The path to the obliteration of Gaza was paved by the confluence of a set of longstanding forces. This great conjuncture has transformed Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories while driving the region to the edge. In The Fall of Israel, Dr Dan Steinbock connects the dots among these lethal headwinds. What makes The Fall of Israel unique is its comprehensive scope. It covers Israel's political, economic, social and military changes, the shifts in the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty, Israel's degradation into apartheid rule, the attendant atrocities, the regional and global reverberations and the human and economic costs, both prior and subsequent to Israel’s fatal war on Gaza. There, its nightmarish actions have led to the engagement of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, renewed international boycotts, and massive domestic and international protests. The Fall of Israel outlines the central drivers of this simmering tinderbox: the serial expulsions of Palestinians, the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, a half century of failed U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East and Israel’s militarization, enabled by the symbiotic bilateral ties with the U.S. and massive U.S. military aid. In the Gaza War, these ties fostered paradigms of devastation, such as the Dahiya doctrine and mass assassination factories, backed by pioneering artificial intelligence. The settlements have contributed to the destabilization of the broader region since the early 1970s, and are now compounding its politico-economic and geopolitical crisis. This book addresses the efforts to institute a Jewish rather than a secular state. It shows how the postwar labor alignments were replaced by the hard-right coalitions, thanks to U.S. neoliberal economic policies, assertive neoconservatism and Jewish-American donors. It also explains the causes behind the rise of the Messianic far-right, centrist parties, and the failure of the Left. The corrosion of Israeli society and politics was already reflected in and driven by an economy constrained by adverse erosion, as reflected by the liabilities of its high-tech cluster, the talent “brain drain,” the threatened welfare state and subsidized religious sector. But now, the already evident politico-economic costs to Israel of the Gaza war have set the stage for extraordinary uncertainty in the foreseeable future.

The empirical starting point for anyone who wants to understand political cleavages in the democratic world, based on a unique dataset covering fifty countries since World War II. Who votes for whom and why? Why has growing inequality in many parts of the world not led to renewed class-based conflicts, seeming instead to have come with the emergence of new divides over identity and integration? News analysts, scholars, and citizens interested in exploring those questions inevitably lack relevant data, in particular the kinds of data that establish historical and international context. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities provides the missing empirical background, collecting and examining a treasure trove of information on the dynamics of polarization in modern democracies. The chapters draw on a unique set of surveys conducted between 1948 and 2020 in fifty countries on five continents, analyzing the links between voters’ political preferences and socioeconomic characteristics, such as income, education, wealth, occupation, religion, ethnicity, age, and gender. This analysis sheds new light on how political movements succeed in coalescing multiple interests and identities in contemporary democracies. It also helps us understand the conditions under which conflicts over inequality become politically salient, as well as the similarities and constraints of voters supporting ethnonationalist politicians like Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump. Bringing together cutting-edge data and historical analysis, editors Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty offer a vital resource for understanding the voting patterns of the present and the likely sources of future political conflict.

In this groundbreaking book, the outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. This has been updated with a new afterword on the 2023 invasion of Gaza. 1. Palestine was an Empty Land 2. The Jews were a people with out a land 3. Zionism is Judaism 4. Zionism is not Colonialism 5. The Palestinians Voluntarily Left their Homelands in 1948 6. The June 1967 War was a war of 'No Choice' 7. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East 8. The Myths about the Oslo Agreement 9. The Lies we tell about Gaza 10. The two state solution is the only way forward

Now in its 153rd edition, The Statesman's Yearbook continues to be the reference work of choice for accurate and reliable information on every country in the world. Covering political, economic, social and cultural aspects, the Yearbook is also available online for subscribing institutions: www.statesmansyearbook.com.

Political parties regularly change and adapt in response to ever-changing circumstances. Until now these changes have frequently prompted both scholars and the media to suggest a whole new type of political party, and over time the number of models and types has proliferated to the point of confusion, contradiction, and a loss of explanatory power. In this sophisticated yet accessible study, André Krouwel rejects this mélange of models as inadequate. He utilizes a wide range of data sources to analyze the ideological, organizational, and electoral change undergone by more than one hundred European parties in fifteen different countries, from Scandinavia to the Iberian Peninsula, between 1945 and 2010. The result is one of the most comprehensive empirically grounded studies to date of the genesis, development, and transformation of political parties in advanced democratic states.