The new Palestine , the new Europe- selected papers from the February 2001 International Academic Conference

Abstract

This extraordinary collection of articles is derived from the conference held at Birzeit in February 2002 on the theme of The New Palestine, the New Europe: Emerging Models in Society and Culture. The purpose of the conference, the brainchild of the late lamented Professor Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, had been to compare and to juxtapose, to seek mutual relevance, whether positive or negative, in the experiences of these two fast-moving territories, one immense, one tiny, and both largely imaginary, since they are not states in the Westphalian sense of enjoying sovereignty behind set borders, and yet, they very much exist, and between the two of them occupy a good deal of news space. The conference was conceived before the 2000 intifada broke out, but did not finally take place until conditions of great precariousness surrounded the area the participants, after numerous incursions by the Israeli army and shortly before the invasion of the West Bank, with total reoccupation of Palestinian cities, took place.