Camille Mansour

Camille Mansour
Born1945 (age 78–79)
Haifa, Mandatory Palestine
NationalityPalestinian
OccupationAcademic
Years active1970s–present
TitleProfessor
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
DisciplinePolitical science
Institutions

Camille Mansour (born 1945) is a Palestinian academic. In addition to his teaching post at different universities he has worked at the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS), Beirut, Lebanon, in various capacities, including the secretary-general of its board of trustees.

Early life and education

Mansour was born in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine, in 1945.[1] He graduated from the American University of Beirut.[1] He obtained his Ph.D. in political science and Islamic from the Paris-Sorbonne University.[1]

Career and activities

Mansour served as the editor in chief of The Yearbook of Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict for the IPS in Beirut.[1] He worked at Harvard University as a visiting scholar from 1979 to 1980.[1] He was named as the chair of the IPS's research department in 1980 and remained in office until 1984.[2] He became a professor of international relations and Middle Eastern politics at the University of Paris in 1984 which he left in 2004.[3] He was named as the advisor to the Palestinian negotiation team for the Madrid conference in 1991 and for the Washington conference.[4] His term as legal advisor ended in February 1994.[5] He was tasked to establish the law center of Birzeit University, West Bank, in 1994 and then became its head which he held until 2000.[6] Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Authority, assigned him to a constitutional committee in February 1996.[1]

Mansour is the founder of Al Muqtafi, the Palestine Judicial and Legislative Databank.[3] He served as the dean of its Faculty of Law and Public Administration from 2007 and 2009.[3] He also worked as a senior advisor of the United Nations Development Program for the Palestinian Rule of Law and Judiciary, Jerusalem, between 2004 and 2006.[6]

Later Mansour was named as the secretary-general of IPS's board of trustees, and member of Birzeit University's board of trustees.[6] He is the editor-in-chief of the Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question.[6]

Work

Mansour has authored many articles and books, including Les Palestiniens de l’intérieur, Beyond Alliance: Israel in U.S. Foreign Policy ISBN 9780231084925, and The Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations: An Overview and Assessment, October 1991–January 1993.[1] He also coedited various books such as Transformed Landscapes: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East in Honor of Walid Khalidi ISBN 978-9774162473.[6]

Views

Mansour states that Israel have transformed Palestinians into targets through a detailed system of monitoring which he calls "besieging cartography".[7] This system consists of many tools, including "passive sensors, observation towers equipped with day/night and radar surveillance capabilities, satellite images and photographs from reconnaissance planes and electronic data banks for analysis."[7]

In his book entitled Beyond Alliance: Israel in U.S. Foreign Policy Mansour argues that the total support of the US to Israeli policies has a psychological dimension in addition to political, economic and strategic dimensions.[8] He adds that this support is, in fact, a burden to the American government and is not a product of the extensive Jewish lobby in the US, but of the positive approach of the Americans towards Israelis.[8] For him, Americans have a negative view about Palestinians.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Michael R. Fischbach (2005). "Mansour, Camille". In Philip Mattar (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Palestinians. New York: Facts on File Inc. pp. 317–318. ISBN 9780816069866.
  2. ^ Richard Parker (1995). "Special Friends". Journal of Palestine Studies. 24 (3): 99–100. doi:10.2307/2537886. JSTOR 2537886.
  3. ^ a b c "Camille Mansour". Al Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  4. ^ Nigel Craig Parsons (1998). The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: The Politics of Transition From Liberation Movement to National Authority (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. p. 347. ISBN 978-0-438-65984-1. ProQuest 2137555696.
  5. ^ "Mansour, Camille". Passia. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  6. ^ a b c d e "Camille Mansour". Institute for Palestine Studies. 8 July 2023. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  7. ^ a b Camille Mansour (Summer 2001). "Israel's Colonial Impasse". Journal of Palestine Studies. 30 (4): 83–87. doi:10.1525/jps.2001.30.4.83.
  8. ^ a b c A.J. Abraham (1996). "Book review". Journal of Third World Studies. 13 (2): 333–334. JSTOR 45197766.