Dear all,

we are happy for the discussion that followed the posting of our CfP (http://settlementsworkshop.wordpress.com/) on this forum. There are several points that we wish to clarify regarding the specific questions, and the wide picture of Israel/Palestine and the BDS.

We believe it is clear that all of us are devoted to the end of the occupation and to a just solution. The last thing that we wish is to create any kind of opposition between "us," protecting the idea of the workshop, and imagined "others," opposing it. None of us is a supporter of Israel's occupation policy, and the only question is how things should be made in order to achieve their best impact. We can assure you one thing: contrary to a boycott made by famous singers, or the economic boycott on Israeli companies that work in the West Bank, no one in Tel Aviv University will shed a tear on the cancellation of this workshop. This, for the least, is a good reason for us to do it exactly there.

Once said that, we would like to comment in detail the suggestion made by William in his message (below), namely, organizing the workshop in the West Bank (which is not an option for us, at least at the moment). And, believe us, we do that at our own risk, because we are 100% conscious that many of the motivations mentioned will be an easy target for criticism: logistics concerns will naturally appear very narrow, and weak, if weighted against issues of human rights and justice, and the decades of violent history of the region.

- The idea of the workshop started from the three of us: we are organizing it from scratch, working toward opening what we consider a quite neglected path of research (we’ll add: with no funds and from the lower grades of the academic pyramids). In other words: it’s a first time, and a fragile project that we hope to be able to nurture with time. Against this background, and since none of us is based in a Palestinian institution, the venue we chose is the Minerva Humanities Center (http://mhc.tau.ac.il/en/), where one of us (Ariel) has a longstanding connection. It is hard enough to organize an international workshop; doing it in an institution that is not ours would be even harder and could make the difference between success and failure.

- While we are very much in favor of partnerships with Palestinian institutions, this is not possible due to the boycott. We don't blame anyone; this is just a fact. No Palestinian university will cooperate with an Israeli one. Several Palestinian institutions would find problematic even the presence of Israeli-affiliated researchers. This is particularly relevant for us because the very idea of the workshop was motivated by our knowledge of the interesting work done by various Israeli scholars on the subject, and our effort is also to connect these scholarly endeavors into a more structured research agenda.

- In this respect, we should also point out that Palestinian researchers (and especially from the West Bank or Gaza) are severely limited in the kind of research they can carry on the subject. They cannot access relevant archives in Israel, not to mention doing research INTO the settlements. In that sense, we use our power as Europeans or Israelis – our relative freedom of research and access to the sources – to expose the important data that is Palestinians themselves cannot access. There are many excellent works done by Palestinians on certain themes related on settlement policy (ex. on the “Palestinian side” of settlement policy), but none (at least to our knowledge) on the settlement policy per se – which is one of the main angles we chose to focus on. Again, this is far from being an ideal situation, but we see that as a legitimate concern for us in terms of what we expect from the workshop.

- Of course, the safe choice would be to organize something in the UK, or Italy, or… But this is something we ruled out from the principle, as it doesn’t really make sense for us (it would also impose a financial burden on the majority of the people interested in participating). Having the workshop in Tel Aviv means placing it near to the real action, and where we can expect to make a difference. I should add that having the workshop in Tel Aviv even presents some intrinsic advantage: it is the Israeli audience that needs to reconsider critically the settlements – much more than the Palestinian or the European ones.

- We would also like to stress that, as we made clear in CfP, this is the first step we take in addressing this theme; we look forward to expanding our network of contacts and organizing other events in different settings, in order to connect what seems to be hardly connectable in just one occasion.

Finally, standing in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can be made by different ways. BDS - which we respect and recognize as an important and powerful strategy - is just one of them, but there are others as well. For example, by joining together to investigate the settlements (which are, arguably, the major cause for Palestinian oppression and suffer, and one of the most important obstacles to just solution in Israel/Palestine). Anyone, in that forum and beyond, can choose what is his or her way of solidarity and what he or she thinks will bring the occupation's end sooner.

We hope that this in some way answer to the concerns raised.
My best
Marco & Ariel

On 12/16/13 9:22 AM, William Payne wrote: