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​The 20 February movement was formed out of a defining moment in modern Moroccan political history, and forced the ruling regime to undertake a process to reform and give up some of its powers. This study takes a look at the path of the 20 February movement as it took shape in 2011. It looks at the defining role played by the group in the Arab Spring protests. It analyzes the components of the movement and the stages of its development and decline in addition to presenting factors that explain the potentials and setbacks it faced months after its beginning. These are related to the existing political and social opportunities in Morocco, in particular the nature of its political system, the position of main actors, as well as the regional and international atmosphere. The social framing of the movement and the limits of its ability to instigate a wide social movement among the poor and vulnerable social classes is also considered, as well as how the movement went about promoting its ideas, apart from the difficulties related to creating a common identity that can unite its contradicting components.

The Moroccan February 20 protest movement came with the mobilization of the Moroccan street through peaceful demonstrations demanding constitutional reforms in the framework of a parliamentary monarchy. The king, keen not to replicate what happened in neighboring states, could not ignore the February 20 movement. This pushed him to announce the program for constitutional reform in his speech on March 9, 2011. The strategy of the political regime to contain and defuse the February 20 movement led every initiative, including the project for the 2011 constitution, to become a resource and weapon in the hands of the authorities, and means for the symbolic and material suppression of the February 20 movement. The constitutional referendum of July 1, 2012, which was backed by the people, and which February 20 called to boycott, represented the beginning of the rapid demise of the movement, because it reinforced the legitimacy of reform, and hence the monarchy. The February 20 Movement represents an opportunity to rethink the meaning of opposition in Morocco, particularly when set against analysis formulated in the 1970s by pioneers such as John Waterbury and Rémy Leveau, who concluded that the opposition, despite its differences and variety of protests, served in the end to reproduce the existing political regime.

This paper examines the implications of Egypt’s military coup on Gaza and its ruling party Hamas. This study is undertaken in light of the escalation of Egyptian media incitement against Hamas and the Palestinians, including accusations that the movement was involved in violent acts on Egyptian soil during the January 2011 Revolution. These rumored actions are paralleled with apparent recent involvement of Hamas in the “terrorist” attacks in the Sinai. Since media incitement has resulted in the tightening of an Egyptian blockade on Gaza, and the destruction of tunnels that represented the lifeline of people in the coastal enclave, a full investigation of the allegations is critical.​

This study distinguishes between three Interrelated theoretical approaches prevalent in writings of researchers seeking to understand the emergence of the Islamic Resistance Movement, "Hamas". The first of these approaches examines the movement from the portal of ideology, stressing the importance of international and regional dimensions and the rise of political Islam after the "setback" (Naksa) of the 1967 Six Day War. The second approaches Hamas as representing a social movement seeking to revisit the historical narrative of Palestinian society. The third considers it to be the heir of the Palestinian national liberation movement, attributing its rise to transformations witnessed in Palestinian identity and the Palestinian community's definition of itself. Although the three readings do not contradict each other, a focus on one of them can lead to oversimplification or exaggeration: emphasis on the first approach is at risk of overlooking transformations in the movement in its later stages and a marginalization at the micro level of local dimensions; emphasis on the second approach can result in the overestimation of the effectiveness of collective action; exaggerated emphasis on the third approach deprives social actors of their effectiveness. Hence this study proposes situating Hamas in the ​intersection of these three approaches.

In this paper we develop a relational understanding of populism informed by urban political ecology. We argue that an urban political ecology of populism is necessary for a popular- democratic denunciation of the environmental claims of the far right. This article thereby aims to further develop a critique of liberal environmentalism and right-wing populism. We do so by first staging a dialogue between literatures in urban political ecology and Gramscian inflected readings of populism. Both have sought to interpret how spatial – and ecological – claim making becomes central to struggles over hegemony. The second half of the paper analyses these tensions in the Dutch farmers movement, which has become one of the most important political forces in the Netherlands since 2019. Abstracting "the local", "the rural" or "the farm" out of the broader processes of urbanisation is central to struggles over the representation of farmers. Right-wing movements thus seek to further a broader disillusionment with formal politics, while effectively deploying spatial and ecological abstractions that pit the "rural" against the "urban". We conclude by instead emphasising the crucial connections between populism and ecology, and call for a popular-democratic political ecology.

By analysing qualitative and archival primary sources, this paper examines intra-military relations in Syria during the period in which Syria seceded from the United Arab Republic (1961 - 1963). It explores the consequences of the failure to apply what can be described as "Concordance Theory", particularly regarding the impact of military divisions on civil-military relations, and how these divisions led to dangerous fragmentation within the military institution itself. Additionally, it examines the role these divisions played in the disintegration of the political system during the secession, without neglecting the social and political conditions that influenced these developments. The paper highlights the emergence of the Damascene 'Shwam' officers' faction as a result of policies aimed at containing and dismantling military factions during the unity period, and how this faction managed to lead the secession coup. It also analyses how this elite failed to maintain control over the army and government institutions, with their efforts to assert control giving rise to competing coup factions, ultimately leading to the collapse of military leadership and the loss of command and control. This paved the way for the military coup on 8 March 1963.

عنوان الكتاب في لغته: Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance. عنوان الكتاب: احتواء حماس: صعود مقاومة فلسطينية وركودها. المؤلف: طارق بقعوني Tareq Baconi. الناشر: Stanford University Press. سنة النشر: 2018. عدد الصفحات: 368 صفحة.

This paper analyzes the impact of the results of the legislative elections on the political process in Tunisia during the period from 2011 to 2021. It discusses the negative impact of the electoral system on the results of the legislative elections in general, and on the political process as a whole in particular. Due to the difficulty of the political parties that won first place in the legislative elections to obtain the required majority that enables them to bear responsibility for the political process alone during the parliamentary period. This created a state of parliamentary fragmentation that affected the Assembly of the Representatives of the People in three electoral cycles in 2011 , 2014 , and 2019 which led to the disruption of the legislative and electoral role of the Assembly, and the multiplicity and instability of governments. This paper also discusses proposals to amend the Tunisian Election and Referendum Law, which include a proposal to adopt an electoral threshold, and the impact of applying the electoral threshold on the representation of political parties in the Tunisian Assembly of People's Representatives, and on the political process.

​This study traces the evolution of the sporting boycott of Israel from its inception and its impact on the colonial system of Israeli apartheid. It contextualises the development of this boycott in major international sports tournaments over the past decade, and how the outbreak of the Arab revolutions in late 2010 gave additional impetus to Arab youth to boycott Israel and sports in particular. Their boycott went hand in hand with their demands to end tyranny and autocracy, giving Arab athletes an opportunity to transform major international sports tournaments into a space for political action. The paper argues that the sporting boycott of Israel emerged in the last decade as a political tool for athletes and assesses the impact of this campaign in international sports tournaments on Israel's international reputation, its sports brand, and its diplomatic efforts related to marketing its emerging sports entrepreneurship.

By studying Tunisian foreign policy in the decade after the 2010 popular uprisings, this article contributes to Role Theory by explaining how regional audience expectations influence foreign policy roles. The article first demonstrates how achieved roles develop expectations among regional states as the audience. Then it explains how these expectations condition role enactment. The article shows how Tunisia developed and established a foreign policy posture of strategic distance, defined by neutrality in regional conflicts, adherence to legalism, and pursuit of economic interests. Strategic distance came to be expected by North African states.