The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa
Middle East Project:announces an international conference on the future of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
Cape Town, South Africa
12-14 June 2009
‘RE-ENVISIONING ISRAEL/PALESTINE’
inviting South African and international scholars and professionals concerned about the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to review and debate the latest evidence, analysis, and theory related to existing and alternative strategies for its just and stable resolution.
CONFERENCE THEMES:
The International Law of Occupation Revisited
National Identities and Democracy in Israel-Palestine
The Political-Economy and Geography of Peace
Building Arab-African Agendas toward Justice and Democracy
Website: www.hsrc.ac.za/middleeastconference
International Conference:
‘Re-Envisioning Israel-Palestine’
Confirmed Participants
Convenor: Dr Virginia Tilley, Chief Research Specialist
Research Director: Dr Adrian Hadland, Research Managing Director
Administration: Tania Fraser, administrative assistant, Democracy and Governance
Contact: +27-(0)21-466-7924, mep@hsrc.ac.za
Theme 1: International Law of Occupation Revisited
Chair: John Dugard, Extraordinary Professor, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, and former Special Rapporteur on the Question of Palestine for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
Max du Plessis, Professor of Law, University of KwaZulu Natal (Durban)
Sahar Francis, Director, Addameer/Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association (Jerusalem)
Adrian Friedman, Advocate, Legal Resources Centre (Johannesburg)
Outi Korhonen, Associate Professor of Law, American University of Cairo
Stefan Lütgenau, Programme Director, Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Human Rights and convenor of the Working Group on Palestine/Israel for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (Austria)
Daniel Machover, head of civil litigation, Hickman & Rose Solicitors, and co-founder, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (London)
Mazen Masri, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (Toronto)
John Reynolds, Researcher, Al-Haq (Ramallah)
Bruce Ryder, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Public Law & Public Policy, Osgoode Hall Law School, University of York (Toronto)
Iain Scobbie, Director and Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law, School for Oriental & African Studies (London)
Elna Sondergaard, Director of the International Human Rights Law Programme, American University of Cairo
Theme 2: Identity and Democracy in the Middle East
Chair: Nadim Rouhana, Professor of International Negotiations and Conflict Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Boston, and Director of the Mada al-Carmel/Centre for Applied Social Science (Haifa)
Adi Ophir, Professor of Political Philosophy, Cohn Institute, University of Tel Aviv
Fouad Moughrabi, Professor of Political Sciences, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Steven Friedman, Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Johannesburg
Theme 3: Political Economy and the Politics of Conflict
Chair: Leila Farsakh, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts-Boston
Sara Roy, Professor of Political Science and Senior Research Fellow, Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University (Boston)
Samia al-Botmeh, Director, Centre for Development Studies, Birzeit University
Jamil Hilal, sociologist, Bir Zeit
Alain Gresh, Editor, Le Monde Diplomatique
Jad Isaac, Director, Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ) (Bethlehem)
Theme 4: Arab-African Networks on Conflict & Democracy
Chair: Gerhard Maré, Professor of Sociology and Director, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of KwaZulu Natal (Durban)
Adam Habib, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Development, University of Johannesburg
Jamal Juma’, Coordinator, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (Ramallah)
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THEME DESCRIPTION
This conference responds to growing international concern about the dangerous stagnation of the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace process.’ As present paradigms for the effective resolution of the conflict have proved inadequate, alternatives and new directions are urgently sought by diplomats, politicians, lawyers, and concerned professionals from both sides as well as the international community. This conference accordingly seeks to bring new thinking and academic analysis to the forefront that can illuminate strategies for a just and stable resolution of the conflict. To encourage and enable a holistic analysis, the conference will solicit presentations from a spectrum of disciplines.
The conference will especially seek to connect South African and Middle East scholars in order to foster new research linkages regarding democracy and identity in Africa and the Middle East. Strong representation by senior South African scholars and experts is expected.
Themes
Themes reflect workshops and activities of the HSRC Middle East Project (MEP) in 2007-2009. Each is chaired by a scholar involved in directing or supervising those events.
Theme 1: The International Law of Occupation Revisited
Theme Chair: John Dugard, Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, and former Special Rapporteur on the Question of Palestine for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
The fortieth anniversary of Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, coupled with Israel`s continued failure to comply with international law, has suggested to some legal scholars that the fundamental character of the occupation may require re-assessment. This theme invites papers exploring whether features of other international law regimes, such as apartheid and colonialism, are manifest in Israeli policy and what this analysis implies legally for the conflict and the international community. Proposals developing theory about how frameworks of IHL and IHRL may evolve or co-exist are also welcome. (Participants will be invited to engage with the HSRC’s special project on this subject.)
Theme 2: Identities and Democracy in Israel-Palestine
Theme Chair: Dr Nadim Rouhana, Professor of International Negotiations and Conflict Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Boston, and Director of the Mada al-Carmel/Centre for Applied Social Science (Haifa)
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is commonly understood as steered by two duelling and immutable national identities-Palestinian-Arab and Jewish-Zionist. Yet, recent historical scholarship has helped clarify the origins of these identities and demonstrated the possibilities of major identity transformations in Mandate Palestine. But what do these studies signify for the conflict? Are present identities to be held as immutable in order to defend related exclusive privileges or struggle for rights, and in what ways is transforming the terms of the conflict inextricably related to transforming the identities themselves? This theme invites papers considering how past and possible constructions of identities relevant to the conflict — such as identities based on nationalism, citizenship, religious affiliation, ideology, colonialism and culture, and victimhood — inform or constrain viable solutions to the conflict in Mandate Palestine. Topics could focus on empirical questions (e.g., mass popular perception; political mood, fears, and will; democratization and citizenship; social and political movements) and/or potential new directions (trajectories of popular thought; engagement with new democratic movements; the reform or redesign of national institutions; implications of altered identity discourses for established and rising leaderships).
Theme 3: The Political-Economy and Geography of Peace
Theme Chair: Dr Leila Farsakh, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts-Boston
However preferable or inevitable any given solution in Israel-Palestine might seem, its viability inevitably rests on geographic and economic realities shaping the lives of people on the ground. Political leadership and diplomacy must appreciate and confront these hard realities or risk becoming irrelevant and futile. This theme invites empirical analyses of economic and social factors that help clarify parameters for the conflict’s potential solutions: e.g. nature of economic relations between Israel and the Palestinian territories and their likely prospects; poverty rates and trends; health trends; trade patterns; the labour market developments; water and other natural resources; population growth; and the geopolitics of borders. While basing their analysis on empirical data, papers will analyse how these conditions impact prospects for peace and growth in the area and what they should signify for viable solutions to the conflict.
Theme 4: Arab-African Visions toward Non-racial Democracy in the Middle East
Theme Chair: Dr Gerhard Mare, Director, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of KwaZulu Natal (Durban, South Africa)
Africa and the Middle East share much in common regarding colonialism, decolonisation, struggles for democracy, Western intervention, and nation-building. Less commonly recognised is their shared heritage of Western discourse about race and ethnicity, which have interplayed with local identities sometimes to dangerous or lethal effect. Theme five explores this comparison by encouraging new dialogue and shared research between African and Middle East scholars: e.g., in clarifying how concepts of race and ethnicity have fed into relevant national movements and strategies of mobilisation; how race, ethnicity and religion have operated as contested and multiple identities within South Africa, Israel, and Palestine; how such identities have articulated with issues of gender and class; and how regional identity discourses that have historically provided potent fuel for liberation movements (e.g., ‘Arab’ and ‘African’) have or should inform national identities today. One concern is to revisit the historical practices and perceptions that informed struggles for self-determination in colonial Africa, including notions of race and of ethnicity. Another is how colonial and post-colonial notions of race and of ethnicity, originating in the West, shaped, created, and articulated with pre-existing social identities. Here the contributions will centre on Israel and Palestine but could provide wider reference to similar and informative ideological and practical projects – whether in Rwanda, India, Sudan, or South Africa.
SCHEDULE (as of 1 June, not final)
SATURDAY 13 June: ACADEMIC CONFERENCE – DAY 1Venue: Townhouse Hotel08h00 Registration09h00 PLENARY I: Politics and Economy of Solutions in Israel/Palestine1. VIRGINIA TILLEY – INTRODUCTION: An Evidence-Based Approach to Middle East Peace2. JAD ISAAC – Geography of Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem3. SAMIA AL-BOTMEH – The Paris Economic Protocol and Beyond: In search of an optimal trade arrangement10h45 Coffee Break11h00 PLENARY I CONTINUES: 4. JAMIL HILAL – Polarization and Fragmentation of Palestinian Society under Occupation 5. ALAIN GRESH – The Failure of the Idea of a Democratic Palestinian State in the 1960-70's 6. SARA ROY – Before Gaza, After Gaza: Examining the New Reality in Palestine-Israel DISCUSSION13:00 LUNCH: Townhouse Hotel, 1st Floor Restaurant (presenters only)
14:30 PLENARY II: Identity and Democracy: Re-imagining the National Project1. NADIM ROUHANA – Theme Keynote: Democratic Transition & Re-inventing Palestinian & Israeli Identities2. ADI OPHIR – Co-existence of Democracy and Occupation in Israel-Palestine3. FOUAD MOUGHRABI – Changing Modes of Resistance 4. STEVEN FRIEDMAN – Those Whom History Wishes to Destroy It First Makes Rich: Identity, Economics and the End of ApartheidDISCUSSION19h00
SUNDAY 14 June: ACADEMIC CONFERENCE – DAY 2Venue: Townhouse Hotel, Main Hall09h00 PLENARY III: HSRC Int’l Law Study: ‘Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid’1. JOHN DUGARD – Keynote: Apartheid and Colonialism in the OPT: Questions for International Law2. IAIN SCOBBIE – Report’s Findings on Colonialism3. JOHN REYNOLDS – Report’s Findings on ApartheidDISCUSSION11.00 Coffee Break11:15 PLENARY III Continued: 4. MAX DU PLESSIS and ADRIAN FRIEDMAN – Legal Considerations for an ICJ Advisory Opinion5. VIRGINIA TILLEY – Elephants in the Room: Political Implications of the Study DISCUSSION12h00 LUNCH13h00 ROUNDTABLESBreak-away Rooms I. Crisis, Collapse, or Cusp? Transitions to New Politics in Israel/Palestine (and the One-State/Two-State Debate)CO-CHAIRS: SARA ROY AND NADIM ROUHANAPARTICIPANTS: SAMIA AL-BOTMEH, ALAIN GRESH, ADAM HABIB, JAMIL HILAL, JAD ISAAC, JAMAL JUMA’, GERHARD MARE, FOUAD MOUGHRABI,, ADI OPHIR, VIRGINIA TILLEY II. Law, Justice and Human Rights: Old Problems, New IdeasCHAIR: JOHN DUGARD, PARTICIPANTS: SAHAR FRANCIS, MAX DU PLESSIS, BRUCE RYDER, IAIN SCOBBIE AND PAPERS BY:1. JOHN REYNOLDS – Colonialism, Sovereignty & the ‘State’ of Palestine Under International Law2. ELNA SONDERGAARD – Access to Justice for Palestinian Victims during the Occupation3. STEFAN LÜTGENAU – Confiscation, Dispossession and Eviction in the Middle East4. MAZEN MASRI – The Two-State Model and Israeli Constitutionalism: The Impact on the Palestinians in Israel5. OUTI KORHONEN – [title pending]15H00 COFFEE BREAK15h15 PLENARY IV: Translating Visions into ActionCHAIR: VIRGINIA TILLEY1. SAHAR FRANCIS – Stagnation in Human Rights Campaigns: The Case of Palestinian Prisoners2. JAMAL JUMA’ – Facing the Realities: an NGO Perspective 3. DANIEL MACHOVER – International Law and the Middle East: Strategies and Tactics4. BRUCE RYDER – Imagining Federal Futures in Israel / Palestine19h00 DINNER/ROUNDTABLE FOR INVITED PARTICIPANTS: BUILDING ACADEMIC NETWORKS1. GERHARD MARÉ –Building a South African-Palestinian/Arab Research NetworkSUMMARY REPORTS OF THEME CHAIRS: NADIM ROUHANA, SARA ROY, C.J.R. DUGARD
CONFIRMED PARTICIPANTS
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Samia Al-Botmeh is the Director of Birzeit University Centre for Development Studies and a Lecturer in Economics. She holds an MA in Economics from the University of Nottingham (1993) and a BA from the University of Leicester (1992). She is presently completing her doctorate at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies: her thesis is titled ‘Gender differentials in labour market outcomes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory’.
Previously, Samia worked as Senior Researcher and Coordinator of Research at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah and has published extensively on Palestinian economic current affairs, labour market, gender differentials in economic outcomes, and poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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John Dugard was appointed to the Chair in Public International Law at the University of Leiden in 1998. He holds a LL.D. degree from Cambridge University and has been awarded honorary doctorates of law by the Universities of Natal, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Witwatersrand and Pretoria.
Since 1997, he has served as a member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations and was, from 2000 – 2006, it’s Special Rapporteur on Diplomatic Protection. Dugard is a Judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice and the International Law Commission. Following the recurrence of the Palestinian intifada in late 2000, Dugard was appointed as Chairman of a UN Commission on Human Rights inquiry commission on the situation of human rights there. Through 2007, he reported to the UN Human Rights Council as Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. He has held visiting professorships at the universities of Princeton, Duke, UC Berkeley, Pennsylvania and New South Wales (Australia), and is a member of the Institut de Droit International. His present interests are international criminal law and diplomatic protection.
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Max du Plessis is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of KwaZulu Natal, where he lectures in Jurisprudence, Public International Law, Human Rights and Professional Training. He holds a LLM from the University of Cambridge and has been visiting scholar in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge and occasional lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Du Plessis has qualified as Advocate of the High court of South Africa, is an associate member of the KwaZulu Natal Bar, and research associate at the Matrix Chambers, Gray’s Inn in London. His research interests include International Criminal Law, Legal Philosophy, International Human Rights Law, Constitutional Law and HIV/AIDS. He has written extensively on the ICC and constitutional law.
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Adrian Friedman is counsel in the Constitutional Litigation Unit of the Legal Resources Centre and a member of the Johannesburg Bar. He obtained an LLB degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and an LLM degree from New York University. He is a former law clerk to Justice Mokgoro and Chief Justice Chaskalson at the Constitutional Court and part-time lecturer in law at the University of the Witwatersrand. Adrian lives in Johannesburg with his wife and cat.
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Steven Friedman is Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg. He holds a DLitt from Rhodes University and an Honors degree from the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg and is Full Professor of Politics and International Relations at Rhodes University. In the 1970s, Steven worked as the labour journalist and later as Senior Editor at the Financial Mail, and then as Labour Reporter and Labour Correspondent at the Rand Daily Mail. He joined the South Africa Institute of Race Relations in 1985 to conduct a detailed study of the reform process and served as Policy Research Manager from 1986 to 1989. In 1990, he became Senior Research Officer at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) where his research focused on the transition to democracy. In 1992, he became director of CPS and reorganized it as an independent, non-profit, policy research centre. In 2008 he was appointed director of the Centre for Democracy Studies, a joint project of Rhodes University (Grahamstown, Eastern Cape) and the University of Johannesburg.
Steven’s many edited and monograph books include Building Tomorrow Today: African Workers in Trade Unions, (1985), Black Politics at the Crossroads (1986), The Long Journey: South Africa's Quest for A Negotiated Settlement (1993), Yesterday's Pact: Power-Sharing and Legitimate Governance in Post-Settlement South Africa (1994), Free But Unequal: Democracy, Inequality and the State in Latin America and Africa (2001); and Golden Dawn or White Flag? The State, Civil Society and Social Policy (2003). His many articles and book chapters include ‘South Africa: Divided In a Special Way’ (in Politics in Developing Countries, 1995); several articles for Politikon including ‘Too Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing: South Africa's Bargained Transition, Democratic Prospects and John Rawls's Veil of Ignorance’; several articles for the Journal of Democracy including ‘South Africa's Reluctant Transition’ (1993) and ‘South Africa After Mandela’ (1999); ‘Democracy, Inequality and the Reconstitution of Politics’ (in Democratic Governance and Social Inequality, (2002); and ‘South Africa: Building Democracy After Apartheid’ in Democratic Reform in Africa: The Quality of Progress (2004). He writes a biweekly column for Business Day and has contributed to The Guardian, Financial Times, and the New York Times.________________________________________
Alain Gresh is editor of Le Monde diplomatique and a specialist on the Middle East. He was born in Cairo in 1948 and moved to Paris in his teens where he completed his Master’s Degree in mathematics at the Université Paris VII in 1971, a Diploma of Arabic at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in 1977, and a PhD with a thesis on the Palestine Liberation Organisation at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1983.
Alain is serves on the administrative council of the Arab World Institute (IMA) and as president of the Association of French journalists specialised on the Maghreb and the Middle East (AJMO).His books include The PLO, The Struggle Within (1986); Un péril islamiste? (1994); Israël-Palestine, vérités sur un conflit (2001), which was translated into German, Arabic, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese; and L’Islam, la république et le monde (2004). He co-authored, with Dominique Vidal, An A to Z to the Middle East (1990 and 2004); Palestine 1947, un partage avorté (1987); and Golfe: Clefs pour une guerre annoncée (1990). He co-authored, with Didier Billion, Actualités de l’Etat palestinien (2000) and with Françoise Germain-Robin and Tariq Ramadan, L’Islam en questions (2000). His articles include ‘Turkish-Israeli-Syrian Relations and their impact on the Middle East’ (Middle East Journal, 1998), ‘Russia’s Return to the Middle East’ (Journal of Palestine Studies, 1998), and numerous articles in Le Monde diplomatique.
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Adam Habib is currently Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research, Innovation and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg. He holds a MPhil and PhD from the Graduate School of the City University of New York.
Adam has held academic appointments at the universities of Durban-Westville and KwaZulu-Natal and was Executive Director of the Democracy and Governance Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council. Adam was the founding director of the Centre for Civil Society and a research professor in the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has served as co-editor of both the social science academic journal, Transformation, and the official disciplinary journal of the South African Association of Political Science, Politikon. He also sits on the editorial boards of Voluntas and the South African Labour Bulletin. He has published extensively on politics and society in South Africa.
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Jamil Hilal is an independent Palestinian sociologist and has published and edited a number of books and numerous articles on Palestinian society. Hilal has served an associate senior research fellow at Muwatin the Palestinian Institution for the Study of Democracy (Ramallah), and at The Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.
Jamil has been a senior research associate at the Law Institute, at the Development Study Centre, and at the Institute of Women Studies, of Beirzeit University. Hilal’s recent book publications include (apart from poverty and related issues); Palestinian political parties, the Palestinian middle class, Palestinian political system after Oslo, and edited Where Now for Palestine; the Demise of the Two-State Solution (Z Books, 2007), and co-authored a book on customary law in Palestine, and another on social capital in Occupied Palestinian Territories. Hilal has very recently on polarization and fragmentation of Palestinian society.
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Jad Isaac serves as Director General of the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem (ARIJ), in the West Bank, where he directs the Palestinian Institute’s research on agriculture, environment and water. He earned his Ph.D from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and joined the faculty of Bethlehem University, where he served as Dean of the Science Faculty.
Jad has published several articles and books in his field including Environmental Profile for the West Bank and Atlas of Palestine. He now monitors and assesses the magnitude of environmental degradation caused by politically induced changes to Palestinian land and natural resources.
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________________________________________Outi Korhonen [ bio pending]________________________________________
Stefan Lütgenau, historian, has focused over the past years on Holocaust Era Assets and restitution and compensation in Austria since 1945. His works include studies on forced foreign and Jewish slave labour in different Austrian companies as well as the city and municipality of Vienna 1938 – 1945.
As programme coordinator of the Bruno Kreisky Foundation for Human Rights, Stefan is active in human rights protection in Austria and human rights networking. Founding member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, Copenhagen, he has served as convenor of a mixed Israeli, Palestinian, European expert working group on human rights in Israel and Palestine since 2002. In this capacity he had been an active promoter of human rights education in Austria, mainly for pupils and teachers.
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Daniel Machover is head of the civil litigation department at Hickman and Rose Solicitors. He specializes in international human rights law, civil action against the Home Office and police and in representing bereaved families at inquests into deaths in custody.
Daniel co-founded Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights in 1988 and is actively pursuing potential remedies in the UK and EU for Palestinian victims of alleged Israeli human rights abuses. He is listed in the Legal 500 as a leading individual in the field of Civil Liberties and Human Rights. In 2001, Daniel received the Margery Fry Award from the Howard League for the Penal Reform for ‘ensuring the protection of prisoners through tenacious pursuit of legal remedies’. ________________________________________
Gerhard Maré is Director of the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He holds a first degree in Political Studies and Literature, subsequent degrees in Comparative Literature and a PhD in Sociology from the universities of Natal (Durban) and the Witwatersrand.
Gerry has written and taught extensively on democracy and transformation in South Africa. His early work included a book on forced population removals in the 1970’s and research on ethnic mobilization during the 1970’s and 1980’s. His most recent research has been on nation-building, racism and race thinking, and he mentors students working on regional politics, gender issues, xenophobia, cultural diversity, HIV/AIDS and traditional knowledge systems. Active in Sociology and the programme in Industrial, Organisation and Labour studies, in both of which he has served as Director, he guided the proposal for the creation of the CCRRI through the University structures and was appointed Director at the end of 2006.
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Fouad Moughrabi is professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He is also director of the Qattan Centre for Educational Research and Development, Ramallah. He holds a PhD from the University of Grenoble Since joining the university in 1969. His research has focused on American policy towards the Middle East, American public opinion and the Palestine question, the political beliefs of Palestinian-Americans, and peace initiatives in the Middle East. ________________________________________
Adi Ophir teaches philosophy at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. He is also fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute where he directs and interdisciplinary research project on ‘Humanitarian Action in Catastrophes: The Shaping of Contemporary Political Imagination and Moral Sensibilities.’
His main areas of interest are modern and contemporary continental philosophy, in the domains of ethics, political philosophy, and critical theory. Ophir founded and edited Theory and Criticism, Israel’s leading journal for critical theory. His published works include This Regime Which is Not One (2008), The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals (2005), Terrible Days (2002) and Working for the Present (2001).
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John Reynolds BBLS, LLM has worked since 2006 as a senior legal researcher at Al-Haq (Ramallah), the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He specialises in public international law, particularly in relation to Palestine-Israel, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law.
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Nadim Rouhana is Professor of International Negotiations and Conflict Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Dimplomacy at Tufts University, Boston. He holds a PhD from Wayne State University and completed two years of postdoctoral work as Harvard University. He has held various research positions in Palestinian and American universities and has taught at Harvard University, Boston College and the University of Massachusetts.
Nadim is founding Director of the Mada al-Carmel / Centre for Applied Social Science (Haifa), a non-profit, independent research institute in Haifa, Israel, that promotes theoretical and applied research on the Palestinian society in Israel, including government policy, the social, educational and economic needs of the Palestinians in Israel, national identity and democratic citizenship. Under MADA’s auspices, Nadim spearheaded the Haifa Declaration project, a collaborative effort by some 50 Palestinian political and intellectual leaders of a collective self-expression of their vision for their relationship with Israel, with the rest of the Palestinian people and the Arab world. Nadim has published extensively on the sociology of Palestinians in Israel.________________________________________
Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where she completed her doctoral studies in international development and education.
Trained as a political economist, Sara has worked in the Gaza Strip and West Bank since 1985 conducting research primarily on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip and on U.S. foreign aid to the region. Her current research, which was funded by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, examines the social and economic sectors of the Palestinian Islamic movement and their relationship to Islamic political institutions, and the critical changes to the Islamic movement that have occurred over the last seven years. She also serves on the Advisory Boards of American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), an American private voluntary organization working in the Middle East, and the Centre for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University.
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Bruce Ryder joined the Osgoode Hall Law School’s faculty in 1987. He is Director of the Centre for Public Law and Public Policy. Ryder’s publications focus on a range of contemporary constitutional issues, including those related to federalism, equality rights, freedom of expression, Aboriginal rights, and Quebec secession. He has also published articles that explore the historical evolution of constitutional principles and is currently researching the history of book censorship in Canada.
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Iain Scobbie is Director and Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East. He holds an LLB (Edinburgh) LLB (Cantab) GDIL (ANU) and PhD (Cantab). He specializes in public international law (especially its relation to the Israel/Palestine conflict), theory of international law, international humanitarian law, and the law and practice of the International Court of Justice. Iain is a member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law, and of its International Legal Theory interest group; the Governing Board of the Scottish Centre for War Studies (University of Glasgow); the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict; and of the International Advisory Council of Diakonia's International Humanitarian Law Programme (Jerusalem). He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Journal of International Law and of the Commissioning Panel of the AHRB/ESRC Religion and Society programme. His many publications include 'Regarding/Disregarding: The Judicial Rhetoric of President Barak and the International Court of Justice's Wall Advisory Opinion' in the Chinese Journal of International Law (2006) and 'An Intimate Disengagement: Israel's Withdrawal from Gaza, the Law of Occupation and of Self-Determination' in Cotran and Lau (eds.), Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (2007).________________________________________
Elna Sondergaard joined the AUC Law Faculty in September 2007. She has previously taught International Human Rights Law and European Union Law at Copenhagen University. She holds a Bachelor in Philosophy and French from Copenhagen University; Candidata Juris from Copenhagen University; and a Master’s Degree in European Community Law (LL.M) from the College of Europe in Brugge (Belgium).
From 2001-2003, Ms Sondergaard worked in the legal department of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip (UNRWA), and since then, she has worked as a legal consultant for the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights for whom she recently wrote a legal Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees. Earlier she has practiced law in Denmark within a major commercial law firm and in the Gaza Strip. She is admitted to the Danish Bar Association.
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Virginia Tilley is a Chief Research Specialist and head of the Middle East Project at the Democracy and Governance Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. She holds a BA from Antioch College (1985), an MA from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (1988), and an MA and PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1997) where she specialised in comparative studies of race, ethnicity, identity and nation-building. In 1988-1992 she served as Assistant Director in the International Organisation for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Washington DC) and headed a research project on Israeli settlements. From 1997 she was appointed to the faculty of the Political Science Department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY, where she was granted tenure in 2004 and became Associate Professor. She came to South Africa in 2005 and joined the HSRC in January 2006.
Virginia is author of The One-State Solution (2005) and numerous essays on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including a series of briefing papers for the South African government in 2008 and the co-authored study, Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?A Reassessment of Israeli Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories under International Law. Her work on the politics of indigenous peoples includes Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation, and Power in El Salvador (2005), which was selected as book of the year by the 2006 Central American Congress of Anthropologists, and a 1997 article on racial conflict in El Salvador co-authored with Eric Ching that won the annual prize of the Congress of Latin American Studies. She is currently serving as coordinating editor of the HSRC’s research project on international law in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and working on a book on the theory of racial and ethnic conflict in the modern international system.
Tania Fraser is administrative assistant to the Middle East Project of the Democracy and Governance Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. Prior to joining the HSRC, she worked as project officer at Themba Le Sizwe, an NGO that worked on empowerment of victims of social trauma and especially sexual violence, funded by the European Union. She joined the HSRC in July 2008 as publications coordinator for the Centre for Poverty, Employment and Growth and joined Democracy and Governance as a project assistant to the Middle East Project in January 2
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