Dialogue in Palestine: The People-to-People Diplomacy Programme and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

245 Pages·2020·2.263 MB·English

by  Nadia Naser-Najjab

Dialogue in Palestine
SOAS Palestine Studies
This book series aims at promoting innovative research in the study of
Palestine, Palestinians and the Israel–Palestine conflict as a crucial component
of Middle Eastern and world politics. The first ever Western academic series
entirely dedicated to this topic, SOAS Palestine Studies draws from a variety
of disciplinary fields, including history, politics, media, visual arts, social
anthropology and development studies. The series is published under the
academic direction of the Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS) at the London
Middle East Institute (LMEI) of SOAS, University of London.
Series Editors:
Dina Matar, PhD, Chair, Centre for Palestine Studies, and Reader in Political
Communication, Centre for Global Media and Communications, SOAS
Adam Hanieh, PhD, Reader in Development Studies and Advisory
Committee Member for Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS
Board Advisor:
Hassan Hakimian, Director of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS
Current and Forthcoming Titles:
Palestine Ltd.: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory,
Toufic Haddad
Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short
Story, Joseph R. Farag
Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space,
Sharri Plonski
Representing Palestine Media and Journalism in Australia Since World War I,
Peter Manning
Folktales of Palestine: Cultural Identity, Memory and the Politics of
Storytelling, Farah Aboubakr
Dialogue in Palestine: The People-to-People Diplomacy Programme and the
Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, Nadia Naser-Najjab
Palestinian Youth Activism in the Internet Age: Social Media and Networks
after the Arab Spring, Albana Dwonch
Dialogue in Palestine

The People-to-People
Diplomacy Programme and
the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Nadia Naser-Najjab
Centre for Palestine Studies
Published in association with the Centre for Palestine Studies,
London Middle East Institute
I.B. TAURIS
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain 2020
Copyright © Nadia Naser-Najjab 2020
Nadia Naser-Najjab has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension
of this copyright page.
Cover image © HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images
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inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist,
but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-1-8386-0384-7
eISBN: 978-1-8386-0386-1
ePDF: 978-1-8386-0385-4
Series: SOAS Palestine Studies
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To my daughters Leen and Nadine, my nephew Akram and my niece Haya,
hoping they will one day read this book during a time of peace.

Contents

Foreword to the SOAS Palestine Studies Book Series viii
Foreword x
Acknowledgements xii
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1 The context of P2PP 31
2 The colonial context of P2PP 45
3 Contact between 1967 and 1987 67
4 Contact during the First Intifada (1987–93) 83
5 The ‘Oslo years’ and ‘facts on the ground’ 97
6 ‘From Both Sides’: A case study of the programme 111
7 The P2PP – a critical assessment 131
8 The P2PP during and after the Al-Aqsa Intifada 147
Conclusion 173
Notes 187
Bibliography 199
Index 223
Foreword to the SOAS Palestine

Studies Book Series
The question of Palestine – with its corollaries, the Israel–Palestine and Arab–
Israeli conflicts – has been a key issue of world politics and a major source
of world tension since the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Few global issues have
attracted so much attention over such a long period of time.
As a result, despite its small territorial size, Palestine has become a key
component of Middle East studies in the academic community as well as a
field of study in its own right, in the same way that France and Germany are
each the subject of individual study while being part of European Studies. This
‘disproportionate’ status of the Palestine topic is due to several factors.
First is the strategic location of Palestine at the Mediterranean door of the
Middle East and the ‘East of Suez’ world. This strategic position – the source
of British interest in Palestine at the beginning of the twentieth century – has
been enhanced by the greater importance of the broader Middle East in global
affairs as manifested by the high frequency of wars and conflicts in the region
since the Second World War and even more since the end of the Cold War.
Second is the very particular fact of what has been described as a ‘settler-
colonial’ project in Palestine that was boosted by the huge human tragedy of
the Nazi genocide of European Jews in 1941–5. The result has been a complex
mingling of the Holocaust, which the Zionist movement claims as legitimizing
its actions, with what Palestinians call the Nakba, or ‘catastrophe’, which
describes the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Arab Palestinians from great swathes of
Palestine in 1948 by the Zionist drive towards the creation of Israel.
Third is the sheer complexity of the Palestine question engendered by the
Nakba and the subsequent occupation by the state of Israel of the West Bank
and Gaza following the Six-Day War in 1967. As a result of these, the Palestinian
people today are living under very different conditions and legal regimes: they
encompass those who remained in Israel after the state’s establishment in
1948; those, including refugees, under direct Israeli occupation or indirect
Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza; those displaced by the wars of 1948
Foreword to the SOAS Palestine Studies Book Series ix
and 1967 to the eastern bank of the Jordan River, some of them still living
in camps and most of whom became Jordanian citizens; those living in the
refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria; those of the diaspora living in other Arab
countries; and those of the global diaspora.
Finally, the question of Palestine plays such a major role in Arab politics in
general and represents such a major trauma in collective Arab memory that
it has been the focus of prolific artistic and literary energy, a drive that goes
beyond Palestinians to include creative minds and talents from all Arabic-
speaking countries.
This complexity and the unparalleled diversity of contemporary Palestinian
locations and situations help to explain Palestine’s ‘disproportionate’ status and
account for the abundance of publications on Palestine and its people. And yet,
surprisingly, there has until now been no university-based English-language
book series specifically dedicated to Palestine Studies. The SOAS Palestine
Studies series, published by I.B. Tauris in collaboration with the SOAS Centre
for Palestine Studies (CPS) at the London Middle East Institute (LMEI), seeks
to fill this gap. This series is dedicated to the contemporary history, politics,
economy, society and culture of Palestine and the historiographic quarrels
associated with its past.
The subject of Palestine has aroused intense passions over several decades.
On such a topic it is very difficult to exclude passion, and the pretension to be
‘neutral’ is often disqualified by both sides. But we will make sure that none of
our books stray beyond the realms of intellectual integrity and scholarly rigour.
With the Palestine Studies series we hope to make an important contribution
towards a better understanding of this most complex topic.
Professor Gilbert Achcar
SOAS, University of London