We are pleased to announce the winners of our first essay competition in memory of Rosemary Hollis (1952-2020), former Professor of Middle East Policy Studies and Director of the Olive Tree Programme at City.
A distinguished political scientist, inspiring teacher, and former Head of the Middle East Programme at Chatham House, she was a world-renowned commentator and author of Middle Eastern affairs, both in regard to internal regional dynamics and concerning EU, British and US involvement.
Her last book, Surviving the Story: The Narrative Trap in Israel and Palestine (2019), is not just another analysis of the peace process but is a reflection on the journey of mutual understanding and future vision to which herself and the young people of the Olive Tree committed their hearts and intellects.
Students in the School of Arts and Social Sciences were invited to submit an essay on ‘Encounters in and between the West and the Middle East’. Read extracts from the winning entries below. The full essays will be published weekly on The City Politics Blog.
Undergraduate - first prize
What Were the Causes and Consequences of the War in 1967 for Both Israelis and Palestinians? by Nora Saghi
Whilst focusing on both Israeli and Palestinian angles, the essay will emphasize the role of outer powers, namely the USA and the USSR, and how much the Cold War affected the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. However, as the essay question suggests, though the essay will provide a brief account of the war itself, it will not focus on it as such in detail. Ultimately, this essay argues that the war in 1967 was an additional milestone in deepening the two parallel narratives, which made the IsraeliPalestinian relations more complex and long-lived, therefore the essay will look at the event from the perspective of a wider scale within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Undergraduate - second prize
Reconstructing Identities, by Sasha Bukhari
The West has its history etched into foreign sands, its achievements laboured by foreign hands, but its legacies sung with only whispered mentions of their foreign names. Discussing the history of the Middle East is to conjointly tell the story of the Rising West; with encounters spanning over 2,500 years, the essay will focus on colonialism alongside several other encounters that influenced the construction of identities for both regions. The second half of the essay will determine whether these identities have been reconstructed following decolonisation.
Sasha Bukhari's full essay will be published on The City Politics Blog on 15th July 2021.
Postgraduate - first prize
All for one but not one for all: How Arab Nationalism Rose and Fell, by Kelly Van Roy.
The heyday of Arab nationalism found its knight in Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who embodied the concepts of Arab unification within his foreign policies and appealed to the masses with overpowering charisma. The ideal of a united Arab state seemed almost tangible with Egypt’s and Syria’s synthesis into the United Arab Republic (UAR), but this only meant that the new state’s failure to persist held greater potential for damage. (Dawisha, 2003). Before it could collapse however, Egypt’s overwhelming defeat and territorial loss against Israel’s surprise air attack in the Six Day War of 1967, dealt a tragic blow to Nasser’s prophetic status first, and without him, any hope for a greater Arab state
Kelly Van Roy's full essay will be published on The City Politics Blog on 22nd July 2021.
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Rosemary Hollis Essay Prize
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