The Palestinian Forum for Israeli StudiesFollowing the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, many international sources demanded that Israel investigate the incident. This episode delves into the mechanisms used within Israel to handle such investigations and examines how the security, judicial, and political systems in Israel address this issue. Our guest, Attorney Sawsan Zahr, who previously served as Deputy Director of Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, provides insights into the procedures, challenges, and implications of the investigation process in this high-profile case.
In this episode, Dr. Honaida Ghanim, Director of MADAR, reviews the most important conclusions of the MADAR annual Strategic Report (issue 18th). Ghanim, presenting the report through an executive summary, concludes that Israel in 2021 witnessed two contradictory processes. Externally, Israel's strengthening of its geopolitical position, especially with the Abraham Peace Accords, has been accompanied by a growing global rights discourse accusing Israel of apartheid. Internally, the May uprising blurred the Green Line and contributed to its erosion, while the participation of an Arab party in the government coalition may also harden the Green Line, turning the issue of the occupied territories into an internal Zionist affair. This episode explains these overlapping processes and foresees their future consequences.
Temple Mount groups are Jewish extremists who seek to demolish the Al-Aqsa Mosque to build the Temple in its place, believing that the salvation of the Jewish people begins not only with control of the entire Land of Israel but through control of the Temple Mount specifically. The incursions of the Temple groups and their efforts to offer sacrifices, symbolizing the beginning of the Temple's construction, often coincide with the month of Ramadan, creating significant tension in Jerusalem. In this episode, Dr. Muhannad Mustafa, Director of the Mada al-Carmel Center in Haifa, discusses the Temple Groups and their theological and historical origins, particularly after 1967.
For years, the Jewish National Fund has been afforesting large areas of Negev land. When afforestation reached the outskirts of some unrecognized villages, the Palestinian people of the Negev realized that the project aimed to swallow up their land and limit their natural development. In this episode, Huda Abu Obeid, a resident of the village of Lakiya in the Negev, talked about the history of displacement in the Negev from the Nakba of 1948 to the outbreak of clashes near the village of Sawa in January 2022.
In recent years, Israel has begun to invest in the high-tech sector in Jerusalem, supporting the creation of "technological incubators" to connect young Jerusalemite minds with the Israeli ecosystem. In this episode, we explore the meaning of technological incubators and ecosystems, linking them to Israel's colonial and neoliberal policies. Our guest is Aris Bishara, a feminist activist and PhD student in sociology, who studies the high-tech sector in Israel by examining the intersections between colonialism, neoliberalism, and the Israeli high-tech sector and its effects on the identities and stratification of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line.
After the 1967 occupation, Israel surrounded its settler colonization project in the occupied territory with a multi-level "legal" cover, with the Israeli Supreme Court forming one of the pillars of this legal structure. In this episode, lawyer Sawsan Zahr reviews the role of the Israeli Supreme Court in contributing to the permanence of the occupation, enabling settlements, and legitimizing the decisions of the Israeli establishment towards the occupied territory and its Palestinian inhabitants. This episode summarizes a book published by MADAR in October on Israeli Supreme Court decisions related to the territories occupied in 1967, prepared by Attorney Sawsan Zahr, who previously served as Deputy Director of Adalah in Israel.
