The Global Economic and Political Implications of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Overview
Choose an entry point (e.g., object, story, conversation, experience, activity) to explore how a lecture theme (e.g., environment, labour, finance, education, technology) relates your life to GPE. Take a diary to capture your reflections on the experience and incorporate this into a final 1500-word report. Use photos, images, maps etc to illustrate your thoughts and experiences. We encourage you to discuss your ideas with other students on the course inside and outside the classroom. Use the following questions to guide your thinking and writing but you do not have to respond to all of them.
- Why is this an everyday practice? What makes it unexceptional and ordinary?
- How do your experiences align with or differ from perspectives presented in the literature you have read on this course?
- How does your positionality (class, gender, race, sexuality etc) shape your everyday experiences? How might your experience differ to other people in the same and different settings?
- What concepts help you make sense of this experience and connect it to wider GPE issues?
- What forms of inequality are hidden from your daily experience as a student in Leeds?
- How is this everyday experience shaped by global political economy structures and processes?
- What space is there for agency and resistance?
- How does this experience make you feel? Happy? Sad? Inspired? Troubled? Confused? Angry?
- Has your understanding of this issue changed during the course? Why? What has prompted this?
Instructions
- The log should be presented as a 1500-word report with in-text citations and a bibliography (references are not included in the word count). Use the first-person singular to capture your experiences and reflections. Avoid footnotes. The report can include images (photos, maps etc) to illustrate key points. The report should include an introduction which explains the main entry point, theme, concept (s) and argument (s) and a brief conclusion that summarises the main points and includes some final reflections.
- Use the diary to capture your experiences, thoughts, and reflections and use it to write the final report. The diary is not assessed and should not be submitted for assessment.
- The log should engage with at least two of the readings allocated for the main theme you have selected - think critically about how your experiences connect to conceptual and/or empirical points made in these studies. You can also draw on other core and further readings from the module.
THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT: A CENTURY-LONG STRUGGLE WITH GLOBAL IMPACT AND PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
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INTRODUCTION
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in a century-old territorial dispute between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, has proven intractable despite intermittent hopes for resolution. Marked by significant events such as Israel's establishment in 1948, which led to the displacement of Palestinians (the Nakba), and subsequent conflicts like the 1956 Suez Crisis and the 1967 Six-Day War, the conflict remains unresolved (Westfall et al., 2023; Nyhan and Zeitzoff, 2017). Efforts for peace, including the 1978 Camp David Accords, the 1993 Oslo Accords, and the tragic assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, have made strides in establishing Palestinian self-rule but left core issues such as Jerusalem's status and Israeli settlements in the West Bank unresolved (Westfall et al., 2023; Bubola, 2023).
This conflict not only affects their states on a national level but also has a global impact, particularly in the political and economic aspects. Moreover, it also has humanitarian implications. These events provide varying perspectives among people globally.
PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
My experiences have shaped my insights on the events of this conflict, particularly on economic difficulties, discrimination, and humanitarian afflictions. One of the most significant events in my life involves a friend whose family was burdened by mortgages and was ultimately lost in life when her mother left them, and her father lost his job. Because of her two younger siblings, she had to work twice as much to cover their expenses. Eventually, they were kicked out of their house and was forced to live in the streets and empty parking lots. This is reminiscent of the displacement of people involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Another relevant experience is when I suffered from discrimination in middle school because of my wit and strong opinions. Although it has a different root cause, it has similar repercussions to the branding of Middle Easterns as terrorists.
Lastly, in middle school, I advocated for the rights and recognition of racial minorities in school, providing