Book Description

This book provides a comparative historical study of the rise and evolution of anti-colonial movements in South Africa and Israel/Palestine. It focuses on the ways in which major political movements and activists conceptualised their positions vis-a-vis historical processes of colonial settlement and indigenous resistance over the last century. Drawing on a range of primary sources, the author engages with theoretical debates involving key actors operating in their own time and space. Using a comparative framework, the book illustrates common and divergent patterns of political and ideological contestations and focuses on the relevance of debates about race and class, state and power, ethnicity and nationalism. Particular attention is given to South Africa and Israel/Palestine’s links to global campaigns to undermine foreign domination and internal oppression, tensions between the quests for national liberation and equality of rights, the role of dissidents from within the ranks of settler communities, and the various attempts to consolidate indigenous resistance internally while forging alliances with other social and political forces on the outside. This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of African History, Middle East History, and African Studies, and to social justice and solidarity activists globally.