Class 2: Conceptual themes: issues of national self-determination, dialogue, and perspective ("bias")

1. Current Events - Why the current violence?

Killed	Israelis	Palestinians	Annual average
June 1967-Dec 1987		650	32
Dec 1987-Sept 2000	422	1491	147
Sept 2000- Dec 2006	1019	4046	844

Adapted from Neve Gordon, Israel's Occupation, xvii

Background:

• UN Map of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and other maps from the United Nations collection
• various other FMEP maps: 3 stages of Israeli withdrawal (in greater detail) toward the final Israeli design of Allon-plus?
• recent press clippings (from new resources) - see Israeli forces detonate explosives before arresting students, Palestinian News Network, Aug. 28, 2008
• human rights abuses on all sides

The current situation:

• Gaza blockade
• immediate issue of stopping the violence and restarting talks.
• further issues of prisoners, linkage of withdrawals to final settlement, safe passage between Gaza and West Bank, deadlines.
• final issues of statehood, boundaries, Jerusalem, refugees from 1948, Israeli settlements and water quotas.

2. Self-determination

• Woodrow Wilson 14 Points (Jan 1918)
• what is a people?
• what is a nation?
• do people have the right govern themselves?

3. Conflicting Claims

• The Jews and Palestine: what is a Jew?
• The Arabs and Palestine: what is an Arab? a Palestinian?

4. One vs. Two-State Solution

• Demographic realities - look at our CIA Factbook data and projections
• the future of a Jewish state of Israel?

Discussion of Readings (and New Resources)

• Is Israel a colonial settler state? ("Colonial, Imperial state" - Dershowitz online) - questions of timing: under whose auspices when did the migrations (aliyahs) occur? Balfour Declaration is 1917; Britain then occupies "Palestine."
• Did European Jews displace Palestinians? cf. Absentees' Property Law of 14 March 1950

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Monday, Sept 8: Introducing Roberta L. Dougherty, PCL Librarian, Middle East Studies

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8 Sept. 2008

Department of Government, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin.

Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to chenry@mail.utexas.edu