2024/2025

Bashir Bashir, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Political Theory

The Open University of Israel, Ra’anana

Born in 1976 in Sakhnin, Israel
B.A. in Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, M.A. in Political Theory and Ph.D. in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science

Arbeitsvorhaben

Egalitarian Bi-nationalism for Israel/Palestine

Given the deadlock of the “peace process,” the deep and irreversible entanglements between Israeli and Palestinian lives, and the precariousness of the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, many scholars and politicians are asking “what next for Israel/Palestine”? The proposed research suggests that egalitarian bi-nationalism is the most promising and defensible answer to this pressing and timely question. It argues that egalitarian bi-nationalism is better equipped to address the underlying issues of the conflict in Israel/Palestine than conventional and new frames in the existing literature. Egalitarian bi-nationalism, the proposed research argues, better satisfies the urge for self-determination of Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews than the benign neglect majoritarianism of the liberal state or ethnic secession and the partition of the two-state solution. The proposed research argues that egalitarian bi-nationalism’s insistence on envisioning affective relations of co-belonging based on an ethics of equality, parity, mutual legitimacy, and cohabitation offers rich resources for historical reconciliation and decolonization in Israel/Palestine.

Recommended Reading

Bashir, Bashir. “The Strengths and Weaknesses of Integrative Solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The Middle East Journal 70, no. 4 (2016): 560–578.
Bashir, Bashir, and Amos Goldberg, eds. The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
Bashir, Bashir, and Leila Farsakh, eds. The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.