1st Edition

Understanding the Middle East Peace Process Israeli Academia and the Struggle for Identity

By Asima Ghazi-Bouillon Copyright 2009
    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    Tracing the evolution of the Israeli academic debate over history, politics, and collective identity, Understanding the Middle East Peace Process examines the Middle East peace process since Oslo and follows the discursive struggle over Israeli collective identity.

    Based on interviews with key protagonists, this book gives a detailed analysis of the interrelatedness of academic debate, societal discourse, and collective identity against the background of major political events in Israel. It charts the ascendancy and expansion of post-Zionism, outlines the emergence of neo-Zionism from the political right, and the re-appropriation of Zionism in light of the new political climate of peace-making.

    Ghazi-Bouillon provides a new perspective on the failure of the New Historians to revolutionize Israeli intellectual life and the failure of post-Zionism to revolutionize Israeli political life, whilst assessing neo-Zionism’s potential to do both.

    Introduction 

    1. Introducing a New Israel?

    2. Power, Knowledge and the Nation - Shaping, Writing, Knowing

    3. Triumphs, Territories and Troublemakers

    4. The Emergence and Works of the New Historians

    5. The Promise of Post-Zionism 

    6. Neo-Zionist Responses – Seizing History, Shaping Policy

    Conclusion

    Biography

    Asima A. Ghazi-Bouillon obtained her doctorate in history from University College London. She also holds degrees in Jewish History and the Politics of Asia and Africa from University College London and the School of Oriental and African Studies. She has lived and worked throughout the Middle East, and has worked for the United Nations in New York.

    "The major strength of this book is the author's critical examination of the three different scholarly movemens and the use of in-depth interviews with their members to illustrate personal trajectories, ideological views, and the effect their scholarship and activism had on their careers in Israel and abroad [...] Ghazi-Bouillon does an excellent job discussing the diversity within, and ideological similarities and differences between, the three intellectual movements that she documents." - Maria Carter Hallward, Kennesaw State University, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 43:3, Aug 2011