Böcker i SOAS Palestine Studies-serien

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Occupied Palestinian Territory has been the subject of extensive international peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts coordinated by Western donor states and international finance institutions. Despite their failure to yield peace or Palestinian statehood, the role of these organisations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally overlooked owing to their depiction as tertiary actors engaged in technical missions.In Palestine Ltd., Toufic Haddad explores how neoliberal frameworks have shaped and informed the common understandings of international, Israeli and Palestinian interactions throughout the Oslo peace process. Drawing upon more than 20 years of policy literature, field-based interviews and recently declassified or leaked documents, he details how these frameworks have led to struggles over influencing Palestinian political and economic behaviour, and attempts to mould the class character of Palestinian society and its leadership. A dystopian vision of Palestine emerges as the by-product of this complex asymmetrical interaction, where nationalism, neo-colonialism and `disaster capitalism'' both intersect and diverge. This book is essential for students and scholars interested in Middle East Studies, Arab-Israeli politics and international development.

At the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a dispute over territory. Yet, the Palestinian predicament is about more than the loss of land.

Despite the boycott Hamas was subjected to since its victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections, it has become a significant player on the international stage. It boasts a territory identifiable by its borders, internationally recognized cease-fire lines and effective authority over a population.This book, a study in international relations, shows how Hamas willingly mobilizes Palestinian internal issues to establish its legitimacy on a global scale, and at the same time, uses its relations with non-Palestinian players to compete against its political rivals on the Palestinian national stage. Leila Seurat reveals that Hamas's foreign and internal policy are strongly intertwined and centred mainly on Hamas's quest for recognition. The book then is a comprehensive diplomatic history of Palestine, focused on the political orientations of Hamas towards both Israel and other countries. Its coverage spans the movement's victory in 2006 up until more recent momentous events, including, Hamas' response to Trump's 'deal of the century' and Israel's announcement of the annexation of the Jordan Valley, as well as the proclamation of normalization accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and the impact of Covid19. The book is based on Leila Seurat's extensive fieldwork and interviews with Hamas's leading officials across the West Bank, Gaza, Damascus, Geneva and Beirut in addition to recent video-conferences planned by various NGOs and attended by West Bank, Gaza and Diaspora Palestinians.

How did the Israeli military learn to cope with the ubiquity of media technologies that routinely document their power abuses? Why did they re-appropriate these to tighten their grip on Palestinian civilians? This book explains why a high-tech nation with advanced military technologies came to rely on the everyday media habits performed by soldiers and civilians. Daniel Mann argues that the intensification of the security regime in Palestine, and the increasingly personal use of media technologies by both soldiers and civilians, are deeply entangled. The book traces how, beginning in the 1990s, the integration of media into the lives of civilians and Israeli soldiers enabled Israel to transfer responsibilities to individual users, who in turn became legally and ethically liable for state abuses of power. Drawing on declassified documents, found footage, and social media, Mann shows how both media and warfare have been remodelled around the figure of the defensive, isolated, and insular 'individual'. Mann suggests that the focus on representations and their close visual analysis paradoxically hinders our ability to understand media. Instead of zooming into fine details, we must step back to reveal the assemblage of images, users, and infrastructure that together serve to maintain the racial, legal and aesthetic divide between Israel and Palestine.

Founded in 1929, the Jewish Agency played a central role in the founding of the State of Israel. Throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, many secret meetings took place between the JA and Arab leaders and elites. The dominant narrative claims that Syrian leaders and elites were not involved in any such meetings. However, this book reveals for the first time that a multitude of secret meetings and negotiations took place including with the Syrian National Block - the official Syrian leadership at the time - and the Shahbandari opposition and leaders of Jabal al-Druze. Based mainly on primary sources from Israeli archives, including documentation of discussions, reports and decisions taken by the JA leadership, the book tells a new story of a critical period of history, the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 in Palestine. Mahmoud Muhareb argues that the main historic objective of the JA was to reach agreements with Arab leaders and Arab states, behind the back of the Palestinians and at their expense, and to normalize its relations with the Arab states while it continued to deny the national rights of the Palestinians. The book challenges Israeli and Syrian official narratives and substantiates the Palestinian narrative, as well as some Israeli new historians who asserted Israel refusal to recognize the national rights of the Palestinians and affirmed its attempts to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Arab states at the expense of the Palestinians. The book includes Arabic and Hebrew sources translated into English for readers.

The Palestinian national liberation movement - or the Palestinian revolution as it is known in Arabic - emerged during the 1960s as an iconic cause of the global Left. This volume highlights the different practices of international solidarity that characterised this period, and how they shaped and were shaped by the global trajectory of the Palestinian movement. Bringing together scholars with versatile linguistic and interdisciplinary skills, Palestine in the World puts the Palestinian movement into conversation with the models of transnational politics that emerged through the revolutionary period. From participation in a vibrant sphere of intellectual and cultural production, the work of travelling revolutionaries as delegates, volunteers, and militants, and the connected mobilisations that took place in different corners of the world, international solidarity with and from the Palestinian movement was integral to its ascendance on the global stage. By treating the Palestinian revolution as a world phenomenon - with cases from Cuba, France, the US, the GDR, Japan and more - this volume reveals the forms of solidarity that shaped the rise of the movement and their afterlives today. It illuminates the rich connected histories of international solidarity that positioned the Palestinian movement as an iconic anticolonial struggle.