Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Since its establishment, the government of Israel has fostered divisiveness through differential laws and practices towards the three principal religious groups of the Arab minority (Muslims, Christians, and Druze). The most favorable treatment has been accorded to the Druze, with Christians ranked second, and Muslims the least. The outcomes and the effects of these policies are to preserve separate ethnic and religious identities and to discourage an Arab collective national identity. This study examines the community of Shafa-amr, a religiously mixed city in Western Galilee. Differential policy is revealed in the community-specific housing and education projects for the Druze people. This study also reveals how the three religious groups were receptive to this differential treatment, thereby helping to sustain separate ethnic and religious identities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Following Hamas’s seizure of the Gaza Strip, many policy advisers confront the question of who can Washington bring to the negotiating table to forge peace with the Jewish State. Whilst some cling to Fatah as the only option, others advocate the opening of dialogues with the Islamic group in recognition of their legitimate claim to power. It is this paper’s assertion that whereas Hamas does enjoy greater legitimacy vis-à-vis Fatah, the organization suffers from a territorial paradox which plagues its prospects for pragmatic involvement. First, the Group is located mostly in Gaza. Second, the West Bank and Gaza are presumed by virtually all parties to the conflict to be the potential Palestinian state. Third, Hamas is committed to the establishment of a state over historical Palestine (present-day Israel.) Fourth, political arrangements to Hamas should be consistent with the Islamic notions of Dawla and Umma. While Hamas is more domestically legitimate, it cannot commit to a peace treaty with its neighbor without forgoing its legitimacy; hence lies the territorial paradox._x000d_The last part of our research question asks: 1) who can be supported to end the conflict without losing out to the radicals? 2) why did the Oslo Accords fail?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In 1930 two female lawyers were admitted to the Bar in pre-state Israel. From that time until the establishment of the state of Israel (1948), only 42 women lawyers were admitted, compared with 1,300 men. 75 years later, it is possible to view the progress made since women's entry into and integration within the legal profession in Israel from a long-term perspective. This view is based on a comprehensive study, centered on archival material and interviews with most of the first 42 women lawyers or their relatives, and a compilation of individual biographical records. Today, numerical equality has been achieved between male and female lawyers in Israel, as well as an alleged essential equality. Some explain this equality, among other reasons, in women lawyers' distancing themselves from any "feminine" identification or feminist approaches, resulting in the absence of a "different-voice" in the legal arena.

At the center of the proposed presentation I wish to examine these claims against the background of the entry and integration of the first female lawyers in the legal-profession. I will explore the different approaches they used in order to integrate and promote themselves within the profession, while struggling with their domestic and familial duties – e.g., forming and joining women's associations, keeping their maiden names, etc. This perspective will help demonstrate that women lawyers not only tried to act like their male colleagues, but paradoxically employed feminist action in order to become more like men lawyers.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: One of the primary questions in the field of political communication is the extent to which the news media in Western countries provide sufficient time and space for oppositional forces to be heard. The amount of access granted to oppositional forces varies among countries and it is useful to consider the variables that can explain such difference. The Politics-Media-Politics (PMP) principle claims that political variations lead to variations in media performance that then lead to changes in the political process. It is argued that one of the most important political variables influencing oppositional access is the nature of the nature of a country's party system. The party systems in Israel and the United States represent polar opposite systems in that Israel is a polarized multi-party system and the U.S. is a two party system. Data was collected based on news stories about major political waves that took place in the two countries during three different years. While oppositional voices tended to dominate these debates in Israel, they were much less likely to be heard in the American press.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In a democratizing world, where increasing numbers of protracted conflicts are being addressed via negotiations, the ability of political elites to shape public opinion and mobilize their constituencies through identity politics has an important affect on the outcome of peace processes. Nevertheless, sociologists have been considerably slow in responding to the challenge posed by identity politics to reconciliation efforts. This paper traces the effects of changes in Israel’s political culture on Israel’s national interests and subsequently on its peace policies. Focusing on the political debates over the meanings and implications of Yitzchak Rabin’s assassination an its effect of the on the Jewish public opinion in Israel, the paper offers an alternative, culturally-based, explanation to the breakdown in the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians. The author argues that one of the main durable transformations of Rabin’s assassination, which produced these debates, was a contextual change in the meaning of peace. This change was a result of the disarticulation of tolerance from universal democratic values and its rearticulation with Jewish ethnonational codes instead. This rearticulation, through which “peace” was reconceptualized as reconciliation among Jews only, marginalized the democratization and de-colonization agendas of the Oslo process and provided a crucial ground for the right-wing’s success in winning the election held shortly after the assassination and grounding the peace process a halt.