Special Working Papers Series, addressing themes of displacement, dispossession, Palestinian diaspora, colonial appropriation, and migrant narratives.
The ongoing displacement of Palestinians remains one of the most pressing humanitarian crises, calling for scholarly attention and meaningful action. The International Migration and Refugee Studies Program at Birzeit University invites you to join us in a critical exploration of the dimensions of forced migration and colonialism to foster a well-informed understanding of these challenges.
This special virtual workshop will provide a platform to discuss the pivotal issues surrounding forced migration, particularly in light of recent escalations in Gaza. It also marks the launch of our Special Working Papers Series, addressing themes of displacement, dispossession, Palestinian diaspora, colonial appropriation, and migrant narratives.
Special Working Papers Series
Examining Palestinian Displacement through Apartheid, Settler Colonialism, and International Law
Samar Nakleh
The paper intends to examine the systems of control embedded in the occupation of Palestine, systems that perpetuate a constant state of displacement and ethnic cleansing. The use of the plural (systems) is adopted because of the fragmentation of both territory and people, hence the state of the Palestinian people as a whole must be analyzed through a comprehensive framework that adopts both apartheid and settler colonialism as its basis. Furthermore, the paper aims to analyze the Palestinian leadership, specifically the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) role within these systems, this includes an analysis of their reliance on international law exclusively, setting aside the powers of settler colonialism, and often engaging in its system of domination and impeding and repressing Palestinian struggle. The events post October 7th have both magnified and exacerbated this exact concept.
Targeting homes, Shelters and Shelter Seekers
Joseph Schechla
This paper provides needed context and continuity of Israel of displacing native populations by targeting homes, shelters and shelter seekers as a matter of military doctrine. Although numerous UN commissions of inquiry and common discourse apply narrow parameters of chronological time and geographical space time to report the practice, they typically overlook this class of military practice as established doctrine.
The repeated pattern of Israeli military practice consists of attacking human settlements, forcibly displacing inhabitants into columns and clusters of shelter seekers, only to bomb them in their places of refuge, including those that the Israeli military commanders deemed as “safe zones.” While most dramatically continued in the serial wars against Gaza, the military administration adapts this doctrine to unhouse and dispossess Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as the analogous treatment of “unrecognized villages” in the Naqab.
Rethinking Survival: Palestinian Smuggling Under Military Rule (1948–1966)
Mohamad Kadan
In this study, I aim to explore the complexities of Palestinian daily life under military rule, with a focus on the Triangle area, emphasizing how these daily practices contributed to the survival of Palestinians in Israel. I seek to rethink the meaning of "survival" by examining how Palestinians navigated and endured within sovereign Zionist formations of borders and military-imposed violence. By analyzing the phenomenon of smuggling, I uncover the ways in which these activities contributed to a social structure of survival, drawing from frameworks that center on the political, cultural, and legal acts of resilience. After the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing conducted by Zionist forces post-1948, Israel, though unable to fully expel the Palestinian population, actively strategized to fulfill this mission. Evidence of these intentions has surfaced in the archives of government sessions and political statements. Meanwhile, the remaining Palestinian population engaged in continuous resistance, asserting their physical and political presence on their lands. This resistance led to the development of a survival and resilience doctrine (Sumud and Baqa’a)
Containing the Gaza Strip to Safeguard Egypt's National Security
Sarah Daoud
“If the project is to displace Palestinians from Gaza then why not displacing them to the Negev ?”1. Since Hamas’ attacks on the 7th of October the Egyptian President al-Sissi has repeatedly stated that Egypt would not give up on any piece of its territory in order to host Palestinian refugees from Gaza. The question of a land swap or the handover of a part of Sinai to allow for an extension of the Gaza Strip, or even as an alternative to it, is a recurring theme that has re-emerged since the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the forced displacement of at least a million Palestinians from the North to the South of the enclave. The Egyptian regime was quick to deny that such a project existed, and has consistently maintained its strict refusal to cede a part of Sinai and thereby infringe Egypt's territorial integrity. These recent events and the Egyptian regime’s reaction to it invite us to question the Egyptian politics towards Palestine on the long term.
Unravelling the Colonial Discourse about Voluntary Migration in the Ongoing Forced Expulsion: A Critical Analysis of the Atrocious Displacement in Gaza against Palestinians
Oroub El Abed
This working paper provides a critical examination of the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians, framed within the colonial discourse of voluntary migration versus forced expulsion. By investigating historical narratives on colonialism, the study highlights how colonial powers have historically distinguished between voluntary migration as acceptable and forced migration as justified under certain conditions, particularly for colonial expansion. The work scrutinizes how modern narratives have applied these justifications to the forced displacement in Gaza today, legitimizing Israeli territorial policies through a colonial lens that obfuscates the coercive realities faced by Palestinians.
By exploring how the idea of "voluntary migration" has been manipulated in both historical and contemporary colonial contexts, this work critically addresses how modern migration policies, like those affecting Palestinians, produce exclusionary hierarchies, dehumanize non-European refugees, and replicate colonial patterns of exclusion from human rights.
Narratives of Dispersed Resistance in Brazil
Maria do Carmo dos Santos Gonçalves
The unfolding of the Israeli state's war in Gaza highlighted the execution of the Zionist project to exterminate the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. These events have generated strong protests around the world, largely led by groups and communities from the Palestinian diaspora. Based on the narratives of the Palestinian diaspora in Brazil, this ethnographic work seeks to understand the impact of the war on the narratives of Palestinian individuals and groups in Brazil. The research data was collected between 2018 and 2024 and is part of a study on diasporic formations in Latin America that favors individual and collective narratives and guides the reading of Palestinian mobilities to Brazil. Focusing on the testimonies of the second generation of Palestinian migrants, made up of children and grandchildren of immigrants who arrived in the country as refugees in the 1940s and 1950s, the study favors the narratives of Palestinians/Brazilians about the ongoing war, considering the plurality of perspectives and the diversity that characterizes the Palestinian diaspora in the country.
On Urbicide: Production and Destruction of Space in Colonial Apparatus (Gaza, 2023–2024)
Abdalla Bayyari
This research intervention originates from the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza (2023 - ), aiming to investigate the contemporary origins of the city and the modern military apparatus, while articulating the notion of territory as a crucial instrument in the establishment of the colonial apparatus, particularly within the context of the modern city. The colonial production of territory is characterized as a corporeal and dynamic strategy for spatial dominance, wherein statehood is enforced to exert control, utilizing the city as a mechanism of warfare, drawing insights from the urban policies and planning of Jaffa and Beersheba as accumulated towards Gaza. This introduces the notion of Urbicide within the colonial framework, positioning continual extermination as a manifestation of the persistent and continuous Nakba,
To watch the workshop please click here:
- Opening Remarks - Dr. Oroub El Abed
- Opening Remarks - Prof. Asem Khalil
- Paper Presentations - Joseph Schechla
- Paper Presentations - Abdullah Biyari
- Keynote Speech - Dr. Nahed HabibAllah
- Paper Presentations - Oroub El-Abed
- Paper Presentations - Maria Santos
- Paper Presentations - Samar Nakhleh
- Paper Presentations - Moh Kadan
- Concluding Session - Dr. Jenan Bastaki
