Visiting Speaker: Prof Simona Sharoni, The State University of New York in Plattsburgh

There is much to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the analysis of community-base research conducted by the Women’s Studies Institute at Birzeit University in Palestine or from listening to the accounts of Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories. However, these stories are seldom included in most accounts of the conflict. By focusing on gender and resistance, this book addresses dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are often overlooked or altogether ignored by politicians, ordinary scholars, and the mainstream media. Unlike conventional accounts that portray the conflict as a primordial, intractable war between two collectivities with competing claims over the same territory, the analysis featured in this talk exposes the power asymmetries and systemic injustices at the heart of the conflict. The talk chronicles the gendered aspects of the conflict and resistance acts in both Palestine and Israel with special attention to the situation on the ground in the aftermath of the July 2014 Massive Israeli attack on Gaza. Using an original framework that foregrounds feminism as a theory of anti-oppression and liberation the talk offers an original analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the prospects for its resolution.