Vol 3, No 2 - Symposium: Palestine - an economy in conflict

July 2008

This issue contains a symposium on the Palestinian economy, a vital aspect of the conflict with Israel that gets relatively little attention and one that clearly deserves more. It contains four stand alone articles. In the first, Siddharta Mitra considers the relation between poverty and terrorism, developing an analytical model and using case studies to show the link between the two; then Raul Caruso and Andrea Locatelli apply insights of contest theory to al Qaeda's recruitment process, Pavel A. Yakovlev then considers what factors affect casualties in civil as well as interstate wars and, finally, Nadege Sheehan assesses potential structures that would best produce effective U.N. peacekeeping. In the symposium, guest editor Sam Perlo-Freeman provides an introduction setting the scene and summarising the fascinating insights provided by the papers. Aamer S. Abu-Qarn provides a valuable context setting review of the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Atif Kubursi and Fadle Naqib considering the interaction between the Palestinian and Israeli states and the costs and benefits to each, the decline of the economy being further considered by Osama Hamed with an analysis of the de-development of the Palestinian economy. Jennifer C. Olmsted then considers an important but much neglected topic, the impact of the troubles on the nature of employment in Palestinian, with particular emphasis on the damaging effects on women's employment. Numan Kanafani and Samia Al-Botmeh then discuss growing food insecurity and malnutrition in Palestine, before Basel Saleh looks at the economic causes that explain much of the governance problems in Palestine and the fragility of the state.

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