Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid: Prospects for Resolving the Conflict

by Marwan Bishara, Richard Falk (Foreword by)

Overview

This incisive analysis of where Palestinians and Israelis are and the possible avenues to a just and durable peace has been fully updated in the aftermath of September 11 and the Israeli Defence Force's campaign against the West Bank and Gaza. It lays out the causes of the Second Intifada and argues that this new rising shows that there can be no peace without justice. Israel may not yet have reached the point where, at the beginning of the 1990s, President de Klerk recognized this fact for South Africa, but the same hard choices must one day be made.

Marwan Bishara shows how the asymmetry of power between Palestinians and Israelis was ignored by patrons of the Oslo 'peace process' - notably the United States. The ill-conceived transition process degenerated into the fragmented and dependent apartheid statelet that exists today in the West Bank and Gaza. The Oslo process was in fact doomed from the start. The seven accords that have been signed have produced seven years of prosperity for Israelis, and seven years of collapsing economy and increasingly impossible living conditions for Palestinians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781842772737
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/01/2002
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	1,070,180
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.42(d)

About the Author

Palestinian author, journalist and public speaker, Marwan Bishara is also an Israeli citizen from Nazareth. He spends much of his time in the United States where, amongst other things, he is a board member of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington D.C. He travels widely and is currently based in France where he is a lecturer at the American University of Paris and a research fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. In late 2001, he was invited to address a series of seminars organized by America's prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

He writes for a variety of newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune (Paris), Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), Al Hayat (London), and WOZ (Zurich).
Palestinian author, journalist and public speaker, Marwan Bishara is also an Israeli citizen from Nazareth. He spends much of his time in the United States where, amongst other things, he is a board member of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington D.C. He travels widely and is currently based in France where he is a lecturer at the American University of Paris and a research fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. In late 2001, he was invited to address a series of seminars organized by America's prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

He writes for a variety of newspapers, including the International Herald Tribune (Paris), Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), Al Hayat (London), and WOZ (Zurich).

Table of Contents

Preface: The Search Continues for an Israeli de Klerk
Introduction
Part 1: Violence
1. The Second Intifada
2. Israel's Enemy Within: The Million Forgotten Palestinians
Part 2: Interim
3. Impasse in the Oslo Diplomatic Process
4. The Real Role of the United States in the Peace Process
Part 3: Final Status Negotiations
5. The Palestinian Refugees
6. Jerusalem
Part 4: Apartheid
7. Seven Fat Years for Israel; Seven Lean Years for Palestine
8. The West Bank Settlements: Apartheid in Practice
Part 5: No End in Sight
9. Israel, the Unready: But Choose It Must

Editorial Reviews

This book by Marwan Bishara offers penetrating insights into why the Oslo Accords have failed. The author outlines innovative suggestions for overcoming the impasse and ensuring a genuine coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis.” —Alain Gresh, editor-in-chief at Le Monde Diplomatique

“Both a Palestinian and an Israeli, Marwan Bishara is the ultimate insider to the current conflict. This book, written in the immediate aftermath of the Sharon election, has proved prophetic. While events have moved on, the choices faced by Israelis and Palestinians remain the same. We overlook Bishara's arguments at our peril.” —Eugene L. Rogan, St Antony's College, Oxford

“A lucid and up-to-date analysis of recent events in the Middle East... Bishara takes some comfort in the parallels with apartheid South Africa, where the international community was eventually able to exert enough pressure to help bring about peaceful change. The South African cause was advanced by thousands of small groups of people across the world... It is just such people that this book addresses and will help to mobilise.” —Palestine News

“Marwan Bishara's book comes as close to being "required reading" as anything currently available.... His analysis of the failure of the Oslo peace process is particularly devastating, warning us all to oppose its resumption.” —Richard Falk

“Marwan Bishara provides a case to answer, drawing on Jewish as well as Palestinian sources.” —The Economist

From the Publisher

Offering the Palestinian perspective on the roots of the Second Intifada, Bishara (Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine) criticizes Israeli state policy as essentially colonial; suggests that the United States is far from an "honest broker" in its continued support for Israeli militarism; and describes the Oslo peace process as a diplomatic effort to derail Palestinian aspirations for a viable state by imposing a series of noncontiguous cantonments in the West Bank and Gaza, divided by Israeli settler roads and lacking control over borders, airspace, and natural resources. He locates the source of the conflict in Israeli control over land and resources via military occupation, rather than some intractable religious hatred between Muslims and Jews. The situation of Palestinians living inside Israel is also briefly examined. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews