Palestine and the Palestinians in the 21st Century is an anthology that views Israel as a “settler colonial” project and identifies it as the root cause of the problems facing the Middle East. It analyzes the contemporary Palestinian situation while searching for the thread that binds the issue through the twentieth to the twenty-first century and suggests that the question of Palestine is the epitome of the worst of twentieth-century legacies. The contributors examine the Palestinian question and declare that it remains an enigma to the international community that has failed the Palestinians time and again. At a time when all the processes toward peace seem to have reached a dead end and the unending Palestinian wait for self-determination continues, they invigorate empathy in their existing perspective.
Editors Rochelle Davis and Mimi Kirk have compiled a collection of essays by specialists on Palestinian society, politics, history, and economics who examine various aspects of the problems arising from the settler colonial basis of the Israeli state. Divided into three parts, the anthology gives equal importance to the origins of the Palestinian problem, its contemporary fault lines and future trajectories. This work comes out of a conference on Palestine hosted at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies of Georgetown University and builds on the work of its former director Michael C. Hudson, who contributed a chapter examining American involvement in the conflict. Hudson, while looking at declining American global influence, suggests a course correction, a “reset”, for U.S. policy toward finding an achievable solution. He concludes that the failure of President Obama in converting the initial articulations into tangible results was a “missed opportunity.”
Gabriel Piterberg, one of the contributors, sets the tone in this volume while contextualizing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in a comparative narrative. He builds on the works of scholars such as Chaim Arlosoroff and Arthur Ruppin, and asserts the settler colonial character of the Israeli state. The first part has two more chapters: Leila Farsakh examines the tattered economic condition of Palestinians building on the work of Yusif Sayigh and concludes that “the Palestinian economy is fragmented and pauperized, both at [the] individual and national level” (55), mainly because of the Israeli colonial occupation. In his chapter, Tamim Al-Barghouti refutes Helga Baumgarten's narrative of the cyclical pattern of war, peace, and civil war in the Palestinian struggle. Barghouti asserts the need for restructuring the colonial state system and says that even if it might be a utopian idea to think of the possibility of political systems based on rule of law and justice, it might be a worthy project given the failures of all other “realistic” solutions.
Contemporary developments and emerging paradigms is the focus of the second part where Asʾad Ghanem analyses the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election arguing that it was a “critical election” that caused a division in the Palestinian national movement which. according to him, is the main roadblock in finding any meaningful outcome for the peace process. Sara Roy documents the sufferings of Palestinians, especially the residents of the Gaza Strip, and opines that the conflict is headed toward normalcy of annexation from abnormality of occupation. On the same note, Susan Musarrat Akram sheds light on the legal aspect of the Palestinian refugee issue. Islah Jad looks at the conflict from the vantage point of women's rights issues and highlights the intricate overlap of secularist and Islamist approaches, particularly when it comes to female participation in public life.
The third part looks at the future trajectories and the role of the U.S. Ali Abunimah advocates learning from the experience of Northern Ireland to effectively mediate in the Palestinian situation. On the other hand, Nora Erakat looks at the possibilities through which American human rights advocates can pressurize the administration to priorities gross violations of Palestinians’ rights. If Piterberg identifies the root of the problem in the first chapter, Saree Makdisi responds by articulating a solution. In his view, a one-state solution is the only “chance of a genuine peace” because the two-state solution framework has failed (267).
The anthology is well articulated, extending a Palestine-centric view of the conflict. It is a must read for anyone specializing on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, though, an intervention on the possibilities for the role of emerging international players would have added weight to its usefulness.
