Rekhess, Eli

Elie Rekhess (Hebrew: אלי רכס; born in Haifa) is an Israeli scholar of political history of the Arabs in Israel; Islamic resurgence in Israel; the West Bank and Gaza and Palestinian affairs. He serves as Crown Visiting professor in Israel Studies at Northwestern University affiliated with the Department of History and the Department of Jewish Studies. He was formerly on the faculty of the Department of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University and served as head of the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation. As an expert on Arab society in Israel, Rekhess' knowledge covers the fields of Political Islam, Palestinian society and politics, the political history of the Arab minority in Israel, minorities and ethnicity in the Middle East, Israeli politics, and social and ethnic cleavages in Israel. He is also a former officer of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), actively engaged in the combat sector in his earlier years. As an IDF officer he has real-life experience dealing with combating the various Palestinian resistance movements.