The Punishment of Gaza

Author: Gideon Levy
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784780332
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
Israel's 2009 invasion of Gaza was an act of aggression that killed over a thousand Palestinians and devastated the infrastructure of an already impoverished enclave. The Punishment of Gaza shows how the ground was prepared for the assault and documents its continuing effects. From 2005-the year of Gaza's "liberation"-through to 2009, Levy tracks the development of Israel policy, which has abandoned the pretense of diplomacy in favor of raw military power, the ultimate aim of which is to deny Palestinians any chance of forming their own independent state. Punished by Israel and the Quartet of international powers for the democratic election of Hamas, Gaza has been transformed into the world's largest open-air prison. From Gazan families struggling to cope with the random violence of Israel's blockade and its "targeted" assassinations, to the machinations of legal experts and the continued connivance of the international community, every aspect of this ongoing tragedy is eloquently recorded and forensically analyzed. Levy's powerful journalism shows how the brutality at the heart of Israel's occupation of Palestine has found its most complete expression to date in the collective punishment of Gaza's residents.

Gaza

Author: Jean-Pierre Filiu
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 1805261509
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 503

Book Description
Through its millennium–long existence, Gaza has often been bitterly disputed while simultaneously and paradoxically enduring prolonged neglect. Jean-Pierre Filiu’s book is the first comprehensive history of Gaza in any language. Squeezed between the Negev and Sinai deserts on the one hand and the Mediterranean Sea on the other, Gaza was contested by the Pharaohs, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Fatimids, the Mamluks, the Crusaders and the Ottomans. Napoleon had to secure it in 1799 to launch his failed campaign on Palestine. In 1917, the British Empire fought for months to conquer Gaza, before establishing its mandate on Palestine. In 1948, 200,000 Palestinians sought refuge in Gaza, a marginal area neither Israel nor Egypt wanted. Palestinian nationalism grew there, and Gaza has since found itself at the heart of Palestinian history. It is in Gaza that the fedayeen movement arose from the ruins of Arab nationalism. It is in Gaza that the 1967 Israeli occupation was repeatedly challenged, until the outbreak of the 1987 intifada. And it is in Gaza, in 2007, that the dream of Palestinian statehood appeared to have been shattered by the split between Fatah and Hamas. The endurance of Gaza and the Palestinians make the publication of this history both timely and significant.

Gaza

Author: Norman Finkelstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520318331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438

Book Description
The Gaza Strip is among the most densely populated places in the world. More than two-thirds of its inhabitants are refugees, and more than half are under eighteen years of age. Since 2004, Israel has launched eight devastating "operations" against Gaza's largely defenseless population. Thousands have perished, and tens of thousands have been left homeless. In the meantime, Israel has subjected Gaza to a merciless illegal blockade. Norman G. Finkelstein presents a meticulously researched inquest into Gaza's martyrdom. He shows that although Israel justified its assaults in the name of self-defense, in fact these actions constituted flagrant violations of international law. He also documents that the guardians of international law -- from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to the UN Human Rights Council -- ultimately failed Gaza.

Drinking the Sea at Gaza

Author: Amira Hass
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1466884533
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
In 1993, Amira Aass, a young Israeli reporter, drove to Gaza to cover a story - and stayed, the first journalist to live in the grim Palestinian enclave so feared and despised by most Israelis that, in the local idiom, "Go to Gaza" is another way to say "Go to hell." Now, in a work of calm power and painful clarity, Hass reflects on what she has seen in Gaza's gutted streets and destitute refugee camps. Drinking the Sea at Gaza maps the zones of ordinary Palestinian life. From her friends, Hass learns the secrets of slipping across sealed borders and stealing through night streets emptied by curfews. She shares Gaza's early euphoria over the peace process and its subsequent despair as hope gives way to unrelenting hardship. But even as Hass charts the griefs and humiliations of the Palestinians, she offers a remarkable portrait of a people not brutalized but eloquent, spiritually resilient, bleakly funny, and morally courageous. Full of testimonies and stories, facts and impressions, Drinking the Sea at Gaza makes an urgent claim on our humanity. Beautiful, haunting, and profound, it will stand with the great works of wartime reportage, from Michael Herr's Dispatches to Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart.

Our Harsh Logic

Author:
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805095373
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers speak out about the Palestinian occupation, revealing that their presence is not merely for defense, but also to accelerate the acquisition of Palestinian land and work against an independent Palestinian nation.

Police Encounters

Author: Ilana Feldman
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804795371
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Egypt came to govern Gaza as a result of a war, a failed effort to maintain Arab Palestine. Throughout the twenty years of its administration (1948–1967), Egyptian policing of Gaza concerned itself not only with crime and politics, but also with control of social and moral order. Through surveillance, interrogation, and a network of local informants, the police extended their reach across the public domain and into private life, seeing Palestinians as both security threats and vulnerable subjects who needed protection. Security practices produced suspicion and safety simultaneously. Police Encounters explores the paradox of Egyptian rule. Drawing on a rich and detailed archive of daily police records, the book describes an extensive security apparatus guided by intersecting concerns about national interest, social propriety, and everyday illegality. In pursuit of security, Egyptian policing established a relatively safe society, but also one that blocked independent political activity. The repressive aspects of the security society that developed in Gaza under Egyptian rule are beyond dispute. But repression does not tell the entire story about its impact on Gaza. Policing also provided opportunities for people to make claims of government, influence their neighbors, and protect their families.

Shell Shocked

Author: Mohammed Omer
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608465144
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Operation Protective Edge, launched in early July 2014, was the third major Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in six years. It was also the most deadly. By the conclusion of hostilities some seven weeks later, 2,200 of Gaza’s population had been killed, and more than 10,000 injured. In these pages, journalist Mohammed Omer, a resident of Gaza who lived through the terror of those days with his wife and then three-month-old son, provides a first-hand account of life on-the-ground during Israel’s assault. The images he records in this extraordinary chronicle are a literary equivalent of Goya’s “Disasters of War”: children’s corpses stuffed into vegetable refrigerators, pointlessly because the electricity is off; a family rushing out of their home after a phone call from the Israeli military informs them that the building will be obliterated by an F-16 missile in three minutes; donkeys machine-gunned by Israeli soldiers under instructions to shoot anything that moves; graveyards targeted with shells so that mourners can no longer tell where their relatives are buried; fishing boats ablaze in the harbor. Throughout this carnage, Omer maintains the cool detachment of the professional journalist, determined to create a precise record of what is occurring in front of him. But between his lines the outrage boils, and we are left to wonder how a society such as Israel, widely-praised in the West as democratic and civilized, can visit such monstrosities on a trapped and helpless population.

This Burning Land

Author: Greg Myre
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 0470928980
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
A profoundly different way of looking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Reporting from Jerusalem for The New York Times and Fox News respectively, Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, witnessed a decades-old conflict transformed into a completely new war. The West has learned a lot about asymmetrical war in the past decade. At the same time, many strategists have missed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become one of them. This book shows the importance of applying these hard-won lessons to the longest running, most closely watched occupation and uprising in the world. The entire conflict can seem irrational -- and many commentators see it that way. While raising their own family in Jerusalem at the height of the violence, Myre and Griffin look at the lives of individuals caught up in the struggles to reveal how these actions make perfect sense to the participants. Extremism can become a virtue; moderation a vice. Factions develop within factions. Propaganda becomes an important weapon, and perseverance an essential defense. While the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to achieve their goals after years of fighting, people on both sides are prepared to make continued sacrifices in the belief that they will eventually emerge triumphant. This book goes straight to the heart of the conflict: into the minds of suicide bombers and inside Israeli tanks. We hear from Palestinian informants who help the Israeli military track down and kill Palestinian militants. Israeli settlers in isolated outposts explain why they are there, and we hear the frustrations of a Palestinian farmer who has had his olive grove cut in half by Israel's security barrier Shows the important lessons that can be learned by viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example of modern, asymmetrical war Authored by long-time reporters on the Middle East, the book provides a balanced and detailed look at the fighting based on first-hand experience and hundreds of interviews Explains how the landscape of the conflict changed and why the traditional approach to peacemaking is no longer valid With a new perspective on what's really going on in Israel and the Palestinian territories, The Familiar War is a book that will inform the debate on the Middle East and the future of the peace process, as well as our understanding of other conflicts around the world.

State of Failure

Author: Jonathan Schanzer
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1137365641
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book Description
The biggest obstacle to Palestinian statehood may not be Israel In September 2011, president Mahmoud Abbas stood before the United Nations General Assembly and dramatically announced his intention to achieve recognition of Palestinian statehood. The United States roundly opposed the move then, but two years later, Washington revived dreams for Palestinian statehood through bilateral diplomacy with Israel. But are the Palestinians prepared for the next step? In State of Failure, Middle East expert Jonathan Schanzer argues that the reasons behind Palestine's inertia are far more complex than we realize. Despite broad international support, Palestinian independence is stalling because of internal mismanagement, not necessarily because of Israeli intransigence. Drawing on exclusive sources, the author shows how the PLO under Yasser Arafat was ill prepared for the task of statebuilding. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, used President George W. Bush's support to catapult himself into the presidency. But the aging leader, now four years past the end of his elected term, has not only failed to implement much needed reforms but huge sums of international aid continue to be squandered, and the Palestinian people stand to lose everything as a result. Supporters of Palestine and Israel alike will find Schanzer's narrative compelling at this critical juncture in Middle Eastern politics.

Governing Gaza

Author: Ilana Feldman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389134
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
Marred by political tumult and violent conflict since the early twentieth century, Gaza has been subject to a multiplicity of rulers. Still not part of a sovereign state, it would seem too exceptional to be a revealing site for a study of government. Ilana Feldman proves otherwise. She demonstrates that a focus on the Gaza Strip uncovers a great deal about how government actually works, not only in that small geographical space but more generally. Gaza’s experience shows how important bureaucracy is for the survival of government. Feldman analyzes civil service in Gaza under the British Mandate (1917–48) and the Egyptian Administration (1948–67). In the process, she sheds light on how governing authority is produced and reproduced; how government persists, even under conditions that seem untenable; and how government affects and is affected by the people and places it governs. Drawing on archival research in Gaza, Cairo, Jerusalem, and London, as well as two years of ethnographic research with retired civil servants in Gaza, Feldman identifies two distinct, and in some ways contradictory, governing practices. She illuminates mechanisms of “reiterative authority” derived from the minutiae of daily bureaucratic practice, such as the repetitions of filing procedures, the accumulation of documents, and the habits of civil servants. Looking at the provision of services, she highlights the practice of “tactical government,” a deliberately restricted mode of rule that makes limited claims about governmental capacity, shifting in response to crisis and operating without long-term planning. This practice made it possible for government to proceed without claiming legitimacy: by holding the question of legitimacy in abeyance. Feldman shows that Gaza’s governments were able to manage under, though not to control, the difficult conditions in Gaza by deploying both the regularity of everyday bureaucracy and the exceptionality of tactical practice.