Sydney Ideas presents
Sara Roy: Beyond Occupation?
Examining the New Reality in Israel and Palestine
Venue: Seymour Theatre Centre
6:30pm Tuesday 14 October
Bookings: Book Online Box Office: 9351 7940
In the last eight years, the transformations in land, labour, economy, and demography in Israel and the Occupied Territories have been stunning. Palestinians have suffered losses not seen since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967, and arguably, since the losses of 1948. The current context has many dimensions but is defined primarily by Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands, perhaps most vividly expressed in the widespread expansion of Israeli settlements, the isolation of the West Bank and Gaza, the internal cantonization of the West Bank and the bureaucratisation of Israeli control. Sara Roy will examine these paradigmatic shifts at the political, social and economic levels and argue that they collectively undermine the possibility of achieving a meaningful and politically and economically sustainable resolution of the conflict.
Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University where she completed her doctoral studies in international development. Trained as a political economist, Dr Roy has worked in the Gaza Strip and West Bank since 1985 conducting research primarily on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip and on US foreign aid to the region. Dr Roy has written extensively on the Palestinian economy, particularly in Gaza, and has documented its development over the last three decades. Her current research, which was funded by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, examines the social and economic sectors of the Palestinian Islamic movement and their relationship to Islamic political institutions, and the critical changes to the Islamic movement that have occurred over the last decade. Her primary findings point to a restructuring and de-radicalisation of the Islamist movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to the start of the second Palestinian uprising.
Dr Sara Roy is the author of The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (1995, 2001), now in its second edition with a third edition forthcoming; The Gaza Strip Survey (1986); and editor of The Economics of Middle East Peace: A Reassessment (1999). Her most recent book is Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2007) and she is completing Between Extremism and Civism: Political Islam in Palestine (Princeton University Press, manuscript in progress). Dr. Roy also has authored over 100 publications dealing with Palestinian issues and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Current History, Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, International Journal of Middle East Studies, The Beirut Review, American Political Science Review, Critique, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago Journal of International Law, Index on Censorship, La Vanguardia, Le Monde Diplomatique and the London Review of Books.
Dr Roy also serves on the Advisory Boards of the American Near East Relief Agency (ANERA), an American private voluntary organisation working in the Middle East, and the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University. She also sits on the Board of Directors of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program US branch. In addition to her academic work, she has served as a consultant to international organisations, the US government, human rights organisations, private voluntary organisations, and private business groups working in the Middle East.
Dr Sara Roy is in Australia for the University of Adelaide’s Edward Said Memorial Lecture.
