In the wake of President Trump’s shocking announcement that he favors the U.S. “take over the Gaza Strip and…own it” and hopes to resettle the Gazan Palestinian population elsewhere, not only the global diplomatic community but also scholars of the region have been given a renewed focus on how the topic of Gaza and its people will be understood, analyzed, and treated. It is fortunate then that Ilan Pappe, long one of the most important scholars of the Israel/Palestine conflict, has provided an essential resource on the expanding discipline of Palestine Studies. Writing in the UCLA Law Review—the campus was one of the most important venues for activism related to Gaza over the course of 2023-24—Pappe not only traces the origin of Palestine Studies as it emerged through academic journals like the Journal of Palestine Studies and the Jerusalem Quarterly, but also how programs and academic chairs are now proliferating in Canada, the UK, the US and elsewhere.
Pappe’s article, Palestine Studies: An Activist Academic Field, is one I like a lot and I hope others seeking greater understanding of Palestine and Palestinian people do as well. Pappe’s story itself is fascinating—he was born in Haifa, educated at the Hebrew University, and served in the IDF before attending the University of Oxford where, like other prominent Middle Eastern historians who studied alongside Albert Hourani, he developed an approach to research that emphasized a comprehensive approach to primary and secondary sources. He eventually became a so-called “New Historian”—one of a number of Israeli academics who, working from records then newly-released from Israel’s state archives, challenged conventional narratives about the origin of the state and have argued that Israel was established through violent and orchestrated mass expulsion of Palestinians. Pappe himself writes from Exeter in a kind of self-exile, departing from the University of Haifa after advocating the boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.
In Part I of the article, Pappe traces the origins of Palestine Studies from the work of dedicated Palestinian historians first in Beirut at the Palestine Research Centre and later in Washington, D.C. at the Institute for Palestine Studies. After prominent Palestinian Professor Edward Said’s publication of Orientalism in 1978, Palestine Studies, according to Pappe, became interwoven with a wider set of interpretive and methodological movements that emphasized the examination of history, language, and culture from the perspective of the colonized, the dispossessed, and the marginal. Curricular innovations followed.
At the same time, in universities throughout the West and South America, courses focusing on Palestine have enriched the curricula of area studies, politics, and international relations. In the past, Palestine-focused modules were located in Conflict Studies or at best appeared in Middle Eastern Studies departments; at worst they were limited to Jewish and Israel Studies departments. With the emergence of dedicated institutions, programs, and courses across the globe, Palestine has become integral to scholarly discussions about decolonization, Indigenous Studies, international law, and Genocide Studies. (P. 1282.)
In Part II, Pappe turns his attention to the “Present State of the Art.” In addition to providing a succinct account of the juxtaposition of Palestine Studies with other intersectional advances in research and pedagogy, Pappe points to 2010 to 2020 as the critical decade in which Palestine Studies advanced worldwide.
He explores the interrelationships between specific disciplines and Palestine Studies: International law has been shaped by the strenuous efforts undertaken by primarily Western governments to apologize, justify, and excuse the frequent violations of international law committed against Palestinians. The role of women during episodes of Palestinian diplomacy, resistance, and advocacy has also informed Gender and Women’s Studies’ research, teaching, and curricular design. Palestine Studies, in turn, has benefited from its expanded dialogue with other disciplines. As Pappe concludes, “Palestine Studies will continue to benefit from the theoretical nuances, comparative case studies, and strategies of resistance offered by Indigenous Studies, literature, social psychology, economics, international law, transnationalism, Settler Colonial Studies, and Cultural Studies.”
Pappe also highlights the distinction Palestine Studies suffers—that it is uniquely targeted for its content, its speakers, and its factual and historical basis. Palestine and Palestinians “remain the only focus of inquiry consistently undermined by governments and media in the West, as well as by mainstream academia” he writes. (P. 1281.) Pappe anticipates that like analogous but more forgiven movements and historical episodes, Palestine Studies will emerge from these antagonistic efforts as an essential, ever-expanded discipline.
In Part III, Pappe meditates about the future, about the need for a closer alignment between scholarship advanced by Palestine Studies and the actual, objective reality of Palestinians and Palestine on the ground. Since October 2023, Pappe argues, there has been a more intense campaign to silence scholars of Palestine Studies and to negatively depict its researchers, study subjects, and conclusions. But in this sense, as his eponymous title suggests, the discipline itself has always been and must necessarily be activist. As the aggressive and contradictory orders issue from the White House affecting more and more territories and more and more vulnerable populations, Palestine Studies will become, Pappe argues, an essential field for “confronting dehumanization and racism, connecting people and their struggles, and building a future in which knowledge serves the aims of justice and liberation.” (P. 1291.)
