Kategoria BISAC: History >> Middle East - Israel & Palestine

The West Bank Barrier is expected to be completed in 2010. Declared illegal by the United Nations International Court of Justice, this network of concrete walls, trenches, and barbed-wire fences could permanently redraw one of the most disputed property lines in the Middle East--the Green Line that separates Israel and the West Bank. To Israel the "security fence" is intended to keep Palestinian terrorists from entering its territory. But to Palestinians the "apartheid wall" that sliced through orchards and houses, and cuts off family members from one another, is a land grab.

In this...

It is impossible to understand Palestine today without a careful reading of its distant and recent past. But until now there has been no single volume in English that tells the history of the events--from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-twentieth century--that shaped modern Palestine. The first book of its kind, A History of Palestine offers a richly detailed interpretation of this critical region's evolution.

Starting with the prebiblical and biblical roots of Palestine, noted historian Gudrun Kramer examines the meanings ascribed to the land in the Jewish, Christian, and...

In this original and wide-ranging study, Gabriel Piterberg examines the ideology and literature behind the colonization of Palestine, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Exploring Zionism s origins in Central-Eastern European nationalism and settler movements, he shows how its texts can be placed within a wider discourse of western colonization. Revisiting the work of Theodor Herzl and Gershom Scholem, Anita Shapira and David Ben-Gurion, and bringing to light the writings of lesser-known scholars and thinkers influential in the formation of the Zionist myth, Piterberg breaks...

In June 2007 civil war broke out in the Gaza Strip between two rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah. Western peace efforts in the region always focused on reconciling two opposing fronts: Israel and Palestine. Now, this careful exploration of Middle East history over the last two decades reveals that the Palestinians have long been a house divided. What began as a political rivalry between Fatah's Yasir Arafat and Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin during the first intifada of 1987 evolved into a full-blown battle on the streets of Gaza between the forces of Arafat's successor,...

These essays describe with unusual immediacy the unfolding obstacles to peace between Egypt and Israel, with a central focus on the Palestine issue. In one especially powerful chapter, the writings of an Arab woman from Nazareth eloquently testify to the difficulties of life for the Palestinians under Israeli rule. Other chapters treat Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, the impact of Israeli politics on the peace issue, and the Palestinians' response to the occupation.

Military cemeteries are one of the most prominent cultural landscapes of Israel. Their story reflects largely the main social processes that Israeli society has been undergoing since the War of Independence (1948)until today. Until the end of the 1970s, the military tombstones and their surroundings were uniform and equal, according to rules set by the State. However, since the 1980s families of the fallen soldiers started to add on the tombstone personal expressions, as well as personal objects, photographs, military artifacts etc. Thus the military tombstone and the Israeli military...