Historical Dictionary of the Bedouins


Book Description

The term ‘Bedouins’ was given to nomads who came from or lived in the desert, and consisted of a sedentary population (from the badia – desert). However, in time, it came to define their social economic essence as: people who raised grazing animals and were compelled to conduct a nomadic life, to live in tents that could be dismantled, carried, and re-erected easily, and to move with their livelihood and living accommodation, according to the environmental conditions — those which provided water and grass. Not all Bedouin tribes are of Arabic origin, as all Muslim nomadic groups in the area adopted the term "Bedouins." There are Bedouin tribes of Turkmen, Kurdish Baluch, and Berberic origin and there are "Arabized" African people and hybrid people, who are categorized as Bedouins. The Historical Dictionary of the Bedouins contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Bedouins.




Words Like Daggers: The Political Poetry of the Negev Bedouin


Book Description

The book explores the political poetry recited by the Negev Bedouin from the late Ottoman period to the late twentieth century. By closely reading fifty poems Kobi Peled sheds light on the poets’ sentiments, states of mind and worldviews.




Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine


Book Description

This volume explores the distribution of the rural population in Palestine from the late Ottoman period (1870-1917) to the British Mandate period (1917-1948). The book focuses on demography, specifically migrations, population size, density, growth, and the pattern of distribution in rural Palestine before the inception of Jewish settlement (1882). Grossman traces little-known Muslim ethnic groups who settled in Palestine's rural areas, primarily Egyptians, but also Algerians, Bosnians, and Circassians. The author argues that the Arab population in the zones occupied by Jews after 1882 was about one-third that of the Arab core areas; in the period studied, the decline in per-capita rural Arab farmland was mainly due to overall population growth, not displacement of Arabs; economic development suffered largely because of violent disturbances and natural disasters; the pattern of growth of Egyptian and other Muslim groups was similar to that of the Jews. The main conclusions of this study note that the size of the rural Arab population in the zones occupied by Jews after 1882 was about one-tenth of that which occupied the Arab core zones; most Egyptian settlement areas coincided with those of the Jewish zones; between 1870 and 1945, the decline of Arab farmland was mainly due to Arab population growth rather than Jewish land acquisitions; and most migrants (Jewish and Muslim) settlement zones were leftovers characterized by some form of resource disability.




Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period


Book Description

The first comprehensive book on Palestine during the Ottoman-Turkish period, this volume includes forty studies of major topics in the field. The studies are mostly based on the latest original research, from a variety of disciplines and approaches - history, geography, political and social sciences, as well as international relations.Among the subjects discussed in the book are aspects of Ottoman imperial policies, local Muslim politics, European activities and the question of the Christian Holy Places' the Jewish communities and the advent of the rival Zionist and Palestinian national movement.




Ruling Palestine


Book Description

"Addresses the issue of reparations for the forced eviction and displacement of Maya Achi communities in Guatemala, specifically in the context of the construction of the Pueblo Viejo-Quixal Hydroelectric Project (Chixoy Dam). Between 1980 and 1982, an estimated 440 persons of the Rió Negro community were brutally murdered in a series of massacres ... Both the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank provided funding for and supervised the Chixoy Dam Project. The Chixoy Dam case clearly highlights the complicity of international financial institutions, including the IDB and the World Bank, in the brutal and unlawful displacement of indigenous communities from their lands in Guatemala"--Back cover.




Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914


Book Description

Gershon Shafir challenges the heroic myths about the foundation of the State of Israel by investigating the struggle to control land and labor during the early Zionist enterprise. He argues that it was not the imported Zionist ideas that were responsible for the character of the Israeli state, but the particular conditions of the local conflict between the European "settlers" and the Palestinian Arab population.




The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine


Book Description

Adopting a systematic yet non-technical approach. Jacob Metzer's book is the first to analyse the divided economy of Mandatory Palestine from the viewpoints of modern economic history and development economics. While the existing literature has tended to focus on the Jewish economy, this book explores the socio-economic attributes of both the Arab and Jewish communities within the complex political economy of the period. A concluding chapter reviews the uneasy record of Arab-Jewish economic coexistence in the area of Mandatory Palestine, composed of present-day Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The book makes a significant contribution to the economic history of the modern Middle East and to an understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It will appeal to economic historians, development economists and to scholars in the related fields of social and political history.




The Palestinian People


Book Description

In a timely reminder of how the past informs the present, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal offer an authoritative account of the history of the Palestinian people from their modern origins to the Oslo peace process and beyond. Palestinians struggled to create themselves as a people from the first revolt of the Arabs in Palestine in 1834 through the British Mandate to the impact of Zionism and the founding of Israel. Their relationship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel has been fundamental in shaping that identity, and today Palestinians find themselves again at a critical juncture. In the 1990s cornerstones for peace were laid for eventual Palestinian-Israeli coexistence, including mutual acceptance, the renunciation of violence as a permanent strategy, and the establishment for the first time of Palestinian self-government. But the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a reversion to unmitigated hatred and mutual demonization. By mid-2002 the brutal violence of the Intifada had crippled Palestine's fledgling political institutions and threatened the fragile social cohesion painstakingly constructed after 1967. Kimmerling and Migdal unravel what went right--and what went wrong--in the Oslo peace process, and what lessons we can draw about the forces that help to shape a people. The authors present a balanced, insightful, and sobering look at the realities of creating peace in the Middle East.




The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine


Book Description

The book that is providing a storm of controversy, from ‘Israel’s bravest historian’ (John Pilger) Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel. 'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East. *** 'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' JOHN PILGER 'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue. There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT