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Zealots for Zion
Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement
Friedman, Robert
Rutgers University Press, 1994

"With his sensitive reporter's eyes, Mr. Friedman takes us inside the settlement movement, to the synagogies, kitchen tables and television rooms where ordinary people talk of extraordinary things . . . . This is a chilling book.  The contrast drawn between charming suburban lawns of settlement communities and the political threat they represent is sobering.  The current Labor government in Israel, and American diplomats pursing the peace process, minimize the movement as an irritant that can be managed when the time comes.  Anyone who knows about the tenacity of the settlers, as described by Mr. Friedman, dares not be so confident."--Peter Grose, The New York Times Book Review

"[Zealots for Zion] is among a new genre of works on Israel that . . . appears to be setting a higher standard of objectivity for studies of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. . . . It is not only a penetrating look at the violence-prone Israeli zealots who are behind the aggressive establishment of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied territories, but also at the Jewish Americans who encourage, justify and help fund them."--Donald Neff, The Washington Post Book World

"Above all else, Friedman documents the extent to which Israeli political figures have used the settler movement for their own purposes.  He also argues convincingly that the general unwillingness of many Israelis to thwart the zealots poses a grave threat to the future of Palestinian-Israel relations and the tenuous chance of negotiating a peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors."--Rita E. Hauser, Tikkun

"The mystical mythology, yuppie yearnings, willful naivete and raw prejudices of those staking a claim to what they consider to be 'Greater Israel' have rarely been this revealingly and comprehensively documented."--Nisid Hajari, Newsday

The peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization gives us hope for the future of the West Bank, but no one expects the transition to be easy.  Who are the zealots who care so deeply about retaining that land for their own?  Robert Friedman, a prize-winning writer, takes a hard, close look at the legacy of the controversial policy of building settlements in the Occupied Territories.  Zealots for Zion is a shocking investigation of the movement by militant right-wing Zionists to reinstitute the ancient civilization of Eretz Yisrael (Greater Israel) on lands seized in the 1967 Six-Day War. 

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Zouping in Transition
The Process of Reform in Rural North China
Andrew G. Walder
Harvard University Press, 1998

Zouping offers important general lessons for the study of China's rural transformation. The authors in this volume, all participants in a unique field research project undertaken from 1988 to 1992, address questions that are far from simple and about which there is some controversy.

The questions are grouped around two issues. The first is the role of local governments as economic actors. What is this role, how have they played it, and how can we explain their behavior? Have they dominated rural economies through public ownership of industry and local planning, or has the role of local governments diminished with the rise of market transactions and private ownership? The second issue is market reform and inequality. Have rural cadres enjoyed income advantages in the new market environment? Has the provision of such collective services as education and health care declined, leading to new forms of inequality?

The chapters on the role of local government all point to a single conclusion: one cannot explain the rapid development of Zouping without reference to the role of local governments and of local government officials as economic actors. Scholarly writings about the "transitional economies" have often ignored or distorted this aspect of China's reform experience. On the second issue, changes in inequality owing to market reform, the authors present mixed findings but contribute rich new data to the research on this issue.

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