Water management is a challenge in the Middle East today because of increasing population, decreasing water quality, political instability and security concerns. Israel and the Palestinian Authority share the three major freshwater sources in an inequitable and unsustainable manner. This study details the hydro-geological, political, cultural and legal challenges to equitable and sustainable water resource management in the region.

From Ancient Near Eastern texts, the Bible and archaeological artefacts, we are able to glimpse an over arching belief in a feminine deity. During the occupation of the Temple Mount by the Knights Templars, earlier traditions were ”re-discovered” and accepted as a de facto tradition. William St Clair at the threshold of the Renaissance, mindful of the danger of heresy, was intellectually able to bring together many traditions into a broad Biblically-based theology that recognised the early Israelite traditions as the foundation of Christian belief. All this is evident in Rosslyn Chapel. / OLD TESTAMENT and ANCIENT NE / MA (BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY)

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis is a theory-proposing and theory-testing study that examines the conditions of state survival in the Middle East. In contrast to the predominant Political Culture and Political Economy approaches, which focus on domestic factors to account for state survival in the Middle East, this thesis suggests that, more than the individual characteristics of states themselves, state survival in that region is a function of the anarchic state system. This thesis examines states as a ‘process’ situating them in time and place. It shows that Middle Eastern states are at once in the early phases of state formation as well as late comers to the international state system. This ontological status contributes to the vulnerability of these states to systematic forces, which in turn shapes their internal development. A major dilemma facing the late-forming state is between regime survival and political incorporation. The first part of this thesis examines the literatures on the state, the Middle East state, and state survival. The second part proposes a Historical Structuralism model and then examines the ontology of the state in the Middle East, specifying the conditions and variables of state survival. The third part presents an empirical examination of the cases of Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Si un concepteur, architecte ou ingénieur, veut concevoir un logement de basse consommation et le site du projet se trouve dans une région au climat froid, les réponses sont nombreuses et la littérature scientifique très abondante. Si le site de notre projet se situe en climat chaud, voir très chaud, le nombre de méthodes simples pour concevoir une maison de basse consommation diminue drastiquement. La solution la plus habituelle des concepteurs non initiés à la basse consommation est de faire appel à un ingénieur d’un bureau d’études énergétiques, qui saura proposer des simulations à partir d’un modèle thermique-dynamique et anticiper la consommation du modèle. La mission d’un bureau d’études a un certain coût, et ses services ne peuvent pas être accessibles à tous les projets. Ainsi, des milliers d’architectes en climat chaud proposent des projets inspirés des références lointaines ou des réalisations non adaptées sans les conseils d’un spécialiste de l’énergie du bâtiment. Ces projets, très énergivores, continuent à croître sans cesse. Pour tous ces concepteurs des projets de taille modeste nous proposons dans cette étude une méthode facile, efficace et accessible à tous permettant de prendre conscience des enjeux bioclimatiques et les options architecturales qui existent pour réussir un projet de basse consommation, puis de le défendre auprès de ses commanditaires. En nous appuyant sur les informations en ligne accessibles à tous, nous proposons une méthode basée sur l’utilisation des degrés-jour de refroidissement et de chauffage. Une série de simulations robustes sur un modèle thermique dynamique générique fourni des résultats qui pourront être interprétables par les concepteurs et projetés sur leurs propres conceptions.La première partie de ce document analyse la construction et la culture en climat chaud: méthodes de classification climatique, les phénomènes physiques les plus significatifs en lien avec la basse consommation,et les notions de confort et température ressentie. En suite, nous proposons un outil d’aide à la conception : la Méthode des Saisons Climatiques, une méthode basée sur un concept très simple : l’ouverture ou fermeture de la maison à l’extérieur en fonction des conditions extérieures quantifiée par les degrés-jour du site. Elle permet de faire une classification climatique du site très orientée vers la conception bioclimatique. Elle base le classement d’un site selon des journées types, S1 à S6, selon jour/nuit froid/froide, tempéré/froide, tempéré/tempérée, chaud/froide, chaud/tempérée et chaud/chaude respectivement. Cette nouvelle classification peu ts’appliquer à tous les climats de la Planète. Une période de l’année continue avec une même journée type donne lieu a une Saison Climatique. Chaque Saison climatique aura des spécificités architecturales propres,et parfois contradictoires entre deux saisons climatiques différentes. L’objectif est de trouver la combinaison architecturale la plus efficace pour une période annuelle complète.Des modélisations Energy+ seront faites pour ces 6 journées types ainsi que pour une période annuelle dans une ville au climat très chaud : Dubaï. Des actions architecturales sont évaluées avec un modèle thermique dynamique.Les actions architecturales seront classées par efficacité énergétique et par temps de retour surinvestissement . Deux maisons idéales par journée type seront proposées : la maison la plus performante et la maison la plus rentable. Une méthode de combinaison d’actions architecturales permettra de trouver une combinaison cohérente d’actions en fonction du climat annuel d’un site. Ensuite nous proposerons les caractéristiques communes, un socle commun, de la maison en climat très chaud de la région du Moyen Orient. / The last 25 years have been ground-breaking in architectural design on low energy consumption in cold climate, mainly in north-western cultures. For an architect today, the method to design a passive house in cold weather and the choice of the Architectural Actions (AA), are clearly established. When the question comes to how to build a passive house in warmer, hot, and very hot climates, the strategies arepoor and often results of a combination of western strategies with a local relook. From several visits in MiddleEast countries, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, we concluded that the strategy for low consumption houses is not established yet and poorly grasped. The lack of training on low energy consumption in hot climate and the low price of energy, force designers and owners to rely on over usage of air-conditioning systems as measures to catch up on poor bioclimatic design. This method proposes a new approach on bioclimatic designfor hot climates from an architect point of view. It is based on a Cooling Degrees Days (CDD) and Heating Degrees Days (HDD) approach, a state of art of contemporary architecture and professional experience. Localclimates are classified according to the energy-hunger of six situations of the exterior temperature during night/day : cold/cold, cold/cool, cool/warm, cold/hot, cool/hot, and hot/hot as CDD and HDD of the twelve month ofthe year. A group of days on one of those situations will be called “climatic season”. In parallel we will create two main “climatic situations”: people keep the house closed to the exterior or opened to the exterior. We will associate passive strategies to these two differents ways to live in the house: “cold” and “hot” to a closed houseand “cool” and “warm” to a house opened up to the exterior. This method allows classifying any climate in theworld under these six climatic seasons. Our climate classification can now be associated to different strategies that we will call “architectural actions” as house is closed or opened. We could already start to design a house from here, but to better understand the influence of each action we have created an Energy+ model to analyze individually the effect of a single AA. The performance of each action is evaluated under the situations of six representative journeys as well as a year round on a very hot city: Dubai. The result of the effect good or badof action during each different season situation allows us to create the best combination of AA that are best fora year round climate resulting of the combination of several climatic seasons. This low-tech method will help usto find the common features of the houses of different hot climates of a big region and find the best typology. We have carried in parallel a cost study of the base house and the financial incidence of each single action to evaluate also the payback period by action.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The archaeology of the region, referred to in scholarly lexicon as the Ancient Near East, is richly endowed with artefacts and monumental architecture of ancient cultures. Such artefacts, as a non-renewable resource are, therefore considered to be a scarce commodity. So also is the context and the provenance of these objects. Once an object’s provenance has been disturbed, it is of no further significant use for academic research, except for aesthetic value. Historically, as well as in the present, we see that humans have exploited this resource for various reasons, with very little regard given to provenance. The impact of forgery, illicit trade and looting are the greatest threat to the value of provenance. Contrary to some arguments, collectors, curators, buyers, looters and certain scholars play a significant role in its destruction. This research reveals to what extent unknown provenance has become a disturbing problem in the study of archaeological artefacts. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / M.Th. (Biblical Archaeology)

The dissertation examines the experience of the landless in the ancient Near East as expressed in the book of Lamentations. Land theology has focused on land loss but not on the people who lost it. Similarly, the interpretation of Lamentations has focused on human suffering or on God’s absence not on land loss neither on the landless. This study investigates the phenomenon of landlessness in the Near Eastern world (over the span of 6th and 7th centuries BCE) and how people reacted to such experiences. They lamented over the destruction of shrines, homes, towns and land. Land loss is a prominent feature in city laments. Lamentations relied on these kinds of lament to express the Judeans’ land loss experience. The Zion theology which had granted an unconditional blessing of protection and stability to Jerusalem and to its people, completely failed on the Babylonian invasion in 587 BCE. The ‘landless genesis’ of the nation from the period of the ancestors (Cain and Jacob) remains in the memory of Daughter of Zion and of the deported man as they lament over the loss of Jerusalem. / Theology / M. Th. (Old Testament)

This thesis seeks to answer the following question: How and to what extent does identity and Self-Other perception influence the foreign policy of the EU and Russia toward the establishment of a sovereign and viable Palestinian State? The thesis scrutinises the assumption that identity and Self-perception as well as perception of ‘otherness’ play a vital role in defining foreign policy-making, with policy toward the Middle East being no exception. The investigation focuses on how the EU’s and Russia’s desire to reinforce their ‘global actorness’ on the international stage informs their involvement in the Middle East peace process. This assumption brings into the analysis the dynamic of constructivism in the shaping of foreign policy. Through a constructivist approach, the thesis attempts to explore how Self-Other perception informs foreign policy-making, specifically by the EU and Russia, in relation to Palestinian statehood. Thus the thesis problematises existing views about the role of established IR schools in understanding foreign policy-making (namely, in terms of peace-making). The study seeks to deepen our understanding of the role of identity and Self-Other perception in EU and Russian foreign policy-making by going beyond conventional understanding of foreign policy-making that are fixated on ‘power’, with special reference to the question of Palestinian statehood. In this vein, I advance the argument that, contrary to the old assumptions of schools such as realism and liberalism, there is a role played by identity and ideas that needs to be assessed in the context of EU and Russian peace-making in the Middle East. The thesis tests these assumptions using a qualitative methodology to investigate the making of foreign policy by the EU and Russia. Discourse analysis is the main method employed to interpret the role of identity and Self-Other perceptions. This is done through a study of discourse made up of official documents and statements as well as interviews with diplomats with current and past involvement in the formulation of EU and Russian foreign policy.