Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

On Thursday, November 18, 2010, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee held an event on Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with Dr. Jennifer Leaning, Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and Professor in Public Health and Medicine at Harvard. The event was co-sponsored by J Street U Harvard. Dr. Leaning spoke on health policy, current medical issues, and how the situation might evolve if the situation doesn’t change. She also addressed the toll the occupation takes on a viable and effective Palestinian health system.

We hope to see many of you again at our future events – keep your eyes open for updates!

Were you served an eviction notice??

Word around campus is that students are returning to their rooms only to find eviction notices on their doors. Upon returning from lunch, a PSC member reported receiving the eviction notice shown here.

The notice reads:

We regret to inform you that your suite is scheduled for demolition in the next three days.

If you do not leave within the next three days, we reserve the right to destroy your suite. Anyone left inside is outside our responsibility. This may seem like harsh treatment, but, in reality, 24,813 houses have been demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967, against international law and without proper justification. Home demolitions are one of many forms of collective punishment used by the Israeli Defense Forces. Surprised? Find out more at www.harvardpsc.com. And no, this is not a real eviction notice.

Alternatives to Partition: New Visions for Israel/Palestine

Bashir Bashir, Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Leila Farsakh, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston
Weiner Auditorium, Harvard Kennedy School
Monday, Nov. 8^th, 6-7:30pm.

This talk seeks to examine feasible, reasonable, and fairly just alternatives to the partitioning of land that would secure the national and individual rights, interests and identities of Arabs and Jews alike. While the merits of concrete proposals such as ‘parallel state structure’; single democratic state; and regional federation; will be briefly discussed, a special focus will be devoted to the proposal of “bi-nationalism.”

Bashir Bashir is a research fellow at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He is currently a visiting scholar at Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University.  He has taught Political Theory at the London School of Economics, Queen's University (Canada), and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His primary research interests include democratic theories of inclusion, multiculturalism, deliberative democracy, conflict resolution and the politics of reconciliation, Palestinian nationalism, and Israeli politics.   Bashir's publications include: Will Kymlicka and Bashir Bashir (eds.), The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). He holds a Ph.D. in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Leila Farsakh is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of London (2003), an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge, UK (1990), and a B.A from the University of Exeter in the UK (1989). She has worked with a number of international organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris (1993-1996) and the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah (1998-1999). Between 2003 and 2004 she undertook a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

Dr. Farsakh has published on questions related to Palestinian labor flows, the Oslo Process, international migration and regional integration in a wide range of journals, including the Middle East Journal, the European Journal of Development Research, Journal of Palestine Studies and Le Monde Diplomatique. Her book, Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation, was published by Routledge Press in fall 2005. Her latest publications include editing Commemorating the Naksa, Evoking the Nakba, for the Electronic Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, in Spring 2008. In 2001 she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sponsored by Justice for Palestine at Harvard Law School, Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Arab Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School, and the Palestine Caucus at Harvard Kennedy School