Gaza | Palestine and the West Bank
Gaza
From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine
An urgent editorial intervention, published in collaboration with Haymarket Books. 12/14/23
From the River to the Sea collects personal testimonies from within Gaza and the West Bank, along with essays and interviews that collectively provide crucial histories and analyses to help us understand how we got to the nightmarish present. They place Israel’s genocidal campaign within the longer history of settler colonialism in Palestine, and Hamas within the longer histories of Palestinian resistance and the so-called ‘peace process’. They explore the complex history of Palestine’s relationship to Jordan, Egypt, and the broader Middle East, the eruption of unprecedented anti-Zionist Jewish protest in the US, the alarming escalation in state repression of Palestine solidarity in Britain and Europe, and more.
From the River to the Sea: download here
Light in Gaza, Writings Born of Fire, edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze, Haymarket Books. The eBook format is currently free.
Gaza: Nearly Two Decades of Israeli Incursions, Siege, and Blockade, 16 Oct 2023. These articles from the Journal of Palestine Studies are free until the end of 2023.
Free Palestine: A Verso Reading List (see the Palestine and the West Bank section below)
To Live, Die, and Be Born in Gaza, edited by David Segarra, traducció al castellà: Roger Sarrià Traducció a l’anglès: Adela Ortiz Traducció a l’àrab: Tamer Hamdan i Rabah Boughenna. (Sembra Llibres, 2014). ISBN: 978-84-942350-5-4. (Catalan, English, Spanish, and Arabic)
This is a book with one hundred photographs and stories of life, history, culture, and resistance in Gaza and all Palestine. The original is in Catalan. But Arabic, English and Spanish translation are also available.
Get To Live, Die, and Be Born in Gaza in English here.
Hamas – From Resistance to Regime, by Paola Caridi, translated by Andrea Teti. (Seven Stories Press, 2023) IBSN: 9781644211892. (English)
In Hamas, journalist and historian Paola Caridi covers the history of Gaza, from its golden age as a port city, to the Nakba, to the present day. A clear-eyed account of Hamas’ birth and slow militarization, Hamas offers an unbiased look at the complex feelings that Palestinians have toward getting behind a government that also supports violent resistance. In doing so, Caridi tells the story of an anti-imperialist movement caught between the desire to resist its oppressor and the need to provide support for a refugee people.
Hamas paints a picture, with empathy, intelligence, dexterity, and heart, of a people trapped in the most historic of political battles, revealing all of the complexities of this key player in the global struggle against imperialism.
Get Hamas – From Resistance to Regime here.
Gaza Stay Human, by Vittorio Arrigoni. (Kube Publishing, 2010). IBSN: UK9781847740199. English.
An authoritative and deeply moving eyewitness account of the terrible twenty-two-day Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009. These daily dispatches were written in precarious conditions, between bombing raids and intermittent Internet access. Vittorio Arrigoni ends his dispatches with the plea “stay human,” which became the motto of the peace protests in his native Italy. This includes entries reflecting on life in Gaza after the offensive and also features an introduction by famous Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.
Get Gaza Stay Human here.
The following books are an updated list from The Veritas Handbook with additional books noted **.
**Bayoumi, Mustafa ed. Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine conflict. OR Books, 2010. Order online.
Efrat, Elisha. The West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Geography of Occupation and Disengagement. London: Routledge, 2006.
**Finkelstein, Norman G. This Time they Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. OR Books, 2010. Order online.
**Gilbert, Mads. Night in Gaza. Skyscraper Publications, 2015. Fifteen days of bombing and human suffering witnessed by Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who worked at al Shifa Hospital during the 2014 Israeli invasion.
Hass, Amira. Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999.
Roy, Sara. Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
**Sacco, Joe. Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel. Jonathan Cape, 2009.
Palestine and the West Bank
From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine
An urgent editorial intervention, published in collaboration with Haymarket Books. 12/14/23
From the River to the Sea collects personal testimonies from within Gaza and the West Bank, along with essays and interviews that collectively provide crucial histories and analyses to help us understand how we got to the nightmarish present. They place Israel’s genocidal campaign within the longer history of settler colonialism in Palestine, and Hamas within the longer histories of Palestinian resistance and the so-called ‘peace process’. They explore the complex history of Palestine’s relationship to Jordan, Egypt, and the broader Middle East, the eruption of unprecedented anti-Zionist Jewish protest in the US, the alarming escalation in state repression of Palestine solidarity in Britain and Europe, and more.
From the River to the Sea: download here
Scott Long’s Library of eBooks, December 6, 2023
Long is an activist for international human rights who is making his entire library of 1700 books on Palestine-Israel available for download.
Librarians and Archivists with Palestine, December 4, 2023
Rashid Khalidi’s recommendations:
Return to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani
We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir by Raja Shehadeh
Books by Suad Amiry
Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora, edited by Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace
Sim Kern’s recommendations:
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Palestine by Joe Sacco
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
Koolaids by Rabih Alameddine
Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh
Deanna Roberts recommendations:
What It Means To Be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood by Dina Matar
Free Palestine Reading List, November 29, 2023
Participating publishers will be offering e-book titles for free download from November 29 to December 5, 2023. All titles are available through PUBLISHERS FOR PALESTINE. There are currently more than two dozen books on the list in six languages, including a half-dozen award winners.
Free Palestine: A Verso Reading List, 17 November 2023
A reading list on the ongoing struggle for Palestinian liberation. “The following books offer a history of the occupation, situated in a wider context of anti-colonial struggles around the world. Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world.”
The Militarisation of Israel
Palestinian Voices
Understanding Zionist ideology and dismantling Israeli myths
Solidarity with Palestine
A Historical Perspective: from the Balfour Declaration to the present crisis
Memoir
Reflections on Anti-Semitism
Reflections on Imperialism and Settler Colonialism
The following books are an updated list from The Veritas Handbook with additional books noted **. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs also lists recommended books.
History
**Abdelrazaq, Leila. Baddawi (Graphic novel). Just World Books, 2015. “A coming of age story that is funny, angry and deeply human.”
**Abulhawa, Susan. Mornings in Jenin (Historical novel). A sweeping, heart-wrenching historical saga about four generations of the Abulheja family. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006.
Bell, J. Bowyer. Terror out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1977.
**Bennis, Phyllis. Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer. Olive Branch Press, 2009.
Dodd, Peter and Halim Barakat. River without Bridges: A Study of the Exodus of the 1967 Palestinian Arab Refugees. Beirut: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1969.
Farsoun, Samih and Naseer Aruri. Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History. Boulder: West View Press, 2006.
Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. London: Harper Perennial, 2006.
Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Gerber, Haim. Remembering and Imagining Palestine: Identity and Nationalism from the Crusades to the Present. London: Palgrave, 2008.
Giladi, Naeim. Ben-Gurion’s Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated the Jews. Dandelion Enterprises, 2006.
**Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine (4th Edition, 1998)
Hamzeh, Muna and May, Todd. Operation Defensive Shield: Witnesses to Israeli War Crimes. London: Pluto Press, 2003.
Harris, William W. Taking Root: Israeli Settlement in the West Bank, the Golan, and Gaza-Sinai, 1967-1980. New York : Research Studies Press, 1980.
**Hirst, David. The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East. Emeryville, Ca: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003.
**Holt, Patricia Martin. Committee of One. Matriarch Press, 2012. The story of Leila Wahbeh and her family, who fled from Jerusalem to Egypt in 1947 to avoid the terrors of the war with Israel, and returned four years later to find they had lost everything.
Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
Khalidi, Walid. All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2006.
Khalidi, Walid. Before their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948. Washingto n D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2004.
Khalidi, Walid. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. Washington D.C., 1987.
Kimmerling, Baruch and Joel S. Migdal. The Palestinian People: A History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Lynd, Staughton et al, ed. Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and the Palestinians. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1994.
Mackey, Sandra. Lebanon: A House Divided. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1989.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People’s War. London: Routledge, 2009.
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999. London: J. Murray, 2000.
Palumbo, Michael. Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. London: Bloomsbury, 1990.
Pappe, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford : Oneworld Publications, 2006.
Robinson, Donna. Politics and Society in Ottoman Palestine: The Arab Struggle for Survival and Power. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994.
Rogan, Eugene and Shlaim, Avi. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Rokach, Livia. Israel’s Sacred Terrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharetts Personal Diary and other documents. Belmont: AAUG, 1986.
Said, Edward. The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969–1994. New Y ork: Vintage Books, 1995.
Said, Edward. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
Schlaim, Avi. Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations. London: Verso, 2009.
Shiblak, Abbas. Iraqi Jews: A History of Mass Exodus. Al Saqi Books: London, 2005. And The Lure of Zion: the Case of the Iraqi Jews. Al Saqi Books: London, 1986.
Politics
**Abunimah, Ali. The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Haymarket Books, 2014. A comprehensive look at the shifting political tides in Palestine and Israel in a neoliberal world.
Abunimah, Ali. One Country: A Bold Proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.
Amos, John W. Palestinian Resistance: Organization of a Nationalist Movement. New York: Pergamon Press, 1980.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
**Blumenthal, Max. Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. Nation Books, 2014. A startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics.
Chehab, Zaki. Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Group. New York: Nation Books, 2007.
Chomsky, Noam. Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. Cambridge, M.A.: South End Press, 1999.
Finkelstein, Norman G. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. London: Verso, 2003.
Goldberg, David Howard. Foreign Policy and Ethnic Interest Groups: American and Canadian Jews Lobby for Israel. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Kimmerling, Baruch. Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War against the Palestinians. London: Verso, 2003.
Lustick, Ian S. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel . New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988.
Lybarger, Loren. Identity and Religion in Palestine: the Struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Mearsheimer, John J. ,and Stephen Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, 2007.
Mergui, Raphael, and Philippe Simonnot. Israel’s Ayatollahs: Meir Kahane and the Far Right in Israel. London: Saqi Books, 1987.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. Islamic Politics in Palestine. London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996.
Shahak, Israel. Open Secrets: Israel Foreign and Nuclear Policies. London: Pluto Press, 1997.
Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
Sorkin, Michael. Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace. New York: New Press, 2005.
Tamimi, Azzam. Hamas: A History from Within. Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2007.
Tilley, Virginia. The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Settlements/Refugees/Human Rights
**Abdelrazaq, Leila. Baddawi (Graphic novel). Just World Books, 2015. “A coming of age story that is funny, angry and deeply human.”
Aruri, Naseer ed. Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return. London: Pluto Press, 2001.
**Baltzer, Anna. Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. Paradigm Publishers, 2007. Order online.
**Bayoumi, Mustafa ed. Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine conflict. OR Books, 2010. Order online.
Bowen, Stephen ed. Human Rights, Self-determination and Political Change in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publications, 1997.
Carter, Jimmy. Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.
Cook, Jonathan. Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. Pluto Press: London, 2006.
Cook, Jonathan. Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Project in Human Despair. Zed Books, 2008.
Davis, Uri. Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within. Zed Books: New York, 2003.
Dolphin, Ray. The West Bank Wall: Unmaking Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
Dumper, Michael ed. Palestinian Refugee Repatriation: Global Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2006.
Efrat, Elisha. The West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Geography of Occupation and Disengagement. London: Routledge, 2006.
Gorenberg, Gershom. Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977. New York: Times Books, 2006.
Hamzeh, Muna. Refugees in our Own Land: Chronicles from a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem . London: Pluto Press, 2001.
Hass, Amira. Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in Occupied Land. Los Angeles: Semiotext , 2003.
Jacoby, Tami Amanda. Bridging the Barrier: Israel’s Unilateral Disengagement. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
Jiryis, Sabri. The Arabs in Israel. Monthly Review Press: New York, 1976
Kattan, Victor. The Palestine Question in International Law. London: British Institute for International and Comparative Law, 2008.
Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Beacon Press, 2007.
Lustick, Ian. Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority. University of Texas Press: Austin, 1980.
Makdisi, Saree. Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2008.
Masalha, Nur. A Land Without A People: Israel, Transfer, and the Palestinians, 1949–1996. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
Masalha, Nur. Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: the Politics of Expansion, 1967–2000. Sterling: Pluto Press, 2000.
Masalha, Nur. The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. London: Pluto Press, 2003.
Minns, Amina and Nadia Hijab. Citizens Apart: a Portrait of the Palestinians in Israel. St. Martins Press: New York, 1990.
Nathan, Susan. The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across of the Jewish/Arab Divide. Nan A. Talese, 2005.
Neslen, Arthur. Occupied Minds: A Journey through the Israeli Psyche. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
Quigley, John. Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice. Duke University Press, Durham, 1990.
Quigley, John. The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005.
Qumsiyeh, Mazen B. Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. London: Pluto Press, 2004.
Rabinowitz, Dan and Khawla Abu-Baker. Coffins on Our Shoulders: The Experience of the Palestinian Citizens of Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Reinhart, Tanya. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005.
Reinhart, Tanya. The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine since 2003. London: Verso, 2006.
Sa’di, Ahmad H. and Lila Abu-Lughod eds. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Takkenberg, Alex. The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1998.
Zertal, Edith. Lords of the Land: the war over Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories. New York: Nation Books, 2007.
Zureik, Elia. The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge, 1979.