MERIP Media Resource List, March 31, 2005

AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS on the following topics:
- Kuwaiti women demand the right to vote
- Israeli settlements in international law
- Israeli settlements impact on Jerusalem

MARY ANN TÉTREAULT
Mary Ann Tétreault is the Una Chapman Cox Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where she teaches courses in world politics, the Middle East and feminist theory. Her recent books include Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait (2000) and The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Economics of the New World Order (1995). She has been writing about women in Kuwait since 1994. Commenting on recent protests, Tétreault said today: "Kuwaiti women's activism goes back to the early 1970s and has changed in tone since its inception. Like women seeking rights in other countries, Kuwaiti women used to emphasize how much they deserved rights: they are the patriotic mothers of the nation, they were the lifeblood of the 'city of women' that Kuwait became during the occupation. Now women activists talk about their rights differently, not as something that men can dispense or withhold according to whether women deserve them, but as something they are entitled to because they are citizens. They are no longer asking -- they're telling."

LISA HAJJAR
Lisa Hajjar teaches in the Law and Society Program at the University of California - Santa Barbara. She is the author of Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005). Hajjar chairs the editorial committee of Middle East Report . Her areas of expertise include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and international human rights. Commenting on the legality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, she said today: "The building and populating of Jewish civilian settlements in territories occupied in war violates the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the settlement of civilians from an occupying state into occupied territories. However, Israel has asserted that conventions do not apply because these territories were not 'sovereign' before 1967. Israel has actively built settlements to achieve permanent control and retention of at least part of these areas. Nowadays, with hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israeli civilians living in settlements, the state also advances the position that to 'displace' these people would violate their 'rights' and constitute a form of 'ethnic cleansing.' It is a spurious argument, which ignores the original law violation."

MICHAEL DUMPER
Michael Dumper is a senior lecturer in the department of politics at the University of Exeter. Dumper's research interests are the permanent status issues of the Middle East peace process, religious institutions and urban politics. He is an expert on the city of Jerusalem. Commenting on Israeli settlement expansion, he said today: “The expansion of Ma'ale Adumim has to be seen in context. The expansion is part of the consolidation of Israeli control over the West Bank, particularly those parts that border on East Jerusalem. Also important is the continuing expansion of Israeli settler activity in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, such as the acquisition of property belonging to the Greek Orthodox church. Both these contexts indicate policies enacted to reduce the possibility of any future Palestinian control over East Jerusalem. In this sense they are extremely damaging to the peace process.”

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