Essay on Iron Cage

The forcible eviction of the Palestinians and the denial of their right of return, has led to them becoming refugees, this has translated into the adoption of aggressive tactics and strategies to achieve their goal of a sovereign nation. Palestinian society is territorially disjointed by the divisions of the West Bank (administered by Fatah) and the Gaza area (administered by Hamas) creating a disharmony in interest articulation towards the goal of

Diamond’s third notion came from a variety of political and institutional problems that are one the main obstacles for the Middle East region. For one, these regimes have become extremely adept at repressing anyone who speaks against them within their societies. For another, they have started to use short bursts of political reform to relieve temporary demands for reform while leaving intact executive monopolies over state resources. Further, they efficiently divide opposition parties and civic forces, often by imposing electoral rules and regulations that make it impossible for civil society-which is generally weak and fragmented-to, mount concerted campaigns against the state apparatus. Diamond’s last explanation speaks on the dual issues of Islamism and the Arab-Israeli conflict, and how it plays into each side’s regime survival strategy. Authoritarian incumbents play up the

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the one of the world’s oldest conflicts, and it is still an ongoing problem in the world. Zionists and Arabs: two groups with conflicting beliefs who both claim Israel as their own. In wake of the Holocaust the U.N decided to gift the Jews a homeland for the lives lost in the genocide. In 1947, the U.N Partition divided the land of Israel (Historic Palestine) into two separate states: Arab and Jewish. Since then, the state of Israel has been the center of conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists. As time passed the Zionists gained more land from winning the Six-Day War, and consequently the Palestinians had to live as refugees in other Arab countries. Additionally, more than 75% of the land belonged to

On Friday night, the University of Washington played host to three of today’s greatest historians concerning the Israel/Palestine issue. Professor Anita Shapira, known for her contextual history of Israel ignited the room with her powerful comments about the circumstances for Arab removal from Israeli lands. Professor James Gelvin tiptoed on several touchy subjects, reiterating his concentration with causality history, nevertheless his historical background gave insight to nationalistic movements both groups have. The third historian, Professor Ilan Pappe concentrated the bulk of his talk on explaining the movement of Palestinian refugees while advocating for the acknowledgement of Israeli brutality in some Arab villages. Naturally, as it was the first time all three sides had come head-to-head, the debate got heated. This was especially true when comparing ideas of what the occupied territory should be described as. History of Modern Israel/Palestine student Erika Arias was able to mediate the debate, defuse tensions and at times draw laughs from the audience.

Israel and Palestine have been battling over territory, dominance, and political freedom for many years. After the Second World War, Israeli forces occupied Palestinian territory, ridding the land of Arabs. In response, the Palestinian people demanded control over their historic land, but the Israelis refused to relinquish power over the territory. In a matter of six days, the Jewish Israeli people conquered the West Bank all the way through to the Sinai Peninsula. After the war, the Israeli forces continued to take over Palestinian land by putting pressure on them to abandon their nation. Due to this ongoing conflict, Sahar Khalifeh utilizes violence and social constraints to explore the lives of Israeli and Palestinian men through vivid diction and descriptive imagery in the 1985 novel Wild Thorns.

Despite current misconceptions of the tensions between Muslims and Jews, the current political conflict began in the early 20th century. The Palestinians, both muslims and christians, lived in peace for centuries. Control of the city had historically, since 637 AD, been under Muslim control with guarantee of Christians’ safety, right to property, and right to practice religion. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to European nations colonizing many of its former lands, and the British gained control of Palestine. Social and political issues prompted European jews to flee from political unrest from their homes in Europe, and migrate to Palestine. Seeing the influx of Jews as a European colonial movement, the Arabs fought back. The British couldn’t control the violence, and in 1947 the United Nations (UN) voted to split the land into two countries. The continued political unrest in the Middle East is the cause of United States involvement.

In addition, I will examine the current state of political and human rights in Israeli occupied West Bank and analyze how they are approaching a level of apartheid. Finally, I will summarize the effects of these social tensions between Israel and Palestinians in the terms of how potential open conflict could reignite.

Before anyone can comprehend the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one must understand the theory of Zionism. Theodor Herzl was the first Jew to have the idea of creating Israel. He was a witness of the Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish officer was accused of treason, solely because he was Jewish. Herzl also witnessed mobs of people shouting “Death to the Jews”. This was the last straw for Herzl. Herzl decided that there needed to be a change so he made it one of his life goals to create a successful movement in which Jews founded a Jewish state. One of his main arguments was that discrimination against Jews could be eliminated if they had their own Jewish State, and so modern Zionism was formed. The idea of modern Zionism is so pertinent to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because much of the reason for Israel becoming a Jewish state is behind the fact that Jews were perpetrated throughout the years before Zionism even came into play of the situation.

The war for the independence of Israel was not a war as much as it was a hostile takeover of Palestine by any means necessary. Two infamous Jewish forces, the Irgun and the Haganah, often used terror tactics to achieve their goals and both focusing their energies on reprisals against Arabs and the British. Their tactics killed hundreds of innocent civilians in the name of a Jewish state and the Haganah even attacked their own people, framing the Palestinians, in order to generate support and sympathy for the their cause, but these acts appealed to some who “believed that any action taken in the cause of the creation of a Jewish state was justified.” There were unquestionably consequences to these actions as well as violent reactions to a Jewish state from other Middle Eastern states. When Israel finally declared independence, “the armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Iraq invaded Israel” and began the first war between the Arabs and now Israelis. Although the Arab Legion lost the war against Israel, in part to the support Israel received from the United States, it set a precedent for Arab-Israeli relations which have been tense every since and there still has yet to be reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians, who continue to be oppressed and persecuted.

According the Oxford dictionary liberation is defined as the action of setting someone free from imprisonment, slavery, or oppression; release. This word can be best represented in the symbolism in both short stories, Story of an Hour by Choppin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman, but freedom for both the protagonist have very different meaning for what it means to be free is a very subjective term based on the cage in which restricts oneself to fill one 's desires. The two stories are similar in the way both women are oppressed by their husbands and how they both find a way to escape but both characters are being oppressed and different ways and I will be analyzing what means they are being oppressed and how they both find a way to escape their oppressors along with how this can be related in a lot of real life examples.

In order to understand the complexity of the problem as a whole, we must first understand what role each character plays. Friedman makes sure we understand where each character is coming from and what his or her ideology is toward the situation in the Middle East. Friedman’s biographical assessments of different leaders such as Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon give us a better perceptive of the main underlying reasons for the struggle. Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had a very distinctive appeal about him. While he was neither physically attractive nor dashing in anyway, he had an appeal to the Palestinians that was not typical with everyday statesmen. Arafat can credit his political success to his great accomplishment and that is guiding the Palestinians “out of the deserts of obscurity into the land of “prime time.”” Arafat was a statesman for the people, he knows what the people are going through and he uses that down-to-earth quality to relate to the Palestinian people and gain their trust and support. On the other hand there is Ariel Sharon, a man that didn’t play with the enemy. The

His article argues that the Israelis won the Arab- Israeli War of 1948 and therefore were able to shape its history through their lens, but their version of the conflict is flawed and the information now available undermines what they claimed to be true. He stated that the Zionist version of the truth is just propaganda, spread in a way to make them look like innocent bystanders and the victims and the Arabs as the

Frequently, issues such as human rights violations occur around the world that people are not aware of. It is therefore a great importance to seek knowledge ourselves beyond mass media outlets and our own governments. Previous research suggests, the history of the Palestinian conflict goes back generations. In 1918 when World War 1 had ended, the British gained control of the Palestinian territory. The UN had no intention of displacing or changing anything within the land, but they decided that the Jews needed a safe place to reside after the holocaust. Therefore, many Jews immigrated to Palestine after the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. It stated that Palestine welcomed Jews into their homeland (Said, 1999). The fall of the Ottoman empire encouraged the number of immigrants to that in 1947, the total number of Jews in the area was “650,000” (Avineri, 1981; Said, 1999). The Palestinians were surely grateful for the number of people immigrating to their land because they needed their

Both of these approaches would pave the way for Hamas’ seemingly bipolar tenure in Palestine. By the 1970’s, the Palestinian population was disillusioned by secularism, Westernization and materialism, and many looked toward the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic revival as an alternative . A drastic turn of events led to niche in Palestine that a more violent facet of the Muslim Brotherhood was willing to fill.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is just one of the many facets that have shaped modern day politics in the Middle East. It is a conflict rooted in generations of violence, discrimination and prejudice that is complicated by a history older than any of the modern day superpowers. Ever since the creation of the state of Israel by the 1947 UN partition of Palestine