The Politics of the Palestinian Authority


Book Description

This book explores the development of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from a liberation movement to a national authority, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Based on intensive fieldwork in the West Bank, Gaza and Cairo, Nigel Parsons analyzes Palestinian internal politics and their institutional-building by looking at the development of the PLO. Drawing on interviews with leading figures in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, delegates to the negotiations with Israel, and the Palestinian political opposition, it is a timely account of the Israel/Palestine conflict from a Palestinian political perspective.




Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent


Book Description

"This report evaluates patterns of arrest and detention conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 25 years after the Oslo Accords granted Palestinians a degree of self-rule over these areas and more than a decade after Hamas seized effective control over the Gaza Strip. Human Rights Watch detailed more than two dozen cases of people detained for no clear reason beyond writing a critical article or Facebook post or belonging to the wrong student group or political movement."--Publisher website.




Human Rights Under the Palestinian Authority


Book Description




Polarized and Demobilized


Book Description

A frank assessment of how burgeoning authoritarianism among elites has divided Palestinians and divested them of political power.







Building a Palestinian State


Book Description

"... an analysis that is as intricate and flawless as it is devastating... Robinson's] presentation is powerful and compelling and his scholarship impeccable." --MESA Bulletin "... an] excellent book. In just 200 pages, Glenn Robinson manages to give the clearest and most concise analysis of the changing political and social structure of the West Bank and Gaza and of current political realities that I have read." --Digest of Middle Eastern Studies "... a fair and sensitive account and contains the best available assessment of the Intifada's political aftermath among Palestinians. An added bonus is that the book is written in an accessible style with enough historical background and contextual explanation to make it ideal as a text for courses in Middle East politics or the politics of revolutions." --American Political Science Review "Well-researched, original, scholarly; deserves the attention of those interested in revolutionary theory or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." --Choice "Throughout, the book is impressively researched and very well-written.... Building a Palestinian State is a book that deserves to be widely read." --Journal of Palestine Studies "... a well-informed and tightly argued analysis of the evolution of politcal leadership in the West Bank and Gaza from the 1980s to the spring of 1996. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the historical backdrop to current political developments in the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority." --Middle East Policy "... carefully researched and balanced study..." --Times Literary Supplement "... provides a unique analysis of the various facets of grassroots organizations and their interaction with the emerging state institutions... a major and very timely contribution." --Anne Lesch In this well informed and accessibly written book, Glenn E. Robinson traces the emergence of a new political elite in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1980s and the grassroots political and social revolution it launched during the Intifada.




The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank


Book Description

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank explores the manner in which the Palestinian Authority’s performative acts affect and shape the lives and subjective identities of those in its vicinity in the occupied West Bank. The nature of Palestinians’ statelessness has to contend with the rituals of statecraft that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its Palestinian functionaries engage in. These rituals are also economically maintained by an international donor community and are vehemently challenged by Palestinian activists, antagonistic to the prevalence of the statist agenda in Palestine. Conceptually, the understanding of the PA’s ‘theater of statecraft’ is inspired by Judith Butler’s conception of performativity as one that encompasses several repetitive and ritual performative acts. The authors explore what they refer to as the ‘fuzzy state' (personified in the form and conduct of the PA) looks like for those living it, from the vantage point of PA institutions, NGOs, international representative offices, and activists. Methodologically, the book adopts an ethnographic approach, by way of interviews and observations in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank makes an important and long-due intervention by integrating performance studies and politics to suggest an understanding of the theatrics of woeful statecraft in Palestine. The book is an essential resource for students and scholars interested in the study of the state, International Relations and Politics, Palestine Studies, and the Middle East.




When Victory Is Not an Option


Book Description

Throughout the Arab world, Islamist political movements are joining the electoral process. This change alarms some observers and excites other. In recent years, electoral opportunities have opened, and Islamist movements have seized them. But those opportunities, while real, have also been sharply circumscribed. Elections may be freer, but they are not fair. The opposition can run but it generally cannot win. Semiauthoritarian conditions prevail in much of the Arab world, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. How do Islamist movements change when they plunge into freer but unfair elections? How do their organizations (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and structures evolve? What happens to their core ideological principles? And how might their increased involvement affect the political system? In When Victory Is Not an Option, Nathan J. Brown addresses these questions by focusing on Islamist movements in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine. He shows that uncertain benefits lead to uncertain changes. Islamists do adapt their organizations and their ideologies do bend—some. But leaders almost always preserve a line of retreat in case the political opening fizzles or fails to deliver what they wish. The result is a cat-and-mouse game between dominant regimes and wily movements. There are possibilities for more significant changes, but to date they remain only possibilities.




Gaza


Book Description

The Gaza Strip is the linchpin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, as Sara Roy argues in this book, key to its resolution.Gaza is central to Palestinian nationalism and resistance. Roy demonstrates that this crucial political role is precisely why Israel has deepened the isolation of the territory, severing it almost completely from its most vital connections to the West Bank, Israel and beyond.With decades of experience in researching and writing on the subject, Roy demonstrates how Israel has deliberately undermined and shattered Gaza's economy, transforming a people with political rights into a humanitarian issue. Roy shows that in the 13 years since Israel's disengagement, both Gaza and the conflict have undergone a profound change that threatens to alter the future of Israel/Palestine and the wider region for decades to come.




Waste Siege


Book Description

Waste Siege offers an analysis unusual in the study of Palestine: it depicts the environmental, infrastructural, and aesthetic context in which Palestinians are obliged to forge their lives. To speak of waste siege is to describe a series of conditions, from smelling wastes to negotiating military infrastructures, from biopolitical forms of colonial rule to experiences of governmental abandonment, from obvious targets of resistance to confusion over responsibility for the burdensome objects of daily life. Within this rubble, debris, and infrastructural fallout, West Bank Palestinians create a life under settler colonial rule. Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins focuses on waste as an experience of everyday life that is continuous with, but not a result only of, occupation. Tracing Palestinians' own experiences of wastes over the past decade, she considers how multiple authorities governing the West Bank—including municipalities, the Palestinian Authority, international aid organizations, NGOs, and Israel—rule by waste siege, whether intentionally or not. Her work challenges both common formulations of waste as "matter out of place" and as the ontological opposite of the environment, by suggesting instead that waste siege be understood as an ecology of "matter with no place to go." Waste siege thus not only describes a stateless Palestine, but also becomes a metaphor for our besieged planet.