By Rachel Havrelock

Because the web site of a number of miracles within the Jewish and Christian traditions, the Jordan is likely one of the world’s holiest rivers. it's also the key political and symbolic border contested by means of Israelis and Palestinians. Combining biblical and folkloric stories with old geography, Rachel Havrelock explores how the complicated non secular and mythological representations of the river have formed the present clash within the heart East.Havrelock contends that the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian clash stems from the nationalist myths of the Hebrew Bible, the place the Jordan is outlined as a border of the Promised Land. either Israelis and Palestinians declare the Jordan as an important boundary of an indivisible place of origin. interpreting the Hebrew Bible along historical and glossy maps of the Jordan, Havrelock chronicles the evolution of Israel’s borders in keeping with nationalist myths whereas uncovering extra myths that envision Israel as a bi-national nation. those different myths, she proposes, supply roadmaps for destiny political configurations of the state. formidable and masterful in its scope, River Jordan brings a clean, provocative standpoint to the continued fight during this violence-riddled sector.

By David Schoenbaum

Schoenbaum's booklet is a heritage of 1 of the main awesome liaisons in overseas adventure, a portrait of the exact courting among the final last superpower and the tiny Jewish country among the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and a examine of the way that courting grew and works. From Truman to Bush, the us has guaranteed Israel's lifestyles, whereas offering billions in army and fiscal help. Over an analogous interval, no U.S. president has ever submitted a proper treaty of alliance to the Senate, or maybe moved the yankee embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. in truth, cross-purposes and mutual doubts have consistently coexisted with shared values, complementary pursuits, nice expectancies, and actual achievements. Schoenbaum's booklet lines Israeli-American kinfolk from their roots in either American and Jewish event to the dangers and possibilities of the present peace strategy. It additionally examines the connection within the point of view of 2 global wars, the chilly battle, the Gulf warfare, eu colonialism and heart japanese nationalisms, worldwide coverage, and household politics in either nations. the result's the tale of 1 of history's oddest foreign undefined, hard-pressed to reside jointly, yet not able to reside aside.

By Muna Hamzeh

"For 4 days, i have never been capable of write. The complications, the nausea, the soreness in my eyes eventually stuck up with me ... i could not write, simply as i could not maintain any nutrition down, or break out the power nightmares each time i attempted to sleep. i have been dreaming of neighbors getting injured, of blood, and of individuals looking defend from falling bombs. even if we sleep, there is not any escape." Muna Hamzeh This impressive e-book is a gripping eyewitness account of what it truly is wish to reside in Palestine as a refugee on your personal fatherland. Born in Jerusalem, Muna Hamzeh is a journalist who has been writing approximately Palestinian affairs because 1985. She first labored as a journalist in Washington DC, yet moved again to Palestine in 1989 to hide the 1st Palestine Intifada ? the struggle of stones. She then settled in Dheisheh, close to Bethlehem, considered one of fifty nine Palestinian refugee camps which are thought of the oldest refugee camps on the planet. the 1st a part of the booklet involves a diary which Hamzeh wrote among October 4th and December 4th 2000, telling the tale of the second one Intifada. dealing with the tanks and armed guards of 1 of the simplest built armies on the earth, the Palestinians don't have anything. The soreness and terror that Muna and her acquaintances face day by day is tangible. Who could be the subsequent to die? Whose residence could be the subsequent to burn down? the second one a part of the booklet presents the historical past to those present occasions. It describes what lifestyles has been like for Dheisheh's refugees considering the fact that 1990, and explains why the second one Intifada was once a usual improvement of the Oslo peace accord. "Refugees in Our personal Land" is an extraordinary insider's check out the hearts and minds of Palestinian refugees.

By Nathan J. Brown

This well timed and severely very important paintings does what hostilities within the heart East have made approximately most unlikely: it deals a measured, inner standpoint on Palestinian politics, viewing rising political styles from the Palestinian perspective instead of during the prism of the Arab-Israeli clash. in accordance with groundbreaking fieldwork, interviews with Palestinian leaders, and an in depth survey of Arabic-language writings and files, Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accords provides the that means of country construction and self-reliance as Palestinians themselves have understood them within the years among 1993 and 2002.Nathan J. Brown focuses his paintings on 5 parts: felony improvement, structure drafting, the Palestinian Legislative Council, civil society, and the trouble to put in writing a brand new curriculum. His booklet exhibits how Palestinians have understood efforts at construction associations as acts of resumption instead of creation--with activists and leaders seeing themselves as convalescing from an interrupted prior, Palestinians trying to rejoin the Arab global via construction their new associations on Arab types, and lots of Palestinian reformers taking the Oslo Accords as an social gathering to renew basic political lifestyles. supplying a transparent and urgently wanted vantage aspect on many of the problems with Palestinian reform and governance that experience emerged in contemporary coverage debates--issues corresponding to corruption, constitutionalism, democracy, and rule of law--Brown's ebook is helping to place Palestinian aspirations and accomplishments of their right context inside a protracted and intricate historical past and in the better Arab global.

By Casey D. Elledge

By Jacques van Ruiten, J. Cornelis de Vos

This publication bargains with many points of the land of Israel; not just with texts talking at once in regards to the land of Israel within the Hebrew and Greek Bible but additionally with the reception of these texts, with theological-hermeneutical implications of taking the land traditions of the Bible heavily, and with the archaeology of Palestine.

By Martin Sicker

Sicker examines the early levels of the method wherein Palestine, an imprecise and comparatively miniscule backwater of the Ottoman Empire, grew to become a serious think about the heritage and convoluted politics of the trendy center East. In doing this, he describes correct elements of the heritage of Palestine within the little recognized and poorly understood interval from the Napoleonic intrusion within the heart East to the top of the Ottoman Empire and the beginnings of British rule. advancements during this interval are analyzed in the geopolitical context of the rivalries one of the nice eu powers that have been decisive components within the sleek heritage of the full center East.During this era the emergence of a Jewish nationalist circulate in another country served as a catalyst for the social and financial transformation of Palestine ahead of the British access into the world in the course of global warfare I. It concerned the original try to reify the nationwide aspirations of a those that, for the main half, lived outdoor the territory towards which these aspirations have been directed. It additionally represented the formerly unparalleled involvement of representatives of nongovernmental businesses in severe overseas political negotiations. How Palestine used to be reshaped via a few of the forces performing upon it through the interval mentioned is a key to figuring out the next heritage of the realm. an incredible advisor for college kids, students, and common readers attracted to the center East regularly and Palestine specifically.

By Seymour Gitin

William G. Dever is well-known because the doyen of North American archaeologist-historians who paintings within the box of the traditional Levant. he's top often called the director of excavations on the website of Gezer yet has labored at various different websites, and his many scholars have led dozens of alternative expeditions. He has been editor of the Bulletin of the yankee faculties of Oriental study, used to be for a few years professor within the influential archaeology software on the college of Arizona, and now in retirement maintains actively to write down and submit. during this quantity, forty six of his colleagues and scholars give a contribution essays in his honor, reflecting the huge scope of his pursuits, rather by way of the ancient implications of archaeology.

By Freddy Liebreich

This e-book presents an incredible shift within the research of Britain's coverage in the direction of the unlawful postwar Jewish immigration into Palestine. It charts the advance of Britain's reaction to Zionist immigration, from the preliminary sympathy, as embodied within the Balfour statement, via makes an attempt at blockade, refoulement and at last disengagement.The booklet exposes adjustments in coverage pursued through the good departments of country just like the overseas, Colonial and conflict workplaces and their criminal advisors, and people carried out by means of the Admiralty. The booklet argues that the eventual failure of Britain's immigration coverage used to be inevitable in view of the hostility proven by means of many eu international locations, and the United States, in the direction of Britain's ambition to continue her place within the heart East.

By Neve Gordon

This primary whole heritage of Israel's profession of the West financial institution and the Gaza Strip permits us to determine past the smoke reveal of politics for you to make feel of the dramatic alterations that experience built at the flooring over the last 40 years. taking a look at quite a lot of themes, from regulate of water and electrical energy to healthiness care and schooling in addition to surveillance and torture, Neve Gordon's panoramic account unearths a basic shift from a politics of life--when, for example, Israel helped Palestinians plant greater than six-hundred thousand bushes in Gaza and supplied farmers with more suitable forms of seeds--to a macabre politics characterised by way of progressively more deaths. Drawing cognizance to the interactions, excesses, and contradictions created by means of the different types of keep an eye on utilized in the Occupied Territories, Gordon argues that the occupation's very constitution, instead of the coverage offerings of the Israeli govt or the activities of assorted Palestinian political factions, has ended in this radical shift.