The Middle East conflicts between Palestine and Israel are long-term, ongoing and wide-ranging. Kicking All Odds is an observational documentary that explores women football players from Palestine – both Christian and Muslim girls – who play together and forge a team despite all the hardships they face.

This thesis is an analysis of the Jordanian economic developmental process which demonstrates that it expanded rapidly between 1948 and 1970. During the period under study, Jordan had to face two wars, in 1948 and 1967, which had inverse effects on the economy. After each war, the economy experienced a period of recovery due primarily to government efforts to promote investment; the existence of a more educated people represented by the refugees; and the role of foreign aid. Chapter I is a brief introduction to the Jordanian economy. Chapter II is a discussion of some theories of economic development. Chapters III and IV provide us with a more detailed description of the economic situation before and after the 1967 war. However, the purpose of Chapter V is to incorporate the theory that appears to handle the processes discussed in both Chapters III and IV.

The Gaza Strip may be the world’s most relentless conflict zone. After decades of destruction and resistance, it is hard to imagine a different reality. But before the Gaza Strip, there was Gaza—a gateway city within an eponymous region with a much-neglected history. Stripped is an exploration of the Gaza borderland that aims to salvage Gaza’s past from the conceptual and historiographic shackles imposed by the current reality of the Gaza Strip, as well as to render imaginable a horizon for Gaza beyond this reality. The work is the first to methodologically depart from the common understanding of the Gaza Strip as purely a consequence of the 1948 war. Instead, Stripped situates Gaza within a century-long history of the Eastern Mediterranean’s integration into the global market economy, the Ottoman-British quest for imperial sovereignty over the Sinai-Palestine-Hijaz desert corridor, and the Palestinian struggle to overcome the urban and environmental destruction of World War I in the face of British and Zionist colonialism. Relying on little-studied sources in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Hebrew, English, and French, the dissertation explores how the Gaza region adapted to Ottoman agrarian reforms and gravitated into British economic orbit in the Mediterranean. As a result of these processes, Gaza of the late nineteenth century reoriented its economy from land to sea and turned to fully rely on exporting its locally cultivated barley to the British beer-brewing industry overseas. While generating promising growth for some two decades, global demand for grains diversified widely in the early twentieth century, leading to an abrupt collapse of Gaza’s new financial base. Concurrently, the very trade Gaza relied upon sliced this historic borderland into separate zones of imperial domination, turning it into a frontier between the Ottomans and the British. Gaza thus became one of the Middle East’s most devastating battlefronts during the First World War. When Palestine was made a formal political unit under the British Mandate, Gaza was both financially and physically in ruins, forced into a slower, more convoluted historical trajectory than other parts of the country. Ruins and their meanings, therefore, are central to the dissertation’s inquiry, as they turned in the interwar period into a contested ground in the struggle for Gaza’s recovery. Dwelling among the physical debris of their former city, Gazans had to marshal waqf regulations and Ottoman land legislation to restore their urban and agricultural environments against British antiquities preservation and land development schemes. Navigating often contradictory reconstruction initiatives, the people of Gaza toiled to carve themselves a space within the emerging Palestinian national collective as well. However, after a century-long “stripping” of its previous economic, social, and political centrality, Gaza could only remain peripheral to the political upheavals of the Mandate period and finally even remote from the battlefields of the 1948 war. It thus almost naturally emerged as a safe temporary shelter for wartime Palestinian refugees, around which the Israeli and Egyptian armies demarcated the Gaza Strip.

This study is a Comparative Foreign Policy (CFP) analysis of the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) foreign policy behavior from 1964 through 1981. This study develops and tests a role modification model that accounts for evolutionary changes in foreign policy behavior. One of the major premises of this research is that what often appears as dramatic restructuring in foreign policy is actually the culmination of a series of modifications that transpired over an extended period of time. The model relies on a total of six independent variables as determinants of PLO foreign policy output representing multiple levels of analysis. There are a total of 12 dependent variables expressed as either foreign policy tactical roles or strategic goals. Relying on content analysis of relevant PLO documents, the role modification model demonstrates that the foreign policy output of the PLO experienced a gradual, over time change in both the means and ends of its foreign policy. The model also identifies the conditions under which any one of the independent variables is able to exclusively determine foreign policy output and which roles one can reasonably expect the PLO to exercise under a given circumstance.

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The Arab-Israeli conflict is examined from its religious aspect, presenting people's experience of religion without passing judgement. Selected concepts are compared and contrasted and interpreted hermeneutically. The roots of the antagonism are traced back historically, showing that it comprises more than a claim to the same geographical territory. Each religion's notion of statehood is described. Internally Jewish-Zionist friction over the ceding of territory arises through divergent interpretations of the same texts; Islam, Nationalism and religious rivalry, being at variance, have engendered Arab tensions. Their respective doctrines on war and peace suggest, broadly speaking, a Jewish-Zionist leaning to shalom, and Islam-Arab Nationalism to jihad (struggle). While the religious perspective does leave an opening for a solution to the conflict, pragmatism may lead to compromise. Finally the suggestion is made that the religious dimension is necessary for a holistic understanding of political issues / Religious Studies and Arabic / M.A. (Religious Studies)

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier la politique de la Grande-Bretagne vis-à-vis du conflit israélo-arabe au prisme de ses intérêts au Proche-Orient entre la première guerre israélo-arabe (1948-1949) jusqu'à la guerre des Six-Jours en 1967. Nous avons essayé de préciser, en ce sens, qu'en plus des intérêts politiques, géostratégiques et économiques, cette politique a été aussi marquée par les changements des rapports de force qui s'imposaient inévitablement dans le monde entier, notamment l'avènement des États-Unis et de l'URSS comme superpuissances mondiales, le nationalisme arabe…etc. Dans ce cadre d'intérêts politiques et économiques, nous avons souligné que la création de l'État d'Israël répondait aux besoins stratégiques des puissances occidentales au Moyen-Orient. D'ailleurs, cette approche prouvera sa validité dès 1956 quand l'État d'Israël va jouer un rôle déterminant pendant l'expédition de Suez. Nous avons mis l'accent sur la place qu'occupait l'industrie du pétrole et les intérêts commerciaux dans le processus de la décolonisation britannique du Moyen-Orient pendant les années 1950 et 1960. Bien que l'étude de la politique britannique au Proche-Orient soit négligée, et ce, en raison de son « déclassement politique », notre recherche a bien montré que la Grande-Bretagne a joué un rôle aussi important que celui des Américains dans la sauvegarde de leurs intérêts à travers une « gestion » commune des affaires du Moyen-Orient. / The aim of this thesis is to study the British policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of British interests in the Middle East from the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948-1949 to the Six-Day War in 1967. In addition to economic and political interests, we show that in the years under review the British policy has also been marked by a change in the world balance of power, namely the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's leading superpowers, Arab nationalism ... etc. In this context, we emphasize that the creation of the State of Israel met the strategic needs of Western powers in the Middle East. This approach will prove its effectiveness only eight years after the creation of Israel when the latter played a decisive role during the tripartite invasion of Egypt in late 1956. Moreover, we point out the place occupied by oil industry and commercial interests in the process of British decolonization in the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s. The study of British foreign policy in the Middle East has been neglected because of the “demise of Britain's political supremacy” worldwide. Nevertheless, we show that Britain has played a role as important as that of the United States in safeguarding their common interests in the Middle East through a close collaboration.

This project presents a three-level analysis of Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir to elucidate the way these films deconstruct the image of the Middle East that the dominant Western media perpetuate. The thesis demonstrates that the combination of highly expressive and easily understandable animated form with an autobiographical storyline that endows the films with attractive authenticity, personification and intimacy, creates a palatable setting for the intellectual texts. Further, this project discloses the ways representation gives rise to stereotypes and illustrates how the films articulate an alternative to the dichotomous perception of West versus Middle East. The movies impersonate a unique, subjective insight into the past, emphasizing that history is an ongoing, non-linear process that depends on where and who is narrating it, and to whom. Understanding that public memory is shaped by media content, the thesis asserts the necessity for more cultural texts that deconstruct the norm and eliminate bias. / by Kristyna Dzmuranova. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

A presente dissertação procurou investigar o fenômeno aqui identificado como digitalização da ocupação da Palestina contemporânea, por meio de reflexões analíticas e históricas sobre as técnicas e tecnologias de controle e monitoramento implantadas pelo que entendemos como um esforço colonial na Palestina contemporânea, tal como a intersecção dessas técnicas e tecnologias com a emergência do Estado de Israel como um nicho global high tech. Sustenta-se que o nomeado processo se dá, em primeiro lugar, em concordância com uma tendência de privatização do setor de segurança - também no que se refere a seu envolvimento nos Territórios Palestinos Ocupados (TPOs) - e, em segundo lugar, com uma narrativa de eficiência, precisão e higienização da guerra, correspondente a um movimento de desresponsabilização do Estado sobre a população nos TPOs e sobre as violações e abusos perpetrados sobre ela. Por fim, no contexto aparentemente contraditório entre a multiplicação das tecnologias de informação e comunicação e sua promessa de superação de fronteiras, e o endurecimento do controle da Ocupação, serão localizadas manifestações e possibilidades de resistência do povo palestino à consolidação das dimensões cibernéticas da colonização da Palestina. / The present dissertation intended to investigate the phenomenon here identified as the digitalization of the occupation of contemporary Palestine, by means of analytical and historical reflexions regarding the techniques and technologies of control and surveillance implanted by what is hereby understood as a colonial effort in Palestinian territory, as well as the intersections of these techniques and technologies with the emergence of the State of Israel as a global high tech niche. It is understood that the referred process takes place, at first, in coherence with a privatization trend in the security sector - as well as its correspondence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) - and, secondly, as a narrative of efficiency, precision and sanitation of war, corresponding with the outsourcing of responsibility over violations and abuses perpetrated against the Palestinian population. Finally, in the seemingly contradictory context between the multiplication of information technologies and its promise regarding borders overruns, and the hardening of the Occupations control mechanisms, we shall discuss the possibility of resistance manifestations, from the Palestinian people in face of the cybernetic dimensions of the colonization of Palestine.