Session 9: Nations and States
Chair: Rob Fisher

The Multiple Faces of Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Aide Esu
Dipartimento di Ricerche Economiche e Sociali, University of Cagliari, Italy

The Israeli and Palestinian conflict represents a rather peculiar case, where the violence assumes multiple interpretations. It is a form of State violence on a double dimension: as an internal phenomenon - the use of force from Israeli IDF soldiers against Palestinian population in the occupied territories, or the suicide terror from Hamas in Israel. It is an external phenomenon, I.e. the targeted attacks by the Israeli army against Palestinians houses or Hamas militants, or the Qassam missile attacks from the occupied territories against the settlers houses. These actions are at the same time used as motives and goals that sustain the discourse around the legitimised use of violence. From each point of view – Israeli and Palestinian - violence is always justified and fulfils a cycle of violence that raises the process of an intractable conflict. In an intractable conflict like the Israeli-Palestinian they develop a culture of conflict and a psychological repertoire to deal with the conflict. This repertoire includes ethos, emotional orientation and collective memory, all this sustain and reinforce the conflict. We propose to focus the attention on the deep process of violence reproduction  by adopting Bar-Tal’s view that “Israeli society represents a mirror image of the Arab societies” In what way is the discourse, the ethics and the legitimacy constructed? Who are the involved social actors? We will look at two different processes, first to the sacralization of land to which Israel geographers refers as “land grasping”. Secondly to the meaning and the social and political implications set by this process.

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State Violence, Authoritarianism and Social Complicities
Alejandro Cervantes-Carson
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA, USA

No abstract is presently available

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Muslims and Westerners as Mutual Enemies in the Netherlands
Fiore Geelhoed
The Netherlands

The events of 9/11 and the murder of the Dutch columnist and cineast Van Gogh in 2004 have had a serious impact on the Netherlands and the relationship between the Dutch Muslim population and Dutch society at large. The Netherlands have had a considerable Muslim population ever since the immigration of so-called ‘guest workers’ from particularly Turkey and Morocco from the 1960s till the early 1980s. The Dutch pillar society has always distinguished these immigrant groups as ‘ethnic minorities’ promoting their minority status until the late 1980s under the slogan ‘integrating with maintenance of one’s own identity’. This approach to minority groups has long been interpreted as a reflection of the alleged tolerance of Dutch society towards people who think differently. Unfortunately, this image has never been totally correct – the Dutch government did not mean to interfere with immigrant groups in the hope they would return to their countries of origin as soon as their contribution to the Dutch economy became redundant - and has totally been shattered after 9/11. In this paper I will deal with three issues. First of all, I will sketch the developments in social discourse concerning Muslim groups in the Netherlands since the late 1990s and in particular after 9/11. Thereafter, I will, on the one hand, try to explain these developments and, on the other hand, identify the social interactions that they are both part of and give rise to.

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