Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa

Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa
Author: Diana K. Davis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2011-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN:

The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries, increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to critically examine culturally constructed views of the environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the questionable policies and practices born of these environmental imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge production.

Palestine Speaks

Palestine Speaks
Author: Cate Malek
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2015-02-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784780510

For more than six decades, Israel and Palestine have been the center of one of the world's most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises. In Palestine Speaks men and women from the West Bank and Gaza describe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the conflict. This includes eyewitness accounts of the most recent attacks on Gaza in 2014. The collection includes Ebtihaj, whose son, born during the first intifada, was killed by Israeli soldiers during a night raid almost twenty years later. Nader, a professional marathon runner from the Gaza Strip who is determined to pursue his dream of competing in international races despite countless challenges, including severe travel restrictions and a lack of resources to help him train.

Hydrofictions

Hydrofictions
Author: Hannah Boast
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-07-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474443826

This book identifies water as a crucial new topic of literary and cultural analysis at a critical moment for the world's water resources, focusing on the urgent context of Israel/Palestine.

Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation

Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation
Author: Nahla Abdo-Zubi
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781571814593

As the crisis in Israel does not show any signs of abating this remarkable collection, edited by an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar and with contributions by Palestinian and Israeli women, offers a vivid and harrowing picture of the conflict and of its impact on daily life, especially as it affects women's experiences that differ significantly from those of men. The (auto)biographical narratives in this volume focus on some of the most disturbing effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a sense of dislocation that goes well beyond the geographical meaning of the word; it involves social, cultural, national and gender dislocation, including alienation from one's own home, family, community, and society. The accounts become even more poignant if seen against the backdrop of the roots of the conflict, the real or imaginary construct of a state to save and shelter particularly European Jews from the horrors of Nazism in parallel to the other side of the coin: Israel as a settler-colonial state responsible for the displacement of the Palestinian nation. Nahla Abdo is Professor of Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa. She has published extensively on women and the state in the Middle East with special focus on Palestinian women. She contributed to the establishment of the Women's Studies Institute at Birzeit University and has found the Gender Research Unit at the Women's Empowerment Project/Gaza Community Mental Health Program in Gaza. Ronit Lentin was born in Haifa prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and has lived in Ireland since 1969. She is a well known writer of fiction and non-fiction books and is course co-ordinator of the MPhil in Ethnic Studies at the Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin. She has published extensively on the genedered link between Israel and the Shoah, feminist research methodologies, Israeli and Palestinian women's peace activism, gender and racism in Ireland.

Integrated Water Resources Management and Security in the Middle East

Integrated Water Resources Management and Security in the Middle East
Author: Clive Lipchin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2007-05-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1402059868

This volume brings together diverse voices relating to the critical issue of water management in one of the world’s most politically volatile areas: the Middle East. The book collects the opinions of Palestinians, Israelis, Jordanians as well as international experts on creating a holistic and comprehensive view of water management challenges and strategies in the Middle East.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Author: Dov Waxman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-04-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190625341

No conflict in the world has lasted as long, generated as many news headlines, or incited as much controversy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, despite, or perhaps because of, the degree of international attention it receives, the conflict is still widely misunderstood. While Israelis and Palestinians and their respective supporters trade accusations, many outside observers remain confused by the conflict's complexity and perplexed by the passion it arouses. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know® offers an even-handed and judicious guide to the world's most intractable dispute. Writing in an engaging, jargon-free Q&A format, Dov Waxman provides clear and concise answers to common questions, from the most basic to the most contentious. Covering the conflict from its nineteenth-century origins to the latest developments of the twenty-first century, this book explains the key events, examines the core issues, and presents the competing claims and narratives of both sides. Readers will learn what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about, how it has evolved over time, and why it continues to defy diplomatic efforts at a resolution.

Environmental Peacemaking

Environmental Peacemaking
Author: Ken Conca
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2002-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801871931

Eight contributions written by professors of political science, government, and politics as well as researchers and program directors for environmental change, energy, and security projects provide insight into the process of environmental peacemaking, based on their experiences in a variety of international regions. An initial chapter makes a case for the process; successive chapters address the Baltic, South Asia, the Aral Sea basin, southern Africa, the Caspian Sea, and the US-Mexican border. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Israel-Palestine

Israel-Palestine
Author: Omer Bartov
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2021-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800731302

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has raised a plethora of unanswered questions, generated seemingly irreconcilable narratives, and profoundly transformed the land’s physical and political geography. This volume seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region that is now known as Israel and Palestine and its peoples—both those that live there as well as those who relate to it as a mental, mythical, or religious landscape. Engaging the perspectives of a multidisciplinary, international group of scholars, it is an urgent collective reflection on the bonds between people and a place, whether real or imagined, tangible as its stones or ephemeral as the hopes and longings it evokes.