Unlike scholarship on other Middle Eastern societies, the study of clans and tribes in Ottoman and British Mandatory Palestine is quite neglected. An important work on the late mandatory period even asserts that “there is no empirical evidence of great family alliances among the Palestinians.” The consequences of this perception are more widespread than one might assume. It suggests that the Palestinian social structure was different from those of other Arab societies in the area, in which inter-clan alliances were common and significantly affected political and economic realms. Based on a comprehensive study of informal networks in Palestine during the 19th-20th centuries, the proposed paper takes issue with such perceptions. The paper will discuss what was, and probably still is, the most powerful inter-family alliance among the Palestinians – the Hebronite alliance. The impact of the Hebronite alliance stemmed from regional consolidation of the Mandate period and extended far beyond the boundaries of Mt. Hebron during the Jordanian and Israeli periods. The alliance offers extensive evidence of the continuity of the family-based structure, and in some respects, even illustrates its growing power. At the same time, this alliance reflects the adaptations required for the survival of family-based structures as a relevant phenomenon attuned to the needs of time. The story of the Hebronite alliance sheds light on major developments experienced by the Palestinians in national and local arenas, ranging from the status of Palestinian integration in the 1948 War to the process of Hebronite social, economic and political domination over Jerusalem and other places in the West Bank since the mid-20th century. The sources for this study include a wide range of documents, newspapers and oral testimonies. Methodologically, this study combines tools and concepts from the field of historical network analysis, a field gaining traction in the Humanities.

The formal Palestinian leadership has long struggled to sustain its legitimacy in the eyes of those it claims to lead: Palestinians within the 1948 borders and the Occupied Territories. Today, dissatisfaction with the Palestinian Authority bubbles right below the surface of Palestinian society over a presumed failure to represent local interests, as well as the close security cooperation with the Israelis that, since Oslo, has stifled civil society and any democratic impulses. For many inside the West Bank and Jerusalem, the PA has rendered itself largely irrelevant, a placeholder in the absence of a viable alternative. Looking back at the 1980s, it is clear that this legitimacy vacuum was not inevitable. There was an alternative power structure that almost took root during the First Intifada: the Unified Leadership operating in the West Bank was a grassroots organization that responded to local needs and demands, rather than acting as representatives of the PLO’s vision and direction. An almost entirely unexplored aspect of the Unified Leadership is its deep connection to the political prisoner population. This paper will argue that it was primarily in and through Israeli prisons that the leadership actually unified. Beginning in the 1970s, political prisoners worked within their factions to develop a highly organized, fully democratic, committee-based leadership for managing daily life and inter-faction relationships, as well as to liaise with the Israeli Prison Administration. The majority of those who constituted the Unified Leadership politically matured inside Israeli prisons, where many of the structures of the leadership itself were established. These individuals and structures developed in closer proximity to those they wished to represent, and so came to represent a viable and vibrant alternative to that waiting in the Diaspora’s wings. This paper will examine how and why these leaders were unable to transition the political approach learned inside the prisons into the formal, post-Intifada leadership structure. With the coming of Oslo, the Unified Leadership as a body was prevented from taking up the reins of government, although a number of the leaders were absorbed into the PA’s political system. Drawing on interviews with current members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, as well as archival sources produced inside the prisons, this paper will explore this under researched moment in Palestinian political history, when the political education learned inside the prison – and put into practice during the Intifada - failed to function in the West Bank.

In recent years there have been great strides in addressing the place of international organizations in various facets of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Much of this recent research has focused on the West Bank, the role of these organizations in creating aid dependency, and the perspectives of Palestinian elites. In contrast, research that focuses on the Gaza Strip and the role of international organizations there is missing. This project brings together several of these lines of inquiry: by focusing on the place of international organizations working in the Gaza Strip between 1948-1967 time it interrogates these organizations relationships with Gazan’s and the ensuing legacy in the structures of governance within the Gaza Strip. This project investigates the role of international organizations in emulating traditional structures of governance, in particular through the provision of services typically associated with national governments: education, health care, job creation programs, and housing programs. By researching the initiation of these practices and their subsequent impact on each organization’s local employees and the communities served, this project explores the significance of internationality as a basis for analyzing the spaces, bureaucracies, and hierarchies created by these organizations. Interrogation of the archival record of prominent international organizations during the 1948-1967 period (including the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and the United Nation Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)) is augmented by placing these documents in dialogue with the oral recollections of Gazan’s. This bi-modal approach presents an argument for the significance of analyzing past and present structures of governance in Gaza on the basis of a legacy of internationality.

This paper re-examines the arguments made in a 2007 book (Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave) regarding the apolitical character of Arab soccer space in Israel. The book's arguments went as follows: For most Arab fans in Israel, soccer has been an opportunity for displaying a common ground with Jewish citizens, and this display targeted Jewish audience. Emphasizing Palestinian nationalism or ethnically based political protest were considered as endangering the potential for rapprochement and therefore were excluded from the stadium. Over the last decade, however, there has been a gradual explicit politicization and nationalization of Arab soccer stadiums in Israel, which has been accelerated following the “Arab Spring” in 2011. Leading this tendency are the fans of Ittihad Abnaa Sakhnin, the most successful Arab club in Israel. Some of these fans bring to the stadium explicit icons of political protest, including Palestinian national flags, banners decorated with the Dome of the Rock, and slogans protesting specific government policies against Palestinian citizens. I explain this shift by the interaction of recent local and global developments. Locally, it is a reaction to a wave of anti-Arab legislation and rhetoric over the past decade, and the general deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations inside Israel during the same period. At the same time, the fans of Sakhnin are part of a globalized phenomenon of a politicized and vocal fan circles, known as ultras. The Sakhnin Ultras’ political activism is inspired as well by fans behavior in neighboring countries and more specifically, by the fans of the Egyptian team al-Ahly, who took an explicit stand against the Mubarak regime in 2011. Finally, the introduction of social media has undermined the traditional distinction in Arab soccer in Israel between politicized sport journalists and a-political fans in the stadium.