Today, Jadaliyya launched a new page adding to its rich coverage of the Middle East and bringing the total number of thematic and country pages to 17. Daily Acts of Resistance And Subversion or DARS is led by Bassam, Haddad, Nada Ghandour-Demri, Isis Nusair, Loulouwa Al Rachid, and Rafeef Ziadeh. This powerhouse team explains the meaning of resistance and subversion as well as the logic for highlighting them where it writes: The DARS Page chronicles daily acts of resistance and subversion (DARS) in contemporary Arab societies and beyond. All forms of resistance and subversion to political, economic, social, or cultural forms of exploitation will be of interest. This includes resistance to authoritarianism, occupation, imperialism, and social norms, and the many ways these are subverted. The launch includes 9 inaugural articles:
I co-authored The Infrastructure of Israeli Settler Colonialism (Part 1): The Jordan Valley along with Bassam Haddad and Jack Saba. The piece is part of a forthcoming series examining Israel's practices in the Occupied West Bank aimed at the forced population transfer of Palestinians. As I explain in the introduction: Since its establishment, Israel has distinguished the persons under its civil and military jurisdiction based on religion. Throughout Israel Proper and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), comprised of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Israel applies a different set of laws to its Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants respectively. By bifurcating Jewish nationality from Israeli citizenship, the State is able to afford demonstrable and significant privilege to Jewish persons even beyond Israel's undeclared borders (hence the reference to Israel Proper) at the expense of the political and socio-economic wellbeing of its non-Jewish citizens. Within the OPT, the brunt of Israel's policies are more severe as they are applied under a military occupation regime for which no oversight or legal redress exists. The impact of these policies is to diminish the number of Palestinians, to remove them from their original lands, and to concentrate them geographically. Within the OPT, they are concentrated into Area A; into no-man's land within the Seam Zone between the Apartheid Wall and the Green Line; and into isolated communities surrounded by Israeli settlements and their associated military apparatus. Within Israel Proper, they are concentrated in urban townships, in unrecognized villages, and other ghettoized communities. Each installment features pictures and video testimony from those activists on the ground engaged in daily acts of resistance and subversion. In this first video, Ibrahim Sawafta, who helps lead the work of the Friends' Solidarity Committee in the Jordan Valley, breaks down Israel's policies aimed at removing the Palestinian population into Area A and to transfer Israeli settlers into the Valley. Watch his interview here.
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