Deen Sharp and Claire Panetta, editors, Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings. New York: Urban Research, 2016. 

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Deen Sharp (DS): The idea for this book grew out of two articles that I wrote for Jadaliyya in 2012.  The first was published in August 2012 and entitled “Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings: Downtown Cairo and the Fall of Mubarak.” This article noted how, at the very moment the rich and powerful had created a scheme to displace and dispossess thousands of residents of downtown Cairo, the city’s inhabitants united in open revolt.  The piece stressed the importance of urban space–beyond Tahrir Square and its environs–to the mass mobilizations that transpired in 2011.  I pushed this idea further in the second article, “Beware of Small Cities,” in which I traced the Arab uprisings through non-metropolitan urban spaces and highlighted their centrality to the unfolding events.

As I was writing these articles, the first wave of scholarship on the uprisings began to coalesce.  This literature was overwhelmingly focused on the large mobilizations that occurred in metropolitan public squares.  This preoccupation provided encouragement that a scholarly study looking “beyond the square” was warranted.  Also, at this time, Michael Sorkin was establishing Urban Research, a publishing house that seeks to produce books examining the urban condition.  Sorkin urged me to put together a publication based on the work I had done for Jadaliyya.  I took him up on this offer, approached Claire, my colleague at the CUNY Graduate Center, to co-edit, and the result is this volume.

Jadaliyya (J): What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address? 

Claire Panetta (CP): As Deen noted, this book is meant to fill a gap in the research on urbanism and the regional political upheaval of the past five years.  In this way, the essays in the volume respond to the early scholarship on sociospatial dynamics and the Arab uprisings–in particular that which looked at the role of central spaces and squares (such as Tahrir Square) in the unfolding of events.  However, the book is not intended as a critique of that literature, which did much to deepen our understanding of the histories and spatial dynamics of the places in which people gathered to demand political change.  Instead, it is meant to push the conversation onto new terrain.  The essays cover a range of topics, time frames, and locations.  They address spatial concerns in areas that fall outside what is often considered the Middle East, in places that have yet to experience mass uprisings, and at moments predating or postdating the outbreak of events in 2010.  They also examine a range of sociospatial phenomena, including spatial fragmentation, neoliberal urban development, the practices of urbicide, the rise of suburbs and gated communities, processes of gentrification, and the relationship between the so-called center and periphery.  By gathering such a diverse set of essays and letting them sit side by side–however uneasily at times, we want to encourage people to think more broadly and creatively about the ongoing political turmoil and its sociospatial causes and consequences.     

Jadaliyya (J): How do you see this book contributing to urban and Middle East studies? 

DS: The book, of course, contributes to the significant literature on the Arab uprisings.  As Claire pointed out, the idea was not to critique the existing literature’s focus on the metropolitan core but to expand and give nuance to this engagement–in part by bringing together a geographically diverse set of essays, specifically at the urban scale.  For instance, the authors examine the informal neighborhood of Fikirtepe in Istanbul, the “villages” surrounding Manama, the working class neighborhood of Bab el-Oued in Algiers, and Kufr ‘Aqab located in between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

Collectively the essays contribute to three interrelated topics within urban and Middle East studies: sociospatial relations, sociospatial fragmentation, and neoliberalism.  Several contributors examine the highly complex sociospatial relationships between peripheral urban spaces and the urban core, and their analyses help to deepen our understanding of the symbiotic nature of this relationship.  Other authors grapple with the idea of sociospatial fragmentation, arguing that such fragmentation has a range of consequences and can be both destructive of social networks and/or urban space and generative of such. The authors also show that these phenomena are underpinned by manifestations of what is widely–but not without controversy–understood as neoliberal urban development.  In this regard, several essays look at how urban conditions born of neoliberal urbanism facilitated or inhibited the development of protests, while others consider how the uprisings have informed neoliberal development processes elsewhere in the region.  The essays provide important grounded insights on neoliberal urbanism in the Middle East.  

Jadaliyya (J): How does this book intersect with your previous and/or current research?

CP: This book connects very directly with my current research, which is for my dissertation and which I have been pursuing in Cairo for the past two years.  My project looks at the shifting politics of urban revitalization in Egypt’s capital after 2011, with particular emphasis on the preservation of architectural heritage in several centrally located neighborhoods.  Specifically, I have been working in “Downtown Cairo” and “Islamic Cairo,” two areas with rich architectural legacies that have long played important symbolic and material roles in the urban and national landscapes.  I have been studying the various urban rehabilitation initiatives being implemented in these neighborhoods by both local and non-local actors.  Through my investigation of these projects, I am trying to understand how and why, in a moment of protracted political turmoil, specific urban spaces and historicized structures have become canvases for the articulation of changing social and political values and ideas.  My project is therefore predicated on the idea that the events of early 2011 had–and continue to have–a profound impact on spatial politics–i.e., the very premise underpinning the essays in this volume.  Given that Deen, the contributors, and I were all working on the book while I was conducting fieldwork, it is safe to say that the essays here have greatly informed my own research and thinking–so I have to thank our wonderful authors for helping me to develop my own project.         

DS: I detailed above how the seeds of this book were planted in two articles I wrote for Jadaliyya. My essay on “urbicide” in Syria led me to organize a panel event with UN officials and policy makers on the topic of urban violence and conflict.  Held in April 2016, “The Nexus of Urbanization, Violence and Conflict” event was the start of an ongoing discussion that will contribute to the scholarly and policy literature on urban violence and conflict.  Of course, the book also intersects with my PhD research.  My project is focused on Beirut and the “reconstruction” process in the “post-war era” (1991-onwards).  In part, the dissertation seeks to understand the business processes connected to the “reconstruction” project that centered in downtown Beirut.  Yet it also focuses on urban-based activism in the city and the struggles for what might be understood as “spatial justice.”  Specifically, I am looking at the contestation over the Fouad Boutros Highway and the struggles of Syrian refugees to find suitable shelter and housing in Beirut.  The essays in Beyond the Square–particularly those dealing with neoliberal urbanism–have been instrumental in helping me to develop my thinking about the mechanics of Beirut’s redevelopment.  Like Claire, I am deeply indebted to our contributors, as the very focus of my PhD has no doubt been shaped by reading and editing their essays.       

Jadaliyya (J): The book includes artwork by Julie Mehretu and Tammam Azzam. Could you say something about their contributions?

CP: Early on in the process of putting together the book, Deen proposed we approach Julie Mehretu about including her work on Egypt–specifically, Mogamma (A Painting in Four Parts) (2012) and Cairo (2013). Asking her felt like a long shot so we were both over the moon when she agreed to be involved.  Once we looked at the works and saw the thematic overlaps with the book’s essays, we decided that they should be included as a stand-alone contribution to the volume–and not simply as the cover art.  To that end, we tried to engage her work directly in the introduction as we did with the essays themselves.  The book has another visual component in the form of two pieces by Tammam Azzam, which are included in Deen’s essay on Syria: Storeys (2015) and The Kiss (Freedom Graffiti) (2013).  As with Mehretu’s work, Azzam’s artwork is intended to speak back to the writing in which it is embedded.  Our objective here was fairly straightforward: to take advantage of the fact that artists have shown an interest in some of the very issues with which this book is concerned and to encourage readers to consider the artwork both in conjunction with the scholarship and as another lens onto the spatial dynamics of the Arab uprisings.

Excerpts from Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings

From “Exopolis: Between Ramallah and Jerusalem,” by Helga Tawil-Souri:

At 5:30 AM, Ahmad’s alarm buzzes. The sun hasn’t yet risen over Kufr ’Aqab. He crawls over the body sleeping on the rolled-out mattress on the door next to him. Eyes half-closed, he heads to the kitchen, fills a pot with water, dumps in half a spoonful of sugar, and leaves it to boil. He goes to the bathroom, where the mist on the mirror has not yet evaporated; Fouad just finished his shower after a long night of work and is heading to bed. Ahmad splashes cold water on his face, rubs his cheek, decides the stubble can last another day, and brushes his teeth. He’s back in the kitchen before the water boils: perfect timing to add a heaping spoonful of coffee and light a cigarette. Looking out the kitchen window, he sees dozens of multistory apartment buildings and, behind the neighboring building on the left, the “separation” wall. In February 2002, when Ahmad moved into this apartment, which he shares with eight other people, there were only a handful of buildings in what was then a peripheral, quasi-rural area across the road from the Qalandia refugee camp. Back then there was no wall either.

. . .

Kufr ’Aqab is an exopolis: a space outside the urban environment that helps to sustain that very same urban center, a space defined by and responding to urban changes beyond its reach, a space where residents remain largely outside urban (and national) citizenship. A place becomes an exopolis through a process in which individuals and communities are rendered outside (éxō) the city (in Greek, polis). The condition necessarily results from a spatial process, but also from material, economic, infrastructural, and symbolic processes of casting out.

Kufr ’Aqab is made geographically, economically, and legally unstable and uncertain by Israeli policies of exclusion. At the same time, it is part of the production of a regime in which segregation and inequality are increasingly legitimized by Israeli policies everywhere. It is also affected by profit-seeking Palestinian developers, landowners, and landlords, and by the everyday choices of Palestinians who live and work there. This exopolis does not exist ex nihilo, but is actively produced, even if that production takes place in negative terms, such as by the absence of the rule of law and/or planning.

From “Urban Protest in Bahrain: (Re)configuring Public Space,” by  G. Ollamh and C. Lanthier:

Groups of young menfrom Bilad Saiba, a village about 12 km west of central Manama, had spent hours barricading most of the village entrances with makeshift assemblages of bricks, large rubbish bins, and palm trunks.1 It was a Friday in late 2011; for hours, male mourners from across Bahrain had been flocking to Bilad Saiba to attend the funeral of a man killed by police in an isolated incident three days prior. The blockaded village entrances presaged a confrontation with an entirely different group that was also gathering near Bilad Saiba: in an empty dirt lot across the road from one entrance, scores of blue-uniformed police officers stood waiting near clusters of jeeps and buses.

At the funeral’s conclusion, mourners left the cemetery with heightened emotions. The general sense of tension rose as the mass of men marched, with Bahraini flags held high, toward the main village entrance. As the men approached, the police vehicles lumbered to meet them, at which point the riot police quickly dismounted and advanced. The inevitable clash was short and intense. Amid acrid clouds of tear gas, the police forced the crowd back into the village. The message was clear: protests within its borders might be tolerated, but any extending beyond them would not. Belying the intensity of the fight, the scene had returned to normal within an hour; lingering whiffs of tear gas and spent projectiles on the sides of the roads provided the only clues that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. Since February 2011, this cat and mouse scene has become a regular part of life in the villages at the periphery of Bahrain’s conurbation.

. . .

In the aftermath of the most acute period of demonstrations in February and March 2011, the [Bahraini] state, aware of the prominent media attention generated by centralized protests, emphasized the urban center’s quiet as evidence that the protest movement had ended. The government made this claim despite the continuation of protests outside Pearl Roundabout. In fact, protests at the urban center comprise only a small portion of the Bahraini uprising’s total activity since February 2011; the majority has occurred—and continues to occur—at the periphery.

Protests at the periphery entail offensive strategies as demonstrators seek to achieve various aims or draw wider attention to their demands, but also defensive strategies as they seek to protect themselves from state violence.   In both instances, protesters have incorporated a number of tactics to sustain their activities. These practices include favoring mass gatherings; disseminating political graffiti, both textual and image-based; erecting makeshift street barricades; and deliberately causing power outages.  These latter tactics are particularly useful in helping protestors to thwart the movement of police officers within the [capital’s] villages. Interestingly…funerals have emerged as central protest events. The state’s violent suppression tactics have resulted in deaths; these deaths are commemorated at events that soon turn toward political protest. These in turn lead to confrontations with security forces, which can result in further deaths, in a cycle that fuels tensions and the intensity of the uprising.

Moreover, pushing the uprising to the periphery may have increased virtual protest activity. Each village has its own media collective that uses YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to organize local actions and to coordinate with other villages’ collectives. These platforms are also used to disseminate information about arrests, protests, and international media coverage of the uprising in Bahrain. In this way, the collectives represent localized social networks. These networks are based upon existing networks, including those of kinship and various villages’ shared political aims; however, they are also helping to forge new connections across Bahrain, and sometimes beyond its borders. Collectively, they illustrate the dialogue between virtual and material space regarding mobilization and spatial production. 

[Excerpted from Deen Sharp and Claire Panetta, editors, Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings, by permission of the editors. © 2016 Urban Research. All rights reserved. By permission of the publisher, Urban Research. No other use is permitted without the prior permission of the publisher. For more information, or to purchase this book, click here.]

Last week Twitter was the site of a few rhetorical skirmishes between Professor Juan Cole and several Iraq-watchers—myself included, albeit very briefly. The exchanges were occasioned by Cole’s use of the phrase “Shiʿa forces” to refer to the various non-Kurdish Iraqi formations (the Iraqi army included) that will lead the effort to recapture the city of Mosul from the Islamic State. Rare, if not downright mythical, is the sensible Twitter debate. Alas, this incident was no exception. Nevertheless, the to-and-fro between the Cole and his critics highlighted an important issue—one that disproportionally affects current commentary on the Middle East: the issue of sect-coding. When should something be sect-coded and when should the vocabulary of sects be avoided? How can we temper the prevalence of sect-coding in commentary on the Middle East without succumbing to a stifling and distortive political correctness? When is sect-coding a neutral linguistic device and when is it a damning value judgment?

Controversial semantics are of course not unique to sect-coding and the Middle East. Consider the role of religious identity in whether an event is labeled a “terrorist attack” or a “mass shooting.” However, there has been a strange ubiquity and persistence about the sect-coding of all things Iraqi since 2003 (a pattern that has been replicated with Syria). Thirteen years after regime change, even some of the world’s most esteemed academics can casually refer to the Iraqi army as “Shiʿa forces.”

There is no need to debate the undeniable relevance of sectarian identity in post-2003 Iraq. Nor is there much uncertainty about the centricity of sect to many in Iraq’s political classes (and not just the Shiʿas amongst them). However, this should not be grounds for the sect-coding of all things related to the Iraqi state—let alone all things related to Iraq. Yet all too often, that is precisely what we see. More to the point is the fact that what drives this sort of sect-coding is far more serious than just an objective assessment of the perceived balance of power between sect-centric forces. Rather, it is a value judgment on the legitimacy of the post-2003 Iraqi state.

Rightly or wrongly, the national is generally viewed if not equated with legitimacy, legality, and modernity. As such, to sect-code a government or arm of the state is to de-nationalize and hence delegitimize it. Nowhere is this more the case than in Iraq where the legitimacy of the state has been violently contested since 2003. That contest means that one cannot use terms like “Shiʿa forces”, “Shiʿa government,” and the like without appearing to take sides in the contentious debate about the legitimacy of the Iraqi state. And in a way the reverse is similarly true: to insist on the use of “Iraqi forces” or “Iraqi state forces” is also to take sides in the struggle over the Iraqi state’s legitimacy— this time defending the legitimacy of the Iraqi state.

This is symptomatic of the inherent difficulties surrounding discussions of post-2003 Iraq: how to maintain distance from an emotionally charged subject? One way to address this minefield might be to question the relative accuracy of the terms. Love it or hate it, there exists an Iraqi state of sorts. It commands an army and other security forces, not least of which is the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS). Labeling these as “Iraqi forces” is accurate enough and only validates the Iraqi state’s legitimacy in as far as it accepts its existence for want of a more functional alternative.

However, labeling the same forces “Shiʿa forces” not only validates a highly incendiary narrative of post-2003 Iraq, it is also inaccurate. A debate can be had as to whether or not the Popular Mobilization Units should be sect-coded as “Shiʿa forces,” and even this is not as clear-cut as is often assumed. But to sect-code the Iraqi army or the CTS is highly problematic. These forces are far from being exclusively Shiʿa. That they are majority-Shiʿa should not be a source of controversy or sect-coding given Arab Iraq’s demographic makeup. In any case, if demographic makeup alone warrants sect-coding then Iraq itself is forever doomed to the tyranny of sectarian labels.

Some may argue that the reason such forces must be sect-coded is that they are precisely the institutions that have upheld the sect-centric power structures that have sustained Shiʿa empowerment and allowed Shiʿa-centric forces to project Shiʿa hegemony in Iraq. But if this logic suffices for Iraq, should it not also suffice for other cases? Should we not use the same logic to, for example, label police forces across the United States as “white forces?” After all, they—like the Iraqi military, police, or CTS—have minorities among their ranks but have nevertheless upheld the power structures that have sustained white male privilege. Yet “Shiʿa forces” is a term of mainstream acceptance while “white forces” is one of those terms that are restricted to the darker corners of the internet.

Some are sure to protest: these forces (“Shiʿa forces”/“Iraqi forces”) have committed crimes and abuses against Sunnis. In other words, they have engaged in sectarian violence and hence should at the very least be sect-coded. However, blanket terms such as “Shiʿa forces” paint far too broad an array of actors with a veneer of illegitimacy and conceal rather than reveal the actual perpetrators. Was it the army that committed a particular crime, was it the CTS, was it the police? In any case, and this is at the heart of the issue with sect-coding, are wartime abuses necessarily instances of sectarian violence? After all, abuses, excesses, and war crimes are hardly the preserve of sectarian conflict. The same Shiʿa-majority Iraqi forces were capable of committing awful excesses against Shiʿa militants in the Charge of the Knights operations of 2008 just as US soldiers were capable of shocking the world at Abu Ghraib without there being a sectarian dimension. In other words, one need not be part of a sectarian militia to commit a war crime.

The Problem with Sect-Coding

There are two inter-related issues with sect-coding: one concerns negative framing, the other is its divisiveness. Sect-coding what are meant to be state organs immediately de-nationalizes what are supposed to be national institutions thereby delegitimizing them. Such sect-coded negative framing cannot but be a force for division. How can a Shiʿa trust the state that governs him if he is convinced that it is a “Sunni state?” How can a Sunni trust an army if she is convinced that it is a “Shiʿa force?” This is precisely why we, as academics, commentators, and writers need to exercise particular caution when it comes to sect-coding—especially in these times of unprecedented sectarian entrenchment.

A good example of the potential impact of sect-coding is how this summer’s effort to recapture the city of Fallujah from Islamic State militants was perceived in the regional. While a scientific opinion survey eludes me for now, casually observing Arabic-language social media at the time and the comments of some of the Arab world’s most influential pundits showed the extent of the Iraqi state’s excommunication from the dysfunctional Arab family. It was not particularly difficult to glimpse a desire, if not for an Islamic State victory, then at least for a failure of the Iraqi state’s campaign. The most easily encountered position was one that portrayed the episode in purely sectarian terms: Shiʿa orcs versus Sunni hobbits with nary a mention of the Islamic State that had occupied Fallujah for over two years. More disconcerting were those who openly framed the Islamic State as the lesser of two evils when compared to the Iraqi state and its “Shiʿa forces.” 

Beyond individual military campaigns and beyond Iraq, the ubiquity of sect-coding has prevented national fronts from emerging and has stood in the way of a politics of citizenship in several parts of the Middle East. In countries that are home to a significant sectarian plurality or that have a “sectarian issue,” there is no surer way of undermining a political challenge than by sect-coding it. Indeed, sect-coding has even tainted how sympathy and morality are conceived. Recent years have seen the normalization of the ugly spectacle of sympathy and solidarity being selectively handed out on the basis of perceived sectarian solidarities rather than on any point of principle or morality. Tragedies, atrocities and victims are only deserving of attention and sympathy if they are “our” tragedies, atrocities and victims. 

Covering the Middle East in Sectarian Times?

I have never been one to advocate shying away from the vocabulary of sects: some things simply cannot, need not, and should not avoid sect-coding. To deny the existence of Shiʿa and Sunni entrenchment today or to deny the sect-centricity of some political actors would be political correctness gone counter-factual. In responding to the journalistic obsession with sectarian categories some scholars have pushed too far in the other direction. For example, in a 2010 study on Iraqi identity, a legal scholar argued that Iraqis can be divided according to “national and ethnic divisions,” most notably Arabs and Kurds or they can be divided on the basis of religion in which case it is a majority Muslim country with smaller religious minorities. “This,” he concludes, “is the true picture of a historic, united, inclusive Iraq. Not a presumptive Iraq [of] . . . statelets, regions sects and ethnicities.” The proverbial elephant in the room is of course Iraq’s sectarian groups, most glaringly, Shiʿas and Sunnis all mention of whom is painstakingly avoided. This neither helps the reader understand Iraq nor does it help address Iraq’s sectarian tensions. Clearly, this example shows that being allergic to the vocabulary of sects is no less distortive than being obsessed by it.

So, avoiding the vocabulary of sects or wishing them away is not the answer. But is it possible to come up with a hard and fast rule or formula for when sect-coding is appropriate and when it is not? Probably not, given the inescapable subjectivity that would be involved in such an exercise. However, we can still try to exercise caution in what we sect-code and how we use the vocabulary of sects. When it comes to something as complex as a state, regime or society we need to be particularly careful. Indeed it can be argued that sect-coding a regime or government cannot but be a loosely-veiled dismissal of its legitimacy. Whatever one’s intentions there is no way of using phrases like “Shiʿa forces,” “ʿAlawi regime,” or “Sunni monarchy” without calling the state’s legitimacy into question. If that is one’s intention then one would do better to understand and critique the nature of a regime—something that is never fully captured in the vocabulary of sects.

The case of Israel offers us an interesting illustration of vocabulary and legitimacy. Despite the centrality of Jewish identity in the conception and practice of the Israeli state, few besides Israel’s more active detractors would use the term “Jewish forces” to refer to the Israeli military. In other words, using ethno-religious markers to code the forces of a state that is explicitly based on an ethno-religious identity is, in this case at least, deemed politically incorrect in western circles. As such, standard histories of Israel will refer to “Jewish forces” only with reference to pre-1948 paramilitary groups such as the Haganah. As soon as the narrative crosses 1948, “Jewish forces” become “Israeli forces”—national, legitimate, conventional. 

In the case of Iraq, thirteen years of relentless sect-coding have had a considerable impact on how the country is perceived by outsiders. I have come across Middle Easterners who believe that a Sunni Iraqi soldier is a contradiction in terms; that the name Muhammad (repeat: Muhammad) will get one in trouble at checkpoints manned by “Shiʿa forces”; that Sunnis live in constant fear for their lives and so forth. The Iraqi state, such as it is, is an unmitigated disaster but none of this is true. Critics of the Iraqi state are better served by examining and highlighting the political system’s failings rather than using sectarian labels that explain nothing. 

Sect-coding is often as much an expression of personal biases as it is a sincere description of a particular state of affairs. What gets sect-coded and what does not says a lot about power relations in a given context. When is it a tribal uprising and when is it a Shiʿa or Sunni uprising? When is an actor’s sectarian identity worth mentioning? When does a murdered corpse require sectarian affiliation? And at what point do we accept a person’s sectarian identity as incidental? Sectarian categories are often relevant, particularly in these days of sectarian entrenchment. Yet it is that same climate that makes it incumbent upon us to exercise caution when using the vocabulary of sects. The consequences of careless sect-coding can go far beyond anything intended or imagined by an individual author or commentator.

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Palestine and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Palestine Page Co-Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each roundup to Palestine@jadaliyya.com.]

The Occupation Force

Two Children Tell Stories of Abuse in Israeli Jails Palestinian children arrested, beaten, and shot by Israeli occupation forces 

Israel No Longer Faces Existential Threat, Palestinians Do Israel no longer faces the existential threat that they have long proclaimed, now its Palestinians that face an existential crisis.

Israel to Deploy Machine Gun-Equipped Autonomous Vehicles Along Gaza Border Israel ramps up security with new machine-gun mounted autonomous vehicles along Gaza border

Israel Army Confiscates Farmer's Tractor in Jordan Valley Israeli army confiscates a Jordan Valley farmer's tractor, again

Palestinian Family Forced to Demolish Their Own Home in Jerusalem's Old City Nabih al-Basti and his family were forced by the IOF to demolish their own home with “light tools.”

Witnesses: Israeli Forces Ransack Home of Slain Palestinian, Threaten to Detain 10-Month-Old Girl Israeli forces raided the home of Fadi Faroukh, who was shot and killed in November, destroyed the inside of the house, and threatened to detain an infant.

Palestinian Shot Dead by Army While Bringing Home Food, Baby Clothes, Grieving Mother Recounts The mother of Mustafa Nimir, shot by Israeli forces after an alleged car-attack, recounts his final moments as bringing groceries home and denies any wrongdoing on his behalf.

Domestic Politics

Analysis: Is Israel Pushing for a Palestinian Civil War? The role of Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman seems to inflate and exacerbate already fragile tensions within the occupied territories.

Right of Return is the Heart of Palestine's Struggle The right of return, guaranteed by international law, continues to be systematically and illegally denied by Israel.

Israelis Fume Over Belgrade Call for "Flight to Palestine" An Air Serbia flight from Belgrade to Tel Aviv called for the boarding of passengers to Palestine, leaving many Israelis infuriated.

Foreign Policy

France Voices Concern over Israel's Ongoing Settlement Activities French Foreign Ministry condemns recent Israeli settlement plans

Black Lives Matter and Palestine: A Historic Alliance The new civil rights movement of Black Lives Matter have acknowledged that Israel is an apartheid as well as the similarities between Palestinians and African Americans’ treatment under their government.

Don't Worry! Clinton and Trump are Going to Fix Israel/Palestine While Donald Trump has shown wavering opinions regarding the conflict, Hilary Clinton has stated time and again her ardent support for the State of Israel. With the election of either candidate, the status quo will likely remain.

Settlers and Illegal Settlements

Neglecting Settler Violence Settler violence in occupied territories often goes unreported for fear of retaliation

Thousands of Jewish Settlers Storm Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron Thousands of Jewish settlers invade Hebron mosque in order to perform "Talmudic rituals"

Palestinian and Scottish Flags Raised in Bilin Weekly Protest Dozens of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists march against Israeli occupation

EU Condemns Israel's Approval of 463 Housing Units in Israeli Settlements Across West Bank The European Union has recently stated their disdain regarding Israel’s new plans of building over four hundred new settlements in the West Bank.

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions

Israeli Minister in London to Discuss Anti-BDS Fight with British Officials Israeli top anti-BDS minister headed to London in attempt to stem the rising tide of BDS sentiment in Britain

Canadian Green Party Adopts BDS A resolution has been passed inside Canada’s Green Party that supports the BDS movement.

Pro-Israel Groups Declare "lawfare" on BDS Movement in Canada Canadian Pro-Israel groups to fight the BDS movement through "lawfare"

Law

Palestinian Prisoner Striker Moved to Hospital Over Health Deterioration Palestinian prisoner forced to receive medical attention after prolonged hunger strike

Will Israel be Put on Trial for War Crimes?"Israel has agreed to allow the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to send a delegation to Israel and the occupied territories. It was revealed over the weekend in a step that could dramatically increase the risk of Israeli officials being tried for war crimes."

Palestinian Man who Filmed IDF Soldier Shooting Attacker Dead "Threatened with Arrest While Reporting Death Threats" Palestinian man threatened with arrest for reporting death threats after he filmed the murder of an incapacitated Palestinian man by Israeli soldier

Economy and Development

Palestinian in Gaza Falls to Death After Electric Shock A young man is killed by falling four stories after electrical shock at his worksite in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip 

Without Israel Occupation, Palestinian Economy Would Double - UN Report According to a recently released UN report, Israel has been preventing the growth of the West Bank and Gaza economy. According to UNCTAD, the elimination of occupation would double Palestine’s economy.

Arabic

قوات الاحتلال

الاحتلال يصادر طريقاً زراعيّاً في "قريوت" جنوب نابلس
أصدرت الإدارة المدنية الصهيونية، اليوم الاثنين، قراراً بمصادرة طريق زراعي يقع إلى الجنوب من قرية قريوت جنوب نابلس، بهدف شق طريق يربط بين مستوطنة "عيلية وشيلو" الإسرائيلية.

إصابة ١٥ فلسطينياً في ١٣ نقطة تماس مع الاحتلال
أصيب 15 فلسطينيًا برصاص وغاز قوات الاحتلال الصهيوني والمستوطنين، الجمعة؛ بينهم صحفيان، خلال مواجهات في 13 نقطة تماس بالضفة الغربية والقدس المحتلتيْن وقطاع غزة.

الاحتلال يقتحم نابلس ويصادر مركبة عائلة شهيد بالخليل
نفذت قوات الاحتلال الصهيوني، حملة مداهمات وتفتيش وإغلاق في محافظة نابلس شمال الضفة الغربية، فيما اقتحمت منزل شهيد واعتدت على عائلته وصادرة مركبتها في مدينة الخليل جنوب الضفة.

إسرائيل تواصل السرقة وتنقل مكتبة من متحف آثار فلسطين إلى القدس الغربية
سمحت المحكمة الإسرائيلية العليا لسلطة الآثار بنقل المكتبة الأثرية في متحف روكفلر (متحف الآثار الفلسطيني) بمدينة القدس من الشطر الشرقي للمدينة إلى شطرها الغربي.

الاحتلال يهدم خياما وحظائر أغنام في طوباس
هدمت قوات الاحتلال، صباح اليوم الأربعاء، خياما سكنية وحظائر بالقرب من منطقة العقبة شرق طوباس.

مستعربون يختطفون شابا من مطعم في بيت لحم
اختطفت قوة خاصة اسرائيلية متخفية بلباس عربي شابا من مخيم عايدة في بيت لحم اثناء تواجده في مطعم بالمدينة.

الاحتلال يعتقل 17 مواطناً من الضفة
اعتقلت قوات الاحتلال ليل الثلاثاء وصباح الأربعاء 17 مواطناً من عدة محافظات في الضفة.

السياسة الداخلية

الأورومتوسطى يطالب بالإفراج الفوري عن 6 شبان بسجون السلطة
طالب المرصد الأورو متوسطي لحقوق الإنسان السبت الأجهزة الأمنية الفلسطينية بالضفة الغربية بالإفراج الفوري عن ستة معتقلين سياسيين فلسطينيين في سجن "بيتونيا" غرب رام الله للشهر الخامس على التوالي دون توجيه لائحة اتهام لهم.

عباس: الانتخابات في موعدها وفلسطين تجمعنا رغم الاختلافات
أكد الرئيس محمود عباس، أن الانتخابات المحلية ستجرى في موعدها المحدد في الثامن من الشهر المقبل، ليمارس الشعب الفلسطيني حقه في انتخاب من يمثله بكل حرية وشفافية.

قبول 6 طعون على قوائم مرشحة للانتخابات المحلية المقبلة
قالت لجنة الانتخابات المركزية الفلسطينية، مساء السبت 3-9-2016 ، إنها قبلت طلبات الطعون في 6 قوائم من أصل 163 طلب، على قوائم ومرشحين محتملين للانتخابات المحلية المقبلة، المقرر إجراؤها في الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة، في أكتوبر/تشرين أول المقبل.

هل يؤدي إسقاط قوائم فتح لإلغاء الانتخابات المحلية؟
دخل الانتخابات المحلية الفلسطينية طريقًا ضيقًا، مع اتخاذ لجنة الانتخابات المركزية قرارًا بإسقاط أربع قوائم في قطاع غزة، وما تبع ذلك من اتخاذ حركة فتح قرارًا بعدم تقديم طعون على إسقاط القوائم في محاكم القطاع، بل اللجوء لمحكمة العدل العليا، وهو ما انتقدته حماس بشدة واعتبرته مخالفًا للقانون.

لجنة الانتخابات: 53 % من القوائم المعتمدة تتبع مستقلين
أظهرت معطيات رسمية، أن القوائم المستقلة تمثل 53% من القوائم المعتمدة، في لجنة الانتخابات المركزية، فيما تبين فوز 182 قائمة بالتزكية، منها 136 تتبع حركة "فتح".

السياسة الخارجية

“القدس ليست عاصمة إسرائيل” بمنهاج المدارس التشيكية الجديد
بعد شكوى تقدمت بها السفارة الفلسطينية لوزارة التعليم التشيكية بسبب الإشارة إلى القدس بأنها عاصمة إسرائيل في خرائط تُدَرَّس بالمنهج، قررت تعديل المناهج التي تحتوي على هذه المعلومة، والإشارة للقدس بأنها عاصمة فلسطين.

الحكومة ترحب بموقف التشيك الرافض لاعتبار القدس عاصمة اسرائيل
رحبت حكومة الوفاق الوطني بموقف جمهورية التشيك الذي رفض تسمية مدينة القدس (عاصمة لإسرائيل) مشددة في الوقت نفسه على ان الوضع الذي تسعى اليه اسرائيل فيما يتصل بمدينة القدس غير معترف به دولياً.

الوفد الفلسطيني يفتتح جدارية حول فلسطين على جدار سجن في بيونس أيرس
جرى افتتاح جدارية لفلسطين على حائط سجن كان يستخدم في عهد الدكتاتورية في الأرجنتين في فترات السبعينات والثمانينات.

إسرائيل تستعد لاستقبال بعثة من المحكمة الجنائية الدولية في مهمة عن حرب غزة
قال مسؤول إسرائيلي الجمعة إن إسرائيل تستعد لاستقبال بعثة من المحكمة الجنائية الدولية تمهيدا لتحديد ما اذا كانت المحكمة ستفتح تحقيقا في اتهام إسرائيل بارتكاب جرائم حرب في قطاع غزة صيف 2014.

فتح معبر رفح بشكل استثنائي في كلا الاتجاهين
فتحت السلطات المصرية، اليوم السبت، معبر رفح الحدودي، أمام حركة المسافرين، بشكل استثنائي في كلا الاتجاهين.

فتح تدعو أوروبا للاعتراف بدولة فلسطين والتحرك ضد الاستيطان
 طالبت حركة فتح دول الاتحاد الأوروبي بدعم تحركات القيادة الفلسطينية ضد الاستيطان الإسرائيلي في الساحة الدولية وفي مقدمتها مجلس الأمن، وبخطوات على مستوى الاتحاد الأوروبي كذلك.

عنف المستوطنين

مستوطنون يقتحمون الأقصى
أفاد موقع إعلام القدس، بأن 60 مستوطنا صهيونيا، اقتحموا الأقصى من جهة باب المغاربة تحت حماية أمنية مشددة.

منظمة «لاهافا» المتطرفة تنظم دورات عسكرية للمستوطنين
كشفت صحيفة «يديعوت أحرنوت» العبرية في عددها الصادر أمس أن منظمة «لاهافا» اليهودية المتطرفة نظمت دورات عسكرية لمتطرفين يهود جنوب الخليل، تشمل تدريبات على الاعتداء على الفلسطينيين في الضفة الغربية والقدس والقيام بعمليات مراقبة، إضافة إلى محاضرات حول التصرف أثناء تحقيقات الشرطة وجهاز المخابرات الإسرائيلي «الشاباك» في حال اعتقالهم.

آلاف المستوطنين اليهود يقتحمون المسجد الإبراهيمي في الخليل
اقتحم آلاف المستوطنين المسجد الإبراهيمي في وقت متأخر من الليلة الماضية (الخميس/الجمعة)، وأدوا صلوات يهودية في داخله وسط حراسة جيش الاحتلال الإسرائيلي.

إسرائيل تصدق على بناء 284 وحدة استيطانية بالضفة الغربية
أقرت الحكومة الإسرائيلية بناء 284 وحدة سكنية جديدة في المستوطنات اليهودية في الضفة الغربية المحتلة، بحسب حركة السلام الآن، لمراقبة الاستيطان.

قانون

"أسرى فلسطين": الاحتلال اعتقل 490 بينهم 70 طفلا و10 نساء خلال أغسطس
أكد مركز أسرى فلسطين للدراسات، أن الاحتلال صعد خلال شهر أغسطس الماضي من عمليات الاقتحام للمناطق الفلسطينية ومداهمة المنازل وتفتيشها، حيث رصد المركز 490 حالة اعتقال من بينهم 70 طفلاً قاصرًا، و10 نساء وفتيات.

توزيع أوامر هدم إدارية في "سلوان" بالقدس المحتلة
قالت مصادر مقدسية إن عناصر من بلدية الاحتلال في القدس المحتلة، وزعت صباح اليوم السبت، أوامر هدم إدارية في حي "البستان" ببلدة "سلوان" (الواقعة إلى الجنوب من المسجد الأقصى)، وصوّرت منازل ومحال تجارية بحجة البناء غير المرخص.

اقتصاد وتنمية

الخضري: عمليات الإعمار قد تنتهي قبل 10 سنوات بسبب قيود إسرائيل
حذّر النائب جمال الخضري رئيس اللجنة الشعبية لمواجهة الحصار على قطاع غزة، من استمرار عمليات البناء لعشر سنوات بسبب القيود الإسرائيلية على دخول مواد البناء.

لأول مرة .. اتفاقية بنقل البريد من الاردن الى فلسطين مباشرة
وقع وزير الشؤون المدنية الفلسطينية حسين الشيخ ومنسق جيش الاحتلال الإسرائيلي في المناطق المحتلة الجنرال يؤآف مرخادي على اتفاق مبادئ لرفع مستوى الخدمات البريدية بين مناطق السلطة الفلسطينية ودولة الاحتلال الإسرائيلي.

فلسطين تنال عضوية الاتحاد الدولي للشباب
أعلن المجلس التنفيذي للاتحاد الدولي للشباب، أمس الجمعة، أن دولة فلسطين قد حصلت على العضوية الدائمة في الاتحاد الدولي للشباب.

انطلاق نقابة صيادلة فلسطين رسميا
اعلن نقيب الصيادلة د.ايمن الخماش قيام نقابة صيادلة فلسطين، خلال مؤتمر عقد في مجمع النقابات في رام الله، ظهر اليوم الاثنين مؤكدا ان المقر الرئيسي للنقابة كان وما زال في مدينة القدس المحتلة.

انخفاض معدّلات الأميّة في فلسطين بنسبة 10٪
انخفاض ملحوظ على معدّلات الأمية في أوساط الشعب الفلسطيني بالضفة الغربية المحتلة وقطاع غزة المحاصر، خلال السنوات الـ 18 الماضية، بحسب معطيات رسمية.

الأمم المتحدة: الاحتلال يشل الاقتصاد الفلسطيني
كشف التقرير السنوي لمؤتمر الأمم المتحدة حول التجارة والتنمية بشأن المساعدة للشعب الفلسطيني أن الاقتصاد الفلسطيني سيكون أهم بمرتين على الأقل من دون الاحتلال الإسرائيلي.

الحركة العالمية لمقاطعة إسرائيل وسحب الاستثمارات منها وفرض عقوبات عليها

حركة المقاطعة تدعو إلى تعليق عضوية اتحاد «إسرائيل» لكرة القدم
دعت حركة "مقاطعة اسرائيل وسحب الاستثمارات" منها (BDS) في إيطاليا إلى تعليق عضوية اتحاد "إسرائيل" لكرة القدم كما حدث عام 1964، عندما علّق الاتحاد الدولي لكرة القدم (فيفا) عضوية اتحاد جنوب افريقيا لكرة القدم، بسبب سياسة الفصل العنصري حتى تحترم "إسرائيل" حقوق المواطن الفلسطيني، والقانون الدولي.

حركة مقاطعة إسرائيل: استراتيجيات مدروسة ونجاحات ملموسة
برزت المقاطعة على مر التاريخ الفلسطيني، كاستراتيجية من استراتيجيات المقاومة الشعبية الرئيسية المتاحة للفلسطينيين على اختلاف مشاربهم. أمّا اليوم فقد أصبحت في إطار التضامن الدولي الشكلَ الاستراتيجي الأهم لدعم النضال الفلسطيني المرتكز على النهج القائم على الحقوق.

قاطعوا.. تطبيق هاتفي لتشجيع مقاطعة المنتجات الإسرائيلي
أطلق عدد من النشطاء في لبنان، بالتعاون مع حركة مقاطعة إسرائيل، تطبيق (قاطعوا) الهاتفي على أجهزة "أندرويد" و"آيفون"، لنشر فكرة مقاطعة إسرائيل ومنتجاتها حول العالم، والتحذير من الشركات التي دخلت في شراكات أو علاقات تجارية مع شركات إسرائيلية.

[تنشر هذه المادة ضمن ملف خاص حول التناول السردي للحرب والعنف في سوريا. للإطلاع على جميع مواد الملف اضغط/ي هنا]

الروائي السوري عبدالله مكسور

أمام سيل المعلومات التي تغمرُ الواقع من كل أطرافه نظن أننا بتنا نعرف العالم، واكتشفنا المدن المختبئة خلف غبار التاريخ أو العمارة المدنيّة وحديثًا مختفيةً خلف غبار القذائف التي باتت تجتاح مدننا التي احتوت الذاكرة الأولى، هكذا تبدأ الخطوة الأولى نحو شهية الكتابة للتخلص من الأوهام التي تشوب تعامل وسائل الإعلام مع الحدث المأساوي في سوريا مثالًا، الحدث الذي جاء مفاجئًا لوسائل الإعلام كان مفاجئًا أيضًا بذات الدرجة للمشتغل بالأدب وعليه كان اللجوء إلى تخيُّل اللحظة في واقعٍ متحرك أمر غير ممكن، كان لزامًا من هنا الكتابة عن سوريا الثورة بتجريد الدوافع الأولى والإنحياز للإنسان والذاكرة معًا على حد سواء، نقل الحياة اليومية بأفراحها وأحزانها وأمواتها وشخوصها ومعطوبيها وحالاتها لم يكن أمرًا يسيرًا، ذلك أنه يحمل من المغامرة ما يكفي للتفكير بإعادة تركيب البيئات الثقافية والإجتماعية والنفسية والثقافية التي كانت قائمة، فصار كل شيء مطروحًا على طاولة الكتابة، وعندما أقول كل شيء فإني أبدأ بالعقد الإجتماعي الهش أصلًا وصولًا إلى العقد الديني.

في الحالة السورية اليوم لا بد من طرح السؤال التالي: لمَن يكتب الروائي في حالة الدمار الكلي؟، ولمن يُطلِق سهام كلماتِه؟، وهل عليه أن يتخذ موقفًا واضحًا قبل الخوض في الكتابة من النقطة صفر، المسافة صفر هنا تعني الإلتصاق بالحدث والتلوث بدمائه في كل اتجاه؟، الكتابة في هذه الحالة لم تعد لأجل الذات والعبارة الأكثر شيوعًا "أكتب لنفسي"، إنها كتابةٌ لأجل قضية أيًّا كان اصطفاف الروائي فيها لكن عليه أن يكون جنديًا حقيقيًا يمتلك من المكنة والمقومات ما يُمكنه من خوض الجولات حتى النهاية.

القصة هنا ليست عملًا توثيقيًّا إنها كتابة فصول التاريخ المعاصر الذي يقع على مقربة منا، كما نراه بأعيننا من زواياه المتعددة، ولوضوح أكثر سأضرب مثالًا من القرن التاسع عشر حيث عبَرَ الرحالةُ العرب والأوربيون البحر المتوسط والطرق الوعرة بإتجاهين متعاكسين وتركوا لنا صورة أدبية موازية للتاريخ المكتوب، نجد فيها ما غفل التاريخ عن تدوينه، فالتاريخ يقوم على تدوين العموميات بتفاصيل قليلة أما الأدب فيقوم على التفاصيل التي تُشكِّل في نهاية المطاف اللوحة الكليَّة العامة، إنها مثل لعبة تركيب القطع الصغيرة الخاصة بالأطفال - كما أراها في الأدب الذي قدَّمته عن سوريا في السنوات الأخيرة - تبدأ من حالة الذات المذابة كليًا مع الحدث وتتفرع منها إلى العام، من الجزء إلى الكل ومن الخاص إلى العام فتكون اللوحة في نهايتها مثل لوحات الفنان الهولندي الشهير "بيتر بروغل" حيث لا يكتشف الناظر تفاصيل اللوحة إلا إذا وقف على مسافة كافية من زواياها ليراها بوضوح تام، تلك الجزيئيات التي تتحد مع بعضها في بُعدِ الناظر والمتلقي عن الحدث تجعله يكتشف أشياء عديدة لن يتسنَّ لهُ رؤيتها إذا كان قريبًا، وفي ذات السياق فإن الصورة التي تطغى على الأدب الذي يتناول المأساة اليوم هي بشكل أو بآخر صورةُ الهوية التي يتم سفكُها واللعب بها، هي العلاقة التي يمارسها الكاتب مع اللغة في الرواية خصوصًا في الحالة التي تتناول حدثًا يقع الآن، حيث تغيبُ خطوط الذاتية والفردانية في الهم الجمعي ويذوب الهم الجمعي في الذات الواحدة، فضحايا ما يحدث يحمل كل منهم رواية في صدره ليحكيها، التقيتُ بالمئات منهم، قصصهم تتنوع في أرض الميدان وعلى أطرافها، في مخيمات النزوح وعلى بوابات الوطن، على الشواطئ الغريبة وفي قلب القوارب المتهالكة، في مراكز العبور بين بلدان عديدة، في مخيمات اللجوء المؤقت، في البدايات المتلعثمة بكل ما تحمله الكلمة من معنى، نحن هنا أمام حالة مرعبة من الحكَّائين الذين كانوا أبطال رواياتهم، وهذه ميزةُ هذا الأدب الذي تناول بجرأة ما يحدث دون تجميل.
الروائي هو الشخص الأضعف في لعبة التضاد التي تسود حقيقة الواقع في البلدان المنهارة، فحين تشتعل المُدن في رحلة الحريق لن توقفها كلماته، فقط ستلذعه بحروق غير قابلة للعلاج في الوقت القريب، إنها الكتابة من المسافة صفر في مواجهة الرصاص الخارق والبرميل المتفجر والحزام الناسف والشعارات المُدمِّرة، تفاصيل الحالة الروائية هنا في إعتقادي لا تهم من حيث الشكل سواء جاءت الرواية بصيغة تقليدية أو على شكل تحقيق صحفي مُوسَّع "كما أشتغلها أنا"، المهم هو أن تصل إلى القارئ برسائلها التي أرادها الكاتب من خلال لغة بسيطة غير إنفعالية، الإنحياز إلى طرف دون آخر في النص ليس وليدًا عن حالة إنفعالية، إنه نتيجة قناعات ومشاهدات عديدة تولَّدت لدى الكاتب قبل البدء في معركة الكتابة لإيجاد نص أدبي يتحدث عن الحالة المعاصرة.

الروائي ليس قائدًا للتغيير وليس مؤثرًا به، في الحالة السورية قد يلعب دور الراصد لتحولات هذا التغيير فهو لا يملك القدرة والقوة على تغيير مساره إذا انحرف، وهذا ليس لضعف منه بل لأن أصوات الرصاص والراجمات أعلى من صوت الكلمات وأوزان الشعر، وما ينتج عن المخاض العسير الذي تعيشه البلاد لا يشفع للعمل السيء فاقد القيمة الأدبية بمعناها الفني، فقدسيّة الحدث في التناول لا تعفي الكاتب من ميزان الجودة، والقول بأن على الأديب الإنتظار حتى انتهاء الحدث هو حالة من العجز فالحدث وُلِدَ مُكتَمِلًا، والسؤال أين ستصل به مراحل الإكتمال القادم، هذا ما على الروائي إلى جانب آخرين الإجابة عليه.

وعلى هذا فإن قيمة الكتابة الأدبيّة التي تنتج عن سوريا اليوم هي في أن أبطال الحكاية ما يزالون على قيد الحياة وهم الذين سيحكمون على جودة العمل الأدبي وصدقيَّته في حال وجدوا أنفسهم فيه، فالناس تبحث في كل العصور عن صورتها في الأدب.

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عبد الله مكسور في سطور:

صحفي وروائي سوري من مواليد مدينة حماه 1983، يحمل إجازة في الآداب والعلوم الإنسانية، وماجستير مهني في الإعلام والعلاقات العامة. وهو يقيم حاليا في بلجيكا.

بدأ الإشتغال في الصحافة المرئية منذ العام 2006، وتنقل بين العديد من القنوات الفضائية العربية، الإخبارية والإجتماعية والإقتصادية.

رَأَس تحرير العديد من المجلات الدورية ويكتب بشكل دائم في صحيفة "العرب" اللندنية.

تعتبر روايته "أيام في بابا عمرو" من أولى الروايات التي خاضت تفاصيل الثورة السورية، حيث تأخذنا في رحلة سرد ورقية عن أحداث حقيقية من خلال بطل الرواية، وهو صحافي شاب يعود إلى بلاده لإنجاز مجموعة من الأفلام الوثائقية عن الاحتجاجات التي شهدتها البلاد في منتصف آذار/ مارس 2011، وتحولت إلى حرب تحرق الأخضر واليابس على الأرض السورية لغاية يومنا هذا. ويدخل "مكسور" سراديب الأحداث في الباب الثامن لمدينة حمص السورية، من خلال رصد للهجمات الشرسة التي عانى منها حي "بابا عمرو" باستخدام كافة الأسلحة الثقيلة من الطائرات الحربية والدبابات والمدافع.
وفي "عائد إلى حلب" يتابع "مكسور" سرديته للحرب في سورية، وقد تركزت في الرواية الأولى (أيام في بابا عمرو) في حمص وريف حماة، بينما تتركز في هذه الرواية في حلب وريف حماة أيضًا، عدا عن الحدود السورية التركية. وفي الروايتين ترافق الكاميرا الراوي الصحافي الذي ما عادت تعنيه الصور التي التقطها في الجزء الأول من حي بابا عمرو وسواه. وفي هذا العمل يستمر الراوي السرد الدرامي للأحداث عبر العديد من الأشخاص الذين يختلفون مع بعضهم بعضًا في كثير من الأشياء و يتفقون على ضرورة القتال حتى آخر رصاصة .

في صفحات الرواية هناك صوت واضح للرصاص الذي ينطلق من كل الجبهات غير مكترث بالوطن الذي وصل حدّ الهاوية إن لم نعلن وقوعه فيها .

وفي روايته الأخيرة "طريق الآلام"، والتي تعد خاتمة الثلاثية الروائية "أيام في بابا عمرو" و"عائد إلى حلب، والتي تحكي (الثلاثية) عن مرارة التغريبة السورية معجونة بمرارة الفواجع. وتحكي "طريق الآلام" تجرية هجرة غير شرعية لشاب سوري هو الراوي الوحيد والمنخرط بالأحداث وأحد أبطالها وليس العالِم بكل شيء، إنما الشاهد على كل شيء والإنسان الذي يتحسّر على وطن منتهك، هو الشاهد على الموت السوري الموزع بين قوات النظام والجماعات المسلحة.

صدَرَ له خمس روايات:
"شتات الروح"، دار فضاءات للنشر، عمّان 2011
"الطريق إلى غوانتانامو"، دار فضاءات للنشر، عمّان 2011
"أيام في بابا عمرو"، دار فضاءات للنشر، عمّان 2012.
"عائد إلى حلب"، دار فضاءات للنشر، عمّان 2013.
"طريق الآلام"، دار فضاءات للنشر، عمّان 2015.
وله قيد الطباعة:
"نوهادرا"، (رواية)، تصدر في 2016.
"أبناء البحر"، (رواية).

[تنشر هذه المادة ضمن ملف خاص حول التناول السردي للحرب والعنف في سوريا. للإطلاع على جميع مواد الملف اضغط/ي هنا]

الروائي السوري عبدالرحمن مطر

ثمة في الكتابة ما لا يقوى أحدٌ على قهره، في ظل هذا العسف المديد، الذي ينسجُ ظلمته كلما تاهت نقطة ضوء من هذا العالم، ظلمة تحاول خنق الأمل، تشتد كلما ملأنا الإحساس بأننا قد نقترب من لحظة خلاص ما. لكن الحروف التي تُسقى بأديم الروح لا تظل عصية على الخنق فحسب، بل إنها تغالب الموات وتزيحه كلما خلق الكاتب نصًا جديدا،ً في الحيز الذي يختبر فيه وجوده، وكينونته. حيز المواجهة اليوم لم يعد محدودًا أو ضيقًا، الحرب تتسع بما تلتهمه من الأرض والناس، ومن القيم .. هو ليس ضيقًا بفعل الكتابة أيضًا والإنجاز النصيّ في الأدب.

في ظل هذا الخراب العميم، حيث الموازين مختلة بين فرقاء الاحتراب والتضاد، حيث تسود علاقات القوة والقدرة على استلاب الحياة والحرية، والاستقواء على المثقف – المدني/ واستتباعه حيث لزم لتطويعه، أوإجباره على الصمت في الحدّ الأدنى، تصبح الكتابة ضرورة قصوى ليس للنجاة، بل لممارسة فعل الحياة والمشاركة فيها. قد تبدو لي "النجاة" فعلًا انهزاميًا – إن جاز التعبير، لوهلةٍ أولى .. لكنها أيضًا هي تجاوز الأثر المباشر لفوضى تثير الموت والدمار وغبار الحرائق.

النجاة بالنسبة للكاتب هي أن يفعّل اللحظة التاريخية، ويرتهنها للكتابة، وتلك مساهمة لابد منها اجتماعيًا وفكريًا، في عملية التغيير الممكنة.

كل كتابة هي فعلٌ مؤثر في الحياة العامة، ويجب أن يمارس الكاتب دوره الطليعي في المجتمع، على الرغم من ثقافة الإقصاء التي تسود الحالة الراهنة. الإرتكان إلى فعل التهميش والإقصاء هو ارتهانٌ لمشيئة الخراب، وارتضاءٌ لسحب الظلامية الرعناء، أيًا يكن مصدرها وشكلها وهويتها. لم تتغير مسؤولية الكاتب التنويرية تبعًا للتحولات الشاملة التي نعيشها جراء الحروب، وتقلبات المفاهيم، وتبدلات دلالاتها.
من هنا تأخذ الكتابة أهميتها، نسقًا في التفكير، رؤية في الوجود وتمعنًا في صورة الحاضر، ومفاعيله، ولا يجب أن تقف الكتابة عند حدود التعبير الذي يقتفي الوصف، ولا يشارك في فعل الحياة، وخلق معطياتها، أنّا تكن الظروف. ما يحدث هو صدمة بكل المقاييس، ما لم تتصوره مخيلة الكاتب الذي ينسج أحلامًا وحكايات، لكنه لم يزل أسير الدهشة لهول ما جرى ويجري. على الكاتب أن يخرج من صدمته وأن يعمل على تجاوز مفاعليها عبر الكتابة. هي إعادة بناء للإنسان، في ظل ما يقوم به الطغيان والإستبداد ومنذ نصف قرن في سوريا، هدْمًا على هدرِ دمٍ، على انتهاكِ حرمة التاريخ والحضارة وسرقة أوابدها وإبادتها، بعد أن صمدت في مواجهة كل الغزوات عبر العصور، آلت إلى غبار على يد المستبد الذي طغى باسم "الوطني"، ليعيث في البلد تدميرًا و تهجيرًا، وفي كل مشهد كان الكاتب مستهدفًا وضحية.

إزاء هذا الواقع المرير يمكن للروائي أن يبني عمارة السرد، وللشاعر أن تلد روحه نصّه الشعري، عشبة الكلام .. مثلما تورق السنبلة في الأرض المحروقة.

الكتابة في بحر الدم والركام، هي عمار للروح لعلها تتعافى من آلامها، وتعينها على النهوض من جديد.
لقد بدأت الحياة الثقافية السورية، تشهد ولادة أعمال أدبية عديدة في الرواية والشعر، تتناول الحدث. وثمة أعمال روائية عديدة برزت خاصة خلال السنتين الآخيرتين، إضافة إلى أعمال أخرى هي أقرب لنصوص السيرة، ويوميات الحدث السوري، من خلال موقف الكاتب ورؤيته وانشغاله. وإن كانت الرواية السورية ما تزال قاصرة عن الألمام بالحدث، ذلك أن الكتابة الروائية، ليست تسجيلًا لحدث واقعي مباشر، وأهميتها في الإبداع الأدبي الذي يمنح النص قيمته في لغته، وفي مدلولات الكتابة، وتأويلاتها للحدث. هنا تكمن الصعوبة، في أن يقدم الروائي نصًا جديدًا في إضافته إلى متن الرواية، لا نصًا كميًا عجولًا يأتي فيه الإنشغال بالحدث على حساب القيمة الفنية للعمل. غير أنه ينبغي القول لايمكن لنص روائي أن يلم بكل جوانب الحدث، والإرتقاء إليه نسبيٌ، وليس ضرورة، حرية الكتابة والتعبير تمنح الكاتب مقدرة غير محدودة، على مقاربة الأماكن السحيقة في الحرب والثورة وظواهرهما، ليخلق النص فرادته. ليس بالضرورة أن يكون النص مرتبطًا بالواقع، كي يكون حرًا. الحرية شرط سابق في الكتابة، وكأي كتابة حرّة من شأنها التأثير في الواقع وفي تغييره، أن تكون جزءًا منه، ومعبرة عنه.

بلا شك، الكتابة هي حرية، لا أحد يستطيع انتقاصها، سوى الكاتب نفسه، بمقدرته الإبداعية، وبمهاراته اللغوية، وبمداركه المعرفية. هو من يستطيع الوصول بالنص وممارسة الكتابة أقصى درجة ممكنة له في فضاءء الحرية، وهو من يعثر في خطو الكلام ويبقى حبيس أفكار، أو توجساتٍ تفقد كتابته بريق الحروف الحرّة، وحرارة التعبير وألق الفكرة.

الكتابة كشف وتعرية وتفكيك. لقد فعلت الثورة فعلها فمزقت حجب الخوف في دواخل الإنسان، وحريّ بالكاتب أن يجعل منها لحظة انعتاق كامل لاعودة فيه. في الأصل هي ثورة ضد مصادرة حقوق التعبير والرأي. التخلص من الشرطي في الداخل أسُّ التحرر، بقاء أي ظلٍ منه يعيق حرية الكتابة والتفكير معًا، ويجعله مكبلًا،عاجزًا، غير قادر على ابتكار نص جديد، بلغة جديدة..

إن سنوات خمسٍ من الثورة، خمسة أعوام من القتل والتدمير والتهجير، ليست وقتًا قصيرًا أو محدودًا، يحول دون أن يتشكل فيه النص الروائي، دالًّا بقيمة أدبية عالية، على حدث جسيم بمكوناته وتقلباته وتغيّراته المقضّة. وقد آن أن تترسخ الكتابة اليوم كفعل حضور جمالي يحرض على التفكير بالمستقبل ورؤيته باتساعٍ وانفتاحٍ مديدٍ على كل المشكلات والقضايا، بكل حرية وجرأة، وهذا ما يمنح الكتابة بُعدًا إضافيًا لقيمة المبنى والمعنى.

لنكتب .. وليأخذ النقد دوره ويستعيد مكانته المؤثرة في حركة الأدب والمجتمع، ما أحوجنا إليه اليوم. الكتابة فعل حياة، لعلنا نساهم في إخماد الحرائق التي ستطول، في وهاد أرواح الناس التي أدمنتها الحروب وأرهقتها المعاناة التي يعجز الأدب لوحده عن تصويرها. الكتابة الحيّة، قد تكون أكثر جرأة وحرية مما سيلي من وقت، يفرض فيه شروطًا وحجبًا وممنوعات جديدة .. تحت ذريعة السلم الأهلي، أو بحجة احترام الأديان، أو قهر وكلاء الله الذين يقتلون الناس بسبب أحلامهم وأمنياتهم. ولنتذكر دائما أن الطغاة يتبدلون إن لم نذهب إلى أقصى درجة ممكنة في حرية القول والتعبير .. حرية بلاحدود للكتابة.

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عبد الرحمن مطر في سطور:

عبدالرحمن مطر كاتب وروائي وشاعر سوري من مواليد الرقة 1960، يحمل إجازة في علم الإجتماع. وقد تنسم "مطر" هبوب الربيع العربي وهو رهن الاعتقال السياسي قبل أن تقوده الرياح إلى ما وراء البحار ليستقر في الأراضي الكندية. يقول: "كنت داخل السجن، معتقلًا سياسيا، لم أشعر بالقلق المشبوب بالأمل، بمثل تلك اللحظة التي خرج فيها التونسيون محتجين على ما حدث، ثم وهم يملؤون الشوارع بهتاف أحسست به يهز جدران السجن، وهم يهتفون: ارحل! لم أستطع النوم بعدها".

ولا يخفي "مطر" تفاؤله بأن دور المثقف والمبدع العربي سيكون لصيقًا بالاستنهاض والتنوير بعد أن ساهم بصورة فعالة وغير مباشرة في التحريض المستمر على التغيير، وعلى مواجهة الاستبداد بمختلف صنوفه واتجاهاته.

تبدأ رواية "سراب بري"، التي تأتي في سياق ما يُعرف بـ"أدب السجون"، والتي تعد شهادة حيّة على نظامين مسّتبدين (السوري والليبي)، بمشهد استهلالي على براميل الموت وراجمات الصواريخ، وهي تدمّر المباني فوق ساكنيها في حرستا، في الغوطة الشرقية، فترى الناس بين قتيل وجريح، والبعض يركض بحثًا عن ناجين أو جرحى بين الأنقاض والبعض يلم أشلاء الضحايا الشهداء.. (عامر العبد الله) بينهم يتحرك مثقلًا بما يحصل، يراقب الشباب وهم منهمكين في بحثهم.. ويلاحظ كثيرًا ممن صدفهم في معتقله. وكلهم يحاولون أن يفعلوا شيئًا في مواجهة آلة الموت الجهنمي.. تنتقل الروايه بعد ذلك مع عامر في عام 2002، عندما اعتقل في بلد عربي ما.. سنكتشف بعد حين أنه ليبيا.. البلد العربي الذي وقع ضحية الاستبداد الوحشي لأربعين عامًا".

وجاء بقلم المؤلف على الغلاف الأخير للرواية، "هي شهادة حية على تجربة عاشها، وكتبها خلف القضبان، ونجح في تهريبها ورقة، ورقة. لكن ما يميز هذه الشهادة عن سواها، أن أحداثها تجمع سيرة المعتقل السياسي ما بين زمنين، قبل ثورات "الربيع العربي" ومن بعدها، وما بين نظامين استبداديين، نظام القذافي البائد في ليبيا، ونظام الأسد في سوريا".

اشتغل "مطر" في مجالات العمل الثقافي، والإعلامي، وهو باحث في الشؤون المتوسطية، وقضايا المجتمع المدني.

كتب ويكتب عبد الرحمن مطر في العديد من الصحف والمجلات والمواقع الإلكترونية العربية.

صدر له:
- "سراب بري"، (رواية)، دارجداول للنشر، بيروت 2015.
- "أوراق المطر"، (نصوص شعرية)، الرباط 1998.
- "وردة المساء"، (نصوص شعرية)، الرباط 2000.
- "الدم ليس أحمر"، (قصص مشتركة من الرقة)، 1983.

وله مخطوطان:
- "ندفة ثلج لشهوة الريح"، (نصوص شعرية).
- الساطر"، (رواية).

The Third Book: An Inclination to Sunset

By Salah Boussrif

1. My march will be an inclination

to sunset

[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]

·       When fullness reaches perfection, it appears empty

Shrouded in gazelle skin

Humankind

in the past used to write its history

The desert

was a horizon in whose span the eyes freely roamed

Nothing veiled the view everything

was a horizon

Even death became a horizon or

a bamboo stalk rising toward a hollowness named the sky

The tribes were not spared the killing just as

language was not spared metaphors which enclosed it in blood.

·       The tribes did not use to like sheep-herding because grass was a trap and water was the shadow

of a man descending from the beginning of blood

And only the flags

indicated the path of departure

I remember that a historian wrote desecrating the past and opening its doors to all possibilities

he called the desert a cage

he also called the wind the voice of a God addicted to deletion

The earth as he named it

was a ghost’s leaven and deletion’s writing neither water nor fire

were the origin

Rather, winds blowing from an old wound whose existence is inflamed in seduction

and allowed the male to desire the pleasure of the ink to write

the history of the body

with naked desire

3.  The first of temptation

The willows were not readying themselves to replace the palms neither

were

roses

about

to become butterflies

The tribes used to leave their trees

and the flags used to hide behind this light which originates from the extreme of the wind

Who leads this madness and who

is this

who

put the night

Book Four…

·       “My soul is sad to death” [Jesus..]

·       “I am innocent of this man's blood”[Pilate]

1

Quickly ah my friend

you reached my wound, but you showed no pain you did not deliver your fingers to a rising wind or come close to the flapping of wings

close to their wakefulness

Your prayer

was no luxury

or a passing fantasy I remember

that your cherry was a call

and the slumbering butterflies wove their whispers

in the lap of your solitude in your sensitivity

and handed your bread to hands

who hungered due to their excess of generosity1

Was it you who led the blind(man) to the balconies of light and continued spreading sparks in limbs of the sleepers

or

your hand

the one that greeted me is

the light that

reached my orphanhood

2

Is this a man or

a bamboo stalk shaken by the wind

3

You are an expert in the secrets of happiness

You didn’t spill any blood

And –whenever you were plunged in yours visions— you exchanged the blood of the killers

with your wine

An arm’s length away from you

Humans used to look lofty

restless.

4

There is not enough in my hands to illuminate your breaths

I suppose that you

reluctantly shed your tears and that the one who wept

was not you

and that the wind born from your fantasies is the water that sprang on your cheeks

Who then

wore your overcoat and went out

under rain quiver

astonished as

if

the sky

planted a moon in his heart

or allowed

his soul to cross its fantasies to leave a laugh

that resembles myth

on the forehead of the sun

5

He came to his home

but the people of his home did not accept him

6

A Nowhere Homeland

To which path does this bridge lead

did all the crossers escape as they were warily walking to their unknown end

none doubted the enormity of the trap

and none thought that the clock will be the bed of a river that only leads to a sinful estuary

How much time did you need to realize that the sun does not rise by chance

and that night

is a day that wept because of the enormity of what it saw

one version has it that

as you were passing the beginning of life

you practiced watching ceaselessly and you traveled the earth in two isthmuses one

you named noor

with it you lit the routes of the soul and the other

you sheltered

and with it you stitched the cracks of my wounds

at the height of happiness you used to thrive like a seductive ember you dribbled the wind and saved yourself from an inflammation that attacked visions

which wandered in the darkness of their illusions

Wasn’t it you who saw

that darkness is the sister of nonexistence and that this blue sphere

is a spark

that you ignited

with your blood

whenever its candescence

waned

Wherefrom were you bringing the light with which you opened all these windows²

The country did not hide its hatred when you were still plunging into its darkness

Happily you came close

to your death and with rare anxiety you liberated your illusions from horses which ran between the riverbeds of your slumbering river

Who then will defend you against all these stabs

and carry your tongue toward a never-dying light

·       The Pleasure of the Light

Is not all this rain enough to cleanse the air

Your breaths are sweeping

and the sparks springing from your trees

are not enough either to open the soul to the unknown lands of its wound

who expelled you from the ladies’ chambers and who

shared the bread with you when you were hungry and awakened your tongue from all this singing

Do you remember how mills turned in hand when you were on the verge of orphanhood and your eye sockets flooded with a light

which due to its delicacy

became

invisible

 al-Sahrourdi’s Beckonings

1

I neither drank from a water well nor did my grieves choke

when the universe appeared slumbering

in my laughs

I remember

how pleased were all those who ordered my exposure and all those who supported the desecration of my soul and how I walked joyfully toward my life

as I boast in happiness

I used to walk far away the steps obeying me and the distances

which seemed

more palatable than a collar

freed me

from my fantasies

Illumination was the last light

that allowed me to perceive my own darkness2

Ibn Muqla’s Hand

Why

The First Vision…

The wind did not wipe my anguish

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Syria and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Syria Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to syria@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.]

Inside Syria

Southern Front rebels are at risk of disintegrating“Reports emerged last Friday that a leader of one of the largest factions in southern Syria had been ousted by his comrades. The episode is part of a broader campaign that could unravel what is often cited as the most successful model for the rebels across the country.” 

Turkish-backed FSA rebels set their sights on last IS Aleppo stronghold after border victory Three rebel sources from participating factions say that their next step is to advance southwards towards al-Bab after taking the last IS held villages in northern Aleppo.

Turkish-backed rebels clear IS from Turkey's Syrian border Turkish-backed rebels cleared Islamic State from Turkey's Syrian border, securing a 90 km (55 miles) corridor and marking a substantial gain in Ankara's plan to drive out Sunni militants and stop the advance of Syrian Kurdish fighters.

US envoy visits Kurds in Syria amid Turkey tensions Washington dispatched a top envoy to meet with allied Kurdish forces inside Syria last week, a State Department official said Monday following tensions after Turkey began operations in the war-torn country.

Syria’s Rebels Lose a Symbolic Stronghold After four years of siege and deadly warfare, Darayya’s residents submitted a deal to evacuate the town. Darayya was heart to insecurity and violence, and is undoubtedly a signal of regime victory.

Will Darayya Normalize the Expulsion of Civilians? With Iranian and Russian support Assad seems to be winning in the areas that matter most to him. 

In Damascus Coffee Shops, Women Make Up for Lack of Young Male Workers Capital witnessing an increase in the number of women in work usually undertaken by men, as many have suddenly become the primary breadwinner for their families.

Analysis: How Evacuating al-Waer and ‘Other Darayyas’ Will Help Assad The recent ultimatum directed at the besieged city of Darayya is just one example of a larger strategy of brutal population displacement that Assad’s government will use to regain control of opposition-held Syria. 

Syrian forces besiege rebel-held Aleppo as Turkish-backed fighters drive Islamic State from border The fighting complicated efforts by the U.S. and Russian to reach a ceasefire deal for Syria, whose civil war is in its sixth year. 

Turkish tanks roll into Syria, opening new line of attack Umit Ozdal and John Davison reports that Turkey and its rebel allies opened up a new line of attack in northern Syria on Saturday (2 September 2016) as Turkish tanks crossed the frontier from Kilis province, making a western thrust in an operation to sweep militants from its border.

US forces hit Isis targets in Syria with mobile rocket system, official says US diplomat says military hit Islamic State targets along Turkey’s border as Turkish-backed Syrian rebels seize villages from militants. 

Syria regime cuts off rebel-held Aleppo, renewing siege: monitor Syrian government troops on Sunday (4 September 2016) seized a military academy south of Aleppo city, once again encircling the rebel-held districts in the east and placing them under siege, a monitor said. 

Islamic State 'loses all territory along Turkey-Syria border' Militants belonging to the so-called Islamic State group have lost all territory along the Turkey-Syria border, according to the Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency.

Israel strikes back at Syrian army after mortar fire hits Golan Heights Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into Syria's complex war, but has attacked Syrian military targets when conflict spills over.

Douma: Survived Bombardment and Hunger .. Arrested By Army of Islam In one of the streets of Douma (Rural Damascus), Abu Mohamad stopped in the middle of the street trying to connect his cell phone to the internet, but a group affiliated with the Army of Islam, arrested the man and put him in prison for "treason and dealing with of the Syrian regime." 

Turkish-backed FSA rebels set their sights on last IS Aleppo stronghold after border victory One day after Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army rebels drove Islamic State fighters from the last villages they held along the border in northern Aleppo province, three rebel sources from participating factions tell Syria Direct that their next step is to advance southwards towards al-Bab.

Suicide bombs kill dozens in Syrian government bastion Tartus At least 35 reported dead in coastal city, while central city of Homs and north-east town of Hasakeh also hit. 

Syria conflict: Government helicopters 'drop chlorine' on Aleppo Syrian government forces have been accused of dropping barrel bombs containing chlorine from helicopters on a suburb of Aleppo, injuring 80 people.

Regional and International Perspectives

The Hidden Scars All Refugees Carry Viet Thanh Nguyen reflects on his journey as a Vietnamese refugee in the U.S. and compares the unwelcome reactions by the majority of Americans in 1975 toward Vietnamese refugees to the similar reaction that  Syrian refugees face today in Europe and the United States.

Can IS survive killings of its core leadership? Hassan Hassan comments on ISIS group recent announcement of the killing of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, its spokesman since 2010. 

In Turkey, a Chechen Commander Makes Plans for War in Syria Marcin Mamon shares the story of Rustam Azhiyev, a Chechen Commander who is better known as Abdul Hakim, which highlights the underlying goal of  Chechens going to Syria which is the hope for a global war with Russia that will allow them a chance to regain their homeland.

Why Is Turkey Accusing Me of Plotting a Coup? Henri J. Barkey reflects on the ways in which  Turkey’s pro-government press targeted him with accusations ranged from organizing the coup on behalf of the C.I.A. to setting up communication links for the plotters.

“Why the UN’s Excuses For its Aid Fiasco in Syria Fail to Convince,” By Reinoud Leenders Reinoud Leenders writes: "Judging from the UN’s comments on its aid agencies’ conduct in Syria, business will go on as usual –too bad if it throws a lifeline to the Syrian regime."

Turkey Must Open Its Heart to Refugees Teymour Ashkan argues "If Turkish youth directly engage with Syrians through community service, they may begin to develop relationships and bonds that reduce misunderstandings and tensions."

U.S.-Russia deal on Syria in jeopardy U.S. officials are still debating whether to join Russian war in Syria that they already said would be a quagmire.

The Only Syrian Solution Bret Stephens proposes that a partition plan in Syria won’t solve everything. But the Balkan example shows it can work.

Syria conflict: Opposition unveils transition plan The umbrella group representing Syria's political and armed opposition factions has set out a plan for a political transition to end five years of war.

Policy and Reports

Life expectancy in Syria fell by six years at start of civil war Study shows drop from 75 to 69 in Syrian men between 2010 and 2013, and falls in other countries affected by Arab spring. 

Syrian opposition to reveal transition plan next week On the fall of Darayya, and what it means for Syria's rebels

Mass evacuations from Syrian cities 'now likely' After flight of thousands from besieged Darayya, citizens of many more towns will leave, says UN envoy Staffan de Mistura.

Al Qaeda Is Gaining Strength in Syria While Washington sits on the sidelines, the siege of Aleppo has cleared a path for the return of America’s greatest enemy. 

The ultimate barbarity Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad turns Syria’s hospitals into death traps as part of a “kneel or starve” policy. 

America has accepted 10,000 Syrian refugees. That’s still too few. In this Washington Post editorial, the board writes: "The modesty of the numerical goal is incommensurate with the weight of the challenge posed by some 5 million Syrian refugees, including roughly 1.1 million already in Europe."

Taking Sides: How the UN lost Impartiality, Independence and Neutrality in Syria This report by The Syria Campaign says that the "United Nations (UN) in Syria is in serious breach of the humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality."

THE DAWN OF MASS JIHAD: SUCCESS IN SYRIA FUELS AL-QA`IDA’S EVOLUTION Charles R. Lister in a new paper details how Al-Qaeda's success in Syria has fueled a process of evolution towards localism and revolutionary integration.

Syria Conflict Mapping Project Reports

TURKISH INCURSION INTO NORTHERN SYRIA SIGNALS TURNING POINT IN ANTI-ISIS FIGHT Turkey is unraveling America’s anti-ISIS partner in northern Syria in order to position itself as a major power broker in planned operations to retake Raqqa City.

SYRIA SITUATION REPORT: SEPTEMBER 1 - 7, 2016 Pro-regime forces reinstated the siege of Eastern Aleppo City on 04 SEP following heavy clashes with opposition forces.

Documentaries, Special Reports, and Other Media

The Long Road From Raqqa to Europe After the self-proclaimed Islamic State killed his son, Khalaf and his family fled their home in Raqqa, Syria for Europe. This is the story of their journey, which has yet to end, as the closing of borders has continued to tear them apart. 

Why one-sided reporting on Syria harbours big dangers Lars Hauch writes that by ignoring people who live in areas under Assad, Western media play into the Syrian regime’s hands and make a peace even harder. More than 90 percent of the published news, analysis and articles ... focused either on Islamic State or rebel-held territory.

Shocking footage from inside Isis prison reveals 'violent torture tools' used against female sex slaves Syrian rebel fighters have uncovered what is thought to be a prison used by Isis militants to imprison and torture women. Sexual stimulants, contraceptives and narcotics were reportedly found in the enclosure. 

Syria: who is fighting whom? This explanatory video by Channel 4 News clarifies the groups and parties who are involved in the five-years-old conflict.

Arabic Links:

ظاهرة التّسرّب المدرسيّ في سوريا: الأسباب، النّتائج والحلول This report investigates Syrian children school dropout numbers and negative effects in present and future.

اليونيسيف: نحو مليونين و600 ألف طفل سوري محرومون من التعليم UNICEF says approximately 600 thousand children inside and outside Syria, do not go to school.

حدود سوريّة الشماليّة تشعل حروباً متعدّدة الأطراف Despite the current truce, the border between Turkey and northern Syria is still riddled with unrest.

An English version of this article can be found here: Truce brings quiet, but not stability, to Turkey-Syria border

الأشرفية.. في حلب Aziz Tbsa shares the story of Ashrafiyeh a suburb in the outskirts of Aleppo and his memoir there. 

وفاة شامل الأحمد أحد أبرز إعلاميي حلب Syrian media activist Shamel Al-Ahmad died from dangerous injury he suffered due to the bombing of an explosive barrels on Aleppo

أطفال بلا نسب This investigative report explores the deprivation of Syrian women from registering their children who are born in the war after the disappearance of their fathers.

مسودة أميركية للاتفاق السوري: روسيا «تجبر» النظام على وقف القصف والعمليات الهجومية Ibrahim Hamidi reports about the draft of US- Russia deal over Syria. 

بعيداً عن التسييس، ماهي حقيقة "جهاد النكاح" وهل هناك جذوراً تاريخية وعقائدية تربط الجنس بـالجهاد This article explores Sexual jihad historical and ideological roots including the concept of Sabaya or enslaved women.

السياحة ضحيّة أخرى للحرب السوريّة Domestic tourism failed to compensate for the major losses incurred by Syria’s tourism sector as a result of the war.

An English version of this article can be found here: Syria's tourism ministry hopes to lure visitors, despite war 

• Syria Media Roundup (August 31)
• Media on Media Roundup (August 30)
• نتصدى للطغاة بأسلحة الروح
• الطريق إلى الفرح
• Egypt Media Roundup (August 29)
• Last Week on Jadaliyya (August 22-28)
• Finger on the Nuclear Button: Gender, Responsibility and Nuclear Custodianship
• معالجة الإرهابيين
• الكتابة في مواجهة الخراب.. حياة ضد الموت
• Palestine Media Roundup (August 26)
• الجسد المؤقت
• Turkey’s Cyclical Coups
• سعوديون في إسرائيل: التطبيع يحفر مجراه
• Syria Media Roundup (August 24)
• الكتابة الكاشفة في سنوات المحرقة السورية
• مختارات من ديوان ضفائر روح 
• Media on Media Roundup (August 23)
• Last Week on Jadaliyya (August 15-21)
• Egypt Media Roundup (August 22)
• The Dubai Social Contract
• In the Eye of the Storm: Geopolitics and the Safe City
• الكتابة فعل وجودي ضد الموت
• البحث عن لغة اللحظة .. لحظة النهوض الجماعي الكبير
• البتراء
• تقرير جنينة: أسئلة المعرفة والنضال السياسي 
• Fight or Flight: The Desperate Plight of Iraq’s “Generation 2000”
• شربت من دمي لأكتب روايتي
• مقاومة الانكسار والقهر بالكتابة
• Treating Terrorists
• Palestine Media Roundup (August 18)
• Commemorating the Failed Coup in Turkey
• Syria Media Roundup (August 17)
• الرواية في زمن الخراب
• Media on Media Roundup (August 16)
• On the Margins Roundup (June-August 2016)
• Between 'Sultanism' and Liberal Democracy: The Peculiarities of a Failed Coup in Turkey
• نجاةٌ هي وتهلكة، فبأي آلائهما تكذبان؟
• Egypt Media Roundup (August 15)
• Last Week on Jadaliyya (August 8-14)
• رواية الاستشراف في زمن الدم
• بين السلطة وسرديات الإعلام في سوريا والعراق: أين تكمن القصة؟
• Media On Media Roundup (August 12)
• في أزمنة الثورة والحرب يُصنع الأدب
• Palestine Media Roundup (August 12)
• الحركة النسائية في المغرب: مقابلة لبرنامج الوضع
• التناول السردي للحرب والعنف في سوريا
• طوق النجاة
• روائيون يتحدثون: التناول السردي للحرب والعنف في سوريا
• أخبار السيسي السارة لن تسره
• Jadaliyya Co-Editor Sinan Antoon's 'The Corpse Washer' Leads The Guardian's Top-Ten Books about Iraq War
• Engaging Books Series: Stanford University Press Selections on Knowledge Production
• Who Is Laying Siege to Whom in Aleppo
• Jadaliyya Monthly Edition (July 2016)
• Last Week on Jadaliyya (August 1-7)
• Interview with Khalida Jarrar, Prominent Palestinian Activist and Parliamentary Member, After her Release from Prison
• الرواية الفلسطينية ليست للذاكرة والتوثيق فقط
• الضباب: قصة للكاتبة الصينية تسان شيوي
• Egypt Media Roundup (August 8)
• Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat in New York Time's Roundtable on "Living with Terrorism"
• Palestine Media Roundup (August 4)
• Media On Media Roundup (July)
• DARS Media Roundup (July 2016)
• Syria Media Roundup (August 4)
• ما من أعمال فنية ترقى إلى ما حدث في واقعنا
• كنز مخفي
• Cities Media Roundup (July 2016)
• Photography Media Roundup (4 August)
• Introduction: Interviews with Students for Justice in Palestine Chapters
• Interview with Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley
• Interview with Temple Students for Justice in Palestine
• Interview with University of Santa Cruz Students for Justice in Palestine
• قصائد للشاعر الايطالي كارلو فالليني
• التراجيديا التي تحاصر مجالنا البصري
• مقاومة الطائفية بإعادة إنتاج منطقها
• Last Week on Jadaliyya (July 25-31)
• Egypt Media Roundup (August 1)
• الإبحار في عناصر الكون
• Critical Readings in Political Economy: Resilience
• Maghreb Media Roundup (August 1)

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Egypt and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Egypt Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to egypt@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.] 

Political Rights

Rights defenders criticize Egypt's new Cabinet-approved NGO law The government approved Egypt’s new draft of the nongovernmental organization law on Thursday, sending it to the State Council and then Parliament for review.

Court orders release of 5 activists accused of attempting to overthrow the state A final court order was given for the release of five activists accused of attempting to overthrow the government through their opposition to a land deal involving Tiran and Sanafir islands, including rights activist Ahmed Abdallah, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms reported.

Prosecution extends detention of Atfal al-Shawarea members for 10th time The East Cairo Prosecutor extended the pre-trial detention of four members of the Atfal al-Shawarea satirical troupe for an additional fifteen days for the tenth time on Monday, pending further investigations.

Release order with conditions given for detained online satirical group An order was given for the release of four members of the online satirical troupe Atfal al-Shawarea on Wednesday, replacing their detention with cautionary measures that are yet to be revealed, according to their lawyer Ahmed Othman.

Professor at German University: They thought my students' work was immoral so they terminated my contract Renowned architect and professor of architecture at several international universities, Tarek Naga, was abruptly informed of the termination of his contract at the German University in Cairo last week.

Mada Masr journalist Hossam Bahgat awarded Anna Politkovskaya prize The Italian magazine Internazionale has awarded Mada Masr journalist Hossam Bahgat the 2016 Anna Politkovskaya prize for courageous journalism. 

Prisons in Egypt increased since revolution and June 30 The number of Egypt’s prisons and detention centers has risen in the past five years, a report released by the Arab Network for Human Rights Information on Monday.

Egypt's police inspected Italian student's activity weeks before his death - prosecution Egypt's public prosecution revealed on Friday that police inspected the activity of Italian student Guilio Regeni early January, a few weeks prior to his death.

Egyptian prosecutor heads to Rome to discuss Regeni investigation Egypt's public prosecutor left for Rome on Thursday to present his Italian counterpart with the latest findings in the investigation into the killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni.

Union head reported Regeni over 'illogical' questions Head of the Independent Street Vendors Union Mohamed Abdallah said he was prompted to report slain Italian student Giulio Regeni to the police because he was skeptical of some of the questions he asked him.

Egypt names six provincial governors, mostly ex-generals Egypt's president named six new provincial governors on Wednesday, in a series of appointments that extended the influence of the military and security forces.

Egypt's Women Council offers legal support to sexual harassment victims during Eid Egypt's National Council for Women is launching operation rooms to receive complaints of sexual harassment and offer legal aid to victims during Eid Al-Adha, as the annual holiday often witnesses a surge in reported harassment.

23.7 percent of Egyptians above 15 are illiterate: CAPMAS More than fourteen million Egyptians above the age of ten cannot ‎read or write, said Egypt’s official statistics agency in a statement ‎Wednesday. ‎

Dar al-Ifta: Islamic nations obliged to possess weapons of mass destruction Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta issued a new edict on Sunday asserting that Islamic nations must possess weapons of mass destruction to be in accordance with the Quranic verse instructing Muslims to “gather all the force that they can” to deter their enemies.

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Foreign Relations

2 Egyptian weightlifters win gold and silver medals in 2016 Paralympics Egyptian weightlifters Sherif Othman and Rehab Ahmed won Egypt’s first two gold and silver medals at the Rio 2016 Paralympics, taking place from 7-19 September.

Egypt backs US-Russia Syria truce deal – Foreign ministry Egypt has welcomed a US-Russian deal on a nationwide truce in Syria, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

Authorities confirm statuette recovered from Mexico is ancient Egyptian artifact Experts appointed by Egypt’s Antiquities Ministry confirmed Wednesday that a miniature statuette recently recovered from Mexico is a genuine ancient Egyptian artifact dating back nearly 3,300 years.

Ethiopia cancels dam meeting A meeting slated for Monday in which contracts would have been signed with a French consultancy regarding the Renaissance Dam was delayed by Ethiopia, according to an Egyptian government source.

Egypt to host Yemen aid conference in March: minister Egypt will host an international conference in March to coordinate humanitarian aid for Yemen, which has been devastated by a civil war, a minister in Yemen's Saudi-backed government said on Tuesday.

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Domestic Security

Egypt military says 11 militants killed, 5 injured in North Sinai Egypt's armed forces said on Tuesday that eleven 'takfiris' were killed and five others were injured in a shootout with security forces in North Sinai.

Five Egyptian policemen injured in South Sinai shooting Five policemen were shot and injured in Egypt's South Sinai on Tuesday.

Policeman killed in Egypt's Giza A low-ranking policeman was killed early Thursday on his way to work in a police station in 6 October City. 

Nelida Fuccaro, ed. Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2016).

Jadaliyya (J) What made you write this book?

Nelida Fuccaro (NF) This edited volume is the result of a long-standing collective effort. It arises form a conference held at SOAS in February 2013 which I organised with Rasmus Elling as part of an international collaborative project on urban violence in the modern Middle East. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Deutsch Forschungsgemeinschaft this project ran between 2011 and 2014 and was led by myself and Ulrike Freitag. It supported a team of researchers based at SOAS and the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin and a network of scholars from Europe, the Middle East, and the US.  This book is the second of two edited volumes to result from the project, the first of which was published in 2015 as Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes from Empire to Nation States.

I became convinced that violence was a very fruitful theme of historical investigation into the modern Middle East ten years ago when I started reading some of the literature on public violence and communalism in mediaeval Europe, and colonial South Asia and Africa. I found this scholarship both appealing and challenging. Being exposed to the violent pasts of other regions reminded me of how inaccurate were some popular and media representations of violence as a peculiar Middle Eastern condition. From a more scholarly standpoint this literature highlighted violence’s complex and intricate connections with the experience of the every-day. In other words, it made me reflect about its ordinary - as opposed to extraordinary - quality. Moreover, I felt that these studies showcased a remarkable depth and breadth as they exposed violence’s varied manifestations, modalities and actors. This multi-sided approach to and nuanced understanding of such a sensitive yet important topic seemed to fill a gap in Middle Eastern history, and area studies in general, particularly as until then regional specialists had tended to tackle violence in disguise, as contentious politics, conflict, authoritarianism, rebellion and the likes. The more I delved into violence the more I became aware of the dangers posed by its elusive nature. I nonetheless felt that to continue treating it as an elephant in the room did not do any justice to its eclectic and heuristic powers. Given my interests in urban history, I also saw a great deal of potential in combining it with the study of cities as the central places of the imperial, colonial and national states that ruled the Middle East in the modern era.   

(J) What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

(NF) The twelve chapters included in the book tap into some critical literature on violence and cities which explore themes as diverse as power, space and place, language, modernity and colonial discipline. Classic works on Indian communalism, European crowds, colonial and industrial urbanism, and urban radicalism have been particularly influential. So have recent studies on violence such as Ussama Maqdisi’s book on nineteenth-century Lebanon The Culture of Sectarianism. Part I of the volume (including my own chapter and that by Rasmus Elling) is written as a critical synthesis of key themes and debates which should inform a future research agenda on the Middle East and which are also relevant to the case studies included Part II, III and IV of the book, all of which are based on original research.

The SOAS conference helped to identify the ‘violent event’ as the backbone of the volume, a theme inspired by literature on contentious politics. Specific episodes of violence alongside performers and victims form the baseline of the ten chapters which discuss the case studies. Yet contributors go further beyond the classic event- and agency-based analysis by skilfully bringing in a variety of contexts: urban space and institutions, discipline and resistance, and meaning and language. They also reflect upon different forms of violence: physical, structural, organized and spontaneous. Some of the chapters also give a voice to narrators and interpreters: from the local chronicles and eye witnesses of late Mamluk Cairo and Ottoman Tunis respectively, to the Ba‘th officials of war-torn Basra in the 1980s. We felt it was important to read and map different languages of violence for methodological and ethical reasons. As historians we always need to scrutinize our sources and to interrogate the idioms of power, legitimacy and legality they use.

On the urban side, the volume as a whole takes up Warren Magnusson’s invitation to "see like a city," and to question states as the prism through which we read politics and public life. In fact, many of the chapters show that urban life generated its own forms of violence, closely connected to, but not necessarily coterminous with, those produced by imperial, colonial and national administrations. Equally inspirational were different strands of urban sociology which have theorized cities as organic social and political orders, and recent empirically-based work on the everyday state in contemporary Cairo by my SOAS colleague Salwa Ismail. Zooming into the city as a particular place of experience also demanded a particular focus on the connections between place, space and power in order to explain how and why urban locations actively shaped mobilisation, memory, and state repression. Many chapters link violent activism and state intervention to the urban environment by grounding violent acts in traditional and modern places of collective life: mosques, quarters, market places, suburban areas, political clubs, public squares and entertainment venues.

(J)How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

(NF) There are several connections with my previous work on the urban history of the Persian Gulf and on communalism and the state in Iraq. I first became interested in violence while I was writing my book on Manama: Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800, a city that has experienced quite a lot of turmoil in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As sectarian strife and violent unrest have been one of the recurring features of Bahrain’s political landscape I turned to literature on Indian communalism and contentious politics in order to develop a more nuanced frame of understanding of Manama’s political culture. Chapter 5 of the book which deals with the urban public sphere is particularly indebted to some of these readings. The chapter on Kirkuk I wrote for this edited volume has given me an opportunity to build on my earlier work on rural Iraq during the monarchy and crucially to venture into Iraq’s urban worlds. Besides my own article on Kirkuk this collection nurtures the scanty urban historiography of modern Iraq with the inclusion of two excellent pieces on Basra and Baghdad. 

(J) Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

(NF) This edited collection was conceived with a broad readership in mind, both academic and non-academic. The non-specialist reader hopefully will find plenty of historical vistas on cities in a region that is familiar either through personal and professional connections or media exposure. As to regional scholars and students I would like them to use the volume to develop their research and thinking about the cities and societies of the modern Middle East in new,  more "connective" and interdisciplinary directions. I hope that this book will also attract the attention of non-regional specialists working on cities or violence, prompting them to take more consistent notice of their Middle Eastern counterparts. While the case studies only deal with the Middle East, they have benefitted substantially from the input of scholars and scholarship from outside the region. Cross-fertilisation in the other direction would be extremely desirable.

I would also like the volume to make a contribution to what I feel is the ethical imperative to normalise public and academic perceptions of violence. This is not to justify bloodshed or to turn a blind eye to cruelty but to try to make sense of it beyond clichés and easy generalisations, also as a way to pay respect to victims.  When I conceived the collective project with the ZMO team back in 2009 the Arab spring had not yet happened. Since 2011, when the research for this volume started, the backlash of the Arab uprisings, the escalation of ISIS terrorism and sectarian upheaval have transformed violence into a sort of cottage industry. Like other project participants I felt the pressure and responsibility of researching such a "sexy" topic as we were confronted with the horrendous suffering endured by many people throughout the region. By the time I was writing the epilogue to the volume in February 2015 ISIS militants had transformed Mosul and Raqqa into archetypal "carceral" cities as residents were subject to the enforcement of jihadist discipline and shocking punishment. The question that came to my mind then was how in a foreseeable future one could treat these abuses as "historical facts" in the same way as the book that was about to go to press was claiming to have done. Fortunately, I had a comforting thought: that by retelling stories of violence this volume was going to contribute to defeat its tyranny.   

(J) What other projects are you working on now?

(NF) I now work on the social and cultural history of the early oil industry in Iraq and Arab states of the Persian Gulf, a topic that I have already tackled in combination with cities and violence in a number of publications. I have focussed on oil cities and urban modernity in an edited collection that was published in 2013 in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and Middle East. Oil has also been an essential ingredient of my research for the urban violence project as I led the SOAS research cluster on oil urbanism and violence, a theme that features prominently in both edited volumes that resulted from the project, and in my own work on Kirkuk.  While building on some of this research my new project wishes to bring attention to the history of oil as an industry and as a particular type of extractive/corporate enterprise, to the different material worlds created by the black gold including urban and industrial infrastructure and new public cultures, and to the influence of petroleum on the lived experiences and social imaginaries of the local populations.

Excerpts from Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East:

Since 2011, Middle Eastern and North African cities have been at the center of political unrest and popular uprisings leading to the fall of dictators, protracted civil wars, and in some cases authoritarian revival. The Arab Spring and its aftermath have pushed the predicament of the city to the forefront Middle Eastern politics. Yet, until recently, media coverage and academic analysis have often overlooked the urban nature of these uprisings. While recognizing that violent disorder was performed in cities, popular mobilization was presented as part of national and transnational spheres of public contention. Media analysts and academics tended to treat the cities of the Arab Spring as stage sets—parade grounds for popular anger and state repression—depicting mass protests as a new twist in the ongoing struggle between governments and people. The result was that spaces and places of conflict, the stakes associated with them, and the specifically urban dynamics of crowd mobilization were often taken for granted, and not analyzed as constitutive of social and political struggles.

Although recent studies of the Arab Spring have started to fill this “urban” gap, the general lack of attention to cities as localities able to shape patterns, ideas, institutions, and practices of social and political life (including conflict) is symptomatic of a broader trend affecting our understanding of past and present landscapes of violence in the Middle East: the tendency to simply consider violence as located in cities (often through the prism of states) rather than being of cities. It is in this spirit that we should take up Warren Magnusson’s invitation in the epigraph that opens this chapter to “see like a city”—which, in his understanding, refers to a new reading of contemporary politics not as the exclusive domain of sovereign authority, but as the result of the cumulative practices of urban life. Seeking solutions to current urban problems at a global scale, Magnusson also reminds us that latent urban tension and unrest is not confined to the Middle East or to the Arab Spring, but is a worldwide phenomenon that demands urgent attention, precipitated by sprawling urbanization and by the relentless expansion of transnational capital and social inequality.

[...]

State-centered accounts of violence gloss over, or at best reveal only partially, the forms of activism and resistance produced by the city as an organic “social order of parts” with a complex and multiform associational life that in itself constitutes a potential arena of violent conflict. In this respect, urban societies have always been implicated in the definition of forms, expressions, and meanings of violence, partly as a result of the deeply entrenched urban roots of competition over territory, resources, and security. Residents have often taken matters into their own hands. Since the 1940s, spontaneous and unregulated suburbanization on the margins of expanding urban centers has often led to the re-emergence of traditional forms of community protection in shantytowns: armed patrols by residents, strong men, and youth gangs.The advance of the security state in late twentieth-century Cairo and Tehran forced the urban poor and the informal communities living at the fringes of these two Middle Eastern megalopolises to adopt nonviolent forms of activism as tactics of “quiet encroachment.”The groundingofacts of violence and violent events in the city—making them of the city—entails a shift in emphasis from the macro level of the institutional setting of the state to the micro level of its spaces of encounter with residents: streets and neighborhoods, workplace and home, urban peripheries and public buildings.

[…]

Using place, proximity, and activism to “see like a city” entails recognizing the power of urban locations to form and reproduce social and political relations and experience. Close encounters in these locations have been the catalysts of violent social and political transformations that have reverberated beyond the city—from the revolutionary bazaars of Tehran, teeming with clerics, students, and protesters, to the squares of colonial Cairo crowded with demonstrators and soldiers; from the schools, mosques, and industrial sites that propelled the insurrectional waves of post-colonial Baghdad, to the barracks of late Ottoman Istanbul and Salonika, where the Young Turk Revolution was planned and executed. The ability to control, visualize and manipulate urban spaces also contributed to their transformation into places of material and symbolic value. An understanding of the geographies of risk faced by urban and state administrations was an important tool of government. The collection of topographical and cartographical data made streets, alleys, squares, and neighborhoods visible and accessible to police and military forces. Intimate knowledge of the built environment was not only the prerogative of surveyors, bureaucrats, and policemen, but also a tool in the hands of rioters, protesters, and urban gangs.

In short, treating violence as contingent upon place and upon the rhythms of urban life can reveal how the physical, material, and immaterial qualities of the city become enmeshed with various forms of state and social power. At a basic level, it problematizes simplistic binary understandings of the relations between state and society, between rulers and ruled, and between citizens and the government. More specifically, given the centrality of the city in shaping the Middle East as we know it today, reading sovereign authority through the prism of the city helps to fine-tune the violent contours of the states that ruled urban society. This reading exposes the interface between urban activism and state repression, between street violence and security regimes, between urban norms and institution-building, and between civic identity, nationality, and citizenship. The nexus between city and state also poses the question of the analytical and physical boundaries of modern Middle Eastern cities, reminding us that their social and political histories can be read at different scales as simultaneously separating, connective, and disruptive. Famously, twentieth-century Iranian cities served as the economic and political linchpins of late Qajar and Pahlavi rule, the nodes that joined together royal power, dynastic authority and European encroachment in Iranian life into a network of forces. At the same time, they were the powerhouses of the Constitutional and Islamic Revolutions—the violent popular movements that obliterated these regimes. While it is evident that towns and cities of the Middle East have constituted distinctive historical formations, it is nonetheless clear that the frontiers of urban life have been open-ended. What constitutes the “urban,” and where it stops, are questions that continue to be debated. Interdependency has provided a popular conceptual framework in exploring urban-rural relations in the Middle East, in order to explain the variation and frequency of popular protest, food riots, and elite factionalism inside early modern and modern urban centers. Contemporary urbanism is predicated upon the idea of the networked or global city—a city that is losing its boundaries, whose materiality is submerged by global flows. “Seeing like a city” thus becomes a process of zooming in and out, with an awareness of the often invisible and fluid boundaries between city and state demarcation.

[…]

The following chapters elaborate on some of the themes, debates, and evidence presented in this introduction. In Chapter 2, Rasmus Christian Elling explores further some of the methodological, interpretive, and ethical issues faced by Middle Eastern historians. Using the case studies included in the book to illustrate some of his discussion, Elling delves into the relevance of language and space in the writing of urban histories of violence. For him, this is an exercise in translation that requires an acute attention to linguistic registers and to different vocabularies of violence that often make dissonant semantics. Parts II, III, and IV consist of chapters based on original research, written as historical ethnographies of violent events. Reflecting the diversity of Middle Eastern urbanism from the eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries, the case studies cover a broad range of urban centers: Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad as imperial and national capitals; provincial towns such as Jeddah, Nablus, and Basra; and oil settlements such as Dhahran and Abadan. While the choice of a diverse range of urban locations and historical settings allows a close reading of local specificities, it also helps us to “see like a city”—to single out common elements, processes, spaces, and power dynamics that conspired to produce violence as a social and political experience of urban life. With this agenda in mind, and in the spirit of some of the arguments presented in the Introduction, the chapters are organized thematically, rather than according to geographical region, chronological sequence, urban typology, or any particular taxonomy of violence.

[…]

While they are separated into three parts, the case studies nonetheless remain in dialog with one other. Some of the chapters could have been included in different sections but they have been arranged so as to draw out particular themes. Part II (“Civic Struggles: Norms and Practices of Conflict”) deals with the question of urban networks as distinctive arenas of public violence structured by political and legal norms and social practices, as well as by close encounters between residents, elites, and public authorities. By focusing on the intricate architectures of power that have underpinned civic conflict, the chapters reveal the intimate bonds connecting—and the often fine lines separating—violent actions, social and political routines, and various manifestations of elite, social, and state power.

[…]

Broadening the geographical and political horizons of the city, Part III (“Urban Connections: The City as a Frontline”) disentangles the interface between the local and its “others” in the manifestations of violent dissent. Urban violence is treated as a particularly urban condition of interdependence binding actors and spaces of violent upheaval to hinterlands, as well as to imperial, state, regional, and global forces. These chapters situate this condition at the heart of the sociopolitical and spatial transformation of urban environments as the nodes connecting centers and peripheries. Critical attention is devoted to the dynamic and creative nature of urban life as a frontline arena of conflict, always positioned in the vanguard of social activism and repression.

[...]

In contrast with the systemic and scalar approaches adopted in Parts II and III, Part IV (“Eventful Ruptures: Order and Disorder”) tackles violence as a moment and tactic of disruption that both fractures and re-composes the sociopolitical and spatial orders of the city. Concentrating on the interplay between riotous urban crowds and various forms of state and military discipline, the chapters present examples of violent spatial politics that transformed urban sites into icons of communal, national, and class struggle, offering sharply defined images of episodes and places of collective violence as constitutive elements of urban political cultures.

[Excerpted from Nelida Fuccaro, ed., Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East, by permission of the publisher, Stanford University Press ©2016 No other use is permitted without the prior permission of the publisher. For more information, or to purchase this book, click here.]

A quick, perhaps superficial mapping of the Jewish-Israeli political map will reveal among those who call themselves ‘leftist’ groups, very few that could actually be referred to as belonging to the anti-colonial camp or struggle. Anti-Zionist resistance includes all those loosely defined groups and individuals who are committed anti-colonial activists with a firm and uncompromising approach in their understanding of Zionism as a settler colonial movement with all of the associated implications, including, first and foremost, the understanding that only decolonization (and here perhaps there are differences in the understanding of the meaning of which) of the Israeli state structure and society will bring an end to the injustices from which the Palestinians are suffering. Before proceeding, it is important to mention that in Israeli political discourse, ‘left’ and ‘right’ pertain more to the position around the extent of colonization than to internal issues of redistribution. Most of those in what is considered in the common political (and popular) discourse as the ‘liberal left’ are in fact supporters of harsh neoliberal policies (for that, see recent example of Haaretz’s editorial supporting Netanyahu’s new policies to limit unions’ ability to call on strikes). Additionally, we should be careful when thinking of the anti-Zionist resistance as some organized form of struggle or some kind of united movement. On the contrary, while it is a very small and marginalized group, internal divisions and disagreements over tactics are prevalent. However, in the political spectrum of groups/organizations that in contemporary Israel are considered by the hegemonic right-center as ‘leftist’, the camp is broad and ranges all the way from fighters for the defence of the Jewish-democracy and human rights advocates to anti-colonial/anti- Zionist radicals. Interestingly, those who are actually on the right side of the ‘left’ are those who attract the most fire.

Here, I would like to shed light on perhaps the most prominent group that has recently been vilified in the mainstream Israeli press and political discourse: Breaking the Silence (BtS). Interestingly, it has also been severely criticised by some of the anti-Zionist camp, which has not made it to the mainstream news but has taken place on social media and in private conversations amongst activists. BtS was founded in March 2004 by a group of soldiers who served in the Palestinian city of Hebron. It is an organisation composed of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000 and have taken it upon themselves to“expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories”.  According to their mission statement, BtS aims to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life. Importantly, their work aims to bring an end to the occupation. In short, all they do is to tell the Israeli public what they did in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, through testimonies collected from soldiers, all of which were approved by the IDF Censor before being published. While most of the information they reveal is not new, but rather a re-affirmation of testimonies by Palestinian and international human rights organizations that report on the same abuses, the testimonies they publish gain interest and features on many international media outlets such as The Guardian, The Times, Russia Today,  CBS and The New York Times. 

Over the past year, BtS has found itself at the center of a public and political campaign that includes prominent politicians and journalists from the centre-right. There have even been calls to outlaw the organisation entirely. In December 2015, Naftali Bennet, Israeli Minister of Education, declared“our children are sent to school to educate them toward mutual responsibility, and not to insult IDF soldiers”. He added, “the activities of BtS have slandered Israel abroad, and they have made it their goal to hurt their brothers who defend us”. On another occasion, Moshe Ya’alon, then the Israeli Minister of Defence, said that BtS was committing treason regardless of whether the confidential information it gathers through questioning former Israeli soldiers was being made public or whether it was only being stored in the group's records. Lair Yapid, the head of the Yesh Atid centrist party went even further, and declared that BtS had “crossed the red line between criticism and subversion”. He continued by claiming that BtS is funded by “BDS organisations that have the Hamas behind them, and try to endanger the core existence of the state of Israel”. Outside of the parliamentary-political sphere, Im Tirzu, an organisation dedicated to ‘strengthening and advancing the values of Zionism in Israel’, launched a public campaign that aims to ‘expose the foreign agents’, who according to it, get support from foreign governments in an attempt to defame and weaken the Israeli state and military. These ‘foreign agents’ organisations include BtS as well as three others. In the campaign, a direct link was made between Palestinian attacks on Israelis and the work of these organisations.

This public and political uproar could be considered a bit surprising if we think about what this organisation is not. Indeed, one could easily criticise BtS from the left side of the political map. Very firstly, they do not belong to the anti-colonial camp, hence, they focus their critique on the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and overlook the colonial nature of the Zionist movement itself. Secondly, and contrary to accusations made by several political figures, they do not support the Palestinian call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. Third, and crucially, they are not asking to put Israeli army officers on trial for war crimes, even when the testimonies they deliver are addressing acts that amount to war crimes according to international law (such as indiscriminate shooting, and the use of specific weapons in densely populated areas, to name just a couple). On the contrary, they believe that it is the political system that must be held accountable for the occupation and not the army. Moreover, BtS is protecting the identities of those soldiers who committed war crimes, as most of their testimonies are anonymous. Forth, BtS do not justify, support, or even understand Palestinian violence as a legitimate act of resistance against the occupation. Fifth, they do not support or encourage refusal to serve in the army and many of the activists are still doing reserve duty every year. Indeed, one BtS activist, Achia Shatz, in an interview with the news outlet Walla!News, expressed his fear that he would be pulled out of the reserve service because of his activities in BtS. Sixth, the framework within which BtS exists and functions is militaristic as is the discourse it promotes. The paradigm for BtS is ‘we have the right to speak out because we are serving’.  Moreover, and a point that was heavily criticised by the radical activists, is that the rhetoric that the organisation’s heads are mobilising in order to justify themselves amidst the campaign against them is militaristic: Yuli Novak, the director of BtS, in an article written for the liberal newspaper Haaretz, ‘enlisted’ her grandparents and their military background in her defence, and against the incitement from which the organisation suffers. Novak outlined their background as immigrants to the newly established State of Israel, with one grandfather who was a member of the Irgun (the infamous pre-state Jewish underground terrorist organisation) and later, as part of the newly established army in the Harel Brigade.

How can we situate this organization in the greater scheme of anti-Zionist resistance? BtS is in between being accused of treason by the Zionist right-center and being understood as the perpetrators by the radical anti-Zionists. Another way to think about this question would be: how can an act that on the one hand is effective internationally and on the other hand is politically compromised be dealt with? In order to answer this question, we must think about the function of the whistleblower: the one that exposes the injustices that exist within the system from the inside. If we think of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and most recently the leakers of the ‘Panama Papers’ – they are not figures of the radical left. They all seem to come from a liberal political outlook rather than radical or anarchist, and made their exposures in the name of transparency and protection of the right of the people to know. Accordingly, in the early days, Snowden claimed that he was not trying to bring down the NSA but rather to improve it. Indeed, whistleblowing is based on democratic premises: “if people know enough, they can "speak truth to power," and this speech itself will somehow catalyze change.Of course, this presumes a political system based in dialogue.” However, this is a naïve premise, and this logic must be challenged altogether. At the same time, there is no doubt that their exposure poses some of the biggest challenges to western hegemony from inside the west; while they are not suspected of anti-regime radicalism, their mode of action opens up a model of resistance that can be, and is indeed mobilised by the left. Whistleblowing should be understood as just a tactic in the larger struggle, and one that more direct form of action must be built upon.

In our context, what the anti-Zionist activists do is to build upon and mobilise BtS exposures for the struggle. Indeed, BtS’ testimonies are assisting the BDS campaign, and serve to fuel the struggle against Zionism internationally. Moreover, the orchestrated campaign against them assists the radicals, as it erodes the liberal-democratic image of Israel both locally and internationally. While on a personal level some of the anti-Zionist activists are in solidarity with members of BtS as they are subjected to ‘street fascism’, they are careful not to be dragged into this discussion, which revolves around the freedom of speech of the already privileged Israelis.

In sum, BtS embodies the structural paradox: the whistleblowers, those that expose from the inside are also the perpetrators, those who take an active part in performing the acts they expose. While it can be determined that it is the criminal that is best positioned to expose the crime, the task of the anti-Zionist left is to build on the information revealed and take advantage of the cracks and contradictions within the system in order to build platforms, construct an alternative, and maintain the struggle. Resistance must be understood as a multi-faceted activity. It is simultaneously inside and outside state institutions; it is legal and illegal, constructive and disruptive and engaged in building and dismantling. It therefore always has to move between the fissures and openings that exist within the hegemonic system: when one avenue of action is blocked, another opens. And in order to be most effective resistance must act simultaneously both inside and outside the system, constructing and disrupting, building and dismantling. This mode of action proves to be the most strategically effective in countering structures of power, exposing their weaknesses and internal contradictions and forcing hegemony to reveal its oppressive nature, thereby losing its legitimacy both internally and internationally. In the case of Israel, it is the tendency of the state to suspend its democratic structures and institutions in favor of the defense of its Jewish character, thus revealing its oppressive undemocratic nature.

This week’s Jadaliyya "Media on Media" roundup tackles a number of issues dealing with media practices, coverage, and freedom of expression. With the ongoing war in Yemen, two media outlets have been divided between Saudi-backed forces, and those who stand with the Houthi-led rebels.

On a cultural note, two films--Saudi ‘Barakah meets Barakah’ and Egyptian ‘Eshtebak'--are making global headlines as they participate in a number of international film festivals, despite the hurdles that still hinder the industry’s progress in the region. In Lebanon, media icon and TV host Dolly Ghanem was wrongfully fired from her job at LBC, after dedicating thirty years of her life working for the network. This issue raised concerns about the lack of respect for veteran journalists and how mainstream media often treat their employees like numbers.

All of these articles, and more, are available below in further detail.

Media and Politics

Yemen: The war and the ongoing media divide [VIDEO]
Source: Al Jazeera
Two television stations, both called "Yemen TV"-–one based in KSA and the other in Houthi-controlled Sanaa–-are offering opposing views, and putting journalists in the crossfire as a result.

Iraq’s media are still censored
Source: Middle East Online
This article argues that freedom of the press is the driving force behind a nation’s progress, highlighting the different stages of Iraq’s media before and after 2003. Despite freedoms gained, there were many hurdles to overcome.

Western legends fight Eastern heroes in new Iranian animation
Source: Al-Monitor
This article makes it clear just how far the Iranian government will go to expel the ‘Western cultural invader’, including broadcasting a Shiite version of armageddon in an animated series aimed at kids.

Egypt hopes to use soccer to score influence in Africa
Source: Al-Monitor
Egypt’s $600 million bid to purchase the broadcasting rights of the African soccer games has raised waves of criticism, especially amid the economic crisis the country is passing through.

Demonize and distract: Sanitizing Syria for the masses
Source: CounterPunch
Jason Hirthler writes on how US corporate media and the state are working together to misrepresent the events in the Middle East, all with the goal of satisfying US interests.

What Aleppo is and is not
Source: The Intercept
Robert Mackey critically comments on how the media is mainly focused on the race for US presidency coverage, rather than ‘illuminating’ the candidates on what the city of Aleppo is, their biggest foreign policy dilemma to face once elected.

Culture

An unlikely story: Why do SouthAmericans love Turkish TV?
Source: BBC News
This article dissects Turkish TV series’ popularity in South America---mainly due to similarities in cultures and values---and comments on Turkey’s cultural ‘exporting’ industry that is still growing.

The seriously funny Arab Comedy Festival set to begin in Abu Dhabi
Source: The National (AE)
This article features an interview with the host of the festival, Taim Al Falasi, a social media sensation in the Gulf.

'Eshtebak' to compete in London Film Festival
Source: Egypt Independent
After being nominated to participate in the Cannes film festival, ‘Eshtebak’ has been selected to compete in the upcoming London Film Festival, set to happen next October.

فنانونعرب: أعمالناتستحقالمنافسةعلى"الإيمي"
المصدر: موقع الفرسان
على خلفية انتهاء جولة التحكيم لجائزة الإيمي في أبوظبي للمرّة السابعة على التوالي، تقدم هذه المقالة شهادة عدد من الممثلين العرب ونقّاد السينما بتفائلهم بقدراتهم التمثيلية العالية وجودة الانتاج، لولا بعض العقبات اللوجستية التي ما زالت تواجههم.

الأغنيةاللبنانيةبحسبملحمبركات
المصدر: موقع الرياض
بالاستناد على مقابلة تلفزيونية مع الفنان اللبناني ملحم بركات، تعطي المقالة موجزاً حول نشوء الأغنية اللبنانية والدور الذي لعبته الاذاعة بتكوينها بالاضافة الى الاشادة بدور الأخوين الرحباني في صناعة النجوم.

اليونيسف وCNNبالعربية يطلقان جائزة للأعمال الصحفية عن أطفال المنطقة
المصدر: CNNعربية
بيان صحفي حول اعادة اطلاق المسابقة الاعلامية التي تدعو الصحافيين تقديم المواد الإعلامية التي تصور بدقة وضع وحقوق وتحديات وأحلام وطموحات وإنجازات الأطفال في المنطقة.

Boy of War filmmakers describe power of animation to present trauma of war
Source: Shadowproof
This article provides a brief review of the filmography of Usama Alshaibi, an Iraqi filmmaker and visual artist, who stresses on animation’s potential to portray reality while affecting the audience on a deeper more intimate level

Film After Euphoria
Source: Ibraaz.org
An interview with Rasha Salti, curator of ‘Safar’ a film festival celebrating contemporary Arab cinema, who discusses her choice of 7 participating films that directly defy all stereotypes and norms of self-censorship in the region, especially post-Arab spring.

Saudi film ‘Barakah Meets Barakah’ released in UAE, soon Arab world
Source: AhramOnline
The film, which had its debut at the Berlin International Film Festival last February, aims to compete in the upcoming Academy Awards in the Best Foreign-Language Film category.

Media Industries

مستقبل الإعلام المرئي في 2016 حروب الشاشات على "كعكة" المعلنين
المصدر: مجلة مباشر
انطلاقا من التغيّرات التي يشهدها المشهد الاعلامي في مصر من عمليات بيع وشراء، تحاول هذه المقالة البحث عمّا قد يعنيه الأمر للمعلنين وبالأخصّ علاقاتهم  بوسائل الاعلام.

هلتصدر«نيويوركتايمز» نسختهاالعربية؟
المصدر: وكالة قاسيون للأنباء
تعلن هذه المقالة وفق مصادرها، ان «نيويورك تايمز» تنوي التوسّع في السوق العربية نظراً "لولع العرب بالأخبار"

Freedom of Journalists/Expression

دوللي غانم: بين "بيارو" و بيار الضاهر.. تغيّر الزمن
المصدر: السفير
تلقي هذه المقالة الضوء على الصرف التعسّفي للإعلامية دوللي غانم من عملها كمذيعة في برنامج "نهاركم سعيد"، بعد ثلاث عقود من العمل في المؤسسة اللبناني للإرسال.

Huffington Post website blocked by censors in Saudi Arabia
Source: Middle East Eye
Ever since it published an article titled “Last Tango in Riyadh,” which was critical of the unsustainable policies implemented by Saudi ‘cronies’, the news outlet has been blocked in the kingdom

Social Media

Alphabet is using Google's Ad technology to take on ISIS
Source: Fast Company
By reverse-engineering Google’s audience-targeting algorithm, this article highlights how Alphabet (Google’s mother company) is focusing its efforts on ridding ISIS from its digital occupancy---providing sympathizers with parodies and ‘relevant’ content instead.

Influencers weigh in on YouTube's 'censorship' controversy
Source: Digiday
After adjusting its censorship policies to become more "ad-friendly," online users were enraged of the impact on their viewing experience (#YouTubeIsOver was trending on Twitter last week).

Media Practices

Let’s not wait for another Alan Kurdi
Source: Huffington Post (the blog)
This article highlights how Alan Kurdi’s now iconic image has helped shift the world’s view of refugees, making aid efforts more visible and effective.

Why one-sided reporting on Syria harbours big dangers
Source: Middle East Eye
The people living in regime-controlled areas are being ignored by mainstream Western media, providing the Syrian regime more agency and thus making the peace process ever more difficult to achieve.

البرامجالإذاعيةالصباحية: المزيدمنأسبابالاهتراء
المصدر: مدوّنة حبر
تعلّق هذه المقالة على المستوى المنحط و المزري التي وصلت اليه البرامج الإذاعية الصباحية في الأردن، خاصة وانها تقوم بمحاولة تكوين الرأي العام حول كل ما يتعلّق بالمرأة العربية.

الإعلامالعراقي.. صوتيستلهممناخاتالحرية
المصدر: موقع موجز العراق
تلقي هذه المقالة الضوء على واقع وسائل الإعلام في العراق وتقوم بمقاربة بين كيفية عمل الاعلام قبل سقوط نظام صدام حسين وبعده.

شوشة: اللغةالعربيةفيالإعلامشرطهويةودعامةمستقبل
المصدر: موقع عمون
تناقش هذه المقالة اهمية استخدام اللغة العربية الفصيحة، نظراً لما تقدمه لتتطوّر المجتمعات وتوحيد وجهات النظر حول القضايا المتنوعة. 

Sexualising occupation: The uses and abuses of Israel's female soldier
Source: Middle East Eye
Criticizing Vice’s photo-spread of female teenage Israeli soldiers which portrays them as beautiful and peaceful, this article argues that they are still killing machines and that there isn’t anything sexy about state terrorism

في ذكرى 11 سبتمبر.. من هذا الرجل الهابط على رأسه؟
المصدر: العربية نت
بمتاسبة مرور الذكرى الخامسة عشر لأحداث 11 ايلول، تلقي هذه المقالة الضوء على صورة "الرجل الهابط" التي احتلت الصفحات الأولى للعديد من الوسائل الاعلامية في حينها.

From Jadaliyya Media Roundups

Saudi Arabian man is jailed for 10 years and given 2,000 lashes for tweeting that he is an atheist and criticising religion
Source: Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup
The 28-year-old was sentenced after the state's Islamic police discovered 600 tweets professing his atheism.

[The "Media On Media Roundup" is an initiative to survey published material in the news and broadcast media that deals with journalism, coverage, or mass communication practices about the region. These roundups are produced and curated in collaboration with theAmerican University of Beirut's Media Studies Program. The items collected here do not reflect the views of Jadaliyya or the editors of the Media Page.]

In this interview with Al-Jazeera English, Jadaliyya Co-Editor and former head of political affairs for the Office of the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Mouin Rabbani discusses the recent US-Russian agreement to establish a ceasefire in Syria and use this as a springboard for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and renewal of a political process. Rabbani identifies the opportunities and pitfalls in the agreement, noting that a main challenge concerns the degree of leverage Washington and Moscow can exercise over their regional and local allies.]

Since media pundits and political figures praised Syrians’ peaceful, democratic and diverse inspiration for freedom, a series of competing narratives have tried to prevail on the conflict: an oppressed people revolting against a brutal regime, a betrayed president facing terrorism and foreign machinations, a struggle between "radical" and "moderate" rebels, a modern nation-state facing regional re-tribalization, a proxy-war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a sectarian between Shi’a and Sunni, and so forth. Though none of these narratives is inherently wrong, all fail to fully explain civil strife in Syria. As Kalyvas’ "ontology of political violence" cautions, reading civil wars in binary terms can be dangerous and misleading. Acknowledging a more tangled system of international and deep-seated local rivalries, which usually find new momentum under the conflict’s "master cleavage," provides a more nuanced understanding of how violence plays out, evolves, and morphs in contexts of irregular conflict. Put differently, though the aforementioned explanations were partly corroborated by the events on the ground, the Syrian Civil War–and the battle for Aleppo in particular–features as a complex process involving a plethora of local and supra-local actors–civilians, militias and armies, as well as different backers, rationalities, motivations, and goals. With this in mind–and drawing upon both secondary sources and interviews with local urbanists, my exploration of Aleppo’s urban landscape, before and during the war, endeavours to unpack civil strife within this framework of simultaneity, wherein sectarian or tribal cleavages, divisive power structures, and contingent foreign interests all intersect in, and exert their disruptive impacts on, Aleppo’s urban environment.

Aleppo in Conflict

According to the now popular sectarian explanation of the war, such as provided by Fabrice Balanche, Aleppo– with its predominantly Sunni confessional demography– should have been the nest of a Sunni rebellion against a pro-Iranian Shiite regime. Yet, what the conflict’s spatiality and temporality suggest is that other fragmenting logics came into surface once the strife erupted.

A first glance at Aleppo’s war geography shows a macroscopic division between a rebel-held urban east, and a government-controlled west, with the bulk of devastation condensed in the ancient centre–around the Citadel (see n.1 on the map)–and in other urban swathes along the continuously shifting frontline. Within this framework, what may be perceived as merely war-generated urban rifts turn out to be deep-seated divisions well before 2011. And though we should not underestimate the role played by external actors in altering local balances–foreign-funded Sunni brigades on one hand, and Shiite militias from Lebanon or Iraq on the other, who played a prominent role in "importing" confessional strife in Aleppo–the way in which the city developed over the last four decades, and fractured over the last five years, can provide major insights into the current patterns of confrontation.

[Figure 1:This map was elaborated by Giovanni Pagani, drawing upon sources from Conflict Urbanism and Syria Liveuamap.]

Aleppo and Its Citizens

From the 1970s onwards, Aleppo experienced a massive demographic growth, and a high urbanization rate. The whole governorate population size quadrupled, from little more than a million to four million people, and the urban population in the city proper soared from 700,000 in 1970 to 2.5 million in 2004. While a substantial increase in the birth rate affected the whole country (Syrians roughly doubled over that period), a major cause for Aleppo’s extraordinary growth was the large and rapid inflow of rural migrants. This migration was partly a consequence of inefficient agricultural reforms, exasperated by four years of unprecedented drought (2007-2011), and partly because of the growing employment opportunities generated by a thriving industrial sector.

It was at this stage that the urban-rural divide became more deeply entrenched in the cityscape: both as a physical schism between the city’s more consolidated fabric and its sprawling outskirts, and as a social cleavage between established urban communities and rural newcomers. Socially, the urban population looked with disdain and superiority at rural migrants, who were often exploited as cheap labor [1]. Spatially, rural mobility resulted in the unregulated development of large informal areas, and in the blurring of the boundaries between the city and its surrounding countryside.

In this context of rapid and unplanned urbanization, it is difficult to conclude whether informal neighbourhoods developed in opposition to the city and its authorities–as their "illegal" status would suggest–or whether they were tacitly approved by the state as a short-sighted solution to a desperate need for housing. According to the Aleppine architect Salwa Sakkal, for instance, the seed of a divide between the wealthier and legally developed western neighbourhoods, and the poorer informally-grown eastern areas may be noticed in Banshoya’s master plan of 1974. The zones reserved for low-income housing–the northern, the eastern and the southern quarters–correspond roughly to the informal areas’ current distribution, except for two limited state-led projects in al-Hamdaniyeh and Masaken Hanano. Differently put, the fact that before 2011 the regime was willing to upgrade various informal settlements–as testified for instance by a joint project of the Aleppo’s municipality and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ)–may suggest that these areas had been somehow taken into account as part of the city’s future development.

Aleppo and Its Regime

Thus, while a striking correspondence between pre-war socio-economic cleavages and the current urban rifts defies any sectarian explanation of the conflict, it would be inadequate to portray civil strife in Aleppo as exclusively informed by material grievances. The urban-rural divide was also a crucial factor behind confrontation, yet the conflict’s evolution and morphology cannot be fully unpacked without accounting for how the regime’s policies affected the built environment, its production and control. This entailed both direct urban planning measures and, more importantly, a thick network of patronage shrewdly weaved by the Assad dynasty.

Direct planning measures were more sporadic in Aleppo than in other cities–for instance Damascus, Tartous or Lattakia–and were mainly implemented in the 1980s. However, a special mention should be made of the al-Hamdaniyeh project (See n.2 on the map), which was implemented by the Military Housing Establishment in 1990. Not only was this one of two public-sponsored housing projects in Aleppo, but the fact that it aimed at housing the army officers’ families, and its spatial proximity to the Military Academy, clearly identified the neighbourhood as strongly pro-regime. As Salwa Ismail showed in the case of Damascus, the spatial practice of facilitating army members–or other security apparatuses–with access to housing was more common in the 1980s than in the following decades, and it was aimed at both fostering cohesion among military officers, and creating urban "buffer zones" for the regime in case of popular protests. From this perspective, although many apartment buildings were subsequently sold to civilians, al-Hamdaniyeh continued to be perceived as loyalist even during the uprisings[2]. Despite its proximity to the frontline, it survived the confrontation with limited damages, as can be assessed on the interactive maps published by Conflict Urbanism.

However, it is also important to acknowledge the practices implemented by the government to simultaneously appease its clients, and keep a hold on space production. Far from being limited to Aleppo and its countryside, these clientelistic networks penetrated the Syrian society at various levels, defining patterns of recruitment in the security apparatuses, better access to state services, and economic privileges. Since the 1980s, firstly Hafez al-Assad, and then his son, Bashar, had managed to weave alliances with some peri-urban tribes, who had moved from the countryside to Aleppo’s inner quarters. This process was both part of the broader strategy argued by Dukhan to empower local leaders in exchange for political compliance, and a way to buy lower classes’ support for counterbalancing the traditional Sunni bourgeoisie–which, in 1982, had supported a Muslim Brotherhood-led revolt. Indeed, although the Ba’athist official discourse had always condemned "sectarianism" and "tribalism" as a threat to the Arab nation, sectarian and tribal loyalties were exploited at several junctures to fracture the social body and neutralize political dissent, as Ismail discusses.

In this regard, the Berri tribe was probably the regime’s most powerful client in Aleppo, where the clan enjoyed almost complete authority over Bab al-Nayrab neighbourhood, as well as extensive leeway in smuggling drugs, arms, and alcohol in the city since the 1980s, as Salih examines. This form of clientelism can be ascribed to the broader phenomenon of the shabbiha, namely the regime-paid criminal gangs operating out of the rule of law, and widely deployed by Assad to sedate the uprising. The first shabbiha groups were initially created in the Alawite coastal communities in the late 1970s, when they started having an active role in trafficking across the Lebanese border. Over the following decades, especially since 2011, the term has been acquiring a broader meaning, referring to all those paramilitary and criminal factions siding with the regime (Nakkash, 2013), in order to preserve their economic privileges. To this extent, although it is safe to define the shabbiha and their patterns of recruitment as a predominantly Alawite issue, it is not uncommon to find analogous Sunni groups particularly in Aleppo’s area, and the Berri tribe is a clear example of this possibility.

When the conflict erupted in 2011, the Berri clan–whose leader used to be a member of the Syrian parliament before his assassination by the Free Syrian Army in 2012, as well as other tribal confederations with analogous ties to the regime remained loyal, and set up Sunni shabiha militias to fight for Assad (Salih, op.cit.). To this extent, it is not accidental that the historical centre’s south-eastern edges–where Bab al-Nayrab is located (see n.3 on the map)–became an area of major confrontation between loyalist and opposition forces, suffering both enormous human casualtiesm and massive physical destruction.

Moreover, as Syrian architect and development consultant Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj explains, when president Hafiz al-Assad in the late 1980s managed to garner the loyalty of Aleppo’s bourgeoisie by engaging them in a complex patronage system, urban development featured as a major field of activity in the city[3]. While this development was publicly led, it opened doors for indirect private-public partnership, and economic speculation. Urban Expansion Law 60/1979–then amended with Law 26/2000–had originally set the legal framework to enable the government to expropriate large swathes of agricultural land at the city centre’s edges and to develop infrastructure, while businessmen from the urban bourgeoisie, as well as privileged army officers, had a considerable leeway on brown-field development, and apartment sales. In other words, while maintaining a virtual hegemony on space production and use, the government set the conditions to encourage its clients to invest. Moreover, a wide majority of these lands originally belonged to the rural or peri-urban communities. Thus, while real estate speculation appeased the Aleppine bourgeoisie, it simultaneously disadvantaged the countryside, which was largely disenfranchised by the informal patronage networks, and profoundly disenchanted with the government’s policies.

Conclusion

“We liberated the rural parts of this province. We waited and waited for Aleppo to rise, and it didn’t. We couldn’t rely on them to do it for themselves so we had to bring the revolution to them." (A rebel fighter speaking to Reuters in summer 2012.)

The initial absence of armed confrontations in Aleppo showed that when the conflict erupted in 2011, the city was not inclined to revolt. And, while the countryside rapidly rose against the regime, the urban areas remained neutral and silent. To this extent, one could reasonably argue that the regime’s divisive networks had partially succeeded to foster Aleppo’s scepticism towards the rebellion.

When the rebels found a way through the city, they penetrated the poorer informal areas, where recent rural migrants, who were neglected both by state institutions, and the regime’s patronage, had settled. The fact that they happened to be Sunni was more a consequence of pre-war demographic patterns than of confessional resentment. And, although in some areas, local and foreign "sectarian entrepreneurs" managed to mobilize these group’s confessional identities against the Alawite regime, many of their urban opponents shared the same confessional and social background. The divisive effects of the regime’s patronage were particularly evident at the southern and south-eastern edges of the city centre where extensive physical damage was reported, and where many pro-regime clans, including the Hasnasne, Zeido, Baggara, Berri, and Hamida tribes, engaged in a ruthless strife at the neighbourhood’s scale. For these tribal confederations, the revolution was rather an opportunity to prove their loyalty, and rejuvenate Assad’s need for their support. Eventually, when the opposition managed to conquer loyalist neighbourhoods, where many shabbiha militiamen came from, the strife’s brutality reached its peak.

On the city’s other flank, the western quarters’ wealthier population saw Bashar al-Assad as a keeper of political stability, and a source of economic benefits. Hence, maintaining privilege and securing better access to investment opportunities were the main reasons for western Aleppo’s loyalism. Moreover, the government’s hold on this half of the city had been buttressed with heavy military presence: the Air Defence Base, the Air Force Intelligence base, the Military Intelligence base, the Military Academy, and the Artillery base are all located, from north to south, on the west of the Citadel.

To conclude, urban-rural dichotomy, sectarianism, tribal loyalties, and socio-economic cleavages all interact in Aleppo’s war geography. The latter mirrors both the complexity of the Assad regime’s power practices, and a broader set of local grievances that the civil war brought to the surface. Although Aleppo represents a rather particular case, it is neither unique nor exceptional. Further socio-spatial research, however, is needed in order to understand the conflict’s social roots, and how they were spatially reflected in different urban areas. Each Syrian city is fractured along multiple lines, and has its own history of many narratives, where traditional loyalties, entangled power practices, foreign interests, and people’s emotions all exert their divisive effects on the urban prism. Understanding how these socio-spatial patterns intertwine with both pre-conflict urban development, and the war-generated fragmentation will be a key issue to address for any future discussion about reconstruction.
 

Farah Al-Nakib, Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (Stanford University Press, 2016).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Farah Al-Nakib (FA): This book is the culmination of nearly ten years of research on Kuwait’s urban social history, which I began working on in 2006 for my doctoral dissertation. But in many ways, I have been thinking about the kinds of urban and social transformations that I address in this book for much longer, ever since I was a teenager. Kuwait in the 1990s, when I was in high school, was dramatically different from the Kuwait in which I’d spent my childhood in the 1980s.  The Iraqi invasion of 1990 seemed the most obvious culprit; our lives were now neatly bifurcated between “before the invasion” and “after the invasion.” And the changes I was noticing were poignant. I watched as Kuwait became rapidly more religiously conservative. People seemed less open and tolerant than before, and the country—even my own American high school—was becoming more segregated along class and national lines. Young people—people I knew—were increasingly resorting to violence to solve their conflicts. And by the time I was ready to leave to the United States for college in 1997, franchise restaurant chains like TGIFriday’s and shopping malls were starting to pop up everywhere, drastically changing not only the landscape but also the way people spent their nights and weekends. I now know that the changes I was trying to make sense of around me in Kuwait in the 1990s were, in many ways, outcomes of a process of urban and social transformation that began decades earlier, well before the invasion. It is that transformation that I deal with in this book.

Writing about Kuwait from an academic perspective has always been a very personal process. So much of what I write about Kuwait’s history and society stems from my own personal observations and experiences as a Kuwaiti. Although it started off as my PhD research, as I worked on it this book became much more than an objective, academic study of Kuwait’s urban social history. It was also a deeply subjective attempt to make sense of the changes that I have witnessed within my own lifetime to both the society of which I am a part, and to the city in which I live. Of course, this is an academic book that I hope contributes to the scholarly literature on urban social history and critical urban theory. But I also wrote this book as a way of addressing some of the social, political, and urban crises I believe we are facing in Kuwait today: crises such as the systemic alienation and abuse of foreigners, sectarian tensions between social groups, rising youth violence, clashes between the government and opposition forces, the unsustainably high use of electricity and water resources, the ruthless privatization of public space, severe traffic congestion, among many others. My book provides an in-depth historical analysis of Kuwait’s urban and social transformations from the eighteenth to thetwenty-first centuries as a way of critically examining the evolution of some of these issues over time.

After going through two radical transformative experiences over the past century (the advent of oil and the Iraqi occupation of 1990-91), Kuwait has developed a tendency to erase the past, ignore the future, and focus solely on the present. Although there is a (perhaps paradoxical) trend emerging in Kuwait, as across the Gulf, to fetishize the pre-oil past and invent a national historical identity in museums and sites of national heritage, there is little critical analysis of the past as a way to better make sense of the present. One of the quotes I live by as a historian comes from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “The past is consumed in the present, and the present is living only because it brings forth the future.” We cannot understand the critical state we are in today without going back in time and retracing our steps to the present, and only by doing so can we start to conceive of a more suitable and sustainable way out of the crises I identify at the start of the book. 

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

FA: This book analyzes the intricate relationship between the urban landscape, the patterns and practices of everyday life, and social behaviors and relations in Kuwait, and traces the historical transformation of these three interrelated realms in the shift from the pre-oil to oil eras. The sudden and dramatic impact of oil wealth from 1946 onward led to the mass demolition of the historic port town, established in 1716, and its reformation into a sprawling modern city. My central argument is that rapid and substantial changes to the urban landscape fundamentally altered the nature of Kuwaiti urban society. I analyze how decades of urban planning, suburbanization, functional zoning, and the privatization of public space and everyday life—combined with strict citizenship laws and the advent of the welfare state—eroded the open, tolerant, and cooperative nature of pre-oil society and gave rise to the insularity, xenophobia, and divisiveness that characterize social relations in Kuwait today.   

A growing body of remarkable literature on Gulf cities and urbanism has been coming out in recent years, such as the work of Pascal Menoret, Ahmed Kanna, and Amélie Le Renard, among others, as well as special issues of journals like Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle Eastand Arabian Humanities). Yet, with the exception of Nelida Fuccaro’s pioneering work on Manama, Bahrain, few studies bridge the gap between the pre-oil and oil eras. My book combines a wide array of old and new primary sources to construct a complex historical narrative of the city and everyday life in Kuwait that reconnects these two periods in an ongoing process of city formation. I begin my study of Kuwait City at the time of its settlement in 1716 through two hundreds years of city growth before oil and end in the present day, with the focus of analysis being the first decades of oil from 1950-1990. This long historical perspective is necessary to challenge the uncritical, simplified, and linear “rags-to-riches” narrative that permeates both scholarly and popular writing about Gulf cities today (exemplified in this recent article on Dubai in Foreign Policy). 

The book also seeks to dispel the myth of the “exceptionalism” of Gulf cities that prevails in academic discourse, building off Fuccaro’s seminal work in this regard. The seemingly extraordinary experiences of oil have marginalized the Gulf from existing research agendas in fields like Middle East, Indian Ocean, or post-colonial studies, and the region often gets studied in isolation. Furthermore, the experiences of the Gulf have largely been excluded from broader studies of urban modernity despite the fact that the region is one of the most highly urbanized in the world and underwent a modernization process unprecedented in speed and scale. Both of these facts—though contributing to the impression of its exceptionalism—actually make the Gulf a key region for analyzing and understanding universal processes of urban modernity. The aim of my work is to de-marginalize (and de-ghettoize) the Gulf within the field of urban studies and to introduce Kuwait’s experiences both before and after oil as relevant and relatable to global processes and urban challenges. 

I therefore situate Kuwait’s urban history within a broader global context by drawing on literature of other world cities—from Beirut and Paris to Latin American and post-war north American cities—to demonstrate that while the speed and scale of Kuwait’s oil urbanization may have been unique, its actual urban experiences were not entirely so. From 1950 onward, the primary strategy driving state development was the production of a modern city to serve as the symbol of Kuwait’s newfound prosperity and progress. Whether or not oil urbanization successfully fulfilled this quest for a particular interpretation of “modernity” is infinitely debatable; but, as Marshall Berman writes, “what matters is the process, not the result” (2010, 50). And indeed, the process of oil urbanization was, in many ways, unmistakably modern. The inherent contradictions between the ideals and outcomes of modern planning; the process of creative destruction that constantly seeks to eliminate the old to create the new; the commodification and negation of the social spaces of everyday life and the concomitant shift from use value to exchange value; the valorization of private life over public belonging: these are all relatively universal experiences of urban modernity as described by Berman, Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and others, that characterize Kuwait’s transformation from the pre-oil to oil eras.  Much of this book is underpinned, both directly and indirectly, by Lefebvre’s work and approach to the city, everyday life, and the production of urban space, in particular, by his ideas on the right to the city. I also draw on the writings of Jane Jacobs, Richard Sennett, Ash Amin, and Nigel Thrift in my analyses of the impact that modern urban planning has had on Kuwaiti society and social relations.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

FA: Most obviously, I hope that students and scholars in a variety of fields—Middle East studies as well as urban studies, urban sociology, and history more generally—will read this book. Again, my goal is to de-marginalize the Gulf Arab states within the scholarly literature. I hope that bringing the work of the urban theorists mentioned above to bear on Kuwait and the Gulf—and, conversely, bringing the experiences of Kuwait and the Gulf to bear on broader theories of space, place, and urbanism—can help dispel the myth of Gulf exceptionalism and open doors for deeper comparative analyses. This will, I hope, make my book relevant to audiences beyond Middle East or Gulf studies.

But I also wrote this book to be accessible to non-academic audiences. Although it is focused specifically on Kuwait, my book deals with changes, challenges, and urban experiences that many other cities and city dwellers encounter in their everyday lives. I hope it resonates with people who live in and write or think about cities elsewhere in the Arab world and beyond.  But ultimately my primary audience in this book is the people who live in Kuwait and can hopefully identify personally with many of the ideas that I explore and unpack in its pages, and relate them to the realities of their own daily lives. I want the book to give people in Kuwait (and elsewhere in the Gulf) new ways of thinking about our city, the patterns and practices of our everyday lives, and the ways in which we interact with each other as members of Kuwait’s urban community. I hope that, armed with this information and alternative perspective, people in Kuwait might start to demand something better than what the past sixty-five years of oil urbanization have wrought on both our city and our society, and to work toward building a more democratic, fulfilling, and enriching urban life.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

FA: As I mentioned above, this book is the culmination of the research on Kuwait that I have been doing over the past ten years. In the scholarly articles and chapters that I published before the book, I dealt with similar urban and social issues that I write about in Kuwait Transformed but from different perspectives or with different goals. In some of my previous publications, the city itself was the focal point of analysis (e.g. an article in the aforementioned special issue of CSSAAME on urban modernity and the making of a state capital), while in others the city was the lens through which I analyzed deeper sociological and political issues in Kuwait (e.g. an IJMES article on present-day tensions between hadar and badu in Kuwait, which I examine in relation to state housing policies). So, in most of my work thus far, I have been writing about the city and urban life in Kuwait and, by extension, the Gulf.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

FA: Right now I am working on a project on the governance, management, and use of public space in Kuwait, through a comparative approach with the city of Washington, DC.  I just completed a six-month Carnegie Centennial Fellowship on this at American University in DC as part of a Carnegie-funded project on urban governance in the Arab world headed by Diane Singerman.  Rather than a strictly academic project, the objective of my fellowship was to focus my research towards influencing urban policy in Kuwait.  Now that I am back in Kuwait I hope to work closely with a growing group of urban activists who have started to engage with state institutions to influence or change various urban policies in Kuwait.

In my scholarly work, I am also going back to a project that I had started working on alongside my PhD and book research but put aside for a while—on history, memory, and forgetting in relation to oil, urban modernity, and the built environment in Kuwait. I have presented work on these issues at various international conferences and in public lectures in Kuwait, but I am now putting the different pieces together into one coherent narrative. This project is connected in some ways to my work on the city, so it is not entirely unrelated to Kuwait Transformed, but it focuses more on historical and cultural memory and processes of forgetting rather than on specific sociological or urban issues.

At the same time, I am starting on a totally new project on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. My research focuses on the domestic socio-political dynamics and long-term effects of the invasion on Kuwaiti society and social relations. Just as in Kuwait Transformed the city is the referent for understanding social change in the shift from the pre-oil to oil eras, so in this project the invasion is the lens through which I examine sociological transformations in Kuwait before and after 1990. In that sense, it is a continuation of the work I have been doing all along—of writing a comprehensive social history of Kuwait. But whereas in the period before 1990 oil modernization constituted the major turning point in Kuwait’s history, in my own lifetime that point of rupture was the invasion. I am currently involved in one edited book project on the invasion, along with another project that is taking the form of a narrative non-fiction based on a single individual’s experiences as a prisoner of war in Kuwait and Baghdad during and after the occupation.

Excerpt from Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life 

From the Introduction:

On a busy Friday night in late December 2012, twenty-six-year-old Jaber Youssef argued with four young men over a parking space at The Avenues, Kuwait’s largest shopping mall. The men followed Youssef, a Lebanese national with a Kuwaiti mother, from the parking lot into the mall. One of the men purchased a meat cleaver from a store while his friends continued to trail Youssef. The four men then attacked the young dentist, stabbing him multiple times in front of hundreds of people. No witness intervened to stop the attack, nor did anyone follow the killers when they fled. Youssef bled out onto the mall floor as bystanders took photographs that were circulated through social media. His friends called an ambulance, but the paramedics took too long to reach the scene. Most entrances into The Avenues are within the underground parking garage. The mall contains a few street-front entrances but these can be reached only by the same narrow access road that leads into the garage, a road that is always gridlocked on busy weekend nights. Youssef ’s friends finally took him to the hospital in their own car, and he died in the emergency room at 1:00 a.m.

The public was shocked and outraged by the crime. Blame was thrown in every direction: at the mall for the lack of security, at the parents of the stabbers for raising them as “reckless youth,” at the paramedics for not getting there in time to save the victim, at the Minister of Interior for not condemning the crime quickly enough, and at the “lack of moral values that has become prevalent in Kuwait.” The latter statement was seemingly confirmed the following week. Mohammed al-Falah, a college student visiting home from the United States, was running along the paved seafront corniche in Salmiya, Kuwait’s main commercial district. He stopped to ask a group of men on motorcycles not to ride on the pavement where people walked and children played. In response, the men stabbed him, though he survived. Less than a year later, in October 2013, a twenty-four- year-old man, Jamal al-Anezi, was fatally stabbed on a busy Friday night after a fight at Marina Mall, which is connected by a pedestrian bridge to the same seaside corniche where al-Falah was stabbed. Once again the crime was watched and photographed by many bystanders. The Ministry of Interior responded to the crime by announcing a new, stringent system for security control and surveillance in shopping malls across the country. These measures did not prevent the occurrence of another fight (allegedly caused by one young man staring at the other) at 360 Mall in August 2015, which resulted in the fatal stabbing of a sixteen-year-old Kuwaiti male and the severe injury of his adversary.

Though public discourse after these incidents focused on the apparent rise of violent crimes among disaffected youth in Kuwait, neither stabbings nor youth violence were new to Kuwait. Rather, what was new about these crimes was their open and public nature, which exposed another sociological phenomenon. All of the incidents occurred on busy weekends in the midst of hundreds of witnesses who chose not to intervene.

… [W]hat stunned people most was that three of the crimes—those that received the most coverage in conventional and social media—occurred in shopping malls. According to the local English newspaper the Arab Times, the residents of Kuwait consider the country’s “various malls to be havens of recreation and relaxation. This unprecedented disruption has upset Kuwait’s otherwise relatively peaceful existence, cutting a little too close to the bone, for those who relish the quiet comfort of this small desert land.” Malls are paradoxical places in terms of the types of social feelings and behaviors they embody. People are often lulled into a false sense of security inside them. As private, enclosed, guarded, and (in the Arab Gulf) often gilded places, they give “the public good reason for feeling safer there than on downtown streets. Malls have better lighting, a steadier flow of people, and fewer hiding places and escape routes for muggers.” In its architectural design and in the names of its shopping areas, The Avenues offers its visitors an artificial experience of shopping in a city without actually having to be in a city. Its multiple sec- tors include the Grand Avenue (designed to look like a British High Street or American Main Street), the SoKu (“South of Kuwait,” which mimics New York’s SoHo district), and the Souk (which replicates Kuwait’s own city streets). The mall thus sanitizes the idea of the city by reconstructing it as a clean and orderly place protected by roaming security guards.

But despite its idealized representation, if The Avenues really was a city district it would be what Jane Jacobs—urban writer, activist, and critic of “rational” city planning—would label an unsuccessful one. “The bedrock attribute of a successful city district,” she argues, “is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on the street” amid a large number of strangers. In well-functioning city districts, throughout the day and night different people are doing different things simultaneously: going to work, running errands, meeting clients, sleeping on park benches, taking the kids to school, loitering, running, walking the dog, shopping, having dinner, and so on. Though this diversity makes city streets seem more dangerous and unpredictable than the seemingly protected and contained mall, it is precisely this diversity, Jacobs argues, that generates safety. The more diverse interactions and public contacts people have on a street (no matter how ostensibly marginal those encounters might be), the more feelings of mutual trust can emerge among the people who use that street. Trust in this context can be defined as “an almost unconscious assumption of general street support when the chips are down—when a citizen has to choose, for instance, whether he will take responsibility, or abdicate it, in combating barbarism or protecting strangers.” Though in the city most encounters between strangers are trivial and fleeting, people are silently yet constantly negotiating various public spaces—sidewalks, parks, benches, bus stops—with one another. The sum of these repeated casual contacts “is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or neighborhood need.” Unsuccessful city districts are ones where that sense of public trust is lacking and where there is no diversity in activities and encounters. When the need to constantly negotiate difference is removed—as it is in a mall, where everyone is doing the same thing—one’s engagement with the public, and inherent concern for the public good, erodes. Malls, like deserted city streets, are therefore prime venues for antisocial behavior, be they acts of violence or acts of passive noninterference. 

Since the late 1990s, malls have become the quintessential urban form in Kuwait and across the Arab Gulf states. Malls in the Gulf states, like malls elsewhere in the world, contribute to the privatization of cities as places governed by consumption from which diverse social groups are implicitly (by income level) or explicitly excluded. (In Qatar, for instance, security guards bar south Asian laborers from entering malls.) In her fascinating study on the daily lives of young urban women in Saudi Arabia, Amélie le Renard convincingly argues, however, that malls can also be accessible places for groups excluded from other parts of the city. For her female interlocutors, who have limited access to most public spaces in the highly segregated city of Riyadh, malls provide a sense of freedom and privacy. But the purpose in highlighting the ubiquity of shopping malls in Kuwait and the Gulf today is not to engage in debates about accessibility and exclusion but rather to emphasize a prominent yet problematic feature of Gulf urbanism today: the absence of diversity in urban space and everyday life experiences, and the impact that this absence has on the functioning of society. 

قصائد للشاعر الأميركي مارك ستراند

مارك ستراند من أهم الشعراء الأميركيين في جيله (١٩٣٤- ٢٠١٤). وكان معروفاً أيضاً كمحرر متقن ومترجم وناثر. وتميز أسلوبه بدقة اللغة، والصور السريالية، والموضوع المتكرر للغياب والنفي، أما مجموعاته التي كتبها في وقت لاحق فتستقصي أغوار الذات الإنسانية .

حصل ستراند على جائزة بوليتزر سنة ١٩٩٩ عن مجموعته الشعرية “عاصفة ثلجيه غريبة من نوعها”.
ولد مارك ستراند في جزيرة برنس إدوارد في كندا وترعرع في عدة مدن في الولايات المتحدة وفي كولومبيا والمكسيك والبيرو.

كان يطمح في البداية إلى أن يصبح رساماً إلا أن اهتمامه بالرسم فتر وقرر أن يصبح شاعراً.
يعبّر ديوان ستراند الأول “النوم بعين واحدة مفتوحة” (١٩٦٤) عن مقاربته المميزة للشعر، فقد عبر عن إحساس طاغ بالقلق وعن موضوع الذات والهوية.

مجموعات ستراند الأولى، وبينها “أسباب للانتقال” (١٩٦٨)، حققت له سمعة كشاعر تشاؤمي تأملي مسكون بالموت، لكنه لم يقبل هذا النوع من التوصيف.

تتحدث قصائد ستراند عن خلو الحياة من المعنى وعن عبثيتها إلا أن ما يمنحها المعنى بالنسبة إليه هو الشعر، الذي يدعم الذات ويحقق توازنها في العالم.

*****************
النهاية

لا أحد يعرف الأنشودة التي سيردّدها في النهاية،
وهو يراقب رصيف الميناء فيما السفينة تبحر بعيداً، أو كيف سيكون الأمر
حين يحتجزه زئير البحر، وهو دون حراك، هناك في النهاية،
أو ما الذي سيأمله حالما يُوقنُ أنه لن يعود.

حين يكون الوقت قد فات على تقليم شجيرات الورد أو مداعبة القطة،
حين تنطفئ مشاعل الغروب التي تضيء المرج،
وضوء البدر الذي يفرش لونه الجليدي عليه لن يعرف أحد ما ينتظره.
حين لا يجد ثقلُ الماضي شيئاً يتكئ عليه، وتصبح السماء

مجرّد ضوء للتذكّر، حين تنتهي قصص تشكّل السحاب الرقيق
والركاميّ، و يُعلَّق تحليق جميع الطيور،
لا يعرف كلٌّ منا ما الذي ينتظره، أو الأنشودة التي سيردّدها،
حين تنزلق السفينة، وهو على متنها، في الظلمة، هناك في النهاية.

خرائط سوداء

لا حضورُ الأحجار،
ولا الريح المصفّقة
سيجعلناك تعرف
أنك وصلتَ،

لا البحرُ الذي لا
يحتفي إلا بالراحلين،
ولا الجبال،
ولا المدن التي تحتضر.
لا شيء سيخبرك
أين أنت.
إن كلّ لحظة هي مكان
لم تكن فيه.

بوسعك السير
معتقداً أنك تُلقي
ضوءاً حولكَ.
لكن كيف ستعرف؟

الحاضر مظلمٌ على الدوام.
خرائطه سوداء،
تصّاعد من لا شيء،
واصفة

في صعودها البطيء
إلى داخل نفسها
رحلتها الخاصة،
وفراغَها

والضرورة الفارغة والمقيدة
لإكمالها.
وهي تنبعث إلى الوجود
مثل نَفَسٍ.

وإذا ما حدث ودُرستْ،
فلكي تكتشف فحسب،
بعد أن يكون الوقت قد تأخر كثيراً،
أن أشياء اعتقدت أنها كانت
تهمك

لا توجد.
إن منزلك غير معلّم
على أيٍّ منها،
وأصدقاؤك

لا ينتظرون ظهورك
أما أعداؤك فلا يسجلون
أخطاءك.
فقط أنت هناك،

تقول مرحباً لما ستكونه،
فيما الأعشاب السوداء
تسند النجوم السوداء.

رجل وجمل

في مساء عيد ميلادي الأربعين،
جلست كي أدخن في الردهة.
فجأة مرّ رجل وجمل. لم يصدر أيٌّ منهما صوتاً
في البداية، ولكن فيما كانا يندفعان في الشارع
وخارج البلدة بدآ بالغناء.
ما أنشداه ما يزال لغراً،
لم تكن الكلمات واضحة وكان اللحن منمّقاً
لا يمكن تذكره. دخلا إلى الصحراء وهناك
تصاعد صوتاهما كصوت واحد
فوق صوت غربلة الرمل الذي تتلاعب به الريح. إن روعة
غنائهما، ومزجه المخادع لرجل وجمل، بدا
كأنه صورة مثالية لجميع الأزواج غير العاديين.
هل كانت هذه هي الليلة التي انتظرتُها
طويلاً؟ أردت أن أصدق أنها هي،
لكن وبينما كانا يختفيان، توقف الرجل
والجمل عن الغناء، وعادا
عدواً إلى البلدة. توقفا أمام ردهتي،
وحدقا بي بعينين خرزيتين وقالا:
“لقد دمّرْتَها. دمرّتَها إلى الأبد.”

منح نفسي

أمنح عينيًّ اللتين هما بيضتان زجاجيتان
أتخلى عن لساني.
أتخلى عن فمي الذي هو الحلم المتواصل للساني.
أتخلى عن حنجرتي التي هي كمّ صوتي.
أتخلى عن قلبي الذي هو تفاحة مشتعلة.
أتخلى عن رئتي اللتين هما شجرتان لم تلمحا القمر أبداً.
أتخلى عن رائحتي التي هي رائحة حجرٍ يسافر تحت المطر.
أتخلى عن يدي اللتين هما عشر أمنيات.
أتخلى عن ذراعيَّ اللذين أرادا تركي بأية حال.
أتخلى عن ساقيَّ اللتين هما عاشقتان في الليل فقط.
أتخلى عن ردفيّ اللذين هما قمرا الطفولة.
أتخلى عن عضوي الذي يهمس تشجيعاً لفخذيَّ.
أتخلى عن ثيابي التي هي جدران تهبّ في الريح
أتخلى عن الشبح الذي يعيش داخلها.
أتخلى.
أتخلى.
لكن لن تحصلوا على أي شيء منها لأنني مسبقاً أبدأ ثانية
دون أي شيء.

كتيّب الشعر الجديد

1- إذا فهم شخص قصيدة،
سيواجه المشاكل.

2- إذا عاش شخص مع قصيدة،
سيموت وحيداً.

3- إذا عاش شخص مع قصيدتين،
سيخون واحدة منهما.

4- إذا حمل شخص بقصيدة،
سينقص ولد من أولاده.

5- إذا حمل شخص بقصيدتين
سينقص ولدان من أولاده.

6- إذا ارتدى رجل تاجاً على رأسه وهو يكتب،
سيُعثر عليه.

7- إذا لم يرتد الشخص تاجاً وهو يكتب،
لن يخدع أحداً إلا نفسه.

8- إذا غضب شخص من قصيدة،
سيحتقره الرجال.

9- إذا واصل الشخص غضبه من قصيدة
ستحتقره النساء.

10- إذا شجب شخص الشعر علناً،
سيمتلئ حذاؤه بالبول.

11- إذا تخلى شخص عن الشعر من أجل السلطة،
سيحصل على الكثير من السلطة.

12- إذا تباهى شخص بقصائدة
سيحبه المغفّلون.

13-إذا تباهى شخص بقصائده وأحب المغفّلين
سيتوقف عن الكتابة.

14- إذا تعطش شخص للانتباه من أجل قصائدة
سيكون كحمار في ضوء القمر.

15- إذا ألّف شخص قصيدة ومدح قصيدة زميل
سيحظى بعشيقة جميلة.

16- إذا ألف شخص قصيدة ومدح قصيدة زميل بإفراط
فإنه سيدفع عشيقته إلى تركه.

17- إذا انتحل شخص قصيدة شخص آخر،
سيتضاعف حجم قلبه.

18- إذا ترك شخص قصائده تذهب عارية،
فإنه سيخاف من الموت.

19- إذا كان الشخص يخاف من الموت،
ستنقذه قصائده.

20-إذا كان الشخص لا يهاب الموت،
يمكن أن تنقذه قصائده أو يمكن ألا تنقذه.

21-إذا أنهى شخص كتابة قصيدة،
سيستحم في اليقظة البيضاء لعاطفته،
وتقبّله الصفحة البيضاء.

[ترجمة: أسامة إسبر]

The decade-long Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-1989) does not usually figure into conventional narratives of precedents for humanitarian interventions. When the Kremlin opted to dispatch a “limited contingent” of tens of thousands of soldiers to liquidate the erratic leadership of one wing of the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan and replace it with another wing, it was to protect the prospects for socialism within what Moscow understood as its sphere of influence, not to halt a genocide. This makes the Soviets’ intervention look much more like a repeat of Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968: the Soviet Union retained the right to intervene in socialist countries, which Afghanistan had officially become following an earlier April 1978 revolution. (This made it the second Marxist-Leninist country in the Islamic world–South Yemen, consolidated in 1970, was the first.)

Of course, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan led to anything but a consolidation of socialism in the region. Irish academic Fred Halliday described the war in Afghanistan as a “kitchen in which the contradictions of the contemporary world, and many of the violent evils of the century, were cooked and then spread out.” Halliday was referring, of course, to transnational Sunni jihadism. Journalists like Steve Coll and Lawrence Wright have told the story of how Arab jihadists like Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden made their way to Peshawar to fight alongside the Pashtun and Tajik Afghan mujahidin brigades who opposed the USSR and Afghan communists. 

Less well known about the conflict, however, is that it was also the threshold for a different form of internationalism that continues to leave a mark on the world, namely, transnational humanitarianism, and more specifically, visions of humanitarianism that disregarded the doctrine of state sovereignty. In order to justify such interventions, transnational humanitarian NGOs claimed that the need to save human lives authorized the suspension of foundational political conceptions about sovereignty and legitimacy. As a result of this shift, by the late 1980s, Peshawar, the city in northwestern Pakistan that served as the hub for humanitarian operations into occupied Afghanistan, hosted sixty-six NGOs, the densest such concentration anywhere in the Third World. And by the early 1990s, NGO governance inside of Afghanistan was so entrenched that ministries of the shambolic Islamic State of Afghanistan, the post-1992 mujahidin-led government, subcontracted their services to NGOs—rather than the other way around.

Yet what makes the story of the humanitarian intervention into Afghanistan more than just a story of the rise of NGOs onto the international stage is that the leading NGOs behind these operations—groups like France’s Médecins sans Frontières and the Stockholm-based Swedish Committee for Afghanistan—came out of anti-imperialist, anti-colonial backgrounds. However, more than just tending to Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Afghan populations inside of Afghanistan, however, these NGOs were coöpted into a campaign of regime change against the socialist Afghan government, which seized power independent of the Soviet Union. What started as a humanitarian intervention to aid Afghans soon turned into a “humanitarian invasion.” This makes this story of humanitarian NGOs important beyond just its own terms, since it shows how humanitarian concepts can be coöpted into campaigns for regime change. It also makes the story of Afghanistan in the 1980s look less like the last of many Cold War proxy wars in the Third World, and more like the beginning of a new era in which “the magnitude of human tragedies” permitted the internationalization of conflicts throughout the same space.

This story prompts two questions: firstly, what prompted groups that identified with the anti-colonial cause to work within a US- and Saudi-backed campaign to topple a socialist government in the Third World? And secondly, might this story of internationalization have any relevance for activists and practitioners engaged in issues of occupation, intervention, and humanitarianism today?

From Anti-Colonialism to “Humanitarian Invasion”

Part of the recipe behind what became a “humanitarian invasion” of Afghanistan had to do with intellectual shifts that took place during the 1970s. At the beginning of that decade, European Social Democratic politicians like Sweden’s Olof Palme could casually compare the American bombing of North Vietnam to Nazi extermination camps and the Sharpesville massacre. Seeking to outflank a well-organized anti-Vietnam War Left within his own country, Palme allowed North Vietnamese, South African, and African national liberation movements to open up organizing offices in Stockholm.

This was in keeping with the mood of the times, characterized by national liberation movements and anti-colonial struggles. The entry of so many post-colonial nation-states into the General Assembly nearly led to the expulsion of Pretoria from the UN, and UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 famously declared “Zionism a form of racism.” While the anti-colonial Left of the day held sovereignty sacrosanct, it made exceptions to this rule vis-à-vis apartheid, colonialism, and Zionism, declaring certain forms of political organization outside of legitimate international order altogether. Neither democracy, racial non-discrimination, nor decolonization had been criteria for membership in the United Nations, but the entry of so many Third World countries into the organization allowed for the transformation of the de facto terms of membership in international society. Put another way, not long after “civilization” was dropped as a criterion for entry into the United Nations (1960), racism, colonialism, and Zionism became criteria for marginalization within or even expulsion from the same organization.

Among the many other internal characters of polities that might serve as grounds for delegitimization in international society, socialism was not one of them. Indeed, support from the Soviet Union lent this movement geopolitical heft. Moscow provided political and military support to both the North Vietnamese as well as Southern African liberation movements throughout the Cold War. Moscow supported both the PLO as well as Marxist-Leninist Palestinian groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and thousands of Soviet military advisors in Egypt, Syria added military heft to the Arab cause. More than these material and financial ties, Moscow and its Eastern European satellites supported the internationalization of the Palestinian question at the United Nations through the aforementioned forums. Socialist states themselves indulged in massive repressions against their own populations, but the triad of Third World ascendancy at the UN, Soviet power, and the European Left’s tolerance of the USSR as a necessary evil meant that these socialist states were rarely if ever submitted to the same logics of internationalization applied to Israel, South Africa, or Portuguese Africa. Nor—as long as the grounds for intervention were restricted to cases of colonialism or racism—did they have any grounds to fear this.

The entry of humanitarian NGOs into Afghanistan (riding on the backs of the mujahidin) was significant for how it took this logic of “colonized against colonizer,” “black against white” or “Palestinian against Israeli,” and applied it to socialist states. Part of the context was a broad backlash against not only Soviet socialism but also Third World socialism in many of its post-1970s iterations. This had begun as early as the 1960s, when many a European Trotskyist or Maoist distanced themselves from Moscow as a deformed workers’ state out of touch with the anti-colonial cause. The Soviets, as noted, had pushed back with their own charm offensive in the Third World, but the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the publication of Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The GulagArchipelago in 1973-1974 discredited the carefully cultivated vision of the USSR as an anti-imperialist and humane alternative to American hegemony or North Atlantic capitalism. Further, by the time the Afghan Communists had their revolution in 1978, revelations about the brutality of Vietnamese Communist rule against ethnic Chinese minorities, not to mention the butchery of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge rendered visions of peasant revolution to be just as blood-soaked as their Stalinist cousins.

True, texts like Solzhenitsyn’s and images of the violence in Southeast Asia did not circulate purely on their own accord; and one can note that US support for the overthrow of Pinochet or the Indonesian invasion of East Timor did not suddenly discredit American capitalism tout court. One must also be careful not to over-generalize about the shifting priorities of the Left vis-à-vis the Third World on the basis of just the Afghan drama. Socialist parties like the Sandinistas attracted support from Western intellectuals and humanitarian groups throughout the 1980s, and in the Horn of Africa, it was left-wing peasants’ movements and Eritrean socialists (not Islamist militias, as in Afghanistan) that received succor and support against a Soviet- and Cuban-backed governing representing “real existing socialism.” Future studies of the intersections of the global anti-imperialist Left and the Cold War will only enrich a nuanced understanding of the shifts of the 1980s.

In the theater of the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands, however, many of the intellectuals who became humanitarian organizers could operate against an ideological formation of “socialism” that was increasingly seen as not only worthy of opprobium but also grounds for exclusion from the rules of international society altogether. Some of the first humanitarian organizers on the scene in Pakistan articulated this shift themselves. One former head to UNICEF’s India office, a Swedish diplomat, explicitly compared Afghan Communists’ murder of ethnic Shi’i minority to Guernica, Lidice, and Oradour-sur-Glane—all classic sites of “progressive” mourning of Nazi violence within Europe. “Socialism,” he wrote, “is betrayed: is this the drama that will have to be repeated again and again? Will it be accompanied by the same applause and clapping from a clueless audience?”  By the mid-1970s, in other words, Europeans had learned to exceptionalize Nazi violence as the barometer of “crimes against humanity” or “genocide” (even though most post-World War II international jurisprudence focused on aggressive warfare, not genocide, as the Nazis’ crime par excellence). Burdened by this sin—and having reinterpreted it in terms of a failure to intervene—Europeans could then expiate it by intervening in Third World contexts, ideally those where the violation of sovereignty could be justified in terms of overthrowing totalitarian Stalinist regimes.

Yet if the route to legitimizing the suspension of Afghan sovereignty went not only through the Holocaust, practically it went through the institutions and legal forms formerly reserved for black South Africans, Portuguese colonial subjects, and Palestinians. The funding forms that Swedish humanitarian organizers used to secure the disbursal of funds to enter Afghanistan were direct copies of those formerly used for South African dissidents. This was the first indication that tactics of internationalization once formerly reserved for very specific kinds of polities–namely, colonial regimes, apartheid, or Zionism–could be extended to Soviet occupation or simply socialist regimes themselves.

Parallel to this tactic, the French group Médecins sans Frontières  followed their own logic, sending teams into the scantily-occupied Hazarajat and Badakhshan regions of central and northeastern Afghanistan, respectively. There, they identified populations as needing comprehensive medical treatment, justifying further missions. Not all of the populations the French engaged, particularly in these Afghan hinterlands, suffered from war wounds; more, archival documents show, suffered from malnutrition or what would be later diagnosed as fibromyalgia. Of course, Afghans had suffered from a lack of medical care long before socialist revolution or Soviet occupation, but new registers of social justice and medical emergency justified the suspension of Afghan sovereignty while French medical teams, embedded in the jihad, treated these remote populations. Leaving aside the question of whether the mujahidin groups that ferried the MSF teams in legitimately represented Afghans, MSF scarcely considered the question of whether a world in which state sovereignty hung upon individual medical diagnoses would be more stable or less violent than one that did.

The Rise of Special Rapporteurs 

Skeptics might object that this only amounted to one or two instances of internationalization, rather than a more structural shift worthy of attention. And they would be right if the humanitarian mobilization against the Afghan socialist state and the Soviet occupation were limited to actions like the Permanent International People’s Tribunal, held in Stockholm in 1981, or Russell Tribunals held in Paris in 1981-82. Such informal groups, like protests against the occupation at CSCE meetings throughout the 1980s, dealt reputational damage to the USSR and the Afghan regime. But even as American and Saudi funding for the jihad eroded the Soviets’ military footing in Afghanistan, more would be needed to delegitimize the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan. (The Soviets’ argument for their presence in the Hindu Kush was grounded on the UN-recognized right of collective self-defense, since Kabul was unable to halt the undeclared war being fought against it from Pakistan. Moscow relies on the same doctrine today in its war with the Syrian regime against opposition groups and ISIS.)

Soon, the campaign to consign Afghanistan to the black hole in international society reserved for apartheid, Zionism, and Portuguese colonialism acquired a further dimension. The answer came through the Swedish-sponsored and French teams inside of Afghanistan, who, by the early 1980s, had collected reams of medical and eyewitness data about the situation inside of Afghanistan (whose borders they had obviously breached to obtain said data). The humanitarian information collected by Swedish-sponsored and French teams inside of Afghanistan was forwarded to Oslo, whose Foreign Ministry spearheaded a Special Rapporteurship on human rights in Afghanistan, the first time such a procedure had been initiated against a socialist country.

Less well known than many other UN institutions, the Special Rapporteurship was of very recent provenance. It dated back to a 1967 United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) resolution that authorized investigations by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights into racial discrimination and apartheid. But it also left open “the question of the violation of human rights in every country.” This made the Special Rapporteurship an attractive institution for takeover by socialist, Third World, and Arab delegations, especially since alternative means of internationalizing colonial questions, like the International Court of Justice had failed to condemn apartheid in 1967.

From that point onward, the aforementioned delegations used their numerical supremacy at the United Nations to use UN institutions to claim moral territory for themselves. Once again, however, the principle was maximum sovereignty for the socialist camp, Arab states, and post-colonial Third World countries; maximum internationalization of the Palestinian question, apartheid, and Portuguese colonialism. These issues occupied significant attention on the international stage compared to other national liberation causes like those of Kurds, Baloch, or Pashtuns, and they were taken to be synonymous with “human rights” per se rather than as expressions of some more general human rights imagination. “Human rights” meant freedom from colonialism, apartheid, or Israeli occupation, and did not refer to the rights of individuals in any particular country. Hence, these three causes (colonialism, apartheid, and Zionism) formed the only subject of Special Rapporteur investigations for several years while the United Nations Commission on Human Rights conducted more investigations into Israel than all other countries combined.

Of course, one reason why allies of the Palestinian, South African, and Southern African cause had to take these issues to the international stage (rather than seeking political solutions through great power diplomacy) was that they had nowhere else to go.The Nixon Administration’s quest for détente with the USSR and unwillingness to allow another Middle Eastern proxy war to spoil peace with Moscow led Washington to suspend the UN Commission designed to find a political solution to the conflict and to exclude the PLO from the Geneva Peace Conference and subsequent forums. Internationalizing strategies of boycotts, divestment campaigns, and calls for sanctions toward apartheid South Africa were necessary precisely because of the Nixon Administration’s “tar baby” policy toward white-ruled Pretoria, Salisbury, and Lisbon. 

Yet this strategy of internationalization had unexpected consequences. Gradually, the option of investigating “the question of the violation of human rights in every country” was explored and expanded to refer not just to colonialism, apartheid, or Zionism. Here, again, power politics dictated from Washington had unexpected consequences. Following US-backed coups in Chile (1973), Uruguay (1973) and Argentina (1975) and the transnational destruction of the Left and opposition groups across South America, the UN’s Commission on Human Rights began investigating rights abuses in Latin American dictatorships in 1975. But by doing so, it indirectly reclassified the situation in South Africa or the Palestinian Territories from sui generis problems that blighted the entire planet to mere instances of a phenomenon that could occur anywhere in the world–even in Third World or socialist states. The subject of “human rights” shifted from the sovereignty of a Palestinian or South African state to an anonymous, tortured body that could be found in Chile, Argentina, or the Soviet Union. 

This individualization of human rights and decoupling from the anti-Zionist, anti-apartheid, and anti-colonial causes meant that states like Afghanistan–at once part of the Third World and the socialist world–could be placed in the docket and judged internationally. This was why the move to have a Special Rapporteurship against Afghanistan was so significant. A decade earlier, few raised an eyebrow when South Yemenese or North Vietnamese Communists jailed and tortured their opponents. It was a sovereign postcolonial country and hence by definition stood outside of the concept of “human rights” prevalent at the UN since the early 1960s, namely, one in which “human rights” meant decolonization and post-colonial sovereignty. Point 1 of the UN’s 1960 Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples made this clear, noting that “the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights.” Oppressed nations, not tortured individuals, were the subject of “human rights.”

By the late 1970s and 1980s, however, that concept had shifted from referring primarily to post-colonial liberation and opposition to racism and colonialism in international affairs. Instead, “human rights” now referred to persecution of individuals, rather than the fundamental character or disposition of the state itself. This meant that states like the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, which enshrined anti-Zionism and opposition to apartheid in their Constitution, could be turned into outlaws in the same way Argentina or Uruguay could, even if neither were colonial or racist entities. Once the UN announced the launching of a Special Rapporteurship–spearheaded by Austrian human rights lawyer Felix Ermacora–Kabul and Moscow did everything they could to block its fulfillment. The Afghan regime prevented Ermacora from obtaining a visa, forcing the Austrian to restrict his fieldwork to Pakistan and a library devoted to Afghanistan Studies in Switzerland. Once Ermacora completed his report, Moscow even managed to prevent the publication of it into English. But the broader point was clear: logics of internationalization once used by the Second and Third World against Israel and South Africa had been inverted to apply to socialist states, in spite of their Third World credentials. 

The Humanitarianization of Politics

By the late 1980s, the combination of military offensives on the ground by Sunni Islamist militias and the inversion of anti-colonial forms and tools against Third World socialist states forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan. (The Soviet occupation also prompted the emergence of an anti-socialist Afghan Shi’a jihad, but such Shi’a groups were unwelcome in the refugee camps of Zia ul-Haq’s Pakistan, nor were they seriously engaged by any regional power or international body in the way the “Peshawar Seven” Sunni Afghan parties were.) Efforts to oversee the transition saw the application of yet another UN institution to Afghanistan—peacekeepers, in small numbers but present for the first time on any large scale in decades. However, the Soviet withdrawal and collapse of Soviet funding for the regime in Kabul meant that the mujahidin and the humanitarian networks that sustained them overran the capital in the spring of 1992.

The history of humanitarianism, occupation, and intervention in Afghanistan might be interesting on its own terms, but the history outlined above has implications for scholars and activists engaged in debates about international humanitarian law in contexts more familiar to followers of the Middle Eastern scene. For instance, the “humanitarian invasion” of Afghanistan reveals how certain legal forms and arguments generated by the internationalization of the Palestinian cause went global. True, this process has had limits. The 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, for example, enshrined the PLO’s campaign as a national liberation struggle, covered, like those against apartheid, South African occupation, or Rhodesian white rule, by international humanitarian law. The Afghan mujahidin, in contrast, never enjoyed such protections, even as they were more successful than the Palestinians in overrunning a Communist Afghan state that, ironically, provided shelter to a small number of PLO members.

However, the same 1977 Protocols also laid the framework for an International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission that allows humanitarian NGOs to claim coverage under international humanitarian law themselves. Indeed, following the October 2015 US Air Force bombing of an MSF trauma center in Taliban-occupied Kunduz, MSF has demanded that the IHFFC begin a case against the United States. In short, even as champions of the Palestinian cause have themselves faced numerous challenges in implementing international humanitarian legal protections in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the decades-long quest to have national liberation movements and non-state organizations recognized by IHL has had far-ranging consequences.

As recent accounts of the history of human rights and humanitarianism remind us, however, it would be blinkered to view this merely as a history of growing enlightenment and expanded social justice. The turn of European activists away from socialism and toward humanitarian aid as their desideratum made sense at a time when images of Vietnamese “Boat People” and the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago exposed Third World socialist regimes and Soviet “real existing socialism” as morally vacuous. While less historicized and beyond the bounds of this piece, MSF’s flirtation with anti-totalitarian interventionism (in the form of a sister NGO, Liberty Without Borders) was also understandable, given that so many of the countries in which the organization intervened were single-party Marxist-Leninist dictatorships like Ethiopia and Cambodia.

But in the case of Afghanistan (where the mujahidin not only booted the Soviets out of the country but eventually sacked Kabul) the humanitarian license to suspend Afghan sovereignty eventually supplied an alibi for US- and Saudi-backed regime change. Revolutionary regimes in Kabul, post-1979 Phnom Penh or Addis Ababa had nothing to do with the Holocaust or the construction of Cold War European ideological formations of “Stalinism,” but their sovereignty became the price on Europeans were willing to pay to expiate own their failure to intervene against Nazism or for having flirted with Stalinism. The comparative lack of ideological energy invested into internationalization of the Suharto regime’s occupation of East Timor, or opposition to the Western-backed coups against left-wing regimes in Grenada (1983) or Burkina Faso (1987) was a fundamentally political choice that had more to do with the ideological formations of “the free world,” “socialism,” and “the Third World” as they were contested and marketed to European and North American audiences in the 1980s. 

More than this, however, the shift away from the democratization of the means of production toward the recognition and healing of somatic and psychic violence also narrowed activists’ field of vision. Scholars of humanitarianism and human rights in Palestine have shown how this turn generated a novel discourse“in which trauma appears less as a clinical category than as a political argument.” Getting two distinct nationalist narratives to reconcile themselves to one another was already a challenge tall enough. Achieving a shared view of reality—much less reconciliation—is especially difficult from the standpoint of “objective,” because medical, victimhood.

In the case of Afghanistan, NGOs’ focus on the humanitarian needs of Afghans and getting the Soviets and Afghan Communists out of Kabul—regardless who replaced them—led them to overlook the question of what kind of country an Afghanistan with no economy and led by a fractious coalition of Sunni Islamist parties would be. More recently, post-1970s discourses of empowerment and human rights arguably led to a lack of engagement with the structural economic factors, not to mention foreign interventions and civil war, that have turned Afghans into one of the world’s largest refugee diasporas. 

Ironically–and tragically–if Europeans deployed medicalized humanitarian rhetoric about wounded and tortured Afghan bodies to legitimize their entry onto Afghan soil forty years ago, today, more and more Afghans use similar humanitarian rhetoric to secure their presence in Europe as refugees and asylum seekers. If, earlier, the failure of Afghan socialists and the Soviet Union to protect human rights inside Afghanistan allowed for the submission of Afghanistan to international supervision, today Afghan claims to remain inside of European states revolves around their ability to claim Afghanistan as an “unsafe country of origin.”

In both cases, Afghans might cite not only their own wounds and trauma but also the inability of the Afghan state to provide a modicum of security for its own citizens or to protect its own borders—both factors that date back at least to the war of the 1980s. As the history of the “humanitarian invasion” of Afghanistan reminds us, humanitarian impulses and moves to internationalize human rights abuses stand as much in tension as in support with postcolonial sovereignty.

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Palestine and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Palestine Page Co-Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each roundup to Palestine@jadaliyya.com.]

The Occupation Forces

Israeli Forces Continue Siege On Nablus For 7th Consecutive Day The reason for the blockade stems from Israeli forces claim that Palestinians had been throwing rocks at Israeli settlers, though they have yet to identify or detain a culprit.

Are Israeli Soldiers Targeting The Legs Of Palestinians On Purpose? Reports from numerous victims blame an officer known only as "Captain Nidal" for purposeful mutilation of Palestinian teens. Of the eighty-three Palestinian teens shot by Israeli forces since the start of the year, most were shot in the legs or knees.

Israeli Navy Opens Live Fire on Palestinian Fisherman In Gaza Palestinian fishermen faced live fair and detainment by Israeli authorities after crossing out of the designated fishing zone. Despite a ceasefire agreement, this has become an almost daily occurrence for fishermen in Gaza.

Palestinian Youth Injured After Israeli Army Opens Live Fire On Them While Leaving School In The Jalazone Refugee Camp Local sources claim that despite a clear absence of clashes in the area, Israeli forces shot live ammunition at youths, which in turn sparked unrest. A recent report on Palestinian rights warned of "systematic targeting" of Palestinian youth.

Israeli Forces Raid Surround Youth Center After Raiding Aida Refugee Camp In Bethlehem While children were inside, Israeli forces surround and searched a community center aimed at providing youth with educational and social development services.

Israeli Forces Shoot 18 Year Old Palestinian In The Head During Protests Though the Israeli Army denies any involvement in the shooting, Abd al-Rahman Ahmad al-Dabbagh is dead after being shot by an Israeli soldier during a protest along the border.

Israelis Close Off Road Near Hebron After Opening It Only A Day Earlier Under the usual pretext of rock-throwing, Israel has reclosed roads throughout Palestine, trapping the residents in their villages and denying any freedom of mobility for the population.

Israel Begins Construction On Subterranean Wall, Intended To Prevent Palestinian Attacks Stretching the entire sixty mile length of the border with Israel, the new underground wall is being built to prevent the tunneling into Israel. 

Domestic Politics

Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas Meets With Mother Of Hunger-Striking Brothers Prime Minister Abbas met with the mother and sister of two brothers that have been on hunger strike since early July. Abbas told the women that he was increasing pressure to release the Balboul brothers and to save their lives.

Segregation Is The Single Biggest Problem In Israel, How Can It Be Confronted Multiple institutions and informal policies are used by Israel to prevent the rise of racially mixed neighborhoods.

Palestinian Education Ministry Outraged Over The Publication Of Fake History Textbooks Palestinian ministry of education claimed that Israel issued textbooks with false information like Jerusalem being the capital of Israel in an attempt to distort Palestinian identity.

Palestinian High Court Cancels Municipal Elections After a ruling in favor of a lawyer's guild petition, municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza were cancelled because East Jerusalem Palestinians were unable to vote in the elections or run for any seats in the government.

Foreign Policy

Dutch MP Refuses To Shake Hands With PM Netanyahu In a showing of solidarity with the Palestinians, MP Tunahan Kuzu declined to shake hands with the prime minister of Israel during a meeting with lawmakers in the Hague. Thousands in the Netherlands have signed petitions urging sanctions.

Turkish Delegates Arrive In Gaza To Distribute Aid A Turkish ship carrying two thousand five hundred tons of humanitarian aid docked in the port city of Ashdod. A delegation of fourteen members will distribute the supplies in coordination with the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs in Gaza.

According To The Russians, Palestinians And Israelis Have Agreed To Meeting In Moscow Though a date has yet to be set, Russian Foreign Ministry reports that Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meeting "in principle." The last round of peace talks between the two countries broke down two and a half years ago.

PM Netanyahu's Absurd Comments On Ethnic Cleansing Rebuked By US State Department Calling Prime Minister Netanyahu's statements "inappropriate and unhelpful," US State Department has come out against the claim of the ethnic cleansing of Jews by Palestinians.

Mahmoud Abbas Responds To PM Netanyahu's Ethnic Cleansing Remarks Citing Israeli actions of seizing occupied Palestinian land for exclusive Israeli use and the displacement of Palestinians, Prime Minister Abbas flipped Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing claims back at Israel.

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions

Numerous Spanish Cities Proudly Proclaim Themselves "Free Of Israeli Apartheid."   The international declaration places Spain on the right side of history in the Palestinian debate. Over fifty cities have voted to boycott and divest from companies complicit in the occupation of Palestine.

Israeli BDS Activist Seeks Asylum In Canada Out of fear of persecution, Gilad Paz has applied for asylum in Canada. Though most of his activism has been online, and he hasn't yet faced consequences, Paz expects an official reaction at any time.

Berkeley, California Has Voted To Divest From Torture-Profiteer G4S The city voted to adopt a resolution that would divest from the private prison firm G4S, among others, who are providers of services for the Israeli jails in which numerous Palestinians are routinely tortured.

Settlers and Illegal Settlements

Under Heavy Police Protection, 43 Jewish Settlers Break In To Al Aqsa Mosque Grounds Despite it being the "day of Arafa," Israeli authorities opened the Magharba Gate to allow for the incursion.

Six Year Old Palestinian Girl Killed After Being Run Over By Car Driven By Jewish Settler The driver fled the scene, but later turned himself in to Israeli police, insisting that he did not kill Lama Musa on purpose.

Israeli Settlers Ran Elderly Palestinian Pedestrian With Their Car In Bethlehem Hussein Dawood Mousa, sixty-five, suffered from minor injuries after being deliberately run over by settlers in the occupied West Bank neighborhood of Bethlehem.

Law

Palestinians Claim Land Declared 'Absentee' By Israelis Thanks to a law dating back to the 1948 creation of Israel, Israel's definition of "absentee Property" allows for the state to take over land owned by Palestinians that are deemed absent, even if the residents had only been gone a few days, or fled in times of violence.

Right Of Return Is What It Is All About For The Palestinians Viewed as an inalienable right, and a cornerstone of the Palestinian struggle, the right of return has been denied to millions of refugees since the 1948 advent of Israel. Multiple UN Resolutions have called for the facilitated return of Palestinians by the Israeli authorities, and to end illegal settlements.

Two Years Since The War In Gaza And Israel Has Yet To Be Indicted For A Single War Crime This just another example of Israel refusing to conduct objective, independent investigations into suspected war crimes. Over five hundred children were killed in the Gaza war in 2014, and massive civilian infrastructure was irreparably damaged or destroyed.

Malik al-Qadi Slips Into A Coma On 56th Day Of Hunger Strike In protest of his administrative detention, Al-Qadi faces imminent death after entering coma. Despite Israeli attempts to force feed and treat him, Al-Qadi has refused to be treated regardless of his health condition.

Many Stage A Sit In At ICRC In Support Of Those On Hunger Strike A group of Palestinian youth, activists, and politicians gathered to stage a sit in at the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern occupied West Bank. The main goal of the protest was to send a message to the ICRC to take further steps to solve the problems of hunger strikers who face death in Israeli custody.

Force-Feeding Of Palestinian Hunger Strikers Deemed Constitutional, In Rejection Of Doctors' Appeals Several Palestinians are being held under Israel's administrative detention law which allows for the victim to be held in custody without charges for renewable six month terms. Israeli authorities view hunger strikers as perpetrators of blackmail.

Economy and Development

Were It Not For Israeli Occupation, Palestinian Economy Would At Least Double In Size According to a new UN report, the Palestinian economy would massively increase in size. Illegal settlement, restriction from international markets and the blockade on Gaza all contribute to the underdeveloped state of the Palestinian economy.

Arabic 

قوات الاحتلال

فلسطين: الاحتلال قتل 3 شبان وهدم 28 مبنى بأسبوعين
ذكر مكتب الأمم المتحدة لتنسيق الشؤون الإنسانية "أوتشا"، اليوم الجمعة، أن قوات الاحتلال قتلت ثلاثة فلسطينيين، وهدمت 28 مبنى، وأصابت 66 مواطناً، واعتقلت 239 آخرين، خلال الأسبوعين الماضيين.

إصابة فتى فلسطيني برصاص الاحتلال
 أصيب فتى فلسطيني، الخميس الثامن من ايلول، برصاص قوات الاحتلال الاسرائيلي شرق مخيم جباليا شمال قطاع غزة.

الاحتلال يواصل الاعتقالات صبيحة أول أيام العيد
قالت مصادر محلية إن قوات الاحتلال اعتقلت الشاب الفلسطيني وهبي إحسان الريماوي (26 عاماً)، عقب دهم منزله الكائن في بلدة بيت ريما شمالي رام الله.

فك الحصار عن بعض قرى جنوب نابلس
فكت قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي، اليوم الأحد، الحصار عن خمس قرى من أصل 10 تحاصرها جنوب نابلس في شمال الضفة الغربية، وأعادت فتح الطرق المؤدية إليها بعد أن أغلقتها بمكعبات الإسمنت لنحو أسبوع.

بيت لحم: استشهاد طفلة فلسطينية دهسها مستوطن
توفيت طفلة فلسطينية، مساء اليوم، السبت، بعد أن دهسها مستوطن يهودي قرب بلدة الخضر، غرب مدينة بيت لحم، جنوبيّ الضفة الغربية، بحسب وزارة الصحة الفلسطينية.

الاجهزة الامنية تسلم مجندتين دخلتا طولكرم بالخطأ لسلطات الاحتلال
دخلت مجندتان في جيش الاحتلال مدينة طولكرم مساء اليوم الاثنين عن طريق الخطأ ما أدى الى تعرضهما للرشق بالحجارة من قبل الشبان في المدينة قبل تدخل الاجهزة الامنية وتأمين خروجهما.

اعتقال فلسطيني بزعم تهديده قتل نتنياهو
نشرت وسائل إعلام عبرية، الثلاثاء، اعتقال قوات الاحتلال لشاب فلسطيني في الناصرة بزعم تهديده لرئيس وزراء حكومة الاحتلال بنيامين نتنياهو بالقتل.

إسرائيل "تبدأ بناء جدار تحت الأرض" على حدودها مع غزة
بدأت السلطات الإسرائيلية بناء جدار ضخم تحت الأرض يهدف إلى أن يغطي كامل حدودها مع قطاع غزة، بحسب ما ذكره مسؤولون.

السياسة الداخلية

اتفاق بين "فيسبوك" واسرائيل
قالت وسائل اعلام اسرائيلية إن اتفاقا جرى بين "وزيري الامن الداخلي والعدل غلعاد إردان وأييلت شاكيد" مع مسؤولين كبار من شبكة "فيسبوك" لتوطيد التعاون بين سلطات الاحتلال وشبكة فيسبوك من اجل شطب ما اسمته "المضامين التحريضية" من صفحات الشبكة.

"الليكود" يتراجع في الاستطلاعات لصالح حزب "ييش عتيد"
أظهر استطلاع للرأي أجرته القناة الإسرائيلية الثانية، مساء الاثنين، تراجعاً كبيراً في قوة حزب "الليكود" من 30 مقعداً إلى 22 مقعداً، في حال جرت انتخابات الكنسيت اليوم. في المقابل، أظهر الاستطلاع ارتفاعاً في قوة حزب "ييش عتيد"، برئاسة يئير لبيد الذي حصل على 24 مقعداً ليصبح أكبر حزب في إسرائيل.

"العدل" الفلسطينية تقرر وقف الانتخابات... و"حماس" تعتبره "مسيساً"
قررت محكمة العدل العليا الفلسطينية، اليوم الخميس، وقف إجراء الانتخابات المحلية مؤقتا، والتي من المقرر أن تجري في الثامن من أكتوبر/تشرين الأول المقبل، وكان من المقرر أيضاً أن تقام في الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة.

أعضاء في "الكنيست" يطالبون بنقاش عاجل للدعم الذي تقدمه إسرائيل لـ"البشير"
قالت تقارير إخبارية إسرائيلية إن أعضاءً في الكنيست الإسرائيلي “البرلمان"، طالبوا بنقاش عاجل للدعم الذي تقدمه الحكومة الإسرائيلية للرئيس السوداني، عمر البشير، رغم صدور مذكرة دولية باعتقاله بتهم ارتكاب جرائم حرب.

ليبرمان يعلن دعمه للجندي قاتل الشهيد عبد الفتاح الشريف حتى لو أخطأ
صرح وزير جيش الاحتلال الإسرائيلي، أفيغدور ليبرمان، في "مؤتمر هرتسليا "لمكافحة الارهاب" أمس الاثنين أنه سيقف إلى جانب الجندي القاتل، إليئور أزاريا، الذي أعدم الشاب الفلسطيني عبد الفتاح الشريف في الخليل، "حتى إن ثبت أنه أخطأ".

شروط اسرائيلية على ذبح الأضاحي في القدس المحتلة
شددت بلدية الاحتلال في مدينة القدس على منع ذبح الأضاحي في المحال التي تبيع اللحوم أو أمام ساحات المنازل واشترطت أن تتم في مسلخ البلدية فقط.

السياسة الخارجية

خارجية التشيك: يجب قيام دولة فلسطين
أكد وزير الشؤون الخارجية التشيكي، لوبومير زاؤراليك، أن دولة فلسطين ينبغي أن تقوم، في تصريح مصور بثه التليفزيون التشيكي العام، وفقًا لما ذكرته وكالة "معا" الفلسطينية.

سفير فلسطين ورئيس بلدية استثيون سنترال في تشيلي يفتتحان مدرسة دولة فلسطين
افتتح سفير دولة فلسطين لدى جمهورية تشيلي عماد نبيل جدع ورئيس بلدية إستثيون سنترال مدرسة دولة فلسطين الأساسية في إحدى ضواحي سانتياغو

بوغدانوف يبحث مع سفير فلسطين جهود موسكو لتيسير الحوار الفلسطيني الإسرائيلي
بحث ميخائيل بوغدانوف، مبعوث الرئيس الروسي الخاص إلى الشرق الأوسط وإفريقيا، مع سفير فلسطين في موسكو، عبد الحافظ نوفل، جهود روسيا المبذولة لبدء الحوار الفلسطيني الإسرائيلي.

واشنطن تنتقد تصريحات نتنياهو ضد الفلسطينيين بشدة
قالت الناطقة باسم وزارة الخارجية الأميركية، إليزابيث تروودو، في تصريح يعتبر الأول من نوعه لجهة حدة انتقادات الحكومة الأميركية للاستيطان الإسرائيلي في الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة، أن حكومتها تعارض بشدة تصريحات رئيس وزراء إسرائيل بنيامين نتنياهو التي وصف فيها رغبة الفلسطينيين بإنشاء دولة تخلو من السكان اليهود بأنها "تطهير عرقي".

الولايات المتحدة تقر أكبر صفقة مساعدات عسكرية لإسرائيل في تاريخها بقيمة 38 مليار دولار
وافقت الولايات المتحدة على تقديم حزمة مساعدات عسكرية غير مسبوقة لإسرائيل خلال السنوات العشر المقبلة تقدر بـ 38 مليار دولار، بحسب مسؤولين أمريكيين، وتعد الأكبر لمثل هذا النوع من الصفقات في التاريخ الأمريكي.

مطار بلغراد يغضب الإسرائيليين بالإعلان عن رحلة متوجهة إلى فلسطين ونائب هولندي يرفض مصافحة نتنياهو
نادت مذيعة المطار المسؤولة عن توجيه المسافرين نحو وجهتهم، عبر مكبرات الصوت في المطار على المسافرين على متن الرحلة الجوية التابعة لشركة «الخطوط الجوية الصربية» المتوجهة إلى تل أبيب، الذهاب إلى البوابة رقم C3 من أجل إنهاء إجراءات سفرهم إلى فلسطين.

قافلة نسائية دولية لكسر الحصار عن قطاع غزة ستنطلق غداً
ينهي "التحالف الدولي لأسطول الحرية" هذا الاسبوع آخر استعداداته لإطلاق قافلة كسر الحصار النسائية البحرية، والتي من المقرر انطلاقها غداً من ميناء برشلونة بإسبانيا باتجاه المياه الإقليمية إلى قطاع غزة عبر ميناء "اجاكسيو" في كورسيكا، فرنسا بمشاركة عدد من الناشطات من دول مختلفة، عربية وأجنبية.

المستوطنات وعنف المستوطنين

في يوم عرفة: مستوطنون يقتحمون باحات الأقصى
اقتحمت مجموعات من المستوطنين، صباح اليوم الأحد، باحات المسجد الأقصى من جهة باب المغاربة، تحت حماية مشددة من قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي ووحداته الخاصة.

لجنة في الكنيست تطالب بمزيد من المساعدات لأربع مستوطنات
أقرت ما تسمى لجنة الشؤون الخارجية والدفاع في الكنيست الإسرائيلي أن هناك أربع مستوطنات في الضفة تشهد "توترًا أمنيًا خطيرًا" و"يسودها تهديد أمني مستمر."

١١٠ مليون شاقل إضافية لحماية المستوطنات
أعلنت وزارة الجيش الاسرائيلي اضافة 110 مليون شاقل لميزانية حماية المستوطنات الاسرائيلية في الضفة الغربية والمحيطة بقطاع غزة.

قانون

"العليا" الاسرائيلية تجيز إطعام الأسرى المضربين قسريا
أصدرت المحكمة العليا الإسرائيلية، اليوم الأحد، حكمًا يجيز إطعام الأسرى المضربين عن الطعام قسريًا، حتى في حال اعترضوا على ذلك.

قراقع: مساع لنقل الأسرى المضربين لمستشفيات فلسطينية
قال رئيس هيئة شؤون الأسرى والمحررين عيسى قراقع، ان الهيئة قدمت طلبا للنيابة العامة الإسرائيلية، لنقل الأسرى المضربين عن الطعام للمستشفيات الفلسطينية.

"العليا الإسرائيلية" ترفض للمرة الثانية طلب إلغاء الاعتقال الإداري للأسير القاضي
رفضت المحكمة العليا الإسرائيلية، اليوم الثلاثاء، طلبا لإلغاء الاعتقال الإداري للأسير المضرب عن الطعام مالك القاضي المضرب عن الطعام منذ 61 يومًا.

٥٠ أسيراً يشرعون بإضراب تضامني مع الأسرى البلبول والقاضي
شرع 50 أسيرا فلسطينيا، بإضراب مفتوح عن الطعام تضامناً مع الأسرى المضربين، محمد ومحمود البلبول ومالك القاضي. 

اقتصاد وتنمية

ارتفاع مؤشر بورصة فلسطين
سجل المؤشر الرئيسي لبورصة فلسطين اليوم الخميس ارتفاعا بنسبة 0.46%، فيما بلغت قيمة تداولاتها ما يقارب 1.2 مليون دولار.

مبادرة "دكان" في فلسطين لإعادة تدوير المخلفات والأغراض المستعملة
أطلقت مؤسسة "دالية" المجتمعية مبادرة "دكّان" بهدف حشد الموارد المحلية في الأراضي الفلسطينية، حيث تم إنجاز هذه المبادرة بمساعدة عدد من المتطوعين.

95.9 مليون دولار ارباح البنوك العاملة في فلسطين خلال 7 شهور
كشفت معطيات تقرير رسمي الأربعاء، أن إجمالي أرباح البنوك في فلسطين ارتفعت بنسبة 18.6٪ خلال الشهور السبعة الأولى من العام الجاري، مقارنة مع الفترة المناظرة من 2015.

الأمم المتحدة: ربع أطفال غزة بحاجة لدعم نفسي واجتماعي
أظهرت دراسة حديثة للأمم المتحدة أن ربع الأطفال الفلسطينيين في قطاع غزة لا يزالون بحاجة إلى دعم نفسي واجتماعي لتجاوز مخلفات الحرب التي شنتها إسرائيل على القطاع في صيف عام 2014.

"الأونروا": احتياجات النمو فاقت الدعم المالي
قالت وكالة الأمم المتحدة لإغاثة وتشغيل اللاجئين الفلسطينيين في الشرق الأدنى "الأونروا"، إن احتياجات النمو لديها فاقت الدعم المالي. 

الحركة العالمية لمقاطعة إسرائيل وسحب الاستثمارات منها وفرض العقوبات عليها:

أكثر من 50 مدينة وقرية إسبانيّة تُقاطع إسرائيل
في خطوةٍ تُعدّ انتصاراً جديداً لحركة «المقاطعة وسحب الاستثمارات وفرض العقوبات» ضدّ «إسرائيل»، «BDS» أعلنت عشرات المدن الإسبانيّة أنّها «متحرّرة من الفصل العنصري الإسرائيلي». وتجاوز عدد المدن والقرى الإسبانيّة الّتي عبّرت عن هذا الإعلان الخمسين.

هل مقاطعة المنتجات الإسرائيلية تدعم الاقتصاد الفلسطيني؟
عام 2005 أطلقت أغلبية من المجتمع المدني الفلسطيني بما فيها الهيئات والنقابات والقوى الشعبية نداء لمقاطعة إسرائيل وسحب الاستثمارات منها، وفرضت العقوبات الاقتصادية عليها حتى تنصاع للقانون الدولي وتلتزم بحقوق الشعب الفلسطيني.

الكونغرس الامريكي يحتضن مؤتمراً لدعم الاستيطان في الضفة الغربية
أفادت صحيفة "إسرائيل اليوم" المقربة من رئيس الحكومة الإسرائيلية بنيامين نتنياهو، أن الكونغرس الأميركي احتضن للمرة الأولى مؤتمرا بغرض توجيه الدعم للاستيطان الإسرائيلي في الضفة الغربية، ومناهضة حركة المقاطعة العالمية (بي دي أس).

نواب أوروبيون يطالبون الفيفا بعدم دعم الاحتلال الإسرائيلي عبر كرة القدم
طالب 66 نائباً في البرلمان الأوروبي اليوم (الجمعة) "الاتحاد الدولي لكرة القدم" (فيفا) أن يستبعد من الدوري الإسرائيلي الأندية التي تنتمي إلى مناطق محتلة بشكل غير قانوني من قبل الدولة العبرية، نظراً لأنهم يرون أن هذه الأندية يجب أن تكون تابعة للاتحاد الفلسطيني للعبة.

الموسيقار البريطاني اينو يمنع فرقة رقص اسرائيلية من استخدام موسيقاه
رفض الموسيقار البريطاني براين اينو السماح لأشهر فرقة رقص اسرائيلية بالاستمرار في استخدام نتاجاته الموسيقية في سلسلة من العروض تقدمها الفرقة في ايطاليا بعد ان علم ان فعاليات الفرقة تُقام برعاية السفارة الاسرائيلية في روما.

قصائد للشَّاعر الإيطالي آلدو بالاتْسِسْكي Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-1974)

آلدو بالاتْسِسْكي في سطور:

اسمه الحقيقي آلدو جورلاني، وبهذا الاسم وقَّع أعماله الشِّعريَّة الأولى قبل أن يتَّخذ من اسم عائلة جدَّته لأمِّه، بالاتْسِسْكي، اسماً أدبيَّاً له. وُلِدَ في 2 شباط/ فبراير 1885 في مدينة فلورنسا. درس المحاسبة نزولاً عند رغبة والدِه، ثمَّ ما لبث أن تحوَّل إلى الفن والكتابة حيث درس التمثيل في كلِّيَّة "تومَّاسو سالفيني" للإخراج المسرحي، ومن بين رفاق المسرح هناك تعرَّف بغابريللينو ابن الشَّاعر الكبير غابرييل دانُّونتسو. لكن مع مرور الوقت بدأ بالاتْسِسْكي يبتعد عن المسرح وينكب بدلاً منه على الشِّعر. بفضل الحالة المادِّيَّة لعائلته كان قادراً على طباعة دواوينه على نفقته، وهذا ما كان، ففي سنة 1905 طبعَ ديوانه الأوَّل "الأحصنة البيضاء" باسم ناشرٍ وهميٍّ "تْشِزارِه بلانك" (الاسم الذي لم يكن في الحقيقة إلا اسم هرِّه الأليف). وقد قرَّبَ هذا الدِّيوانُ بالاتْسِسكي من الغروبيِّين لجهة أسلوبه أكثر ممَّا لجهة مضمونه. في سنة 1907 صدرت مجموعته الشِّعريَّة الثانية "سِراج"، وكما في المجموعة الأولى، فإنَّ القصائد هنا تميل إلى الغموض واستخدام رموزٍ تتمحور، بالرَّغم من حداثة سنِّ الشَّاعر، حول الموت والشَّيخوخة والمرض. بعدها بسنتين صدرت مجموعته الشِّعريَّة الثَّالثة "قصائد" التي كان لها الدَّور الأكبر في حمله صوبَ جماهيريَّةٍ أوسع، حيث دعته مجلَّة "شِعر" للنَّشر فيها. في سنة 1910 صدرت مجموعته الشِّعريَّة "المحرِق" التي أظهرت تحوُّلاً كبيراً عن الحركة الغروبيَّة نحو الحركة المستقبليَّة. غير أنَّه عاد ليعلن انفصاله عن الحركة المستقبليَّة في سنة 1914 عندما تحوَّلت من حركة فنية وأدبية إلى حركة تدعو إلى الحرب وتشجِّع عليها. بعد التحاقه، مُجبَراً، بالخدمة العسكريَّة خلال الحرب العالميَّة الأولى عاش حياةً منزوية ومنعزلة، فلم يشارك خلال حقبة الفاشيَّة بالحياة الثقافيَّة الرَّسميَّة، وصمت تقريباً عن الشِّعر لمدَّة ثلاثين عاماً تحوَّل خلالها إلى كتابة القصَّة والرواية. أمَّا المرحلة الشِّعريَّة الثانية، بعد مرحلة الصَّمت، فبدأها الشَّاعر بنشر قصائده في المجلَّات خلال الحرب العالميَّة الثانية، لتصدرَ في ما بعد في ديوانٍ بعنوان "قلبي" سنة 1968. في سنة 1972 صدرت مجموعته الشِّعريَّة "طريق الألف نجمة" التي قال عنها بالاتْسِسكي: "أردت أن أصنع شيئاً جديداً، متَّخذاً طريقاً مغايرة عِبْرَ هذه القصائد، دون طموحاتٍ إنشائيَّةٍ ولغويَّة. إنَّها محض مذكرات، تكاد تكون دفتر يوميَّاتٍ لا أكثر. لا تلتزم هذه القصائد بعهدٍ من العهود، بل إنَّها متروكةٌ للانزلاق والهرب...". وكانت تلك آخر إصداراته الشِّعريَّة، ففي الحادي عشر من آب/ أغسطس 1974، وفيما كانت الأوساط الثقافيَّة تستعدُّ للاحتفال بعيد ميلاده التِّسعين، توفِّي بالاتْسِسْكي في إحدى مستشفيات روما بعد أن تدهورت صحَّته بسبب إهماله لخرَّاج أسنانٍ حادٍّ أصابه.

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إذن، حتَّى وإن اقترب بالاتْسِسْكي، خلال المراحل المختلفة لنشاطه الشِّعريِّ، من الحركات الأدبيَّة التي عاصرَها، إلَّا أنَّه حافظ دائماً على فردانيَّته وعلى صوته الخاص. في مرحلته الشِّعريَّة الأولى تأثَّر بالغروبيَّة، ومن بعدها، بالمستقبليَّة، ومع ذلك لم يفقد شيئاً من أصالة ملامحه الشِّعريَّة. إنَّنا لا نجد في قصائده المبوَّبة ضمن الحركة الغروبيَّة إفراطاً في تقديس الفراغ والخمول، فهو ولئن اقتفى بعض موضوعات الغروبيَّة، إلَّا أنَّه استبدلَ الدُّعابة بالأنين، ولطَّخ النَّبرة الرثائيَّة بروح الهزْل التي منحتْ قصائدَه سمتَها اللاهية. أمَّا اقترابه العفويُّ من الحركة المستقبليَّة فلقد كان من شأنه أن يفجِّر إلى أبعد حدٍّ طموحَه بتحويل الكلمة إلى أداة لهوٍ صرْفٍ. مع ذلك، رفض بالاتْسِسكي كلَّ قصيدةٍ تتَّصل بالأحداث المرحليَّة للتَّاريخ، وأراد للتجربة الشِّعريَّة أن تتحرَّر بالمطلق من جميع الالتزامات. وعليه أعلن رسميَّاً، سنة 1914، في مجلَّة "لاتْشِربا"، انفصاله عن الحركة المستقبليَّة، ونزوعه نحو الفرح ومعابثات الخيال: "ينبغي أن نعوِّد أنفسنا على الضحك من كلِّ ما اعتدنا البكاء عليه، لنقوِّي بذلك أعماقنا. لا يكون الإنسان إنساناً بحقٍّ إلَّا عندما يضحك [...] ينبغي أن نعلِّم أبنائنا الضحكَ، الضحكَ الأكثر إفراطاً، الأكثر تغطرساً؛ أن نعلِّمهم شجاعةَ الضَّحك بأعتى ما يكون الصَّخب...". هذا الموقف يجعلنا نقع عند بالاتْسِسكي على موضوعاتٍ ونبراتٍ جدُّ متنوِّعة، توحِّدها جميعاً، من حيث المبدأ، تلك الرَّغبة بتحطيم البنى التقليديَّة للقصيدة.

* * *

النُّصوص:

[من مجموعة "الأحصنة البيضاء" 1905]

العلامة(1)

هناك حيث تتقاطع الدُّروب
يتَّكئ على شجرة سروٍ صليب.
على سوادِ الخشب تومضُ
تواريخُ بيضاء.
مَن يمرُّ به يتوقَّف هنيهةً،
وبإصبعين فقط، وقد مَسَّ ذلك الخشبَ مسَّاً خفيفاً،
يرسم علامة الصَّليب.

*
آرا، مارا، أمارا(2)

في أسفلِ المنحدَر،
بين شجرِ سروٍ سامقٍ،
ثمَّة مرجٌ صغير.
في تلك الظِّلال تقبع
ثلاث عجائز
يَلعبن بزهرِ النَّرد.
لا يرفعن الرَّأسَ هُنيهةً واحدة،
لا يغيِّرن مواضعهنَّ يوماً واحداً.
راكعاتٍ على العشب
يَنكَبِبْنَ على اللعب في تلك الظِّلال.

*
بيتُ مارا

بيتُ مارا حجرةٌ صغيرةٌ مِن خشب،
بجانبه سروةٌ تظلِّله في النَّهار.
قُبالته تجري القطارات.
قابعةً في ظلِّ السَّروة السَّامقة هي ذي مارا تحيك.
للعجوز مِائةٌ من السِّنين،
تواصل حياتها وهي تحيك في ذلك الظِّلِّ.
القطارات تجري سِراعاً أمامَها
حاملةً البشرَ إلى البعيد.
ترفع رأسها هنيهةً
ثمَّ من فورِها تستأنفُ عملها.
القطارات تخورُ
إذ تتقاطعُ خطفاً أمام بيتِ مارا.
ترفع رأسها هنيهةً
ثمَّ من فورِها تستأنفُ عملها.

*
عجوزُ النُّعاس

للعجوز مِائةٌ من السِّنين.
لا أحد رآها تطوف في النَّهار.
كثيراً ما يعثر عليها النَّاسُ غافيةً
عند الينابيع:
لا يوقظها أحد.
على هسهسةِ الماء العذبة
العجوز تغفو،
وتلبث غافيةً في الهسهسةِ العذبة
أيَّاماً وأيَّاماً وأيَّامْ ...

*
الببَّغاء

للبهيمة(3) رِيشٌ بألوانٍ كثيرة
يلتمعُ في الشَّمس فتتقلَّب ألوانه.

على تلك النَّافذة يقبع مِن مائةِ عامٍ
يتأمَّل النَّاسَ في غُدُوِّهم ورَواحِهم.
لا ينطق ولا يغنِّي.

المارَّة يتوقَّفون للنَّظر إليه،
يحدِّثونه ويصفرون له ويغنُّون،
وهو يحدِّق صامتاً.

يناديه النَّاسُ
وهو يحدِّق صامتاً.

*
فاصلُ التَّلاشيات(4)

عِبْرَ الزُّجاج الفائق الإعتام
يمرُّ ضبابٌ بنفسجيٌّ خفيف:
ضياءٌ بالغ الرِّقَّة.
وتُسمَعُ النُّوتاتُ المحتضرة
لرقصاتٍ أكثر خمولاً.
يُرى عِبْرَ الزُّجاج
كيف تمرُّ خطفاً
الإزاراتُ البيضاء
لأزواج الرَّاقصين.

* * *
[من مجموعة "سِراج" 1907]

عبورُ النَّاصريَّات(5)

ناصريَّاتٌ بيضٌ، ناصريَّاتٌ سُود.
على ضفَّتي النَّهر
ديران يحدِّقان في بعضها منذ عهدٍ قديم،
تحدِّق بعينِ الصَّداقة العتيقة
في بعضها تلك البروج الصَّغيرة، بيضاءَ سوداءَ،
والرَّاهبات يتلاقين في المساء،
في المساءِ آناءَ الشَّفق.
يتلاقين مرَّتين، البيضاواتُ والسَّوداوات،
على الجسرِ، الجسرِ الذي يصلُ الدَّيرين،
يصلهما منذ القديم بصداقةٍ عتيقة،
والبروج الصَّغيرة تحدِّق في بعضها ضاحكةً
بيضاءَ سوداءَ،
والرَّاهبات يتلاقين في المساء،
في المساءِ آناءَ الشَّفق.
الكنيستان الصَّغيرتان تُفتَحان عندَ الشَّفق،
تخرج منهما الرَّاهباتُ خِفافاً ويلجنَ الجسرَ؛
في منتصف الجسر يتلاقين،
ينحنين البيضاواتُ منهنَّ والسَّوداوات،
يتحوَّلن كلٌّ نحو كنيسةِ الأخرى مُلقياتٍ بالسَّلام؛
يتلين هناك صلاةً قصيرة،
وخِفافاً يلجن الجسرَ من جديد.
يتلاقين ثانيةً في المنتصف،
ينحنين صفَّاً أبيضَ وصفَّاً أسود،
الرَّاهباتُ يتلاقين في المساء،
في المساءِ آناءَ الشَّفق.

*
حديقةٌ رطبة

الحديقة مُوصَدةٌ مُوصَدةٌ مُوصَدة،
مُوصَدةٌ بجدارٍ يمتدُّ
أميالاً وأميالاً وأميالْ،
جدارٍ مغطَّى بالعفن،
مغطَّى بحَزَازٍ أخضر،
منقوعٍ في وحولٍ غزيرة.
لا منفذَ يلوحُ في الحديقة
ولا ثلمةَ حتَّى تضيءُ هناك،
ليس إلَّا العفن المنهمر
يمكن أن يُرى، ليس إلَّا
نقيع الوحول الغزيرة.
الأرزُ السَّامق يجاوز الجدار،
الصَّنوبرُ الصَّلبُ الجذوع ينتأ بتيجانِه،
يبسقُ سروٌ، وماغنوليا مُحمرَّة،
وصفصافٌ، صفصافٌ جمٌّ
يطلق آهاتِه البعيدة،
مازجاً على الجدار دمعَه
المسفوك بالحزازِ الأخضر،
بالنَّقيعِ الرَّماديِّ للوحول.
من الخارج هي ذي الحديقة مُوصَدة،
مُوصَدة بجدارٍ
يمتدُّ أميالاً وأميالاً وأميالْ.
بين الظِّلال، بين الظِّلال ذات السَّطوة،
في أجمة الأشجار العظيمة،
لا أحد إلَّا ثلاث نساءٍ يطفن ببطءٍ،
فائقات الجمال: مثلَ ملكات.
يطفن ببطءٍ وفي صمت
بين ظلال الحديقة الموصَدة،
يسحبن وراءَهنَّ ملاءةَ الحِدادِ الثَّقيلة، النِّساء،
موشَّحاتٍ بخمارٍ
بالكادِ يحجبُ صفرةَ الوجوه.

* * *
[من مجموعة "قصائد" 1909]

مَن أكون؟

أأكون ربَّما شاعراً؟(6)
لا، البتَّة.
كلمةً واحدةً فحسب، كلمةً جدُّ غريبة،
تخطُّها آلامُ روحي:
"الجنون".
أأكون رسَّاماً إذاً؟
ولا هذا.
لا يملك إلَّا لوناً واحداً
لوحُ ألوان روحي:
"السَّوداويَّة".
موسيقيَّاً أكون إذاً؟
ولا حتَّى هذا.
ليس ثمَّة إلَّا نوتةٌ واحدة
في لوحة مفاتيح روحي:
"الحنين".
فماذا أكون إذاً؟
إنَّني واضعٌ عدسةً أمام قلبي
فأجعله مرئيَّاً للبشر.
مَن أكون؟
لست إلَّا بهلوانَ روحي.

*
ساعاتٌ موحِشة

من السَّقف تهوي إلى أسفل
واحدةً تِلْوَ الأخرى
السَّاعات،
تُسقِطُها إلى أسفل تِباعاً
السَّاعةُ ذات المطرقة،
فتهوي كلُّها
في طَرْقاتٍ جافَّةٍ متشابهة
على رأسي.
لَكأنَّ كلَّ طَرْقةٍ منها
وخزةٌ بسنِّ إبرة،
أو كأنَّ أحداً ينتزع منِّي شَعرة.
أيَّتها السَّاعات الموحِشة كرغيفٍ مستوحدٍ
لأجل اليوم ولأجل الغد
ولأجل أيَّام الأسابيع قاطبةً.
أيَّتها الفجريَّة، والغروبيَّة،
المسكونة بالأجراس،
والقريبة والبعيدة.
يا ساعات النَّهار التي
لا تضحك لعاشقٍ ينتظر.
أيَّتها السَّاعات الرَّماديَّة، والسَّوداء،
يا هدآتِ الأجراس،
القريبة والبعيدة.
هو ذا يدنو ذاوياً
خورَسُ الدَّير العتيق
خورَسُ النَّاصريَّات اللائي
يبحن بآلامهنَّ في جوقةٍ واحدة
طِوالَ السَّاعات،
ساعاتٍ يرينها هنَّ أيضاً موحِشة.
"في العُلى، في العُلى، في العُلى...
المجدُ لك يا الله!"
يا ساعاتِ الليل، وساعاتِ النَّهار،
المتشابهة كلِّها
التي لا تضحك لعاشقٍ ينتظر.
أيَّتها السَّاعات الموحِشة كرغيفٍ مستوحدٍ
لأجل اليوم ولأجل الغد
ولأجل أيَّام الأسابيع قاطبةً.

*
بحرٌ رماديٌّ

مفتوناً أحدِّق في ذلك البحر:
بحرٍ هامدٍ متشابه.
لا يموجُ،
لا عصفةَ تجعِّدُ ماءَه،
لا نَسَمَ يهبُّ عليه.
تغشاه سماءٌ رماديَّة
جدُّ خفيضة، كثيفةٌ، وخالدة.
مفتوناً أحدِّق في ذلك البحر.
لا سفينة، لا شراع، لا جناح،
لا شيء إلَّاه
صفيحةٌ هائلةٌ من فضَّةٍ صدئة.
فوقه
محجَّباً يبدو كلُّ كوكب.
الشَّمسُ تتلفَّع ببرقعِ حِداد،
والقمرُ بخمارٍ رمادي،
النُّجومُ التي لا تحصَى تحدِّق فيه
موارِبةً قليلاً
عيونَها المتوقِّدة.
مفتوناً أحدِّق في ذلك البحر.
لكن من صبَّ فيه ماءَه؟
أمِن جبالٍ انسفحَ؟
أمِنَ السَّماء انهمرَ؟
أم تراه مِن عيون الخليقةِ انسفكَ؟
أيُّها البحرُ الرَّمادي،
المستوي كصفيحة فضَّةٍ صدئة،
الهامدُ والمستوحد،
والمتشابه،
إنِّي أحدِّق فيك مفتوناً.
لكن أهو موجودٌ هذا البحر؟ أهو حقَّاً موجود؟
إنَّه لا ريبَ موجود!
أنا وحدي أراه،
أنا وحدي القادر على إطالةِ أمدِ النَّظر إليه،
الشِّراعُ نسجته بيديَّ:
هو أوَّلُ شراعٍ يشقُّ عبابَه.

*
ريو بو(7)

ثلاثة بيوتٍ صغيرةٍ صغيرة
بأسقفٍ مؤنَّفة،
مرجٌ صغيرٌ أخضر،
نُهيرٌ شحيحٌ: ريو بو،
سروةٌ مترصِّدة،
بلدٌ بالغ الصِّغَر، حقيقيٌّ،
بلدٌ كأنَّه العدَم، ولكن...
ثمَّة فوقه على الدَّوامِ نجمة،
نجمةٌ هائلةٌ، مهيبة،
تبدو كأنَّها...
تداعب بنظراتها القمَّة المدبَّبة للسَّروة
سَروةِ ريو بو،
أتُراها نجمةٌ عاشقة؟
أفي وُسعِ مدينةٍ عظيمةٍ
أن تفاخرَ بمثلِها؟

*
الباب

أمامَ بابي
يقف العابرون لينظروا،
والبعضُ ليهمسَ:
"هناك، داخل ذلك البيت،
الكلُّ موتى،
لا يُشرَّع أبداً ذلك الباب،
أبداً أبداً أبدا".
آه يا بابي الحزين!
أيُّها المدخلُ الكبير المعتم
المطرَّز بمسامير ضخمة لا تُحصَى عددا،
ما عدتَ تسمع
حفيفَ الحرير مائجاً أمامَك.
مصراعاك الهائلان مِن حديدٍ مُطاوِع،
ما عاد يطرقهما أحد،
لم يطرقهما أحدٌ
منذ عهدٍ بعيد.
أنت المنخورُ بالسُّوسِ،
المغطَّى بخيوط العناكب،
لم يفتحك أحدٌ منذ سنين وسنين،
لم ينفض غبارَك أحد،
لم يكشف بعضَ زينتكَ أحد.
النَّاس يمرُّون وينظرون،
يقفون ليهمسوا:
"هناك، داخل ذلك البيت،
الكلُّ موتى،
لا يُشرَّع أبداً ذلك الباب،
أبداً أبداً أبدا".

* * *
[من مجموعة "المُحرِق" 1910]

المَواكِب

اليومَ، تتراءى أمامي
طريقٌ طويلةٌ
لا نهاية لها،
مكتظَّةٌ بالمواكب.
طريقٌ طويلةٌ مغبَّرة
تمتدُّ إلى ما لا نهاية
مِن أمام بيتي بالضَّبط.
من نافذة غرفةِ نومي
أحدِّق
في كلِّ ذلك الرَّواح،
كلِّ ذلك اللهاث، وكلِّ تلك الوقفات.
مواكب ساكنة، مواكب مطوِّفة،
مواكب محلِّقة،
تنفضُّ في الطَّريق أمامي.

مواكبُ سامقةٌ وخضراء
مِن سَروٍ وشوحٍ،
مواكبُ أجنحةٍ، مواكبُ أيدٍ،
أقدامٍ، عُكَّازاتٍ، عيونٍ،
عيونٍ غريبة، متوقِّدة، هامدة،
نظراتٍ نافذة البصيرة،
نظراتٍ حُمْقٍ.
رجالٌ برَّاقون
مُدَثَّرون بالحديد،
رجالٌ نصف عراةٍ
ملتفُّون بالفرو،
يمضون قدُماً قدُماً،
تارةً سِراعاً وتارةً مُبطئين،
مختلطين بالأنعام
موكباً تِلْوَ الموكب.

مواكبُ بيوتٍ، مواكبُ قصورٍ،
سُفنٍ، زوارق،
نسوةٍ صارماتٍ
محشوراتٍ في العربات،
مومساتٍ فظَّاتٍ في زُمَر.
مواكبُ طيرٍ، مواكبُ حشراتٍ،
فوقَ مواكبِ سطوحٍ.
في أذنيَّ تصفرُ
ألفُ فكرةٍ بلهاء،
وتحلِّق في السَّماء خفيفةً خفيفة.
أحدهم يتوغَّل في البعيد،
دافعاً عكَّازه
يريدُ أن يخرق به العالَم.
وفي الأعلى تتجسَّس بدهاءٍ،
مواكبُ نجومٍ برَّاقة.

لكن ما كلُّ ذلك العبور،
كلُّ ذلك المضيُّ، كلُّ تلك الوقفات؟....
إنْ هي إلَّا رُكبانٌ رُكبانٌ رُكبان....
بان بان بان بان بان....
آن آن آن آن آن....
نننننننننننننننن....
ن..... ن..... ن..... ن..... ن.....(8)

في الخلفيَّة قابعٌ أنا أنظر،
هادئاً عند النَّافذة
نافذةِ غرفةِ نومي،
أنظر، وأنتظر.
لكن قولوا لي، أين أنتم ماضون؟
أين تمضون؟ أيمكن أن أعرف؟
ماذا يوجد في نهاية تلك الطَّريق؟
أماضون أنتم إلى مدينة الشَّمسِ، شمسي؟
أغبياء! حمقى! قفوا!
ألا تعلمون
أنَّ تلك المدينة
لا يمكن أن يدخلَها إلَّاي؟
أقسم لكم!

*
قَصْري ورأسي

عندَ النَّافذة
نافذةِ غرفةِ نومي،
في قصريَ المتهالك،
ألتذُّ طوال المساء
بالبقاء وحيداً مع رأسي.
اللذَّة، تقولون،
لا يمكن أن تبقى رحيمةً
مع شاعرٍ، مثلي، متبطِّلٍ.
أنظر إلى أسفل عِبرَ الوادي،
أنظر إلى الجبال، إلى التِّلال،
البحرُ لا يُرى من هنا.
وتدورُ تدورُ
وتتثنَّى السُّنونواتُ
حولَ قصري.
(آهِ كم تدور!)
وتدورُ تدورُ
وتتثنَّى
الأفكارُ حولَ رأسي.
(آهِ كم تدور!)
تحليقاتُ سنونواتٍ خِفاف
وأفكارٍ خِفاف.
(ما هي دائماً بِخِفاف).
وأتأمَّل أمامي الوادي،
الجبال، التِّلال،
الأشجار الهائلة هَوْلَ غابة،
منسَّقةً حدَّ الكمال،
في صفوفٍ تمتدُّ بلا نهاية،
أمَّا البحرُ فلا يُرى من هنا.
وتدورُ تدورُ
وتتثنَّى
السُّنونواتُ حول القصر الهرِم.
(آهِ كم تدور!)
وتدورُ تدورُ
وتتثنَّى
الأفكارُ حول الرَّأس الفتي.
(آهِ كم تدور!)
أفكِّرُ:
لو كان لكلِّ فكرةٍ
خيطٌ بين الشِّفاه
(كمثلِ العنكبوت)
لو كان في مناقيرها خيطٌ
(كمثلِ العنكبوت)
كلُّ السُّنونوات التي تدور،
كلُّ السُّنونوات التي دارت،
لكان قصري ورأسي
بَكَرَتين
جِدُّ جِدُّ جِدُّ منفوشَتين.

[اختارها وترجمها عن الإيطاليَّة: أمارجي]