cisgiordania #WestBank#iof #idf #colonialism#settlers #coloni

[likeclarabow]

happy new year abby!!!!!!! congrats on meeting your reading goal, i’m glad that despite your busy life you’re still able to enjoy reading for yourself <3 some bookish questions, if you don’t mind …

what was your favourite reread of 2023? what book did you mean to read but ended up not? what books were you looking forward to but disappointed by? what book took you by surprise? your favourite series? your favourite standalone? your least favourite book(s)? what book did you write your favourite review about? and finally, what book(s) are you most looking forward to reading in 2024?

may this year be full of blessings to you!

hiiiiii love, happy new year!!!! i'm finally back on my laptop so i'm sorry this is a few days late <333

favourite reread: i did a lot of rereading this year and i loved them all but probably six of crows!! every time i reread that series i'm a little nervous that its not going to have the same magic it did the last time and it always does and this time was no exception its just going to be a forever favourite and i'm so glad i reread it

a book i meant to read and didn't get to: there were a few i meant to at the very least start over my break that i didn't get a chance to (this biography i picked up at a school social and the hundred years war on palestine by rashid khalidi), books i had on hold at the library but it was just never the right time (as long as the lemon trees grow by zoulfa katouh), and my book lovers reread that i was all set to start and then i didn't read for like 3 weeks

a book i was looking forward to that disappointed me: greywaren by maggie stiefvater was soooo messy plotwise and there were things i wanted wrapped up that were just not addressed in a satisfying way yes i gave it 5 stars the epilogue made me cry those 5 stars are for declan lynch and for how much i love the trc/tdt universe as a whole pls take my rating system a little bit seriously (so i guess it wasn't 100% disappointing i just wanted more from the final book) (honourary mentions to nine liars by maureen johnson bc it was sososo fun for 99% of the book but the very end was so unnecessary i'll never forgive her, and harlem shuffle by colson whitehead i liked the writing i just thought the plot would be different from what it ended up being)

a book that took me by surprise: the day of the jackal was supposed to be something i picked up for a few hours for shits and giggles since i've never had any real interest in 70's spy thrillers but i actually enjoyed it enough to finish! also these violent delights by micah nemerever surprised me because i did not know what to expect at. all. and i still dont know how to describe the feelings that book gave me but i certainly didn't expect them

my favourite series: beartown!!!!!! you know exactly why i don't even have to explain </3 (honourary mention to sandra gullands josephine b trilogy its one hell of a historical fiction series and i enjoyed it SO much)

my favourite standalone: rebecca by daphne du maurier!! its just the most beautifully written book that captivated me from the very first page <33

least favourite books: the last word by taylor adams (extraordinarily mid upon first read and it just seems so bleh looking back), ready player one by ernest cline (i can see why my boyfriend loves it but it just didn't appeal to me at all), 20,000 leagues under the sea by jules verne (jules verne knows sooooo many facts about the ocean and electricity and he put every single one of them in this book in very long paragraphs but i forgive my prof for making me read it)

my favourite review: i didn't really write any solid reviews this year (something i'm hoping to do more of in 2024) but my favourite mini reviews are the ones i left for wuthering heights and 20,000 leagues under the sea bc i think i'm funny and bc i think they sum up my reading experience quite well

books i'm most looking forward to reading in 2024: soooo many a curse for true love by stephanie garber, a man called ove by fredrik backman, alone with you in the ether by olivie blake, divine rivals by rebecca ross (!!), penance by eliza clark to name a few

[newstfionline]

The Conflict in Jerusalem Is Distinctly Modern. Here’s the History.

By Mona Boshnaq, Sewell Chan, Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Gaia Tripoli, NY Times, Dec. 5, 2017

In December 1917--100 years ago this month--the British general Edmund Allenby seized control of Jerusalem from its Ottoman Turkish defenders. Dismounting his horse, he entered the Old City on foot, through Jaffa Gate, out of respect for its holy status.

In the century since, Jerusalem has been fought over in varying ways, not only by Jews, Christians and Muslims but also by external powers and, of course, modern-day Israelis and Palestinians.

It is perhaps fitting that President Trump appears to have chosen this week to announce that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite concerns from leaders of Arab countries, Turkey and even close allies like France.

Conflicts over Jerusalem go back thousands of years--including biblical times, the Roman Empire and the Crusades--but the current one is a distinctly 20th-century story. The New York Times asked several experts to walk readers through pivotal moments of the past century.

1917-48: British Mandate: “It was for the British that Jerusalem was so important--they are the ones who established Jerusalem as a capital,” said Prof. Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, a historical geographer at Hebrew University. “Before, it was not anyone’s capital since the times of the First and Second Temples.”

The three decades of British rule that followed Allenby’s march on Jerusalem saw an influx of Jewish settlers drawn by the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland, while the local Arab population adjusted to the reality of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled the city since 1517.

“Paradoxically, Zionism recoiled from Jerusalem, particularly the Old City,” said Amnon Ramon, senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research. “First because Jerusalem was regarded as a symbol of the diaspora, and second because the holy sites to Christianity and Islam were seen as complications that would not enable the creation of a Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

Many early Zionists were secular European socialists, motivated more by concerns about nationalism, self-determination and escape from persecution than by religious visions.

“Jerusalem was something of a backwater, a regression to a conservative culture that they were trying to move away from,” according to Michael Dumper, professor in Middle East politics at the University of Exeter in England. “Tel Aviv was the bright new city on a hill, the encapsulation of modernity.”

For Arabs, he said: “There was still something of the shock at not being in the Ottoman Empire. There was a reordering of their society. The local Palestinian aristocracy, the big families of Jerusalem, emerged as leaders of the Palestinian national movement, which was suddenly being confronted by Jewish migration.”

Opposition to that migration fueled several deadly riots by Palestinians, while Jews chafed at British rule and at immigration restrictions imposed in 1939--restrictions that blocked many Jews fleeing the Holocaust from entering. After the war, in 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan that provided for two states--one Jewish, one Arab--with Jerusalem governed by a “special international regime” owing to its unique status.

1948-67: A Divided City: The Arabs rejected the partition plan, and a day after Israel proclaimed its independence in 1948, the Arab countries attacked the new state. They were defeated. Amid violence by militias and mobs on both sides, huge numbers of Jews and Arabs were displaced.

Jerusalem was divided: The western half became part of the new state of Israel (and its capital, under an Israeli law passed in 1950), while the eastern half, including the Old City, was occupied by Jordan. “For the Palestinians, it was seen as a rallying point,” Professor Dumper said.

Israel and Jordan, he said, were largely focused elsewhere. Israel built up its prosperous coastal areas--including Haifa, Tel Aviv and Ashkelon--into a thriving commercial zone, while the Jordanian king, Abdullah I, focused on the development of Amman, Jordan’s capital.

The early Israeli state was hesitant to focus too much on Jerusalem, given pressure from the United Nations and from the European powers, according to Issam Nassar, a historian at Illinois State University.

Having accepted the idea of international control of Jerusalem, the early Israeli leadership sought alternatives for a capital, perhaps Herzliya or somewhere in the south. They also realized that not having control of Jerusalem’s holy sites might have some advantages, according to Dr. Ramon.

While Israel moved many government functions to Jerusalem during the country’s first two decades, foreign governments largely avoided Jerusalem and opened embassies in Tel Aviv, in recognition of the United Nations resolution.

1967-93: Two Wars and an Intifada: No event has shaped the modern contest over Jerusalem as much as the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, in which Israel not only defeated invading Arab armies but also seized control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt; the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan; and the Golan Heights from Syria.

“The turning points in 1967 were two: the great victory, including the fast shift from fears of defeat before the war to euphoria and the feeling that everything was possible, and the emotional impact of occupying the Old City,” said Menachem Klein, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

Images of Israeli soldiers praying at the Western Wall, to which they had been denied access during Jordanian rule, became seared into Israel’s national consciousness.

“Jerusalem became the center of a cultlike devotion that had not really existed previously,” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. “This has now been fetishized to an extraordinary degree as hard-line religious nationalism has come to predominate in Israeli politics, with the Western Wall as its focus.”

The victory of the right-leaning party Likud in 1977, under the leadership of Menachem Begin, helped solidify this new emphasis on Jerusalem as integral to Israel’s identity. Religious settlers became more prominent in political life in Israel, beginning a long ascendance that has never really halted. Old-line socialists with roots in Russia and Eastern Europe gave way to a more diverse--and also more religious--population of Israelis with origins in the Middle East, North Africa and other regions.

As part of this shift, Jerusalem’s symbolic importance intensified. Its role in Jewish history was emphasized in military parades and curriculums, and students from across Israel were taken there on school visits. This process culminated in 1980, when lawmakers passed a bill declaring that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”--although Israel stopped short of annexing East Jerusalem, a move that would most likely have drawn international outrage.

1993-present: Oslo and Beyond: The 1993 Oslo accords provided for the creation of a Palestinian Authority to govern the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, while deferring a resolution on core issues: borders, refugees and Jerusalem’s status. In the nearly quarter-century since, the prospects for a lasting peace deal have seemed ever more elusive.

A visit by the right-wing politician Ariel Sharon in 2000 to the sacred complex known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary--which contains Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock--set off violent clashes and led to a second Palestinian uprising that claimed the lives of about 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis over five years.

Palestinians say that Jewish settlers have encroached on East Jerusalem, and that Israel has compounded the problem by revoking residency permits. Even so, the ethnic composition of Jerusalem’s population has remained about 30 percent to 40 percent Arab.

“The entire international community has been in accord that Israeli annexation and settlement of East Jerusalem since 1967 is illegal, and refuses to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Professor Khalidi said. “If Trump changes this position, given the importance of Jerusalem to Arabs and Muslims, it is hard to see how a sustainable Palestinian-Israeli agreement or lasting Arab-Israeli normalization is possible.”

Professor Ben-Arieh says the conflict over the city is likely to endure. “The Arab-Jewish conflict escalated into a nationalistic conflict, with Jerusalem at its center,” he said. “Jerusalem was a city holy to three religions, but the moment that, in the land of Israel, two nations grew--the Jewish people and the local Arab people--both embraced Jerusalem. More than Jerusalem needed them, they needed Jerusalem.”