Mada al-Carmel – Arab Center for Applied Social Research held its ninth conference for Palestinian graduate students at the Ramada Olivie Hotel in Nazareth on Saturday, July 27, 2024. Palestinian researchers who are doctoral candidates or were recently awarded doctoral degrees presented six research papers during the event.
Dr. Areen Hawari, Director of Mada al-Carmel, opened the conference by welcoming the participants and introducing the organization’s graduate students’ program. She emphasized that the founding goals of Mada al-Carmel include providing support young Palestinian researchers, who are denied the opportunity to work freely in academia in Israel, to produce knowledge in academic Palestinian Arabic language, independent of the Israeli academic establishment, which is mobilized to produce knowledge that serves colonial interests. Hawari further stated that Mada al-Carmel, along with other Palestinian organizations, has been working for the past year amid the onslaught of painful events resulting from the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Opening lecture – Reading and writing from fragmented flesh
The opening lecture of the conference, titled “Reading and writing from fragmented flesh: Barbarism and brutality in knowledge production”, was given by Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a member of Mada al-Carmel’s Board of Directors, a critical feminist activist, a researcher and lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Professor and Global Chair in Law at the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
Shalhoub-Kevorkian began her lecture with a series of questions to which she sought to provide answers. She stated, “In these extremely difficult times, during which our people remains in the clutches of genocide, I share with you, through the subject matter of my lecture, the question of how we can develop a critical intellectual analysis or propose any reading and writing from fragmented flesh (ashlaa’). How can we do so amid the barbarism and brutality of the state’s violence, its vicious acts during the actual genocide, and the production of knowledge that supports savagery, and while we exist at the heart of the genocide, our thoughts and feelings bloodied, and living with loss and crime on a daily basis? And how can we do so while we are aware of the gendering and legitimation of physical and sexual assault, of starvation, of the assaults on health, education, the economy and livelihoods, of the exploitation of live, dead and dismembered bodies, and of traumatized and aggrieved souls?”
Session One – Readings on the colonial condition
The first session of the conference was titled “Readings on the colonial condition” and was moderated by Dr. Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University, and in sociology at the University of Berkeley.
The session’s first lecture was given by researcher Ibrahim Muhammad Rasras, a doctoral candidate in international relations and political science at the Near East University in Cyprus, on the subject of “An African, decolonial and Marxist critique of the liberal values of human rights: Zimbabwe as a case study”. Rasras presented his study of the shortcomings entailed in applying the liberal concepts and values of human rights, employing an African, decolonial and Marxist critique. His study works towards developing an understanding of the economic and social dimensions of human rights based on these three frameworks, in a challenge to the liberal view of human rights, focusing on the case of Zimbabwe. As the researcher explained, the study examines the extent to which colonialism has made the application of liberal human rights in Zimbabwe incompatible and ineffective for the peoples of the global South in the age of advanced capitalism.
The second lecture was given by researcher Muna Haddad, a human rights lawyer and doctoral candidate in law at the Queen Mary University of London, on the subject of “The withholding of dead bodies: Between colonial repression and anti-colonial resistance”. Haddad presented her study on the state practice of withholding the dead bodies of ‘enemies’ as a tool of political repression, as a phenomenon on which international law lacks a clear position, leaving dead bodies ‘hostages’ without direct protection. Her study focuses on Israel as a case study of the treatment of the dead bodies of Palestinian martyrs (shuhada’) in an attempt to shed light on the objectives of this practice and its legal framework. She draws on analysis of official documentation and oral testimonies to gain understanding of how the practice developed over time, and the role it plays within both the Israeli colonial project and the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
The third lecture was delivered by researcher Daoud al-Ghoul, a doctoral candidate in human geography in at the University of Newcastle in the UK, under the title of, “The making and reshaping of the geography of Jerusalem”. Al-Ghoul introduced his study of the historical development of spaces within the city of Jerusalem, viewing these spaces as natural spaces, even though they were created through conflict and political dynamics, as the conflict has continually reshaped the city’s geography, especially after the Nakba of 1948. The study makes use of historical records to offer valuable insights into the city’s past and present and underscores the unique value of archival collections as a primary data source for the bureaucracy that documented daily life and converted it into records. The study thereby endeavors to uncover documented stories and bring them back to life by linking them to the present. It offers an original explanation for the expansion of the municipal boundaries of the city after 1948, including through the annexation of the village of Silwan to the Jerusalem municipal area. It also provides an explanation of the effect of the uneven spatial development of Jerusalem’s neighborhoods on participation in the municipal council, through a comparative analysis of the development of the neighborhoods of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah.
Session Two – On the politics of violence and genocide
The second session of the conference was titled, “On the politics of violence and genocide”. It was moderated by Dr. Mansour Nasasra, Professor in Political Science and International Relations in the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Be’er al-Sabe’/the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The session’s first lecture was given by Dr. Lamma Butrus Mansour, a researcher in social policy who has a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Oxford. Her lecture was on the subject of “Echoes of violence in the halls of academia: The experiences of Arab Palestinian students during the events of May 2021”. She described the experiences of Arab Palestinian students in Israeli academic institutions during the events of May 2021 (in what are known as ‘the Uprising of Dignity’). The study was based on interviews conducted with university students and members of civil society organizations. The study proposes a theoretical model for tracking the emotional, social and political processes that the students went through at the time and links the events of May 2021 to the current war on Gaza in terms of their impact on students.
The second lecture, given by Shehab Idrees, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Haifa, had the title, “Parenting in the neoliberal age: An ethnographic perspective of the Palestinian family in Israel”. Idris’s research paper was based on his doctoral thesis of the same title, which contained an ethnographic study of the Palestinian reality within the Green Line. The lecture focused on the emergence of a new familial and educational model within Palestinian society inside Israel, one that puts the child at the center. Idris documented the developments and challenges that this model poses for parents, using ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Palestinian towns and villages.
Researcher Aysheh Maslamani, a doctoral student in Cognitive and Brain sciences, gave the third lecture, on “Policies of silencing Palestinian children from Jerusalem and the genocidal war on Gaza”. She presented her study on the repercussions of the genocidal war on Palestinian children in Jerusalem and how to deconstruct and analyze policies of silencing pursued against them, using their own voices. The researcher demonstrated that the voices of Jerusalemite children can help us to comprehend the meaning of the war and its impact on them, and to challenge the systems that gag them, through analyzing debates in the Knesset. The research methodology was based on interviews conducted with children in Jerusalem and experts on Jerusalem, in addition to observations of conferences related to issues of childhood during the genocide. The centering of the voices of Jerusalemite children reveals the power and effectiveness of these voices, and the weakness of the system that seeks to silence them. It further sheds light on their behaviors and emotions, from survivor’s syndrome, to fear and severe anxiety, and extending to their awareness of the system that aims to suppress and silence their pained voices and their Palestinian identity, which lives on despite the loss and genocide. Ultimately, their voices call for the wall of silence to be broken through refusal and resistance.
Grants for graduate students
The conference concluded with the distribution of the final installment of the grant of the Seminar to Support Research Skills among Palestinian Graduate Students for 2024. This is the ninth cycle of the program, which is directed by Dr. Mohanad Mustafa and coordinated by graduate student Jowana Jbara.
The program aims to create a supporting academic space and a nurturing cultural and national atmosphere for master’s and doctoral students, in which they can discuss their research and writings throughout the academic process. A group of Palestinians academics and lecturers with various academic specialisms take part in the program, and its outputs include a special academic file compiling articles related to the participants’ research projects, in which they discuss their academic contributions and their significance for society.
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