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The meteorological statistics collected from six-year wind speed data of Ramallah in Palestine are used to evaluate the potential of wind energy. The Weibull function is utilized to statistically assess the wind performance. An examination of the wind data using hourly wind directions and speeds throughout the six-year period between 2016 and 2021. The investigation revealed that the Weibull model provided a precise explanation of the actual wind data using the maximum likelihood estimator approach for scale and shape parameters. The most prevalent wind direction in Ramallah was west-northwest, accounting for 29.5% of all occurrences. Summer months have the maximum power density, reaching 129.9 at 50 m, 196.0 at 75 m, and 268.9 W/m2 at 100 m. In the conclusion, yearly energy outputs, capacity factors, and economic potential for fifteen wind turbines ranging in size from 0.5 to 5 MW had been evaluated. It was revealed that the greatest capacity factor is about 36% and has a high economic potential at a cost of less than 0.07 $/kWh for an appropriate selection of wind turbine models. This baseline research will be utilized as a decision-making basis for the best and most economical wind energy investment in Palestine.

Recycling is one of the management options applied to: minimize the landfilled waste quantity, provide raw materials, and assist in sustaining the environment for future generations. The success of any recycling program globally depends mostly on the active and sustained participation of citizens. The purpose of the conducted research presented in this paper is to investigate the recycling barriers and offer an insight into the motivations that may encourage local population to increase participation in local recycling schemes. The research focused on Ramallah and Al-Bireh district of Palestine, which is a developing country with minimum infrastructure and economics; the raw data were collected using structured questionnaires. The influence of four basic socio-economic factors, namely, gender, level of education, age, and type of residence, on recycling barriers of individuals was recorded and investigated. The results showed that: lack of awareness and information on the process of waste separation and storage are the basic recycling barriers of the local population, whereas financial incentive is the major motivational factor for their active participation. Most importantly, the field research proved that locals are willing to participate in recycling campaigns and almost half of them appreciate the necessity of recycling-green-point’s existence for the collection of segregated waste.

Drawing inspiration from the principles of postcolonial ecocriticism, this research investigates the correlation that Mourid Barghouti constructs in his autobiographical novel I Saw Ramallah (2003) between the occupied Palestinians and their exploited environmental and natural world. This essay contends that the novel presents a comprehensive perspective that necessitates an appreciation of the interconnectedness between the national and bioecological struggles and resistance of the colonized people. Nature serves as a source of inspiration and resistance. In this context, the Palestinians’ fight against the loss of their land and identity is concurrently a resistance against the exploitation of their environment; thus, the Palestinians’ connection with their natural environment represents a form of attachment and resistance. This research advances the main postcolonial ecocritical claim that the natives’ existence is inextricably linked to the survival of their environment. Through depictions of the natural and environmental worlds, the author conveys his feelings about the environment, demonstrating the principle of human-ecosystem interconnectedness and revealing the environmental consciousness that permeates the narrative. Thus, an examination of the novel demonstrates the principles of the critical intersection of ecocriticism and postcolonialism.

The establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) after the 1993 Oslo Accords opened doors for private local, and international, investments, mainly in real estate sector. This paper focuses on the case study of the city of Rawabi (hereafter, Rawabi), in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate (R-AG). In such context, the urban boom has been influenced by the neoliberal market and new global realities, cultural fascinations, and technological advances. As argued by Jean Baudrillard, the engagement of the technology in the architecture industry not only enabled the emergence of new architectural typologies and meanings to market alternative models of “dream designs” but also has affected the boundaries between the real and the imagined. Following a qualitative ethnographic socio-spatial methodological approach, this study examines the city model of Rawabi, in reference to neoliberal policies, the investors’ vision, emerging architectural typology, promoted readymade lifestyle, and residents’ everyday lived reality. The study involves theories of selected literature on neoliberal policies and profit-driven urban development, hyperreality, and architectural industry to discuss the evolution of the commodified urban landscape in the Occupied Palestine and its impacts on the quality of living, accessibility and social inclusion.

This article examines and problematizes the idea of return in the autobiography of Mourid Barghouti’s Ra’aytu Ram Allah (I Saw Ramallah). After thirty years of living in Egypt and Budapest, Barghouti returned to his hometown Ramallah in 1996 for a short visit that composes the core of his text. I investigate how Barghouti’s text unveils the Palestinian exile as a permanent state, but also as a challenged, resisted, or accepted the process of shifting people and places over time. By re-examining this autobiography within the frame of reading it as a displaced text, (or “displaced autobiography”) I show how I Saw Ramallah seeks to move beyond the state of exile and expose its aftermath, especially when the displaced person is back in his or her homeland. I also explore how the author’s return to his original place invokes the memory of a remote past, inviting a buried or forgotten selfhood. I argue that by recalling this past, which occurred before displacement, a displaced autobiographer like Barghouti attempts to “fix” Palestine as a land for the people who have memories and history in it.

Al-Manarah Square in the twin cities of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, Palestine, is one example of modern urbanisation in a Palestinian context. During the twentieth century, the area was transformed from a dirty road that connected the two towns of Ramallah and Al-Bireh to a central space that evocated the major urban restructuring and transformations of both cities to an exclusive administrative and business centre with a high-end gated residential community. Thus, the aim of this paper is to study the transformation of Al-Manarah Square as a main node that connects Ramallah with its twin city of Al-Bireh. It also analyses the various dimensions of this square in the spatial configuration and urban development of both cities as a political and economic centre as well as a cultural milieu. The implemented methodology includes direct observations via site visits, fieldwork, documentation of all existing streets and buildings around the square, interviews with owners and other residents of the study area and surveys of the existing literature related to the subject. An analytical approach based on the Conzenian School has been applied to analyse the urban form, spatial layout and configuration of the square.

Many in the United States and Israel believe that Hamas is nothing but a terrorist organization, and that its social sector serves merely to recruit new supporters for its violent agenda. Based on Sara Roy's extensive fieldwork in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during the critical period of the Oslo peace process, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza shows how the social service activities sponsored by the Islamist group emphasized not political violence but rather community development and civic restoration.

Objective: This study examines the effect of the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) handbook - a home-based health record - on women's knowledge and behavior in the Jericho and Ramallah Governorates of Palestine. Methods: This study uses a repeated, cross-sectional data set in which pre- and post-intervention situations are incorporated on two groups: those exposed and those not exposed to the MCH handbook. We employed a difference-in-difference regression analysis utilizing a pre-tested knowledge, attitude, and practice survey of women at 24 MCH 'treatment' centers (N= 260, 270, pre-/post-) in comparison with the women at 6 MCH centers (N= 70, 70, pre-/post-) where the MCH handbook was not released. A trained facilitator conducted a series of focus group discussions with 42 women who were the clients of MCH services and 25 health providers, both from the intervention area, to confirm the results obtained from the quantitative study. Findings: Knowledge related to MCH such as the importance of exclusive breastfeeding and how to cope with the risks of rupture of membranes during pregnancy increased among MCH handbook users, especially among less-educated women. The MCH handbook may be an effective tool for communication with health providers and husbands, for both highly educated and less-educated women during their first pregnancy. Our results suggest that although less-educated women rarely read the handbook themselves at home, they became familiar with health information and options related to MCH through personalized guidance that was provided by health providers at health facilities utilizing MCH handbook. Conclusion: The MCH handbook may be an effective tool to improve (i) communication between the client and the health provider and (ii) women's knowledge- and health-seeking behaviors related to maternal, newborn, and child health.

Among the consequences of the consolidation of the Israeli closure regime have been the contraction of Palestinians' social worlds and the emergence of new forms of localism. Unlike the more parochial West Bank towns of Nablus, Hebron, and Jenin, Ramallah/al-Bireh has taken on many of the cosmopolitan aspects of larger metropoles—Beirut, Cairo, Tunis—because of a combination of historical influences, present-day migration patterns, and political realities. The result is a paradoxical “enclave city” whose sights are oftentimes more fixed on the global rather than the national level.

This article documents two Palestinian productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream that took place in Ramallah at Ashtar Theatre in 1995 and Al-Kasaba Drama Academy in 2011. This exploration demonstrates how Shakespearean plays have become a medium for international collaboration and exchange between European and Palestinian theatre training institutions. Recognizing that the works of Shakespeare have been used as a tool to further British imperialist ambitions, and drawing upon the author's own experiences as director of the 2011 production, this article examines the ways in which these two contemporary productions both acknowledge this colonial heritage in Palestine and use it to further the mission of training emerging actors.