Political Analysis

Recommended Reads
What’s the story today?
See also the History List

Ali Abunimah
Battle for Justice in Palestine : The Case for a Single Democratic State in Palestine
(Chicago : Haymarket Books, 2014)
Author is editor of the Electronic Intifada.

Diana Allan
Refugees of the Revolution
(Stanford University Press, 2014)
A study of the Shatila camp in Beirut today.

Alternative Tourism Group (ATG, Beit Sahour, Bethlehem)
Palestine & Palestinians (ATG, 2008, 455 pages)
See also : Sarah Irving’s Bradt Guide to Palestine.

Avigail Abarbanel
Beyond Tribal Loyalties : Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists
(Cambridge Scholars, 2012)
Includes chapters on Jeff Halper, Ilan Pappé, Susan Nathan, Anna Baltzer, and others from the UK, Israel, the USA, and Australia.

Daud Abdullah & Ibrahim Hewitt, editors :
The Battle for Public Opinion in Europe : Changing Perceptions of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
(MEMO/Middle East Monitor, 2012)
Tim Llewellyn : A Public Ignored – The Broadcasters’ False Portrayal of the Israel-Palestine Struggle; David Cronin : The Rise of the Israel Lobby in Europe; Hanan Chehata : The Biggest Obstacles to Peace in the Middle East; Ilan Pappé : Is Israel a Democracy?; Corinna Mullin : Israel, the Biggest Threat to World Peace; Azzam Tamimi : The Inclusion and Exclusion of Hamas; Daud Abdullah : A Reading of European Attitudes toward Jerusalem; Robert Lambert : Extremist Nationalism in Europe and Support for Israel; Maria Holt : Changing Public Perceptions Relating to the Palestine-Israel Conflict; Daud Abdullah : The End of the Love Affair

Einas Abdullah [NYC]
Chapter from There are No Angels in Ramallah, translated by Robin Moger, Banipal 45 (2012).

Ali Abunimah
Battle for Justice in Palestine : The Case for a Single Democratic State in Palestine
(Haymarket Books, 2014)

Gilbert Achcar
The People Want : A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising
(Saqi Books, 2013)

The Arabs and the Holocaust : The Arab-Israeli War on Narratives
(Metropolitan Books, 2009)

With Michel Warschawski : The 33 Day War : Israel’s War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and its Consequences
(Paradigm Books, 2007)

Susan Akram, Michael Dumpet, Michael Lynk & Iain Scobbie, editors :
International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict : A Rights-Based Approach to Middle East Peace
(Routledge, 2011)
Contents : Susan M. Akram : Myths and Realities of the Palestinian Refugee Problem – Reframing the Right of Return / Scott Custer, Jr. : UNRWA : Protection and Assistance to Palestine Refugees / Terry Rempel & Paul Prettitore : Restitution and Compensation for Palestinian Refugees / Michael Dumper : Constructive Ambiguities? Jerusalem, International Law, and the Peace Process / Stephanie Koury : Legal Strategies at the United Nations : Namibia, Western Sahara, and Palestine / Omar Dajani : “No security without law” : Prospects for Implementing a Rights-Based Approach in Palestinian-Israeli security Negotiations / John Quigley : Self-Determination in the Palestine Context / Iain Scobbie : Natural resources and belligerent occupation : perspectives from international humanitarian and human rights / Feras Milhem & Jamil Salem : Building the Rule of Law in Palestine : Rule of Law without Freedom / Ian Lustick : One State not Two? A Cruel Examination of the ‘two states are impossible” Argument for a Single-State Palestine/the land of Israel / George Bisharat : Maximazing Rights – The One-State Solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

Atef Alshaer – SOAS Research Fellow and translator
Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World
(Hurst & Co., 2014)

Atef Alshaer & Lina Khatib
The Hizbullah Phenomenon : Politics and Communication
(Hurst & Co., 2013)

Ahmad Amara, Ismael Abu-Saad, and Oren Yiftachel, editors
Indigenous (in)justice : Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev
(Harvard University Law School, 2012)

Suad Amiry
Nothing to Lose but Your Life : My 18 Hour Journey with Murad
(Bloomsbury Qatar, 2010)

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law
(Granta, 2005)

with Michael Sorkin, ed : The Great Wall of Capital, in : Against the Wall – Israel’s Barriers to Peace
(New Press, 2005)

Earthquake in April (Beirut : Institute for Palestine Studies, 2003)

Women in the Conflict (Jerusalem : Middle East Publications, 1995)

The Palestinian Village Home (London : British Museum Publications, 1989)

‘An Obsession’
in Penny Johnson & Raja Shehadeh, eds: Seeking Palestine – New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home (Northampton, Massachusetts : Olive Branch Press, 2013)

Andrew Ashdown
The Stones Cry Out : Reflections from Israel and Palestine
(with foreword by Jerusalem Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal; Christians Aware, 2006)

Gilad Atzmon
The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
(Zero Books, 2011)
Do we need another book on Jewish identity? In this case, yes, a collection of essays approaching the all-too-typical Jewish self-importance. The Germans and Japanese fell hard after learning that being excusably exceptional ain’t cool.
Not all the arguments here are strong, especially regarding international finance and demography, some sections get diverted into the philosophers’ tea room, and it’s neither nice nor necessary to use actual non-celebrities as evidence.
Still, there are numerous important points : Zionists feed on anti-Jewish sentiment; fear of another Holocaust is unwarranted; clannish separatism is bad policy and bad humanity too. And Atzmon’s typology of worldwide Zionism seems accurate to me. Although the writer takes pains to denounce some Jewish stereotypes, he has every moral and intellectual right to criticise the wider community of Jews. The `Holocaust religion’, and media reticence to rationally take it on, simply excludes proper debate. Atzmon rejects the attitude that Jews are innately, preciously special. Those who set themselves in exclusivity ought to get out more. -AS
A controversial book that dangerously conflates Judaism and Zionism, and is therefore disavowed by many in the pro-Palestinian struggle as racist and anti-Semitic. NF

Uri Avnery
1948 : A Soldier’s Tale : The Bloody Road to Jerusalem
(Oneworld Publications, 2008 / 1949, 1950)

Ariella Azoulay & Adi Ophir, translated by Tal Haran
The One-State Condition : Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine
(Stanford University Press, 2013)

Ibtisam Barakat
Tasting the Sky : A Palestinian Childhood
Melanie Kroupa Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007

Gabi Baramki
Peaceful Resistance : Building a Palestinian University under Occupation
[Birzeit University] (Pluto Press, 2010)
A personal account of the establishment and maintenance of the first Palestinian university, most interesting for the post-1967 Occupation years but before Oslo.

Mourid Barghouti [Mashriqi writing ?]
‘The Driver Mahmoud Home’
in: Penny Johnson & Raja Shedadeh, eds : Seeking Palestine – New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home (Northampton, Massachusetts : Olive Branch Press, 2013)

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here
translated by Humphrey Davies (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Midnight and Other Poems
translated by Radwa Ashour (Todmorden : Arc Publications, 2008)

I Saw Ramallah
translated by Ahdaf Soueif (American University in Cairo Press, 2000, 2002 / Bloomsbury, 2004)

Omar Barghouti
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights
(Haymarket Books, 2011)
The author, a dance choreographer turned key architect of the BDS movement, argues the case for the Palestinian global campaign to boycott Israeli goods, academia and culture; divest from Israeli institutions; and sanction the Israeli government. Particularly good for artists to read, as it answers any questions you might have about cultural boycott. – NF

Ramzy Baroud [now at Exeter & editor at Middle Eastern Eye]
My Father was a Freedom Fighter : Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, 2010)

The Second Palestinian Intifada : A Chronicle of People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, 2006)

As editor :
Searching Jenin : Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion 2002
(forward by Noam Chomsky ; photojournalist, Mahfouz Abu Turk ; project facilitator, Ali Samudi; Seattle : Cune Press, 2003)

Gershom Baskin
The Negotiator : Freeing Gilad Shalit from Hamas
(Toby Press, 2013)

Joel Beinin and Rebecca L. Stein, editors
The Struggle for Sovereignty : Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005
(Stanford University Press, 2006)

Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1946-1965
(University of California Press / IB Tauris, 1990)

Marwan Bishawa (Al Jazeera English senior editor)
The Invisible Arab (Nation Books/Perseus, 2012)
Palestine/Israel : Peace or Apartheid? (Zed Books, 2003)

Max Blumenthal
Goliath : Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
(Nation Books, 2013)

Dr Dimitris Bouris
The European Union and Occupied Palestinian Territories : State-Building without a State
(Routledge, 2014)

State-Building without a State : The European Union’s Role in the Occupied Palestinian Territories after the Oslo Accords
(PhD University of Warwick, 2011)

Francis A. Boyle
Palestinian Right of Return under International Law
(Clarity Press, 2010)
A concise interpretation, highlighting ‘Israel as a Jewish bantustan.’

Palestine, Palestinians and International Law
(Clarity Press, 2006)

Martin P. Bunton
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict : A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford University Press, 2013)

Land Legislation in Modern Palestine
9-volume set including standard reference works, official reports and memoranda, council orders, ordinances and maps, 1917-1948.
(Cambridge Archive Editions, 2009)

Paola Caridi
Hamas : From Resistance to Government
(Seven Stories Press, 2012)

Noam Chayut
The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust
(Verso, 2014)
Memoir of ex-IDF conscript, now active in the Breaking the Silence group of soldiers against the occupation.

Zaki Chehab
Inside Hamas : The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies
(IB Tauris, 2007)
Despite the sensational title, it reveals the electoral strategies of Hamas, including their opinion survey research, that got them a solid democratic victory in Gaza elections. -AS

Leena Dallasheh, Kaoutar Buediri, & Andreas Muller; edited by Michael Warschawski
Cleansing and Apartheid in Jerusalem : An Alternative Guide to Jerusalem [pamphlet]
(Jerusalem & Bethlehem : Alternative Information Center, 2004)

Jonathan Cook
See also : Pappé : People’s Apart

Disappearing Palestine : Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair
(Zed Books, 2008, 2010)
The West Bank and Gaza have been transformed into laboratories for testing the infrastructure of confinement, creating a lucrative ‘defence’ industry by pioneering technologies for crowd control, surveillance, collective punishment and urban warfare. The goal of these ever more sophisticated systems of curfews, checkpoints, walls, permits and land grabs is the disappearance of Palestine.

Israel and the Clash of Civilisations : Iraq, Iran, and the Plan to Remake the Middle East
(Pluto Press, 2008)
A wide focus, in which the author argues that Israel’s desire to be the sole regional power in the Middle East has shaped the Bush Administration’s objectives in the “war on terror”. The book examines a host of inter-related issues, from the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the Second Lebanon War to the role of Big Oil and the demonisation of the Arab world. The current chaos in the Middle East, far from being a disastrous mistake, is the true goal of the neocons and Israel.

Blood and Religion : The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State
(Pluto Press, 2006)
An assessment of the Second Intifada and the resulting separation wall.

William A. Cook
The Plight of the Palestinians : A Long History of Destruction
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
From the publisher:“ A collection of voices from around the world that establishes in both theoretical and graphic termsthe slow, methodical genocide taking place in Palestine beginning in the 1940s, as revealed in the Introduction. From Dr. Francis A. Boyle’s detailed legal case against the state of Israel, to Uri Avnery’s “Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing,” to Richard Falk’s “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” to Ilan Pappe’s “Genocide in Gaza,” these voices decry in startling, vivid, and forceful language the calculated atrocities taking place, the inhumane conditions inflicted on the people, and the silence that exists despite the crimes, nothing short of state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians”

Guilia Danielle
Along an Alternative Road : Women, Reconciliation, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2011
-Hopefully this will be published as a book.

Beshara Doumani
‘A Song from Haifa’
in Penny Johnson & Raja Shehadeh, eds : Seeking Palestine – New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home (Northampton, Massachusetts : Olive Branch Press, 2013)

‘The Rise of the Sanjak in Jerusalem in the Late Nineteenth Century’
in Ilan Pappé, ed :
The Israel/Palestine Question (Routledge, 2007)

Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property and Gender
(State University of New York Press, 2003)

Rediscovering Palestine : Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (University of California Press, 1995)

Michael Dumper
Jerusalem Unbound : Geography, History and the Future of the Holy City
(Columbia University Press, 2014)

Marc H. Ellis
Judaism Does Not Equal Israel (New Press, 2009)

Reading the Torah Out Loud : A Journey of Lament and Hope (Fortress Press, 2007)
A time to mourn: the golden age of Constantinian Judaism — Politicizing the Holocaust: Richard Rubenstein and Israel after — Encountering a prophetic Christianity: political realities and spiritual questions — Liberation and loneliness: searching for God and community in North America — Gustavo Gutiérrez and liberation theology: the voice of faithful struggle — Among the Palestinian people: discovering a Jewish theology of liberation — Speaking truth: Israel and Palestine in the American Jewish understanding — Struggling for fidelity: encountering post-Holocaust theologians — Surveying the Jewish-Christian landscape: reflections on the political and ecumenical “deal” — Shattered hopes: loss and solidarity in the Jewish and Palestinian Diaspora — An unexpected blessing: Edward Said’s religious secularity — Reading the Torah out loud: reclaiming the text in an age when Israeli Star of David helicopter gunships fly — Standing up.

Israel and Palestine Out of the Ashes : The Search for Jewish Identity in the Twenty-first Century (Pluto, 2002)

Marc H. Ellis & Daniel A. McGowan, eds.
Remembering Deir Yassin : The Future of Israel and Palestine
(Olive Branch Press, 1998)

Sharif S. Elmusa
As editor:
Culture and the Natural Environment (American University in Cairo, 2005)

Water Conflict : Economics, Politics, Law and Palestinian-Israeli Water Resources
(Washington DC : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1998)

Hani A. Faris
The Failure of the Two-State Solution : The Prospects of One State in the Israel-Palestine Conflict
(IB Tauris, 2013)

Leila Farsakh
Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel : Labour, Land and Occupation
(Routledge, 2005, 2012)

Norman G. Finkelstein
‘US Support for Israeli State Terror’
in : Weapon of the Strong : Conversations on US State Terrorism [interviews by Cihan Aksan and Jon Bailes]
(Pluto Press, 2013)

This Time We Went Too Far : Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (OR Books, 2011)

Goldstone Recants : Richard Goldstone Renews Israel’s Licence to Kill (OR Books, 2011)

Civility and Academic Life, in : Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Era (edited by Edward J. Carvalho and David B. Downing; Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

Beyond Chutzpah : On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (regarding Alan M. Dershowitz; Verso, 2005, 2008)

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Verso, 1996, 2003, 2008)

The Holocaust Industry Reflection on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Verso, 2000, 2001, 2003)

The Rise and Fall of Palestine (University of Minnesota Press, 1995)

Richard Falk
Palestine : The Legitimacy of Hope
(OneWorld Books, 2014)
Legal scholar who assessed Palestine for the United Nations covers history, prison resistance, the USA and of course the UN.

Richard Falk & Howard Friel
The Record of the Paper : How the New York Times Misreports US Conflict in the Middle East
(Verso, 2007)

Chas. W. Freeman, Jr.
America’s Misadventures in the Middle East (Charlottesville, Virginia, 2010)
Career diplomat for the White House reflects on mistakes.

Fawaz A Gerges (London School of Economics professor & Al Jazeera commentator)
The New Middle East : Protest and Revolution in the Arab World
(Cambridge University Press, 2013)

The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda
(Oxford University Press, 2011)

The Far Enemy : Why Jihad Went Global
(Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Journey of the Jihadist : Inside Muslim Militancy
(Wadsworth, 2007)

Andrew Gowers and Tony Walker
Behind the Myth : Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Revolution
(Interlink Books, 2001)
Based on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with senior PLO figures, including Arafat, as well as senior American, Arab, Israeli and European officials, it is a comprehensive portrait of the evolution of the Palestinian resistance from its earliest days as an unruly and little noticed collection of guerrilla factions, through its rise to international prominence, right up to the position following the Gulf War and the historic Madrid Peace Conference of 1991.
It is the story of internecine strife and external conflict; of weakness and over-confidence; of mistakes and miscalculations; and of many lost opportunities for peace. But it is above all the story of of the dream that Arafat has done more than anyone to sustain in the face of daunting odds: the idea that Palestinian people should have the right to determine their own future.

Laila El-Haddad
Gaza Mom : Palestine, Politics, Parenting and Everything in Between
(Just World Books, 2010 and edited ed., 2013)

With Maggie Schmitt : The Gaza Kitchen (Just World Books, 2013)
More than a cookbook, Gazans’ stories reflect farming and the food distribution system.

Raja Halwani and Tomis Kapitan, eds.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict : Philosophical Essays on Self-Determination, Terrorism and the One-State Solution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

Adam Hanieh
Lineages of Revolt : Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East
(Haymarket Books, 2013)

Alan Hart
Zionism – The Real Enemy of the Jews
(World Focus Publications, various editions, in two-and-three-volume editions, 2005, 2012)
Zionist political muscle in both Tel Aviv and Washington is unwrapped in this fascinating insider’s history given that the author knew well both Yassir Arafat and Golda Meir! Someone just had to put these candid observations into print, but Hart is the one who really did. – AS

Eric Hasan
Notes on the Occupation : Palestine Lives [Israeli colonisation of the West Bank]
(translated by George Holoch; New Press, 2006)

Amira Hass
Reporting from Ramallah : An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land
(Semiotxt(e), 2003)
Hass is a rare Jewish Israeli correspondent (Ha’aretz) on Palestinian affairs living among the people about whom she wrote these dispatches.

Drinking the Sea at Gaza : Days and Nights in a Land under Siege
(translated by Elana Wesley & Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta; Hamish Hamilton Press, 1979)

Rosemary Hollis
Britain in the Middle East in the 9/11 Era
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)

-as editor w/Mark A. Heller : Israel and the Palestinians : Israeli Policy Options
(Chatham House, 2005)

Jordanian-Palestinian Relations – Where To?
With Mustafa Hamarneh & Khalil Shikaki
(Chatham House, 1997)

Maria Holt
Women and Conflict in the Middle East : Palestinian Refugees and the Response to Violence
(IB Tauris, 2014)

Women, Islam and Resistance in the Arab World
(Lynne Rienner Publications, 2013)

Testimonies of Violence – Testimonies of Violence : A Comparative Study of the Impact of Violence and Islamic Teachings on Shi’i and Palestinian Women in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations in Lebanon
(PhD University of London, 2004)

Sahar Huneidi
A Broken Trust : Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians (IB Tauris, 2001)
Sir Herbert Samuel, the first British High Commissioner in Mandatory Palestine (1920–25) has been generally regarded as an impartial administrator. But most of the measures Samuel took during his time in Palestine were designed to prepare the ground not simply for the “Jewish national home” promised in both the Balfour Declaration and the mandate for Palestine, but also for a Jewish state.

International Solidarity Movement (ISM)
Nicholas Blincoe & Hussein Khalili, editors
Peace under Fire : Israel, Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement
(Verso, 2004)
Non-violent, direct action efforts in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Sarah Irving
Leila Khaled : Icon of Palestinian Liberation
(Pluto Press, 2012)
An improvement on Khaled’s own 1975 autobiography, long since out of print. Irving allows the subject’s voice to come through, and her own critical assessment as well. -AS

Palestine
(Bradt Travel Guides, ca. 2010)
An insightful walking guide for intrepid ramblers, but an indispensable reference work too. Keep it handy. –AS

Sharon Lock with Sarah Irving
Gaza : Beneath the Bombs (Pluto Press, 2010)

Runo Isaksen
As editor : Literature and War : Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers
(translated by Kari Dickson; Northampton, Massachusetts : Olive Branch Press, 2009)
What really matters is the quality of what’s in our heads / Etgar Keret — In morality’s catastrophe zones / David Grossman — We have to act as if there is a chance. Maybe / Yoram Kaniuk — In conflicts, few people are able to understand the suffering of others / Amos Oz — Dissension is an old Jewish tradition / Meir Shalev — Arabophobia! / Orly Castel-Bloom — A perfect bridge / Dorit Rabinyan — Life is so much richer / Mahmoud Shuqair — I want to be free / Ghassan Zaqtan — My aim is to survive / Liana Badr — I write to release the violence inside / Zakariyya Muhammad — We have to be humane in our fight / Yahya Yakhlif — Men dominate society / Sahar Khalifeh — It is our duty to know about the other side / Mahmoud Darwish and Izzat Ghazzawi — Or should we do something about it? an Israeli-Palestinian contribution / Salman Natour.

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
The First Well, autobiography on growing up in Bethlehem and Jerusalem
translated by Issa J. Boullata
(Hesperus Press, 217pp, 2012)

Princesses Street : Baghdad Memories
Translated by Issa J. Boullata (University of Arkansas Press, 185pp, 2005)

Ewa Jasiewicz (author), Jon Sack (illustrator)
Prisoners of Love : A Story from the Freedom Flotilla
Graphic novel format published by Jon Sack, 2011

Hatim Kanaaneh
A Doctor in Galilee (Pluto Press, 2008)
“1948-er” Palestinian Israeli’s story, heartily endorsed by Dr. Ghada Karmi, Emma Williams (The Lancet), Ilan Pappé , Rashid Khalidi, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Ghada Karmi
Edward Said : A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation
(edited by Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom, University of California Press, 2010)
Chapter : Said and the Palestinian Diaspora : A Personal Reflection

Married to Another Man : Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine
(Pluto Press, 2007)
Ghada Karmi is a medical doctor and a leading Palestinian writer. This is her lucid and eloquent account of the impact of Israel on the Arab world, and its relationship with America and Europe. The book is also a informed defense of the One State solution. – NF
Concise but piercing insights into the injustices on the Palestinian communities. – AS

In Search of Fatima : A Palestinian Story
(Verso, 2004)
This hugely successful account of how the author’s childhood in Jerusalem became, in 1948, a lifetime in exile is much more than a gripping personal narrative. All the major events of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are covered here, by a Palestinian woman who grew up in Golders Green, and from wanting nothing more than to ‘fit in’ with her new surroundings, become one of the world’s leading commentators on Palestine. – NF.
Autobiography which superbly balances being neither overly self-centred nor polemical. A classic. –AS

The Palestinian Exodus : 1948-1998
(as editor, Reading : Ithaca Press, 1999

Egyptians in Britain : A Migrant Community in Transition
(University of Durham, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 1997)

Jerusalem Today : What Future the Peace Process
(as editor, Reading : Ithaca Press, 1996)

Widad Kamel Kawar
& Margarita Skinner
Palestinian Embroidery Motifs
(Rimal Publications, 2007)

Widad Kamel Kawar
Threads of Identity: Preserving Palestinian Custume and Heritage
(Rimal Publications, 2011)

Anbara Salam Khalidi
Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist : The Life and Activism of Anbara Salam Khalidi
(translated by Tarif Khalidi; Pluto Press, 2014

Rashid Khalidi (pre-Oslo Palestinian advisor, former University of Chicago colleague of Barack Obama)
Brokers of Deceit : How the US has Undermined Peace in the Middle East
(Boston : Beacon Press, 2013)
Note : author had access to declassified CIA documents.

Under Siege : PLO Decision-making during the 1982 War
(Columbia University Press, 1985, 2012)

Sowing Crisis : The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East
(Boston : Beacon Press, 2009)

The Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
(Oneworld, 2006)

Palestinian Identity : The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
(Columbia University Press, 1997, 2010)

‘Refugees’
In Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture, V.2 N.4
(Jerusalem : Middle East Publications, 1995)

The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism
(Columbia University Press, 1991)

With Itamar Rabinovich :
The Palestinian Right of Return : Two Views
Pamphlet – Cambridge, Massachusetts : International Security Studies Program, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1990

With Camille Mansour, as editors
Palestine and the Gulf : Proceedings of an International Seminar
Beirut : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1981

Walid Khalidi (Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut / Harvard University)

[See Camile Mansour : Transformed Landscapes: Essays on Palestine in Honor of Walid Khalidi
(American University Press in Cairo, 2009)]

Islam, the West, and Jerusalem
(Washington DC : Center for Contemporary Arab Studies & Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, 1996)

Palestine Reborn
(IB Tauris, 1992)

As editor, with Sharif S. Elmusa and Muhammad Ali Khalidii
All that Remains : The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948
(Washington DC : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992)

Before the Diaspora : A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948
(Beirut : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984)

Conflict and Violence in Lebanon : Confrontation in the Middle East
(Harvard University Center for International Affairs, 1979)

As editor : From Haven to Conquest : Readings in Zionism and the Palestinian Problem until 1948
(Beirut : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971, 1976)

As editor : with Jill Khaddini
Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1974)

Nick King
Education under Occupation – Learning to Improvise
(Discovery Analytical Resourcing, 2005)
Brief yet rare insight into Birzeit University, the West Bank’s oldest and best-funded university, near Ramallah. A not entirely encouraging narrative resulting from staff cynicism and occupation fatigue, but important for that regardless. – AS

Alex Klaushofer
Paradise Divided : A Portrait of Lebanon (Signal Books, 2007)
Drawing on interviews with community leaders and relationships with ordinary people, it reveals a richly-textured social and religious fabric in which Sunni and Shia Muslims, Druze and Christians of all kinds, from Maronite Catholics to evangelical Protestants, strive to maintain a delicate balance. It offers an insight into how Lebanon’s religious communities, their identities formed by history, landscape and their relationships with one another, came to be what they are today—and how their different perspectives can lead to potentially destructive tensions. What emerges is a quintessentially Middle Eastern form of coexistence, poised between tolerance and sectarianism—a theme powerfully developed through the author’s privileged access to the normally secretive Druze.

Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman
The Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans : Addressing Pedagogical Strategies
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

Joel Kovel
Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel / Palestine
(Pluto Press 2007.)
The author is the Jewish American former leader of the US Green Party. This book is a sustained critique of Zionism as ‘state-sponsored racism’, and a compelling argument for the One State solution. The author has particular insights into the psychology of Zionism, and the state of denial that the ideology attempts to engender in Jews. – NF

Stephen Law, editor
Israel, Palestine and Terror (Continuum, 2008)
Contents : Terrorisms in Palestine / Ted Honderich — Terror / Tomis Kapitan — The morality of Palestinian terrorism / Timothy Shanahan — Killing the innocent / Richard Norman — Terrorism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict / Igor Primoratz — Terrorism and justice : some useful truisms / Noam Chomsky — Terror in Palestine : a non-violent alternative? / Stephen Law — Casting the first stone : who can, and who can’t, condemn the terrorists / Gerald Cohen — Murder and morality : Professor Honderich on Israel and the Palestinians / Ardon Lyon — Terror and expected collateral damage : the case for moral equivalence / Michael Neumann — In a world of uneasy virtue / William L. McBride — Talk and terror : the value of just-war arguments in the context of terror / Patrick Riordan — Territory and terrorism in Israel / Tamar Meisels — Cosmopolitanism in a time of terror / Sharon Anderson-Gold — Tricks of memory : Auschwitz and the question of Palestinian terrorism / Brian Klug

Tim Llewellyn
A Public Ignored : The Broadcasters’ False Portrayal of the Israel-Palestine Struggle
-in Daud Abdullah & Ibrahim Hewitt, editors : The Battle for Public Opinion in Europe : Changing Perceptions of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Fulsome details noted earlier – MEMO/Middle East Monitor, 2012)

Zachary Lochman
Comrades and Enemies : Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948
(University of California Press, 1996)

With Joel Beinin
Intifada : The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation
(Boston : South End Press / IB Tauris, 1989)

Antony Loewenstein & Ahmed Moor, eds.
After Zionisn : One State for Israel and Palestine
(Al-Saqi Books, 2012)
Contributors include : Jonathan Cook, Ghada Karmi

Antony Loewenstein
My Israel Question
(Melbourne University Press, 2006)

Lila Abu-Lughod
Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
(Harvard University Press, 2013)

‘Pushing at the Door : My Father’s Political Education and Mine’
in: Penny Johnson & Raja Shedadeh, eds : Seeking Palestine – New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home (Northampton, Massachusetts : Olive Branch Press, 2013)

‘Singing with the Taxi Driver: from Bollywood to Babylon’
in Marianne Hirsch & Nancy K. Miller, eds : Rites of Return – Diaspora Poetics and the Politics of Memory
(Columbia University Press, 328pp, 2011)

Writing Women’s Worlds : Bedouin Stories
(University of California Press, 2008)

As editor, with Ahmad H. Sadi : Nakba – Palestine, 1948, and Claims of Memory
(Columbia University Press, 2007)

‘Secularism and Islam’
in : Nermeen Shaikh, ed. : The Present as History : Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Global Power
(Columbia University Press, 2007)

Local Contexts of Islamism in Popular Media
(Amsterdam University Press, 2006)

‘Rostam, Qashqai Rebel’
in Edmund Burke, ed : Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East
(University of California Press, 2006)

Dramas of Nationhood : The Politics of Television in Egypt
(University of Chicago Press, 2005)

‘On Shifting Ground : Bonding and Breaking with the Past’
in Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone , ed. : On shifting Ground : Muslim Women in the Global Era
(Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2002)

Michael T. Luongo
(as editor) : Gay Travels in the Muslim World (Routledge, 2007)
Actually, the diverse Arab world.

Sandra Mackey
Mirror of the Arab World : Lebanon in Conflict
(WW Norton, 2008)
A concise unpacking of Lebanon, in some ways the centre of the Middle East, with borders contrived by others, a weak state housing weak institutions, a Palestinian presence, resistance to societal and political change, Sunni/Shia sectarianism, occupation, militant Islam as a political ideology, conflict over the common identity essential to turning a fragile state into a viable nation, and civil war perpetrated by forces both inside and outside its borders.

Lisa Suhair Majaj, Paula W. Sunderman, and Therese Saliba, editors :
Intersections : Gender, Nation, and Community in Arab Women’s Novels
Syracuse University Press, 2002
Contents: Modernist Arab women writers: a historical overview / Salma Khadra Jayyusi — Framing Nawal El Saadawi: Arab feminism in a transnational world / Amal Amireh — Reenvisioning national community in Salwa Bakr’s The golden chariot / Magda M. al-Nowaihi — The sixth day of compassion: the im/possible communities of life toward death / Mary N. Layoun — Partitions and precedents: Sahar Khalifeh and Palestinian political geography / Barbara Harlow — A country beyond reach: Liana Badr’s Writings of the Palestinian diaspora / Therese Saliba — Strategic androgyny: passing as masculine in Barakat’s The stone of laughter / Mona Fayad — The fourth language: subaltern expression in Djebar’s Fantasia / Nada Elia — Voice, representation, and resistance: Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie Rose / Lisa Suhair Majaj 10. Hanan al-Shaykh’s Hikayat Zahra: a counter-narrative and a counter-history / Sabah Ghandour.

Saree Makdisi
Palestine Inside Out (WW Norton, 2008)
The author, a Palestinian who grew up in Lebanon, is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. This is his highly articulate and informed account of the mistreatment of Palestinians within Israel; also his analysis of the failed peace process, during which Israel has never acknowledged the rights of the refugees it created in 1948. Another educated plea for a One State solution. – NF

Ethel Mannin (1900-1984. Of her almost 100 titles, these represent most of the London writer’s Arab period, in the 1960s, always with a Palestinian struggle focus.)
The Lovely Land : The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan [travel]
(Hutchinson, 1965)

Aspects of Egypt : Some Travels in the United Arab Republic [travel, inc. Gaza]
(Hutchinson, 264pp, 1964)

A Lance for the Arabs [travel]
(Hutchinson, 1963)

Camille Mansour (ed., Birzeit University) and Leila Fawaz (ed., Tufts University)
Transformed Landscapes : Essays on Palestine in Honor of Walid Khalidi
(American University Press in Cairo, 2009)
Contributors include Laurie A. Brand, Leila Fawaz, Jamil Hilal, Michael C. Hudson, Rashid Khalidi, Philip S. Khoury, William Roger Louis, Adel Manna, Butrus Abu-Manneh, Camille Mansour, Abdul-Karim Rafeq, André Raymond, Sara Roy, Eric Rouleau, May Seikaly, and Salim Tamari.

Philip Marfleet & Rabab El-Madhi, editors
Egypt : The Moment of Change (Zed Books, 2009)
Note : contains perspective on the Muslim Brotherhood, which embraces Hamas in Gaza.

Philip Marfleet
Refugees in a Global Era (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
The Palestinians are repeatedly forced into migration.

Nur Masalha (Palestinian historian and professor linked to the University of Surrey and SOAS :
“The rupture of 1948 and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine are central to both the Palestinian society of today and Palestinian social history and collective identity. Resisting ethnic cleansing and politicide has been a key feature of the modern history of the Palestinians as a people.”

The Zionist Bible : Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory
(Acumen Publishing, 2013)

The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory
(Zed Books, 2012)

The Bible and Zionism : Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel
(Zed Books, 2007)

as editor: Catastrophe Remembered : Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees : Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said
(Zed Books, 2005)

The Politics of Denial : Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem
(Pluto Press, 2003)

Ariel Sharon : A Political Profile
(Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, 2001)

Imperial Israel and the Palestinians : The Politics of Expansion
(Pluto Press, 2000)

A Land without a People : Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians 1949-96
(Pluto Press, 1997)

Expulsion of the Palestinians : The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948
(Washington DC : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992)

King Faisal I of Iraq : A Study of His Political Leadership, 1921-1933
(PhD thesis, University of London, 1987)

Dina Matar (SOAS) and Zahera Harb (City University)
Narrating the Conflict in the Middle East : Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine
(IB Tauris, 2013)

Dina Matar
What it Means to be Palestinian : Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood
(IB Tauris, 2010)

Dina Matar, Lina Khatib & Atef Alshaer
The Hizbullah Phenomenon : Politics and Communication
(Oxford University Press, 2014)

MEMO – Middle East Monitor
Numerous reports available as free downloads via middleeastmonitor.com
Recent (2014) articles include :
Sawson Ramahi : The Forced Expulsion of Palestinians
Amelia Smith and Penny Green : Forced Evictions in Israel-Palestine
Henriette Johansen : Narrow Scope for Palestinian Rights in Lebanon
Henriette Johansen : Palestinian Cries Fall on Deaf Ears
Al-Zaytouna Centre : The Yarmouk Camp for Palestinian Refugees in Syria

Khaled Meshaal
The Political Thought of the Islamic Resistance Movement
(Memo – Middle East Monitor, 2013)
88 pages of clear and concise discourse by the Political Director of Hamas.

Beverley Milton-Edwards & Stephen Farrell
Hamas : The Islamic Resistance Movement
Polity, 2010

Dervla Murphy
A Month by the Sea : Encounters in Gaza (Eland Press, 2013)
Veteran travel writer with worldly observations, engaged with both liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters, and rich and poor. Used to western reporters dashing in and out of the Strip in times of crisis, the people she met were touched by her genuine, unflinching interest and spoke openly to her about life in their open-air prison. What she finds are a people with real, complex, nuanced voice that are not often heard.

Karma Nabulsi
‘Exiled from Revolution’
in Penny Johnson & Raja Shehadeh, eds : Seeking Palestine – New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home (Northampton, Massachusetts : Olive Branch Press, 2013)

Traditions of War : Occupation, Resistance and the Law
(Oxford University Press, 1999, 2005) – Uni thesis, not entirely on the Palestinians

Susan Nathan
The Other Side of Israel
(Harper Perennial, 2006)
Nathan, a South African Jew who ‘returned’ to Israel to live, quickly became aware that Arabs in Israel were discriminated against in ways that echoed the treatments of Blacks under apartheid. She chose to act in solidarity with Palestinians; this is her highly researched yet personal story of being a Jew living in an Arab town in Israel. – NF

Sari Nusseibeh
Once Upon a Country : A Palestinian Life
(Halban Books, 2007)
Extraordinary autobiography of President of Al-Quds University, who tried to use his cosmopolitan awareness to bypass Israeli officialdom in forming a viable Palestinian state. -AS

Ilan Pappé
[See also section on older history.]

as editor : Peoples Apart : Israel, South Africa and the Apartheid Question
(IB Tauris, 2014)

Contributors include :

Jonathan Cook :The Israel / Palestine Question (Routledge, 2007) Contents :
Ilan Pappé : New historiographical orientation in the research on the Palestine question.
Beshara B. Doumani : Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine : writing Palestinians into history.
Manneh Butrus Abu- : The rise of the Sanjak of Jerusalem in the late nineteenth century.
Uri Ram : The colonization perspective in Israeli sociology.
Gershon Shafir : Zionism and colonialism : a comparative approach.
Walid Khalidi : Revisiting the UNGA partition resolution.
Ilan Pappé : Historical truth & the challenge of the Tantura case .
Avi Shlaim : The debate about 1948.
Mahmoud Yazbak : Marriages in Ottoman Palestine – women’s strategies in a patriarchal society.
Islad Jad : From salons to the popular committees : Palestinian women, 1919-89.
Alina Korn : Crime and legal control of Israeli Arabs during the military government, 1948-66.
Asad Ghanem : Palestinians in Israel under the Israeli “ethnocratic” regime’
Nur Masalha : Present absentees and indigenous resistance.

The Modern Middle East
(2nd edition, Routledge, 2010)

-with Noam Chomsky
Gaza in Crisis : Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians
(Haymarket Books, 2010 / Penguin, 2011)

The Forgotten Palestinians : A History of the Palestinians in Israel
(Yale University Press, 2011, 2013)

Wendy Pearlman
Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement
(Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Compares a century of Palestinian struggle with organisational structures of movements in South Africa and Northern Ireland.

Wendy Pearlman and Laura Junka
Occupied Voices : Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada
(Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003)

Miko Peled
The General’s Son : Journey of an Israeli in Palestine
With foreword by Alice Walker (Just World Books, 2012)
An Israeli-American’s reject of garrison state culture.

James F. Petras
The Power of Israel in the United States
(Clarity Press, 2006)

Gareth Porter
Manufactured Crisis : The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare
(Charlottesville, Virginia : Just World Books, 2013)
American peace academic unpacks Washington’s intervention, dating back to 1983, and how it forced Tehran’s under-the-counter acquisitions of Atomic materials.

William B. Quandt, editor
Troubled Triangle : The United States, Turkey and Israel in the New Middle East
(Charlottesville, Virginia : Just World Books, 2011)
Politically centre-focused conference speeches by governments and think-tanks.

Yakov Rabkin
A Threat from Within : A History of Jewish Oppositiion to Zionism
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal [Palestinian Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem 1998-2007]
Caught in Between : The Story of an Arab-Christian Israeli
(Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1999)

Jacqueline Rose
The Question of Zion
(Princeton University Press, 2005)

John Rose
The Myths of Zionism
(Pluto, 2005)

Brant Rosen
Wrestling in the Daylight : A Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity
(Just World Books, 2012)
The most important blogs from the Shalom Rav website, collected by the author, a politically converted Rabbi from suburban Chicago. A highlight of influence from within the American Jewish community.

Elaheh Rostami-Povey
Iran’s Influnce : A Religious-Political State and Society in its Region
(Zed Books, 2010)
A bonus is the last chapter, on Egypt, just before the deposing of Mubarek, with Palestinian reference. – AS

Alice Rothchild
On the Brink : Israel and Palestine on the Eve of the 2014 Gaza Invasion
(Just World Books, 2014)
Author is an activist doctor who contributes to the Electronic Intifada and chairs American Jews for a Just Peace.

Karl Sabbagh
Britain in Palestine : The Story of British Rule in Palestine, 1917-1948
(Skyscraper Publications, 2012)
An excellent accompaniment to the SOAS/Brunei Gallery exhibition. Many illustrations yet compact. -AS

Palestine : A Personal History
(Atlantic Books, 2006)
Sabbagh, whose father was the lead broadcaster for the BBC Arabic Service during WWII, here interweaves the literary and political history of Palestine, with his own family’s story, in particular his father’s experience during the partition of his country and creation of Israel. -NF

Shlomo Sand
The Invention of the Land of Israel : from Holyland to Homeland
(Verso, 2912)

Sarah Schulman (City University, New York)
Israel / Palestine and the Queer International
(Duke University Press, 2012)
Invited to Israel to give the keynote address at an LGBT studies conference at Tel Aviv University, Schulman declines, joining other anti-occupation artists and academics in calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The author tours the West Bank and brings activists to tour the United States to establish a Queer International.

Israel Shahak
with Norton Mezvinsky
Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
(Pluto Press, 1999, 2004)

Open Secrets : Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies
(Pluto Press, 1997)

Jewish History – Jewish Religion : The Weight of Three Thousand Years
(foreword by Gore Vidal; Pluto Press, 1994)

Israel’s Global Role : Weapons for Repression
(Introduction by Noam Chomsky; Belmont, Massachusetts : Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982)

As editor : The Zionist Plan for the Middle East
(Belmont, Massachusetts : Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982)

Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights [The Shahak Papers]
(edited by Adnan Amad; Beirut : Palestine Research Centre, 1973)

Mariam Shahin (BBC journalist of Egypt, Jordan and Iraq)
Palestine : A Guide
(Interlink Books, 2007)
This remarkable travel guide manages to be both intimate and honest, while conveying the Palestinians’ relationship to their homeland, past and present. The book offers the reader an authentic vision of why, despite lacking legal status as a state, Palestine is a real place on the world map.

Bassam Abu Sharif
Arafat and the Dream of Palestine : An Insider’s Account
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Author gets a central role, not Abu Ammar, but a good read nonetheless.

Samah al-Shaykh
‘At the Hospital’ (first published in journal Masharef)
b. Saudi Arabia 1980, now in Gaza.

Raja Shehadeh
A Rift in Time : Travels with My Ottoman Uncle
(Profile Books, 2010)

Occupation Diaries
(Profile Books, 2012)

Strangers in the House
(Steerforth Press, 2002 / Profile Books, 2003, 2009)

Palestinian Walks : Notes on a Vanishing Landscape
(Profile Books, 2007)
A moving and beautifully written account of the author’s walks in his native hills, spanning 27 years, and witnessing the devastating impact of illegal Israeli settlements on the people and the landscape of the West Bank. Winner of the Orwell Prize 2008. – NF

When the Bulbul Stopped Singing : A Diary of Ramallah under Siege
(Profile Books, 2002)

From Occupation to the Interim Accords : Israel and the Palestinian Territories
(Kluwer Law International, 1997)

The Law of the Land : Settlements and Land Issues under Israeli Occupation
(PASSIA, 1993)

The Sealed Room : Selections from the Diary of a Palestinian Living under Israeli Occupation, September 1990 – August 1991
(Quartet, 1992)

Occupier’s Law : Israel and the West Bank
(Washington, DC : Institute for Palestine Studies, 1985)

Samed : Journal of a West Bank Palestinian
(New York : Adama Books, 1984)

The Third Way
(Quartet, 1982)

The West Bank and the Rule of Law – A Study
(Quartet/International Commission of Jurists, 1980).
See : Seeking Palestine (edited with Penny Johnson, 2012)

Adania Shibli
May God Keep Love in a Cool and Dry Place [translated to English?]
b. Palestine 1974.

Avi Shlaim
Edward Said : A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation
(University of California Press, 2010)

Israel and Palestine : Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations
(Verso Books, 2009)

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British Writers In Support of Palestine