Results by title

95 books match the query 'Arab-Israeli conflict' and 25 start with t

cover of The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East

The Blood of Abraham

Insights into the Middle East

Jimmy Carter

University of Arkansas Press, 2007

In The Blood of Abraham, originally published in 1985 with updates to the afterword in 1993 and 2007, President Carter explains his understanding of the Middle East and seeks to provide an enlightening and reconciling vision for greater peace in the region.
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cover of The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective

The Case for Palestine

An International Law Perspective

John Quigley

Duke University Press, 2005

John Quigley brings a necessary international law perspective to bear on the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this updated edition of his important book. Since 2000, the cycle of bloodshed and retribution has spiraled increasingly out of control. Quigley attributes the breakdown of negotiations in 2000 to Israel’s unwillingness to negotiate on the basis of principles of justice and law. He argues that throughout the last century, established tenets of international law—and particularly the right of self-determination—have been overlooked or ignored in favor of the Zionists and then the Israelis, to the detriment of the Palestinians.

In this volume, Quigley provides a thorough understanding of both sides of the conflict in the context of international law. He contends that the Palestinians have a stronger legal claim to Jerusalem than do the Israelis; that Palestinian refugees should be repatriated to areas including those within the borders of Israel; and that Israel should withdraw from the territory it occupied in 1967. As in his earlier volume, Quigley provides an extensively documented evaluation of the conflict over the last century, discussing the Zionist movement, the League of Nations’ decision to promote a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the 1948 war and creation of Israel, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights during the 1967 war.

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cover of The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938-1967

The Holocaust Averted

An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938-1967

Gurock, Jeffrey S

Rutgers University Press, 2015

The increasingly popular genre of “alternative histories” has captivated audiences by asking questions like “what if the South had won the Civil War?” Such speculation can be instructive, heighten our interest in a topic, and shed light on accepted history. In The Holocaust Averted, Jeffrey Gurock imagines what might have happened to the Jewish community in the United States if the Holocaust had never occurred and forces readers to contemplate how the road to acceptance and empowerment for today’s American Jews could have been harder than it actually was.
 
Based on reasonable alternatives grounded in what is known of the time, places, and participants, Gurock presents a concise narrative of his imagined war-time saga and the events that followed Hitler’s military failures. While German Jews did suffer under Nazism, the millions of Jews in Eastern Europe survived and were able to maintain their communities. Since few people were concerned with the safety of European Jews, Zionism never became popular in the United States and social antisemitism kept Jews on the margins of society. By the late 1960s, American Jewish communities were far from vibrant.

This alternate history—where, among many scenarios, Hitler is assassinated, Japan does not bomb Pearl Harbor, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt is succeeded after two terms by Robert A. Taft—does cause us to review and better appreciate history. As Gurock tells his tale, he concludes every chapter with a short section that describes what actually happened and, thus, further educates the reader.
 
 
 
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cover of The Kingdom of Strangers

The Kingdom of Strangers

Elias Khoury

University of Arkansas Press, 1996

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cover of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story

The Last Earth

A Palestinian Story

Ramzy Baroud

Pluto Press, 2018

Spanning decades and encompassing war, mass exodus, epic migrations and the search for individual and collective identity, The Last Earth tells the story of modern Palestine through the memories of those who have lived it. 

Ordinary Palestinians have rarely narrated their own history. In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed author Ramzy Baroud draws on dozens of interviews to produce vivid, intimate and beautifully written accounts of Palestinian lives - in villages, refugee camps, prisons and cities, in the lands of their ancestors and in exile. Baroud's empathetic and lyrical approach reveals new human dimensions of the Palestinian saga, telling it as it has never before been told. 

Against dominant narratives, the last earth reclaims Palestine's past - and present - for all its people.
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cover of The Making of a Human Bomb: An Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance

The Making of a Human Bomb

An Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance

Nasser Abufarha

Duke University Press, 2009

In The Making of a Human Bomb, Nasser Abufarha, a Palestinian anthropologist, explains the cultural logic underlying Palestinian martyrdom operations (suicide attacks) launched against Israel during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–06). In so doing, he sheds much-needed light on how Palestinians have experienced and perceived the broader conflict. During the Intifada, many of the martyrdom operations against Israeli targets were initiated in the West Bank town of Jenin and surrounding villages. Abufarha was born and raised in Jenin. His personal connections to the area enabled him to conduct ethnographic research there during the Intifada, while he was a student at a U.S. university.

Abufarha draws on the life histories of martyrs, interviews he conducted with their families and members of the groups that sponsored their operations, and examinations of Palestinian literature, art, performance, news stories, and political commentaries. He also assesses data—about the bombers, targets, and fatalities caused—from more than two hundred martyrdom operations carried out by Palestinian groups between 2001 and 2004. Some involved the use of explosive belts or the detonation of cars; others entailed armed attacks against Israeli targets (military and civilian) undertaken with the intent of fighting until death. In addition, he scrutinized suicide attacks executed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad between 1994 and 2000. In his analysis of Palestinian political violence, Abufarha takes into account Palestinians’ understanding of the history of the conflict with Israel, the effects of containment on Palestinians’ everyday lives, the disillusionment created by the Oslo peace process, and reactions to specific forms of Israeli state violence. The Making of a Human Bomb illuminates the Palestinians’ perspective on the conflict with Israel and provides a model for ethnographers seeking to make sense of political violence.

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cover of The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians

The Moral Triangle

Germans, Israelis, Palestinians

Sa'red Atshan and Katharina Galor

Duke University Press, 2020

Berlin is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora community and one of the world’s largest Israeli diaspora communities. Germany’s guilt about the Nazi Holocaust has led to a public disavowal of anti-Semitism and strong support for the Israeli state. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Berlin report experiencing increasing levels of racism and Islamophobia. In The Moral Triangle Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor draw on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Israelis, Palestinians, and Germans in Berlin to explore these asymmetric relationships in the context of official German policies, public discourse, and the private sphere. They show how these relationships stem from narratives surrounding moral responsibility, the Holocaust, the Israel/Palestine conflict, and Germany’s recent welcoming of Middle Eastern refugees. They also point to spaces for activism and solidarity among Germans, Israelis, and Palestinians in Berlin that can help foster restorative justice and account for multiple forms of trauma. Highlighting their interlocutors’ experiences, memories, and hopes, Atshan and Galor demonstrate the myriad ways in which migration, trauma, and contemporary state politics are inextricably linked.
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cover of The Myths of Zionism

The Myths of Zionism

John Rose

Pluto Press, 2004

Ancient, medieval and modern, this book is a critical account of the historical, political and cultural roots of Zionism.

Scrutinising the roots of the myths of Zionism and mobilising recent scholarship, John Rose shows how many of these stories, as with other mythologies, have no basis in fact. However, because Zionism is a living political force and these myths have been used to justify very real and political ends - namely, the expulsion and continuing persecution of the Palestinians. John Rose separates fact from fiction presenting a detailed analysis of their origins and development. This includes a challenge to Zionism's biblical claims using very recent and very startling Israeli archaeological conclusions.

This book shows clearly how Zionism makes many false claims on Jewish religion and history.

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cover of The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises

The New Babel

Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises

Leonard Schwartz

University of Arkansas Press, 2016

The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises evokes and investigates—from a Jewish American perspective and in the forms of poetry, essays, and interviews—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, America’s involvement as both perpetrator and victim of events in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the multiple ways that poetics can respond to political imperatives.

The poems range from the immediately lyrical to the experimental forms of the “Apple Anyone Sonnets” series, which relies heavily on the Arabic but has Shakespeare as its scaffolding.

In the essays, Schwartz calls on the power of poetry—and of some of the great poets in the Arabic, Jewish, and American traditions—to help rethink the battle lines of the contemporary Mid-East, with the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber looming large.

The interviews provide Schwartz’s discussions with Israeli poet and activist Aharon Shabtai, political philosopher Michael Hardt, and the late, great American poet Amiri Baraka.

In these creative, analytical, and conversational moments, Leonard Schwartz rethinks the battle lines of the contemporary Middle East and calls on the power of language as the essence of our humanity, endlessly fluid, but also the source of an intentional confusion there is a necessity to counter.

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cover of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock

The One-State Solution

A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock

Virginia Tilley

University of Michigan Press, 2010

“A clear, trenchant book on a topic of enormous importance... Overall this is a courageous plunge
into boiling waters. If it helps propel forward a debate that has hardly begun in this country it will
have performed a signal scholarly and political function.”
—Tony Judt, New York University

“. . . a pioneering text. . . . [A]s such it will take pride of place in a brewing debate.”
—Gary Sussman, Tel Aviv University

The One-State Solution demonstrates that Israeli settlements have already encroached on the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the extent that any Palestinian state in those areas is unviable. It reveals the irreversible impact of Israel’s settlement grid by summarizing its physical, demographic, financial, and political dimensions. Virginia Tilley explains why we should assume that this grid will not be withdrawn—or its expansion reversed—by reviewing the
role of the key political actors: the Israeli government, the United States, the Arab states, and the European Union. Finally, the book addresses the daunting obstacles to a one-state solution—including major revision of the Zionist dream but also Palestinian and other regional resistance—and offers some ideas about how those obstacles might be addressed.

 
Virginia Tilley is Chief Research Specialist in the Democracy and Governance Division of the Human Research Council in Cape Town, South Africa.
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cover of The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America's Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan

The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict

Making America's Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan

Steven L. Spiegel

University of Chicago Press, 1985

The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict illuminates the controversial course of America's Middle East relations from the birth of Israel to the Reagan administration. Skillfully separating actual policymaking from the myths that have come to surround it, Spiegel challenges the belief that American policy in the Middle East is primarily a relation to events in that region or is motivated by bureaucratic constraints or the pressures of domestic politics. On the contrary, he finds that the ideas and skills of the president and his advisors are critical to the determination of American policy. This volume received the 1986 National Jewish Book Award.
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cover of The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction - Fourth Edition

The Palestine-Israel Conflict

A Basic Introduction - Fourth Edition

Gregory Harms and Todd M. Ferry

Pluto Press, 2017

The Palestine-Israel conflict is the most notorious and ingrained conflict in living memory. Yet the way it is reported in the media is confusing and often misleading. In The Palestine-Israel Conflict, Gregory Harms and Todd M. Ferry provide an authoritative introduction to the topic. Balanced, accessible, and annotated, it covers the full history of the region from Biblical times up to the present.

Perfect for both general readers and students, it offers a comprehensive yet lucid rendering of the conflict, setting it in historical context. This fourth edition brings us up to date with a new introduction, conclusion, and material covering recent events: Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, the Palestinian unity deal between Fatah and Hamas, and ongoing Palestinian resistance, America’s Middle East policy, and the election of Trump.

​Cutting through layers of confused and inconsistent information, this new edition of The Palestine-Israel Conflict will clarify the ongoing struggle for all readers.
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cover of The Palestinian Refugee Problem: The Search for a Resolution

The Palestinian Refugee Problem

The Search for a Resolution

Edited by Rex Brynen and Roula El-Rifai

Pluto Press, 2013

In this unique volume, leading analysts – many of whom have been actively involved in past negotiations on this issue – provide an overview of the key dimensions of the Palestinian refugee problem. Mindful of the sensitive and contested nature of the subject, none offers a single solution. Instead, each contribution summarises and synthesises the existing scholarly and governmental work on the topic.

Each paper develops an array of policy options for resolving various aspects of the refugee issue, written in such a way as to provide a broad menu of choices rather than a single narrow set of recommendations.

No other work on the Palestinian refugee issue has undertaken such a task. The Palestinian Refugee Problem: The Search for a Resolution is likely to be a pre-eminent reference and analytical work on the topic for many years to come.

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cover of The Politics of Change in Palestine: State-Building and Non-Violent Resistance

The Politics of Change in Palestine

State-Building and Non-Violent Resistance

Michael Broning

Pluto Press, 2011

This book contradicts the dominant myth that incompetent, corrupt, and uncompromising Palestinian decision-makers are responsible for the lasting stalemate in the Middle-East Peace Process. It highlights recent political developments in Palestine that fundamentally redefine important parameters of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Contrary to public perception, new political trends in the Palestinian Territories bolster prospects for the realisation of Palestinian national aspirations. Michael Bröning identifies key indicators which fundamentally question dominant Israeli narratives and pose an unprecedented strategic challenge to the Israeli leadership. These include the re-invention of Hamas, the reform of the Fatah movement, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s state-building efforts and the surge of non-violent resistance against Israel.

This persuasive book forces us to reconsider the perceived wisdom that the Palestinians are powerless to influence events as they struggle for peace.

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cover of The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem

The Politics of Denial

Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem

Nur Masalha

Pluto Press, 2003

The 1948 war ended in the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their villages and homes. Israeli settlers moved in to occupy their land and the Palestinian refugees found themselves in refugee camps, or in neighbouring Arab countries. Today there are nearly four million Palestinian refugees -- and they want the right to go home. Their problem is the greatest and most enduring refugee problem in the world.

Since 1948 Israeli refugee policy has become a classic case of denial: the denial that Zionist "transfer committees" had operated between 1937 and 1948; denial of any wrong-doing or any historical injustice; denial of the "right of return"; denial of restitution of property and compensation; and indeed denial of any moral responsibility or culpability for the creation of the refugee problem.

The aim of this book is to analyze Israeli policies towards the Palestinian refugees as they evolved from the 1948 catastrophe (or nakba) to the present. It is the first volume to look in detail at Israeli law and policy surrounding the refugee question. Drawing on extensive primary sources and previously classified archive material, Masalha discusses the 1948 exodus; Israeli resettlement schemes since 1948; Israeli approaches to compensation and restitution of property; Israeli refugee policies towards the internally displaced (‘present absentees’); and Israeli refugee policies during the Madrid and Oslo negotiations.

Masalha asks what rights Palestinians possess under international law? How can a refugee population be compensated, and will they ever be able to return to their homes? Masalha questions the official Israeli position that the only solution to the problem is resettlement of the refugees in Arab states or elsewhere. This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the subject that lies at the heart of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

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cover of The Politics of Planting: Israeli-Palestinian Competition for Control of Land in the Jerusalem Periphery

The Politics of Planting

Israeli-Palestinian Competition for Control of Land in the Jerusalem Periphery

Shaul Ephraim Cohen

University of Chicago Press, 1993

On the open landscape of Israel and the West Bank, where pine and cypress forests grow alongside olive groves, tree planting has become symbolic of conflicting claims to the land. Palestinians cultivate olive groves as a vital agricultural resource, while the Israeli government has made restoration of mixed-growth forests a national priority. Although both sides plant for a variety of purposes, both have used tree planting to assert their presence on—and claim to—disputed land.

Shaul Ephraim Cohen has conducted an unprecedented study of planting in the region and the control of land it signifies. In The Politics of Planting, he provides historical background and examines both the politics behind Israel's afforestation policy its consequences. Focusing on the open land surrounding Jerusalem and four Palestinian villages outside the city, this study offers a new perspective on the conflict over land use in a region where planting has become a political tool.

For the valuable data it presents—collected from field work, previously unpublished documents, and interviews—and the insight it provides into this political struggle, this will be an important book for anyone studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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cover of The Politics of the Trail: Reflexive Mountain Biking along the Frontier of Jerusalem

The Politics of the Trail

Reflexive Mountain Biking along the Frontier of Jerusalem

Oded Löwenheim

University of Michigan Press, 2014

Each day, as Oded Löwenheim commutes by mountain bike along dirt trails and wadis in the hills of Jerusalem to Hebrew University, he feels a strong emotional connection to his surroundings. But for him this connection also generates, paradoxically, feelings and emotions of confusion and estrangement.

In The Politics of the Trail, Löwenheim confronts this tension by focusing on his encounters with three places along the trail: the separation fence between Israel and the Palestinians; the ruins of the Palestinian village Qalunya, demolished in 1948; and the trail connecting the largest 9/11 memorial site outside of the U.S. with a top-secret nuclear-proof bunker for the Israeli cabinet. He shares the stories of the people he meets along the way and considers how his own subjectivity is shaped by the landscape and culture of conflict. Moreover, he deconstructs, challenges, and resists the concepts and institutions that constitute such a culture and invites conversation about the idea of conflict as a culture.

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cover of The Power of Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians: Stories of Change from the School for Peace

The Power of Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians

Stories of Change from the School for Peace

Sonnenschein, Nava

Rutgers University Press, 2019

In The Power of Dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, scholar and activist Nava Sonnenschein shares a collection of twenty-five powerful interviews she conducted with Palestinian and Jewish Israeli alumni of peacebuilding courses, a decade after their graduation. Participants with diverse personal and professional backgrounds completed a series of conflict transformation workshops using the model developed by the School for Peace at the world’s only intentional Jewish-Palestinian community, Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam (“Oasis of Peace” in Hebrew and Arabic). Critically, the interviews vividly demonstrate that peacebuilding does not end with the courses. Most of the graduates choose to work professionally in roles that contribute to peace-building. Sonnenschein shows the transformational potential of encounter between members of groups in conflict, sharing how ordinary Israelis and Palestinians coming together in an open and honest environment undergo life-changing experiences that provide concrete hope for a sustainable path to a peaceful shared existence as equals in Israel and Palestine. 

 
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cover of The Privatisation of Israeli Security

The Privatisation of Israeli Security

Shir Hever

Pluto Press, 2017

From 1994-2014, Israel’s security service transformed and became one of the most extreme examples of privatized security in the world. The Privatisation of Israeli Security provides a comprehensive overview of this period and the socioeconomic conditions that enabled it. Shir Hever considers the impact of the ongoing crisis of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, the influence of US military aid, and the effect of neoliberalism on state apparatus in order to make sense of this dramatic change in security policy. Through his revealing study, Hever shows how the structural violence of the neoliberal economy is self-perpetuating, providing a fresh perspective on the Israeli occupation for students, activists, and journalists alike. 
 
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cover of The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability

The Right to Maim

Debility, Capacity, Disability

Jasbir K. Puar

Duke University Press, 2017

In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar's analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel's policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability's interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.
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cover of The Struggle for Peace: Israelis and Palestinians

The Struggle for Peace

Israelis and Palestinians

Edited by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea and Mary Evelyn Hocking

University of Texas Press, 1992

The determination of ordinary people to end regional and global conflicts is powerful despite the forces opposing them. The Struggle for Peace explores how average citizens on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict worked for peace in the late twentieth century. Essays by noted scholars are juxtaposed with profiles of individual Israelis and Palestinians involved in peace activism. What emerges is a unique perspective on the prospects for peace in this troubled area.

Coordinated with a documentary film of the same name, the book is designed as a tool for the study of conflict resolution generally and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. The twelve original essays deal with the issues from different disciplinary perspectives: political science (Yehoshafat Harkabi, A. R. Norton, Muhammad Muslih, and Robert Vitalis); history (Avraham Zilkha and Joel Beinin); anthropology (Robert Rubinstein); sociology (Salim Tamari); film (Steven Talley); law (Edward Sherman); and international peacekeeping (Christian Harleman). The human side of the struggle is presented through brief biographies and portraits of twenty-five ordinary Israelis and Palestinians involved in peace activities in Israel and the West Bank.

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cover of The Suppression of Guilt: The Israeli Media and the Reoccupation of the West Bank

The Suppression of Guilt

The Israeli Media and the Reoccupation of the West Bank

Daniel Dor

Pluto Press, 2005

In the three years that have passed since Operation Defensive Shield – three years marked by denial, deceit, rage and resentment – one fact remains uncontroversial: never, until the operation, had there been such a wide breach between the Israeli collective consciousness and international public opinion. Israeli scholar Daniel Dor measures this gap and concludes that Israeli society has withdrawn into an unprecedented sense of isolation and victimization – largely because of the role played by the Israeli media.

Different media outlets provided their readers and viewers with significantly different perspectives on the operation, but they all shared a certain emotional attitude, not vis-à-vis the operation itself, but in relations to the global discourse of blame against Israel: they all projected an urgent, desperate, almost obsessive urge to suppress, to dismiss, to fend off guilt.

Dor shows how analysing this type of reporting as an attempt to manufacture consent with the government and the military fails to capture its essential nature. He argues that, at its core, the coverage proposed alternatives for the construction of an Israeli identity. During the operation, all the different media converged around one assertion: being Israeli at this point in time feels like being accused by the entire world of something we are not guilty of. Basing his arguments on detailed analyses of media reports, Dor explores how the Israeli media work within the context of the global media and world opinion, rather than within the classic context of the nation-state -- and what it means for the future of the country.

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cover of The Time beneath the Concrete: Palestine between Camp and Colony

The Time beneath the Concrete

Palestine between Camp and Colony

Nasser Abourahme

Duke University Press, 2025

In The Time beneath the Concrete, Nasser Abourahme argues that settler colonialism is always as much an attempt to conquer time as it is to conquer land. Taking as his primary object  Palestinian refugee camps, created in the fallout of the eliminatory violence of Israel’s founding, Abourahme shows how these camps become the primary place where settler colonial attempts to dominate space and time encounter Indigenous refusal. Seen from the camps, Israel becomes a settler colonial project defined by its inability to move past the past—a project stuck at its foundational moment of conquest. At the same time, the Palestinian insistence on return is a refusal to abide by the closure of the past into settler futurity. Palestinian struggle does not just happen in the open time of dispossession; it happens over this time. That struggle, Abourahme demonstrates, is a form of anticolonial refusal that draws its power not from any decisive finality, but precisely from irresolution and keeping time open.
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cover of The West Bank Wall: Unmaking Palestine

The West Bank Wall

Unmaking Palestine

Ray Dolphin

Pluto Press, 2006

Since Israel began its construction in 2002, the Wall has sparked intense debate, being condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice. 

Israel claims it is a security measure to protect Israeli citizens from terrorist attacks. Opponents point to the serious impact on the rights of Palestinians, depriving them of their land, mobility and access to health and educational services. 

This book explores the Palestinian experience of the Wall in their international context. What are the real intentions behind the Israeli security argument? Is it a means of securing territory permanently through an illegal annexation of East Jerusalem? The West Bank Wall is a cutting account of the impact of the wall and how it affects prospects of a future peace in the Middle East.
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cover of Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel

Threat

Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel

Edited by Abeer Baker and Anat Matar

Pluto Press, 2011

Palestinian prisoners charged with security-related offences are immediately taken as a threat to Israel's security. They are seen as potential, if not actual, suicide bombers. This stereotype ignores the political nature of the Palestinian prisoners' actions and their desire for liberty.

By highlighting the various images of Palestinian prisoners in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Abeer Baker and Anat Matar chart their changing fortunes. Essays written by prisoners, ex-prisoners, Human rights defenders, lawyers and academic researchers analyse the political nature of imprisonment and Israeli attitudes towards Palestinian prisoners. These contributions deal with the prisoners' status within Palestinian society, the conditions of their imprisonment and various legal procedures used by the Israeli military courts in order to criminalise and de-politicise them. Also addressed are Israel's breaches of international treaties in its treatment of the Palestinian prisoners, practices of torture and solitary confinement, exchange deals and prospects for release.

This is a unique intervention within Middle East studies that will inspire those working in human rights, international law and the peace process.

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