Independent research on Palestine

PASSIA offices in Jerusalem

EAs visited the Jerusalem headquarters of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA). Founded in 1987 by Palestinian academics and intellectuals, it is not affiliated with any government, political party, or organization, and maintains a completely independent financial and legal status. The society's main activities are research, roundtables, religious studies, and seminars. The majority of PASSIA's activities focus on Jerusalem, including regular workshops that address freedom of access, Israeli settlements, and municipal aspects for Jerusalem as the capital of two independent states.

Here are a few excerpts from three of the more than 100 publications issued by the society.

Nakba: The process of Palestinian dispossession. "The massacres, looting, and destruction that characterized the depopulation of Palestine were components of a carefully designed military strategy developed and implemented by the leaders of the emerging State of Israel....The process of Nakba continues to this day through the discriminatory and expansionist practices of the Israeli establishment, facilitated by the support or soft criticism of the international community." Here's an eyewitness account from the massacre of Deir Yassin, when Israeli forces killed 245 Palestinians, recalled by Fahimi Zeidan, who was 12 years old in 1948: "The Jews ordered all of our family to line up against the wall and they started shooting at us. I was hit in the side, but most of us children were saved because we hid behind our parents. The bullets hit my sister Kadri (four) in the head, my sister Sameh (eight) in the cheek, my brother Mohammed (seven) in the chest. But all the others with us against the wall were killed: my father, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother, my uncles and aunts, and some of their children."

Area C: The Key to the Two-State Solution. "Unless the Israeli government is held accountable for breaches in international law and international humanitarian law, Israeli policies will continue to forcibly displace Palestinians, while integrating Area C [59% of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli military and civil control] into Israel proper, thus destroying the last hope for building a viable Palestinian state and rendering a just and lasting peace in the framework of a two-state solution impossible."

The Road to Palestinian Statehood: A Review of a People's Struggle for National Independence. On November 29, 2012, when the UN General Assembly voted to give Palestine non-member observer State status, "71% of the 193 UN member states, representing more than 80% of the world's population, recognized Palestine as a state....Of course, this is still a state under occupation and the prospects for the achievement of true independence are still remote considering Israel's absolute refusal to end its ever-expanding colonization and subjugation of Palestinian lands and rights."

A researcher at PASSIA told us the organization sometimes hears from Israeli academics. Daniel Seidemann presented a recent paper on "Israeli Unilateralism in Jerusalem and Its Implications for a Two-State Solution."  Current research initiatives include political Islam, historical and contemporary partition, Hamas-Fatah relations, Jordan and Palestine, and a resource book on what happened in Jerusalem in 2012. The society's website is www.passia.org.