News from The European Centre for Palestine Studies

The European Centre for Palestine Studies (ECPS) is one of 6 research centres based in the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, which are central to our research success. Professor Ilan Pappé and Dr Ghada Karmi founded the European Centre for Palestinian Studies (ECPS) in 2009. It is dedicated to producing interdisciplinary on the history of Palestine and the Palestine/Israel conflict.

The European Centre for Palestine Studies (ECPS) has continued activity under its program of the One State Laboratory in 2019/2020 and 2020/2021. An academic effort, with activists, looking for alternative solutions to the Palestine issue.

We have conducted several workshops. Among them one titled ‘Local Authorities and the Absorption of Refugees: A Comparative Examination’. As the issue of refugees is a central theme in the academic studies on Palestine, the workshop looked at the possible scholarly contribution of the ECPS to both to the study of the Palestinian refugees and to the study of the present absorption processes in Europe of refugees from the Arab world.

In this context, it is noteworthy that the ECPS also sponsored this year, with other outfits, as we did in the past, conferences in London that focused on UNRWA (as it celebrated 70 years of its existence).

Our second workshop took place between January 31, 2020 to February 3, 2020 and was titled: ‘Decolonization in Palestine/Israel: Approaches and Strategies’. This workshop focused on alternative, and outside the box, ideas of how to push for a solution in Palestine. Leading scholars and activists, together with our PGRs, discussed the meaning of decolonization in the 21st century.

Our guests came from Palestine, Israel, Europe, the USA and the rest of the world and after intensive three days are committed to continue this scholarly effort for looking for alternative solutions (this continues the work we did in a 2018 workshop on the One State Solution). The proceeding of this meeting will be published soon.

Professor William Gallois and Professor Ilan Pappe our now editors of a new series, with I.B Tauris, on settler colonialism and decolonization and we hope to encourage some of the participants to publish their contributions in this series that would be endorsed by the ECPS.

As for the future there are few projects in the pipeline (with few modifications that might be necessary due to COVID-19).

We have participated in December 2019 in a conference in Beirut that hosted all the Centres for Palestine Studies in the world. It was agreed on a distribution of labour between the various centres. Our centre, with the largest number of PGRs, took upon itself to publish an e-Journal for PGRs on Palestine.

Our most recent event on 28th January 2021 was an online discussion about transnational movements for antiracism, anticolonialism and social justice. Professor Angela Y. Davis (University of California Santa Cruz) and Professor Ilan Pappé (University of Exeter) explored what lessons might be learned from histories of antiracist and anticolonial organising – and how they might lead us toward more just futures. The event was organised by the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, the European Centre for Palestine Studies and Exeter Decolonising Network, with all of the 300 tickets selling out in advance.