Towards the 1980s, Gaza emerged as the fulcrum of Palestinian resistance and in 1987, the first Palestinian Intifada started here. In 1994, the Palestinian Authority (PA) established its first headquarters in the Strip. From the beginning of the 21st century, Gaza’s politics of resilience underwent a fathomable transformation with the advent of political Islam which later overpowered Arab and Palestinian nationalisms
After conquering South Asia in the 19th century, the British decided to retain precolonial personnel, like qazis, while designing structures to meet their requirements. In 1864, however, Act XI abolished the position of qazi, as they were considered superfluous. This led to operational difficulties in Muslim legal practices and the British were forced to re-establish this position a decade later.
This was the case in many of the newly independent countries of that time, including India, but it became a bigger issue in Pakistan. Of the six major nationalities within Pakistan during its initial phase—the Pashtun, Punjabi, Baloch, Sindhi, Bengali and Mohajir, all others except one (the Punjabi) have raised questions over the national identity (Pakistani) vis-à-vis their linguistic and ethnic identities during the last seven decades. While the Bengali identity assertion resulted in the partition of Pakistan in 1971, the Sindhis
Hamid, however, has a tough time explaining away continued American military, diplomatic support and arms supplies to Israel which have resulted in the current bombing of Gaza and indiscriminate killing of women and children. Israel’s bombing of Gaza has led to over 67,000 deaths of which more than 20,000 were children and close to 170,000 injuries. To his credit, he does anticipate that the American support to Israel in the Gaza war ‘will stand as the strongest objection to the arguments in this book’. When Hamid argues that America
As the world fractures into rival blocs, many countries like India will resist becoming a part of this rivalry between the US and China, especially as they cannot determine its outcome (p. 60). However, it will be difficult for these countries to avoid picking a side and they will be forced by their economic, financial, cultural and political ties to align with one side or the other (p. 64). He argues that India is likely to align with the US, based on the fact that the US is India’s largest export market, invests much more in India than China
Since none of the South Asian states have signed the 1951 Convention, they never legally recognize having refugees. On the contrary, they have sought to deal with such challenges through numerous national legal frameworks. The patterns of national interest decide state responses. The European Union (EU) today is deeply divided on how to cope with the influx of people from West Asia, which is testing the principle of solidarity and making the Union look heartless and ineffective, pitting member states against each other, thereby infusing populism and anti-Islamic sentiments.