Both before and after 1948, Marxists advocated a two-state solution to Arab-Israeli conflict. This book examines how this proposal, endorsed by international consensus in 1947-49, had ceased to figure on the political agenda by the 1960s.

"Illuminating. . . . The entire field of modern Middle Eastern Studies still has remarkably little closely researched social history of this sort. Beinin's study adds to the work recently published by revisionist Israeli historians, debunking the dominant view of the origin and early history of the Palestine conflict and extending the revision into the 1950s and early 1960s. His explanation of the different political paths that were taken, turned back from, and lost sight of is an important—indeed vital—contribution to contemporary scholarly and political understanding."—Timothy Mitchell, New York University

This book examines the history of the Palestinian Left by focusing on the trajectory of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) during its declining phase. Relying on a substantial corpus of primary sources, this study illustrates how the PFLP’s political agency contributed to its own marginalisation within the Palestinian national movement. Following the 1982 eviction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) from Lebanon, the bases of the PFLP’s opposition to Fatah’s primacy in the national movement were jeopardised. This book argues that the PFLP’s «loyalty» to the PLO institutional and political framework prevented the formulation of a real counterhegemonic political project. This drove the PFLP’s action to suffer a fundamental contradiction undermining its stance within the national movement. In the attempt to continue its opposition to Fatah, while maintaining integration in the Palestinian mainstream, the PFLP’s agency fluctuated, compromising its effectiveness and credibility. Apparently irreversible, the PFLP’s marginalisation is a factor fostering the current Palestinian impasse, as no alternative is emerging to break the thirteen-year long Hamas-Fatah polarisation.

The relations between the Israeli state and its Arab citizens have been distorted by the perception that national security concerns require the full rights of citizenship to be restricted for members of the Arab community. However, the national security of the state can also be affected by a poor reputation in the international community, which plays a vital role in sustaining the existence of the state. This created a space for Arab intelligentsia to use internationalisation as a means to promote their cause. This study is designed to explore and analyse the internationalisation process and its impact regarding the Arab community in Israel. It is a beneficial source to academics, experts, policymakers, journalists and other experts and interested members of the public.

Why have state-building projects across the MENA region proven to be so difficult for so long? Following the end of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, the countries of the region began a violent and divisive process of state formation. But a century later, state-building remains inconclusive. This book traces the emergence and evolution of state-building across the MENA region and identifies the main factors that impeded its success: the slow end of the Ottoman Empire; the experience of colonialism; and the rise of nationalistic and religious movements. The authors reveal the ways in which the post-colonial state proved itself authoritarian and formed on the model of the colonial state. They also identify the nationalist and Islamist movements that competed for political leadership across the nascent systems, enabling the military to establish a grip on the security apparatus and national economies. Finally, in the context of the Arab Spring and its conflict-filled aftermath, this book shows how external powers reasserted their interventionism. In outlining the reasons why regional states remained hollow and devoid of legitimacy, each of the contributors shows that recent conflicts and crises are deeply connected to the foundational period of one century ago. Edited by Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, the volume features contributions by stellar scholars including Faleh Abdel Jabar, Lisa Anderson, Bertrand Badie, François Burgat, Benoit Challand, Ahmad Khalidi, Henry Laurens, Bruce Rutherford, Jordi Tejel and Ghassan Salamé.

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.

In this provocative and wide-ranging history, Joel Beinin examines fundamental questions of ethnic identity by focusing on the Egyptian Jewish community since 1948. A complex and heterogeneous people, Egyptian Jews have become even more diverse as their diaspora continues to the present day. Central to Beinin's study is the question of how people handle multiple identities and loyalties that are dislocated and reformed by turbulent political and cultural processes. It is a question he grapples with himself, and his reflections on his experiences as an American Jew in Israel and Egypt offer a candid, personal perspective on the hazards of marginal identities.