Samih K. Farsoun and Naseer Aruri. Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History.

• Author: Talhami, Ghada Hashem
• Position: Book review

Samih K. Farsoun and Naseer Aruri. Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History. 2nd edition. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2006, 467 pages. Paper, no price indicated.

THERE ARE MANY TREATMENTS, both historical and diplomatic, of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but hardly any focusing on the Palestinians. Studies focusing on Israel as a political entity and thriving society abound, to the extent that we have been inundated with works on early Zionism, the Yishuv, the Israeli economy, and Israel's diplomatic history. Moreover, most Israeli studies are the work of Israeli scholars but the same dose not hold true to for treatments of the Palestinians themselves. Most Western-language works dealing with this conflict are either oblivious to Palestinian society in general or too eager to portray the Palestinians as inert actors. In addition, most general Middle East histories or political studies relegate Palestine, if it receives any mention at all, to the margins of their narrative. Palestine as a non-state entity usually registers a faint image on the radar screen of most historians and political scientists.

Studies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have always missed two significant factors: a sound theoretical basis on which to build their analysis, and the general willingness to investigate the inner workings of the beleaguered Palestinian society. Thus, even when we meet sympathetic treatments of this subject, the conflict is presented as that of two equally-valid rights. This distorted prism manages to place the historic "struggle" of the Israeli Jews on an even level with that of the Palestinian Arabs, so that there are no occupiers and occupied here, but merely two people with equally-valid claims to the same piece of land. This practice has been further distorted by ignoring evolutionary trends which were at work in Palestinian society long before the appearance of modern Zionists on the scene. Had these trends been subjected to the full glare of the scholarly scrutiny, however, they would have easily shed some light on the destructiveness of twentieth-century Western and Zionist domination. Among the most glaring lacuna in such works has been the absence of any discussion of the Palestinian economy and its inevitable transformation under the impact of powerful twentieth-century capitalist and racialist colonization.

This book is a unique and welcome addition to the literature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simply because it performs two unusual feats. The first is its emphasis on the political economy of Palestine, which examines and disentangles the nexus of politics and...