IPS ROUNDTABLE: THE PALESTINE QUESTION AMID REGIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS

For some time, the Journal of Palestine Studies' sister quarterly, Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya (MDF), has held small, open-ended roundtable discussions at the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) headquarters in Beirut to address issues of importance to Palestine and the Arab world, with a view to to publishing the proceedings. On 15 December 2012, JPS followed suit, and in cooperation with MDF organized an English-language roundtable at the IPS Beirut headquarters to consider the impact, on Palestine, of the regional changes subsumed under the "Arab Spring" rubric. Participants ranged over an array of topics; including geopolitical changes at the global and regional levels political, social, and intellectual trends from the Maghrib to the Gulf; and internal developments in several states, as well as within Palestinian communities in historic Palestine and the Diaspora. Especially noteworthy is the grounding of current developments in a historical framework evolving since World War I. The roundtable was transcribed by JPS Editorial Assistant Linda Khoury and the transcript edited by JPS Associate Editor Linda Butler. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]