Munir Fakher Eldin
Munir Fakher Eldin
With undergraduate background in Philosophy and Sociology, I chose to continue my master and doctoral studies in in History and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University (1998-2008). My dissertation project was based on extensive archival research on British colonial land policy and its political and social impact on Palestinians. After a period of post-graduate training in New York and Berlin, I was lucky to join the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University in 2010 as an assistant professor. In 2014/15, I participated in a committee that prepared for the launching of our unique multidisciplinary doctoral program in the social sciences. I also directed the new MA program in Israeli Studies from 2015 to 2021, which the university launched to augment critical knowledge and scholarship about the inner dynamics and effects of Zionism and its settler-colonial project. Within this framework, I co-supervised a collaborative research project between BZU and the London School of Economics (LSE) about the memory of resistance to Israeli occupation in the Golan Heights. Parallel to my academic and institutional tasks at the university, I also collaborated with the Institute for Palestine Studies in several publications, archiving projects, and conferences since 2011. My publications include a coauthored book with Salim Tamari on urban properties and awqaf in the Old City of Jerusalem (2017). Currently, I have several ongoing publication projects under various stages of production, which focus on my two main areas of interest: colonialism and the land question in Palestine, and the social, cultural, and political encounters with colonial rule in occupied Golan.
BOOKS
Coauthored with Salim Tamari, Property Records in the Old City of Jerusalem [in Arabic] (Beirut/Ramallah: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2017)
EDITTED VOLUMES
Coeditor with Muna Dajani and Michael Mason, The Untold Story of the Golan Heights: Occupation, Colonisation and Jawlani Resistance(London: I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Academic, anticipated publication date September 2022). {contribution includes a chapter and co-authoring of introduction and conclusion}
Chief Editor, The General Survey of Israel 2020 [in Arabic] (Beirut/Ramallah: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2020 electric edition, 2021 hardcover edition)
Coeditor with Jamil Hilal and Khalid Farraj, Palestine Internationally: The rise of the right in the world and redrawing of challenges [in Arabic] (Beirut/Ramallah: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2018)
Coeditor with Jamil Hilal and Khalid Farraj, Israel and the Question of Palestine [in Arabic] (Beirut/Ramallah: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2017)
ACADEMIC ARTICLES IN EDITTED VOLUMES
“After Property: The Sakhina Struggle in Late Ottoman and British-Ruled Palestine, 1876–1948,” in Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O’Brien (eds.), Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, anticipated publication January 2022) [Available for pre-order in hardcover and paperback editions].
“Palestinians Trapped in Israeli Planning Policies,” [Arabic] in Jamil Hilal, Munir Fakher Eldin, and Khalid Farraj (eds.) Israel and the Question of Palestine [Arabic] (Beirut/Ramallah: Institute for Palestine Studies, forthcoming in 2017)
“La socie?te? golanaise au prisme de la re?volte,” in Franc?ois Burgat & Bruno Paoli (eds.) Pas de printemps pour la Syrie? Acteurs et enjeux de la crise 2011-1013 (Paris: La De?couverte, 2013).
“Silvestre de Sacy et les Druzes: re?flexions sur la politique du savoir et l’utilisation conjoncturelle des traditions,” in Michael Spain, Nora Lafi, and Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn (eds.) Silvestre de Sacy: Le projet europe?en d’une science orientaliste (Paris: E?ditions du Cerf, 2014).
“A Historian’s Task: Make sure the object does not turn against itself in the museum,” in Martin Hager (ed.) Islamic Art and the Museum (London: Saqi Books, 2012), 135-138.
ARTICLES IN ACADEMIC/PEER-REVIEWED JOUNRALS
“Unsettling Property Records, Reclaiming the Political: Discourse and Power in British- Ruled Palestine, 1918-1948,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (submitted on 13 March 2021, under review for as a special section article “Who Owns Palestine?”).
“Power, Politics, and Community: Resistance Dynamics in the Occupied Golan,” Journal of Palestine Studies, XLIX, no. 1 (Autumn 2019): 77-92.
“Confronting a Colonial Rule of Property: The al-Sakhina Case in Mandate Palestine,” Arab Studies Journal, Vol. XVII, No. 1 (2019): 12-33.
“Land, Property Rights, and Colonial Procrastination: Between the Balfour Declaration and the Nakba” [Arabic], Ostour, Vol. 8 (July 2018): 193-209.
“The Syrians in the Golan Heights, between Uprising, Regime, and Occupation” [Arabic], Majallat al- Dirasat al-Filastiniya, 104 (Autumn, 2015), 27-32.
“British Framing of the Frontier in Palestine, 1918–1923: Revisiting Colonial Sources on Tribal Insurrection, Land Tenure, and the Arab Intelligentsia,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 60 (2014): 42-58.
“Nahda Anxieties in Jubran Kazma’s letters to Jamal Husseini, 1921-1923,” [Arabic] Hawliyat al-Quds 11, no. 12 (Winter, 2011): 25-33.
ESSAYS
“On the Birth of the Refugee Camp,” in Issam Nassar and Rasha Salti (eds.) I would have smiled: Photographing the Palestinian Refugee Experience, a Tribute to Myrtle Winter-Chaumeny (Jerusalem: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2009), 125-127.
“The New Intifada and a Short History of the Question of Palestine,” (co-authored with Koray C?alis?kan; in Turkish), Birikim (December, 2000), 20-35.
OTHER WRITINGS
Published essays on the cultural and political affairs in the Golan Heights local websites and in leading Arabic newspapers and magazines: Al-Nahar (the Cultural Supplement), Al-Safir (the Palestine Supplement), and most recently in Bidayat (edited by Fawaz Trabulsi).
BOOK REVIEWS
“Review of Miri and Amiri, Owner and Property: Legal Notes on the Distinction between Private Land and State Land in Palestine, [Arabic] [A historical monograph from 1936, republished by the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center],” Majjalat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniya, vol. 23, no. 89 (Winter, 2012): 180-182.
“Review of The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World, by Partha Chatterjee,” Arab Studies Journal, vols. 13-14 (2005-2006), 141-44.