Marwan Darweish

Everyday resistance among Palestinians living in Israel 1948–1966

Abstract Contemporary research often either overlooks Palestinians who experienced life under Israeli military rule (1948–1966) or describes them as acquiescent. This interview-based study draws on wide-ranging sources and the testimony of Palestinians in the Galilee and Triangle to provide multiple examples of people’s everyday resistance to the extension of Israeli military rule. The objects of this research are the acts of nonviolent resistance undertaken by Palestinians to preserve their own existence first and foremost rather than to endanger that of others. The testimony gathered signals the persistence of resistance, dignity, and identity, but it also speaks to how contingent and difficult acts of nonviolent resistance are.

History Education in Schools in Iraqi Kurdistan: Representing Values of Peace and Violence.

Abstract The Kurdistan Regional Government has implemented a wide range of reforms in Iraqi Kurdistan’s education system since its establishment in 2003. This qualitative study utilises critical discourse analysis to investigate the content of History Education (HE) textbooks (grades five to eight) and to assess how far peace education values and principles have been integrated into the curriculum. The ME’s top-down approach has faced significant resistance from teachers and it fails to consider the importance of hidden and null curricula. It focuses on the history of Iraq, Kurdistan, and Islam, glorifies war, excludes different narratives or interpretations, and fails to foster critical debate or enquiry. The curriculum appears to encourage violence and foster divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the null curriculum is regulated to maintain the dominance of the group in power.

A Review of “The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream”

The Israeli Peace Movement: A Shattered Dream provides a comprehensive analysis of the ideology, organization, and actions of the Israeli peace movement. The book offers a detailed account of the evolution of the Israeli Jewish peace movement from the early 1920s until 2008, and reveals the high and low points of its development. Tamar S. Hermann makes it clear that the book is not intended to examine the circumstances and processes behind the failure of Oslo peace agreement, but does argue that the Israeli peace movement made a significant impact on the Israeli “climate of opinion” and prepared the ground to move from armed conflict to peaceful negotiation. Hermann, a Jewish Israeli academic, is optimistic and believes that despite the collapse of the peace process and the return to high level of violence and destruction, the peace movement in Israel has kept “the ashes of hope for peace.”