IR Aficionado

Introduction Ethno-national conflicts are amongst the most powerful and persistent features of global politics. The pattern usually is one side attempts to establish complete dominion over a part of its territory populated by a different people who view it as alien intrusion into their homeland. The stronger side responds to dissent with repression deepening the hostility harboured by the repressed against their oppressor and sparking in them an urge to break away. This urge transforms over time into a staunch demand for freedom and self-determination. Mutual antagonism then breaks out into an all-out war which doesn’t end immediately, but prolongs for many years and even decades.  If one probes into the reasons behind the instances of many ethno-national wars across the world, one finds that in several cases two peoples who define themselves in opposition to each other are forced to live together. Most of these (although not all) occur in the post-colonial world where the colonial...

Following days of intense clashes between Israeli police and far-right Jewish activists on the one side and Palestinians on the other in East Jerusalem, the tensions between the two sides have escalated with Hamas launching attacks in Israel and Tel Aviv retaliating. The security forces in the Holy City were particularly brutal in their treatment of Palestinian demonstrators against whom the forces wielded stun grenades and rubber bullets. Some videos that showed a gang of police officers setting upon a Palestinian went viral on social media. Things began to spiral out of control when the Israel police chief blocked the area around Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, an area where Palestinians gather after breaking their fast in the holy month of Ramadan. Though the order was revoked subsequently, it sparked protests with Palestinians coming out onto the streets to rail against an ‘alien’ people hurting their sensibilities. East Jerusalem had been under Israeli control since 1967 when Tel Aviv...

                                           One Palestine, Complete by Tom Segev Khalil al Sakakini, a noted Arabic teacher in Jerusalem, is accused of treason and sent off to a prison in Damascus for helping a Jewish insurance agent who was on the run for his life. The year was 1917, the war that had gripped Europe was raging with full ferocity and the Ottoman empire was struggling to save face. Whilst Sakakini awaits the gallows in Damascus, British troops under the command of General Allenby reach Palestine and the Ottomans formally surrender. Sakakini is saved. In 1926, a young man called Yefim Gordin arrives in Palestine from Vilna, hoping to make a living in the ancient Jewish homeland. His verve for Zionism comes into its own with his active participation in the activities of the Battalion for the Defence of Language, the hot-headed organisation that sought to asse...