Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This dissertation examines the ambiguous status of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It focuses on three events: the 1956 Kafar Qasem massacre, the 1976 Land Day events, and the October 2000 shootings. It argues that neither a civic-republican nor a liberal-democratic understanding of the concept of "citizenship" provide an adequate account of the status of this minority. The interplay between these conceptions of citizenship exemplifies the constant tension between Israel's two defining characteristics -- as the Jewish homeland and a liberal-democratic state. The dissertation argues that the political theories of Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt offer a more promising articulation of this status. While the state-official responses to these cases vary, they do share one common aspect -- the shooting and killing of Palestinian citizens by state security forces. These point to a clear course taken by the state of setting the lives of its Palestinian inhabitants in constant political and civil unpredictability. The tension between the civic-republican and the liberal-democratic conceptions of citizenship is sufficient to explain some of the inequality endured by the Palestinian minority. Nevertheless, the dissertation will argue that these watershed events in Israeli history point not simply to the inequality of the Palestinian citizens, but raise the troubling question of whether, in effect, Palestinians are treated as citizens at all. The second part of the dissertation draws on the work of Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt to explore two alternative ways of analyzing the status of the Palestinian minority. Arendt's understanding of power and violence clarifies the varied outcomes of the cases, and her account of the condition of "statelessness" suggests that the Palestinians' status is better understood as that of stateless-citizens. Carl Schmitt's notion of the "state of exception" provides a troubling articulation of the state's use of a constant sense of emergency. His distinction between "friend" and "enemy" suggests the treatment of the Palestinian citizens is best understood as that of internal enemies. Taken together, these approaches shed light on the reality in which the Palestinians live as citizens, a reality of uncertainty, unpredictability and animosity.

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A water resources and water demand management model has been developed applicable to locations which experience specific constraints such as rapid population growth, limited water resources and political disputes over water resources. The West Bank was chosen as a case study. The Research has suggested a paradigm for a comprehensive management framework for large-scale water management problems in and and semi-arid areas. This management framework can help to achieve sustainable water resources for meeting water demand and preventing the gridlock and excessive legal expense of uncoordinated and conflict-filled decision processes. The attributes of management frameworks (some well known and others not so familiar) begin with inclusion; that is, the framework should be comprehensive, with extensive stakeholder involvement and collaboration. The decision processes should be clear, action oriented, and adaptive. Other desirable qualities of the framework include a focus on environmental integrity, technical aspects, financial aspects, social implications, institutional aspects, political implications and use of proven management practices. Today's international legislative structure is incapable of solving complex water disputes. The Research has introduced one such multi-criteria decision tool for quantification of water resources rights. For illustrative purposes, it was presented in terms of the water-sharing problem facing Israel and the Palestinians. The methodology is based upon the several factors identified by the International Law Commission in its draft articles on the non-navigational uses of water.

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High among the mountains and olive groves of Israel's Western Galilee, a group of Palestinian women regularly meet to do something unexpected. They play soccer. In Israel. Banat Sakhnin is the only Palestinian women's soccer team in the Israeli league. The players, coaches, and manager are Israeli citizens, but represent a minority within the Jewish state. As such, the women who play for Banat Sakhnin face challenges from multiple sides. This dissertation argues that Palestinian women's access to soccer in Israel is intimately tied to complex and contradictory community and national ideas about Palestinian-ness. Women's participation in an overtly physical activity puts their bodies on public display to be symbolically constituted as versions of "Palestinians," "Israelis," or an amalgamation of both. Additionally, soccer's reputation as a male sport in Israel further complicates women's access to it as players or as fans. This dissertation is based on intensive field research conducted from January 2006-December 2007. The interviews, stories, archival research, newspaper articles, and personal experience I collected revealed a complex picture of what life might be like for young Palestinian women who play soccer in Israel. I found that soccer players face limitations placed upon them by their coach and manager in the form of protectiveness and monitoring of their "propriety." I found that they face limitations from their families and communities who view soccer as a "hobby" that should end when the players marry. The team itself faces financial difficulties, because of a lack of popular interest in women's soccer, and a lack of commitment by the governing bodies of soccer in Israel. Yet, the players are not fully passive, and find ways to pursue their own goals around these structural and cultural limitations. This research contributes to the anthropology of women and power in the Middle East and the sociology and anthropology of soccer. Scholarship on women's soccer in the Middle East has focused on women's role in Islam. I suggest that this focus overshadows other gendered, cultural, and political barriers faced by women in Middle Eastern countries. The story of Banat Sakhnin adds to research about women's lives in the Middle East and Israel, because it focuses on female athletes playing a sport perceived to belong to the realm of men. It explores the ways in which the players' transgression of this gendered norm shapes and transforms other kinds of ideas about "Palestinian-ness" and "womanhood" in Israel.

In the Israel-Palestinian conflict, peace conferences and agreements come and go. Public and political discourse about the conflict waxes and wanes. Meanwhile, new and expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to grow unabated. The history of settlements in the West Bank began with the conclusion of the 1967 war during which Israel successfully took over the West Bank Palestinian territory. According to international law, building settlements in the West Bank is illegal. Israel contends that such settlements are not illegal because the West Bank is disputed territory, not occupied territory. The possibility of a Palestinian state is likely preempted because Israeli settlements comprise close to 40% of the landmass in the occupied territory. The occupation of the West Bank (and Gaza) and the continuing growth of settlements are a perversion of classic political realism because these actions create an increased threat to the long-term national security of Israel and to the safety of the global Jewish community. / Master of Arts

This study assumes that political terrorism results from conscious decision-making by groups opposing a governing system, policy or process. The kinds of terrorist activity employed depend upon such factors as the philosophy, goals, objectives, and needs of the terrorist group. This presents a comparative analysis of three types of terrorists in southwest Asia: Palestinians, Marxist-Leninists, and Muslims. The first section summarizes and compares the three groups' motivational causes, philosophies, histories and sources of inspiration. The second section compares their behavior from four perspectives: trends and patterns, level of violence, tactical preferences, and lethality. The third section identifies and categorizes socioeconomic, political and military variables associated with tactic selection and acts of terrorism.

In the 1990s Palestinian refugees sought to secure a seat in negotiations alongside the PLO and Israel in talks to resolve their situation. Their efforts raise a number of basic questions concerning the right to political participation and the negotiation of durable solutions to refugee situations. First and foremost is the question of whether peace negotiations comprise a conduct of public affairs under international law entailing a concomitant right to take part. Second and related is the question of whether citizens, refugees in particular, have a right to take part in the conduct of public affairs when they are outside their country of citizenship voluntarily or otherwise. This study examines these questions through legal analysis of the right to political participation under international treaty law, jurisprudence and soft law and through empirical analysis of all negotiated settlements to armed conflict between 1990 and 2000. The study concludes that while refugees did not have a "right" to take part in the negotiation of durable solutions during the period under consideration, the PLO and Israel may have nevertheless had an obligation to facilitate the participation of refugees in a manner that would have allowed for substantial influence on decisions affecting their lives with the objective of shared ownership of agreements reached. The study also finds that between 1990 and 2000 few refugees appeared to take part directly in the direct negotiations to their situation. The implementation of durable solutions and agreements reached along with unofficial or indirect peacemaking mechanisms appeared to comprise the primary or most common domains for political participation. The study concludes that the negotiation of durable solutions for refugees is nevertheless a developing area of law and practice which has arguably strengthened in the decade since Israel and PLO sought to achieve a negotiated solution to the Palestinian refugee issue.

This thesis is focused on the impact of the events that are connected with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The main focus is on the socioeconomic impact those events had on the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Therefore, the first chapter of this thesis summarizes the development in the area of today's Israel, Gaza Strip and West Bank territories in the period before the formation of the state of Israel to today. The second chapter continues with the socioeconomic description of those territories since the year 1967 until today. This chapter shows the influence of the occupation on the socioeconomic situation in the areas mentioned above and describes the socioeconomic changes that appeared in connection with the peace process in the nineties and also explains the influence of the current events on the socioeconomic situation in both areas. The thesis ends with a chapter that is focused on the main problems that appear when negotiating about the final status of the Palestinian territories, including the economic issues, and it outlines a possible solution of those problems in the case of a hypothetical decision for the existence of two independent states -- Palestine and Israel.

This thesis examines how Palestinian ethnicity is negotiated and embodied in different contexts by young people with Palestinian background in Sweden. It is based on semi-structured interviews and uses Social Identity and Self Categorization theory. A main result is that the Palestinian ethnicity of the respondents play an essential role for their identity building, regardless of context. While being “Palestinian” is fore-fronted by all the interviewees as central to their identities, they ascribe somewhat different meanings to the concept of Palestinian-ness - what actually makes them “feel Palestinian” or can claim a Palestinian identity. Further, the interviewees’ perception of how Palestinian-ness is generally regarded in different contexts matter. Lastly, their notion of Palestinian ethnicity is strongly connected to the Palestinian territory and the historical-political situation and conflict with Israel. Together, these themes show the complexity of identity and ethnicity, however, the interviewees relation to their Palestinian background is solid.