CONFERENCE - PAST IS PRESENT: SETTLER COLONIALISM IN PALESTINE

This looks an extremely interesting conference to anyone who wants to learn about the history of settler colonialism in Palestine. It is one of a series of excellent conferences put on by the SOAS Palestine Society. The speakers are of the usual high class and I can personally recommend his book The Returns of Zionism as one of the best books on Zionism to have come out in the past decade, having reviewed it in the Journal of Holy Land Studies and various left publications. Go, you won't be disappointed! Tony Greenstein

PAST IS PRESENT: SETTLER COLONIALISM IN PALESTINE 7th Annual Conference 5- 6 March | Brunei Gallery | School of Oriental and African Studies – London organised by SOAS Palestine Society and hosted by the London Middle East Institute For over a century, Zionism has subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation, and erasure in the pursuit of a new colonial Israeli society. Too often, this Palestine ‘Question’ has been framed as unique; a national, religious, and/or liberation struggle with little semblance to colonial conflicts elsewhere. The two-day conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine, seeks to reclaim settler colonialism as the central paradigm from which to understand Palestine. It asks: what are the socio-political, economic and spatial processes and mechanisms of settler colonialism in Palestine, and what are the logics underpinning it? By unearthing the histories and geographies of the Palestinian experience of settler colonialism, this conference does not only chart possibilities for understanding Palestine within comparative settler colonial analyses. Rather, it also seeks to break open frameworks binding Palestine, re-align the Palestinian movement within a universal history of decolonisation, and imagine new possibilities for Palestinian resistance, solidarity and common struggle. Day One: Saturday, 5th March 2011 Registration and Refreshments: 9.00-9.30 Opening and Keynote: 9.30-10.15 Hassan Hakimian – London Middle East Institute Not Another Racism: Zionism, a Logic of Elimination Patrick Wolfe – La Trobe University Session One – Empire, Settler Colonialism and Zionism: 10.45-12.15 Chair: Nelida Fuccaro – School of Oriental and African Studies Playing the Zionist Card: The British Empire and the Middle East John Newsinger – Bath Spa University Literature of Settler Societies: Albert Camus, S. Yizhar, and Amos Oz Gabriel Piterberg – University of California, Los Angeles The Settler Colonialism Paradigm and its Place in Palestinian Political Development Naseer Aruri – University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth Refreshments: 12.15-12.30 Session Two – Zionism Destroys to Replace: 12.30-14.00 Chair: Laleh Khalili – School of Oriental and African Studies The Palestinian Labour Market and the Politics of Zionist Settler Colonialism Gershon Shafir – University of California, San Diego The Erasure of the Native Ilan Pappe – University of Exeter The Second Phase of the Settler Colonial Conquest of Palestine: The 1967 Allon Plan and the Search for a Zionist ‘Settlement’ Gilbert Achcar – School of Oriental and African Studies Lunch: 14.00-14.45 Session Three – Zionism Controls the Native: 14.45-16.15 Chair: Ruba Salih – School of Oriental and African Studies Chronicles of a Cultural Destruction: The Appropriation of Palestinian Knowledge during the 1948 War Gish Amit – Ben-Gurion University Indigenous Citizens and the Contradictions of Status amongst Palestinians in Israel As’ad Ghanem – Ibn Khaldun, The Arab Association for Research and Development Frontier Wars and Robotic Colonisation Eyal Weizman – Goldsmiths College Refreshments: 16.15-16.30 Session Four – A Political Economy of Settler Colonialism: 16.30-18.00 Chair: Elisa van Waeyenberge – School of Oriental and African Studies A ‘Bad Lot’? Palestinian Businessmen and the British Colonial State Sherene Seikaly – American University of Cairo The Exploitation of the Palestinian Economy by Israel Shir Hever – Alternative Information Center Palestinian Capitalism, Regional Accumulation Processes and Implications for Liberation Strategy Adam Hanieh – School of Oriental and African Studies Day Two: Sunday 6th March 2011 Registration and Refreshments: 10.30-11.00 Keynote: 11.00-12.00 Self-Determination, Ethical Decolonisation and Resistance: Toward a Secular Democratic State in Historic Palestine Omar Barghouti – independent Palestinian researcher and human rights activist, Ramallah Session Five – Indigenous Life and the Reverberations of Settler Colonialism: 12.00-13.30 Chair: Lori Allen - University of Cambridge Counterfeit Citizenship: On the Politics of Property in Nahr El-Bared Monika Halkort – Queen’s University, Belfast Ethnic Cleansing in the Naqab: The Razings of the Bedouin Village of Al-‘Araqib Mansour Nsasra – University of Exeter Policing, Self-Policing and Indigenous Collaboration Mouin Rabbani – Institute of Palestine Studies Lunch: 13.30-14.30 Session Six – Overcoming Zionism, Dismantling Settler Colonialism: 14.30-16.00 Chair: Jan Jananayagam – Tamils Against Genocide Decolonising Settler Colonialisms Lorenzo Veracini – Swinburne University of Technology The Power and Pitfalls of a Support Movement: Campaigning Against the Jewish National Fund Selma James – International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Towards Common Liberation Mezna Qato – University of Oxford Refreshments: 16.00-16.15 Roundtable – Unsettling (Settler) Colonialism: 16.15-18.15 Chair: Lorenzo Veracini Participants: Naseer Aruri, Omar Barghouti, Selma James, Ilan Pappe, Mezna Qato, Patrick Wolfe Tickets Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED – book in advance Price: £30 (£20 concessions, and £40 organisations) – all tickets include lunch and refreshments To buy your tickets Online – www.soaspalsoc.org By cheque: Send cheques payable to SOAS Palestine Society with attached note of email address to: SOAS Palestine Society, Thornhaugh Street, London, WC1H 0XG Location SOAS Brunei Gallery Thornhaugh Street Russell Square London, WC1H 0XG Contact palestineconference@gmail.com www.soaspalsoc.org