Rosie Bsheer, Assistant Professor of History, and Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies, both core faculty members of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, recommend the following English-language materials and resources to contextualize current events in Palestine. These resources offer analyses and histories of expulsion, occupation, settler colonialism, forced evictions, home demolitions, and annexation that situate the current struggle as part of the ongoing Nakba of 1948 and in relation to the Naksa of 1967. These resources also point to the myriad attempts to control knowledge production on Palestine and to silence critical speech that attempts to humanize Palestinians.
ACADEMIC READINGS
Fayez Abdullah Sayegh, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, Vol. 1 (Beirut, Lebanon: Research Center, Palestine Liberation Organization, 1965).
Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971).
Fouzi Al-Asmar, To Be an Arab in Israel (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1978).
Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (Zed Press, 1979).
Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (Vintage, 1992).
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture (Verso, 2003).
Sara Roy, Failing Peace: Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Pluto Press, 2006).
Ussama Makdisi and Paul A. Silverstein, Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Indiana University Press, 2006).
Omar Jabary Salamanca, Mezna Qato, Kareem Rabie, and Sobhi Samour, “Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine,” Settler Colonial Studies 2.1 (2012).
Shira Robinson, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State (Stanford University Press, 2013).
Jasbir Puar, “Rethinking Homonationalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45.2 (2013), 336-39.
Ella Shohat, On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements (Pluto Press, 2017).
Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018).
Rana Barakat, “Lifta, the Nakba, and the Museumification of Palestine's History,” Native American and Indigenous Studies 5.2 (Fall 2018), pp. 1-15.
Sherene Seikaly, “How I Met My Great-Grandfather: Archives and the Writing of History,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 38.1 (May 2018), p. 6-20.
Ussama Makdisi, Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (University of California Press, 2019).
Matthew Hughes, Britain's Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936–1939 (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019).
Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (Metropolitan Books, 2020).
Seth Anziska, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, 2020).
FICTION / POETRY
Emile Habibi, The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist (1974, 2001).
Sahar Khalifeh, Wild Thorns (Interlink Books, 1976).
Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun and other Palestinian Stories (Lynn Rienner, 1999).
Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010).
Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence, trans. Sinan Antoon (Archipelago Books, 2011).
Basma Ghalayini (ed.), Palestine +100 Anthology: Stories from a Century after the Nakba (Commapress, 2019).
Ibtisam Azem, The Book of Disappearance (Syracuse University Press, 2019).
HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTS
Al-Haq, Annual Report on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 1989.
UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, 2017.
UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Concluding Observations on the Combined Seventeenth to Nineteenth Reports of Israel, 2019.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Joint Submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, 2020.
Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, 2021.
B’Tselem, A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid, 2021.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
Mohammed El-Kurd, “Tomorrow My Family and Neighbors May Be Forced From Our Homes by Israeli Settlers,” The Nation, November 20, 2020.
Noura Erakat and Mariam Barghouti, “Sheikh Jarrah Highlights the Violent Brazenness of Israel’s Colonialist Project, The Washington Post, May 10, 2021.
"Israel v Palestine Conflict," Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, S08E12, May 16, 2021.
Nora Erakat, interview by Becky Anderson, CNN, May 18, 2021.
Nimer Sultany, “Peaceful Coexistence in Israel Hasn’t Been Shattered – It’s Always Been a Myth,” The Guardian, May 19, 2021.
Omar Barghouti, “People of Conscience: Palestinians Ask You to Boycott Israel,” The Guardian, May 19, 2021.
INDEPENDENT MEDIA
Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “Palestine, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer,” Middle East Research and Information Project, 2014.
"Gaza in Context," JADMAG, Summer 2016, Issue 4.1.
Avi Shlaim, "Avi Shlaim on Israel’s New Historians, Hamas, and the BDS Movement," Jadaliyya, October 23, 2017.
Judith Butler, Angela Davis, Samera Esmeir, and Sherene Seikaly, "Thinking Palestine Intersectionally," Status, November 19, 2017.
Sarah Ihmoud, “Sheikh Jarrah: The Question Before Us,” Jadaliyya, May 16, 2021.
"On Targeting Doctors in Gaza, Israeli War Crimes, and the Palestinian General Strike," Democracy Now, May 18, 2021.
"What Does Palestine Mean for Black America? A Conversation in Partnership with the Dream Defenders," The Root, May 18, 2021.
Amjad Iraqi, "Hamas Breaks out of Its Gaza Cage," +972 Magazine, May 21, 2021.
TEACH-INS
Holding Palestinian Ground: Lessons from Gaza to Sheikh Jarrah, featuring Samer Abu Aysheh, Ziad Abu-Rish, Issam Adwan, Mariam Barghouti, Noura Erakat, Amjad Iraqi, Yasser Qous, Mouin Rabbani, and Sherene Seikaly, Jadaliyya, May 15, 2021.
Dr. Lana Tatour in conversation with Prof. Rashid Khalidi, Cultural Media, May 17, 2021.
Conversation on Sheikh Jarrah, featuring Ussama Makdisi, Mouin Rabbani, and Sherene Seikaly, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, May 19, 2021.
A Third Intifada? Palestinians and the Struggle for Jerusalem, featuring Rana Barakat, Beshara Doumani, Aya Ghanameh, Weeam Hammoudeh, Adrienne Keene, and Adi Ophir, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University, May 20, 2021.
DIGITAL ARCHIVES / RESOURCES
Archiving the Struggle: Towards a New Political Imaginary for Palestine
Avalon Project (Yale Law School)
Gaza in Context: Narrative Documentary
Palestinian Poster Project Archives
Palestinian Oral History Archive (AUB)
Palestine Oral History Project (Columbia University)