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This study aims to test the role of the state of occupation, represented in Israel, as one of the most significant challenges, which faces the Jordanian water security. Where Israel expands in its policy and ideology everyday its hydro-hegemony over the Jordanian waters. Hence, its acts result in negative consequences on the Jordanian water and food security, which in turn affects the Jordanian national security as a whole.

This study relied on the following two approached to tackle its problem: first: descriptive approach: the descriptive approach depends on defining the apparent features and describing their nature and the type of the relationship between its variables. It aims to achieving a better and deeper understanding on the situation of its future policies and measures. And research uses the system analysis approach to handle the subject matter. Given the influence of water on the development, Jordan, as an organic or a political and social state, takes into account the reasons and causes of development. Jordan turns into an active political state, with water as an influencing factor on it. This premise represents the core of the system analysis approach.

The research concluded that the Israeli theft of the Jordanian waters is the main factor in the Jordanian water crisis. If Jordan had received its usurped water rights by Israel, it could have been able to solve its water issue represented in the increasing deficit in its water balance. Therefore, the Israeli hydro-hegemony on the Jordanian water resources caused the imbalance in its water security and, in turn, caused the development process to falter in general.

The value of the research lies in the fact that it addresses the most important reasons behind the water crisis in Jordan, represented in the Israeli control over the Jordanian water resources and the research shows that the amount of water stolen by Israel is enough to solve the water crisis in Jordan.

This paper aims to present a critical appraisal of Ghassan Kanafani’s short story “The Child Goes to the Camp” using the Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and Rose (2007) in an attempt to investigate the predicament of the Palestinians who were forced to flee their country and live in refugee camps as well as the various effects refugee life had on them.

Using the Appraisal Theory, and with a special focus on the categories of Attitude and Graduation, the paper aims to shed light on the plight of refugees through revealing the narrator’s suffering in a refugee camp where the most important virtue becomes remaining alive.

Analysing the story using the Appraisal Theory reveals the impact refugee life has left on the narrator and his family. This story serves as a warning for the world of the suffering refugees have to endure when they are forced to flee their war-torn countries.

Although Kanafani’ resistance literature has been studied extensively, his short stories have not received much scholarly attention. In addition, his works have not been subject to linguistic analysis. This study presents an appraisal analysis of Kanafani’s “The Child Goes to the Camp” in an attempt to investigate how the author’s linguistic choices are key to highlighting the suffering of the Palestinians, especially children, in refugee camps.

This study aims to explore the effect of mental health in terms of depression, anxiety, stress, fear of COVID-19 and quality of life (QoL) on the reluctance to be vaccinated in a population of Palestinian adults living in occupied Palestinian territories and Israel.

The authors recruited 1,122 Palestinian adults who consented to participate in the study; 722 were females, and the mean age of the sample was 40.83 (SD 8.8). Depression, anxiety, and stress scale (DASS), World Health Organization QoL-BREF, FCov-19 and reluctance to the vaccine scale were administered; hierarchical regression analysis was applied to test vaccine reluctance as a dependent variable, and mental health, fear of COVID-19 and QoL as independent variables. This study hypothesized influence of such variables on the vaccine choice with differences due to the participants’ geographical locations.

Findings showed an effect of mental health, particularly depression, QoL and fear of COVID on vaccine reluctance, with depression and fear of COVID in the West Bank and Gaza, while in Israel, QoL played a role in vaccination choices.

The future needs to be comprehended more thoroughly to discover mutations and fluctuations over time in vaccine hesitancy and the increasing role of psychological distress, diminished QoL and fear of Covid-19. Online recruitment might not have allowed the study to include the most disadvantaged strips of the Palestinian population.

Human rights perspectives must be considered in public health and public mental health policies to ensure the QoL and well-being for the Palestinian population during and following the pandemic.

The crumbling of the Palestinian health-care system exacerbated the sense of dread among the population and made them less likely to vaccinate. The pandemic-like spread of Covid-19 prompts a plea for the global community to actively advocate for the urgent re-establishment of equity, autonomy and durability of the medical infrastructure in the occupied territories and equal entitlements for the Palestinians in Israel.

The results demonstrated the importance for public mental health to consider the multiple levels implied in the vaccine refusal in Palestine and Israel among the Palestinian population.

This paper aims to explore to what extent can the Saudi–US alliance endure, given the several challenges it has faced over the past decade. Using a conceptual framework from the alliance theory, the paper will trace the historical evolution of the alliance between the two countries, then will identify some of the challenges that have faced the alliance on both the regional and bilateral levels, and finally will assess the impact of these challenges on the resilience of the Saudi–US alliance.

This paper will use the alliance theory literature to analyze the challenges and the resilience of the Saudi–US relations.

The Saudi–US alliance has encountered several challenges in the past decade such as the Arab spring, the Iranian nuclear deal and the Civil War in Syria and Yemen. However, this alliance proved to be resilient, and the strategic partnership between the two countries managed to overcome these challenges.

The importance of this paper stems from the fact that the USA and the Saudi Arabia are two pivotal countries, and their relationship affects regional and international dynamics. The paper contributes to the literature on the Saudi–US bilateral relations as well as their views on recent regional issues such as the Arab Spring, the civil war in Yemen and Syria. Assessing the limits and potentials of the alliance between the two countries could also help us understand the future of regional developments in the Middle East.

The study aims at estimating the shadow economy (SE) using the method of demand for currency in Palestine for the period 2008–2018 by studying the relationship between a group of variables that affect the ratio of money traded outside the banking system to the money supply in the broad sense.

The study has adopted analytical and descriptive research methods to estimate SE in Palestinian territories. The data has been obtained from the inflation reports issued by the Palestinian Monetary Authority for ten years, from 2008 to 2018. A standard model was constructed using EViews version 8 for statistical data processing after converting the annual data to quarterly data.

The authors demonstrated that the size of the SE in Palestinian territories has varied over time, and the annual average of its size during the study period reached about $1764.893 (in millions). This amount constitutes about 15.5% of the gross domestic product. The study provides recommendations for reducing the size of the SE in Palestinian territories.

The current study shows that shadow economics could significantly matter for economic policy design by policymakers.

This study deals directly with Tanzi’s “estimation of shadow economy in Palestinian territories” concept and its impact on economic policies.

This study aims to highlight the dimensions of the rivalry over the regional role between two regional powers in the Middle East, and the impact of local, regional and international pressures of the Syrian crisis on the role performance of the competing forces.

The study is based on using “the role approach” as an analytical frame to benefit by the application of the theory of role. This approach allows the possibility of linking various analytical levels, both in clarifying the relationship between internal and external factors and showing the interaction between elements of perception, abilities and behavior.

The international pressures shall remain governing the frame of competition among the roles of the regional powers, through determining the course of competition and its direct impact on its results.

This study examines the phenomenon of regional rivalry between two distinct and competing regional powers, in a turbulent environment in the wake of the Arab Spring crises, which created opportunities and challenges for regional powers, especially in Syria, where it intersected with the interests and policies of major and regional powers.

This paper aims to explore the international response to the discovery and development of gas fields in the East Mediterranean basin.

The study applies key concepts into a framework and explores the strategies used by nations for developing their influence in the region.

The key nation states (the USA and Russia) and the supranational EU are notable in their divergent approaches to obtaining access to and influence regarding the gas fields.

The development of the strategies used by the international rivals for access to the resources available from the offshore oil fields is set to be an area for further study.

This paper offers insight into a developing rivalry over energy security, which will a platform for further investigation throughout the exploitation of the “New Gulf” gas fields.

Cities are facing challenges that dramatically affect their social and physical landscapes, leading to the increase of urban segregation and polarization. One response to these challenges is adaptive reuse, yet, in heterogeneous communities, these adaptations are often a source of conflict, because local actions often lack an integrative approach, leading to further exclusion. In this paper the authors explore the potential of adaptive reuse of urban heritage as a planning tool to support inclusiveness and heterogeneity.

The city of Acre is used as a case study, where different scenarios for urban heritage are proposed and tested among stakeholders through interviews. These aim to explore how adaptive reuse processes can lead to the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups and how design interventions in historic urban landscapes challenge the way the current disconnected historic and urban layers interact.

The paper presents the commonalities and differences between the interviewees' perceptions on Acre's functioning, their idea of inclusiveness and other aspects related to urban design. Moreover, it highlights the existing conflicts of interest, value prioritization and the adequacy of the proposed scenarios, serving as a way to verify the accuracy of the scenario building process.

Testing an urban design tool related to adaptive reuse of urban heritage in a real and extreme case, based on the guidelines of the Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation; and critically analysing the sources of conflict and value systems to address inclusion in heterogenous settings.

This study is not intended to be a prescriptive blueprint for any nation or region to fight terrorism, but rather it aims to analyze the development of policies supporting terrorism and their impact on regional as well as international relations. It is an examination of relevant facts, which might hopefully benefit policy makers and practitioners who diligently work on reducing or eliminating terrorist activities.

In order to achieve the objectives of the paper and in light of the pool of the available literature and data, the study adopts the system-analysis method in analyzing the impact of policies supporting terrorism and the countermeasures to apply based on the inputs, outputs and conversions associated with the phenomenon of terrorism.

Policies supporting terrorism differ from a state to another starting from providing safe haven to terrorist groups to providing direct finance and armaments to directly intervening militarily in a targeting country. Or deter such policies. This raised the concerns of many States in the region regarding the domination tendency of Turkey and called for a firm and pragmatic international, regional and Arab stand beyond verbal condemnation to deter Turkey from pursuing such policies.

The importance of the academic study stems from the importance of addressing one of the central issues in the field of regional and international relations, which is the policies some states adopt to support terrorism, not only by financing terrorism but also by incubating terrorism. Most studies on terrorism focus on the concept and situations and not on policies that support terrorism and their impact on regional and international relations and the means of encountering terrorism.

This paper aims to examine the hypotheses of main international theories (realism, liberalism and constructivism) and the development of these theories toward the behavior of foreign policy of small states in the developing world. The theories of international relations, especially the realistic theory, face a theoretical debate and a fundamental criticism. The hypotheses of these theories are not able to explain the external behavior of some small states, especially those in the developing world such as Qatar. In particular, these small states do not have the elements of physical power through which they can play this role. However, they are based on the internal determinants (such as political leadership and the variable of perception) and non-physical dimensions of power to play an effective and influential external role.

This topic sheds light on the hypotheses of theories of main international relations, which explain the behavior of foreign policy of small states. This is due to the increased number of such states after the disintegration of Soviet Union, the practice of some countries an effective foreign role and the transformation of the concept of power from the hard power to soft power, and then to smart power

The theories of international relations, especially the realistic theory, face a theoretical debate and a fundamental criticism. The hypotheses of these theories are not able to explain the external behavior of some small states, especially those in the developing world such as Qatar. In particular, these small states do not have the elements of physical power through which they can play this role. However, they are based on the internal determinants (such as political leadership and the variable of perception) and non-physical dimensions of power to play an effective and influential external role.

The importance of the study comes from its interest in small countries in general and the Qatar situation in particular. The small country emerged as a player independent of the Gulf Cooperation Council, unlike what prevailed before, which led to the discussion of a regional role for Qatar despite its small power compared to the strength and size of other factions in the region such as Turkey, Israel and Iran.