MOBILITES, FRONTIERES ET CONFLITS DANS LES ESPACES ISRAELO PALESTINIENS ET LEUR PERIPHERIE – MOFIP

This project analyses the trans-border mobility and exchanges between Israel, the Palestinian territories and their neighbouring countries since the signing of the Oslo Agreement (1993). It is because these exchanges and mobility take place at the margins of groups predefined according to administrative and cultural criteria, at the margin of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority that they allow us to see how they structure, on the ground, the inter-relations, the inter-dependencies, the antagonisms, the power relations and the borders between these populations and between those state institutions. The nature of the borders and the relations between these populations as well as the relations between the state institutions in the region (Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian administrations, etc.) is a particularly significant issue for those who wish to understand the dynamics that structure the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, since the signing of the Oslo Agreement, the territorial and institutional configurations in the area have been constantly changing. Fostering more intricate Israeli-Palestinian spaces, these dynamics challenge the creation of two separate viable territorial and institutional entities; Israeli and Palestinian side by side. Current approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are too territorialised and fragmented to provide an understanding of the complexity of the spatial, social, economic and institutional configurations that have emerged since the Oslo period. As young researchers, we have already noted this problem while trying to discuss the significance of these informal mobility and exchanges between Israeli and Palestinian spaces with our colleagues. We encountered many difficulties to develop such discussions in the frame of our respective universities and research institutes in France. Because French researchers tend to separate studies on 'Israel' from those on 'Palestine', they a priori construct two radically distinct social, economic and political entities. Considering the interactions occurring at the margins of these spaces to be insignificant, they overlook and elude the complex configurations these relations create. Departing from the study of informal mobility and exchanges among the populations and among local, national and international institutions, the first aim of this research program is to allow a new perspective on social, economic, and political dynamics at work in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Grasping the nature and the shape of the separations and borders as well as the modes of interaction and interpenetration, we intend to rethink a part of the processes structuring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The second aim of this program is to develop an international research network with its core located in the Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur Region. This network will offer a legitimate and permanent space for young researchers and doctoral students (French, British, Swiss, Palestinian, and Israeli) to carry on and deepen this new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian spaces. We will thus shift the focus of research, usually directed at Israel or the OPT, towards the interactions between these two spaces and their populations. Such approach will include in its spectrum Jewish and Arab populations as well as migrants coming from Europe, Asia and Africa. Taking into account these 'foreign' actors and their interactions with international networks, we will not solely analyse the internal dynamics structuring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and spaces, but we will also apprehend the ways and the extent to which these spaces are integrated in larger realms. This three year program includes 15 researchers and 10 doctoral students. Each year, will be divided into two semesters. During the first semester the researchers and the students will split into two teams that will work on two forms of mobility: 1) the legal and illegal mobility of 'ordinary' people crossing politico-administrative borders (daily interactions, organized trafficking, etc.); 2) formal and informal networks of exchanges of institutional agents, putting into relation NGOs, governmental agencies, local, national and international institutions (humanitarian aid, security). The second semester will be devoted to the processing and the publishing of our findings. Two public workshops and an international conference will be organized in order to ensure the dissemination of our work. They will lead to three series of publications. Relying on the thematic complementarities and the corpus of knowledge of different research institutions, and profiting of the multiplicity of disciplines from which the researchers are coming from (history, anthropology, geography, sociology, political sciences and economy), this program will better be able to develop an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective in order to grasp the complexity of its object.