Book Displays

Available at the Oesterle Library
Righteous Transgressions examines four groups: the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, the ultra-Orthodox Shas, the Islamic Movement in Israel, and the Palestinian Hamas. Lihi Ben Shitrit demonstrates that women's prioritization of a nationalist agenda over a proselytizing one shapes their activist involvement. The author engages the literature on women's agency in Muslim and Jewish religious contexts, and sheds light on the centrality of women's activism to the promotion of the spiritual, social, cultural, and political agendas of both the Israeli and Palestinian religious right.

Available at the Oesterle Library
Citizen Strangers traces how Jewish leaders struggled to advance their historic settler project while forced by new international human rights norms to share political power with the very people they sought to uproot. As Shira Robinson shows, these tensions in the state's foundation—between privilege and equality, separatism and inclusion—continue to haunt Israeli society today.

Available at the Oesterle Library
Political Parties in Palestine is an elucidation of the Palestinian political landscape. The book offers vital background information on movements such as Hamas and Fatah, as well as smaller political factions that have defined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades.

Available at the Oesterle Library
Through its millennium-long existence, Gaza has often been bitterly disputed while simultaneously and paradoxically enduring prolonged neglect. Squeezed between the Negev and Sinai desert 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, 20,000 Palestinians sought refuge in Gaza, a marginal area that neither Israel nor Egypt wanted. Palestinian nationalism grew there, and Gaza has since found itself at the heart of Palestinian history.

Available at the Oesterle Library
In this fully revised and expanded fourth edition of his highly respected introductory text, Alan Dowty demystifies the conflict by putting it in broad historical perspective, identifying its roots, and tracing its evolution up to the current impasse. His account offers a clear analytic framework for understanding transformations over time, and in doing so, punctures the myths of an "age-old" conflict with an unbridgeable gap between the two sides. Rather than simply reciting historical detail, this book presents a clear overview that serves as a road map through the thicket of conflicting claims.

Available at the Oesterle Library
Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict edited by Rachel S. Harris is the first book designed to meet this need. Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict brings together thirty-nine essays from experienced educators who reflect on the challenges of engaging students in college classrooms. Divided into seven sections, these personal essays cover a broad range of institutional and geographical settings, as well as a wide number of academic disciplines. Some of the topics include using graphic novels and memoirs to wrestle with the complexities of Israel/Palestine, the perils of misreading in the creative writing classroom as border crossing, teaching competing narratives through film, using food to teach the Arab-Israeli conflict, and teaching the subject in the community college classroom.

Available at the Oesterle Library
A collection of interviews with people living in the occupied territories of Palestine, including a fisherman, a journalist, and a professor.

Available at the Oesterle Library
In late 1991 and early 1992, Joe Sacco spent two months with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, traveling and taking notes. Upon returning to the U.S., he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combined the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling to explore this complex, emotionally weighty situation.

Available at the Oesterle Library
The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people--one Israeli, one Palestinian--that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East. In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into Israel, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out nearly twenty years earlier. Two were turned away, but the third was met at the door by a young woman who invited them in. This act, in the face of years of animosity, is the starting point for a true story of a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish.

Available at the Oesterle Library
The Great Arab Revolt of 1936 in the Holy Land lasted three years, cost thousands of lives-Jewish, British, and Arab-and cast the trajectory for the Middle East conflict ever since. It radicalized the Jewish and Arab communities and made the separation permanent. This book reveals world-changing events through extraordinary people on all sides.

Available at the Oesterle Library
This book offers an analysis of the major sources of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and suggests principles and processes for building a peacemaking platform. This book will be of great interest to anyone engaged with peace and conflict transformation, ethnography, social justice, communication studies, and Middle Eastern studies, human rights and international law.

Available from I-Share
Gaza Under Hamas scrutinizes the workings of the Hamas government, tracing how its governance in the domestic arena unfolded. Particular focus is placed on the ways in which the new government reacted to three key challenges to its power: the competitive political system and main opposition party; violent radicalisation and local splinter groups; the need to re-establish societal order and reform the judicial system.

Available from I-Share
The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the most polarizing and long-lived confrontations in the world. Tearing communities apart in Israel and Occupied Palestine, with repercussions across the globe, Israel's "temporary" occupation turns a half century old in 2017. This timely and provocative book offers a background history and context for general readers and covers the major turning points of the conflict. Expertly detailing the political, diplomatic, and legal dimensions of the struggle, Gershon Shafir examines the effect of the colonization of occupied territories on Israel's democracy and offers compelling reasons and possibilities for ending the occupation now.

Available through ILL
Hamas in Power: The Question of Transformation discusses the changes in Hamas' stance towards the borders of the Palestinian statehood (Two States Solution), the armed resistance, and the peace process. It also attempts to explain Hamas' perceptions of these issues after assuming power and becoming a government. Covering key topics such as peace, power, governance, and ideology.

Available from I-Share
This remarkable book examines how the Islamist movement and its competition with secular-nationalist factions have transformed the identities of ordinary Palestinians since the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, of the late 1980s. Drawing upon his years living in the region and more than eighty in-depth interviews, Loren Lybarger offers a riveting account of how activists within a society divided by religion, politics, class, age, and region have forged new identities in response to shifting conditions of occupation, peace negotiations, and the fragmentation of Palestinian life.

Available from I-Share
Drawing upon Robbie Sabel's first-hand involvement with many legal negotiations in the Arab-Israeli conflict, International Law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict examines international law in relation to the conflict by analysing its major events and agreements, both historical and contemporary. Outlining the role of international law from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire until the present day, it considers the legal elements of the various peace treaties that Israel has signed with its neighbouring Arab States. Using his expertise as a professor, practitioner and ambassador, Sabel endeavours to represent both sides of the conflict, offering a wealth of counter-arguments and adding his own legal interpretations.

Available from I-Share (Oesterle Library copy COMING SOON)
The book traces the struggle from the emergence of nationalism among the Jews of Europe and the Arab inhabitants of Ottoman Palestine through to the present, exploring the external pressures and internal logic that have propelled it. Placing events in Palestine within the framework of global history, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History skilfully interweaves biographical sketches, eyewitness accounts, poetry, fiction, and official documentation into its narrative.

Available from I-Share
Introduction to any complex international conflict is enriched when the voices of the adversaries are heard. The Israel/Palestine Reader is an innovative collection, focused on the human dimension of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian confrontation. Its vivid and illuminating readings present the voices of the diverse parties through personal testimonies and analyses. Key leaders, literary figures, prominent analysts, and simply close observers of different phases of this protracted conflict are all represented―in their own words.

COLLIDING DREAMS addresses that void with a gripping exploration of Zionism’s meaning, history and future. Told through the remarkable lives and voices of Jews and Palestinians living in the Middle East today, the film weaves together past and present, ideas and passions, wars and peace talks, brilliant minds with the voices of ordinary citizens to develop a film portrait of unprecedented depth and sensitivity.

“Military occupation” is an abstract term, open to mistaken interpretation. What does “occupation” imply? What does it mean for people living under occupation? What means must be employed so that occupation can be implemented?

This film instills meaning in the term “occupation” in the form of a “manual for military occupation” derived from the testimonies of those people who implemented it in practice. Director Avi Mograbi hosts the viewers in his living room and provides insights to how a colonialist occupation works, the logic behind the practices that it produces and the different modes of thought needed to be applied at different situations in order to maintain it. In his presentation Mograbi is using the 54-year Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a case study.

A nonpartisan account of a tense year in the lives of Israelis settlers and of the Palestinians and Israelis who oppose them. This unprecedented film challenges conventional views about the Palestinian-Israel conflict, West Bank settlements, and the two state solution.

In the shadow of a wall stands a new generation of Palestinian. With defiant creativity they prove that no matter the height of the obstacle, one can always climb. HURDLE reveals an important and intimate story emerging from the hearts and actions of Palestinian youth as the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories reached its 50th year. Official Selection at DOC NYC.

From Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Hava Kohav Beller comes her new film IN THE LAND OF POMEGRANATES, a suspenseful, multi-layered documentary centered on a group of young people who were born into a violent and insidious ongoing war. They are young Palestinians and Israelis invited to Germany to join a retreat called 'Vacation From War' where they live under the same roof and face each other every day.

There is an invisible war going on in the West Bank. The Israeli settlers are waging a daily war on the Palestinians who remain; they harass their neighbours, attack their houses, move their livestock and generally make life unbearable for them. And after years of violent resistance a new generation of Palestinians have undertaken a new strategy and are fighting back with video cameras rather than guns. They post their videos online to show the world what is happening but what does all this mean for the possibility of peace? An in-depth and eye-opening investigation into life in the West Bank.

Like all Israeli youth, Atalya is expected to become a soldier. Unlike most, she questions the practices of her country’s military, and becomes determined to challenge this rite of passage. Despite her family’s political disagreements and personal concerns, she refuses military duty and is imprisoned for her dissent. Her courage moves those around her to reconsider their own political positions and power to effect change. OBJECTOR follows Atalya to prison and beyond, offering a unique window into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of a young woman who seeks truth and takes a stand for justice.

For many Israelis, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 marked a grim turning point for their country. In the words of the commission set up to investigate the murder, "Israeli society [would] never be the same again. As a democracy, political assassination was not part of our culture." In the eyes of even more people, the murder ended all hope for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process through the Oslo Accords and altered the course of history. But, as Amos Gitai sets out to prove in his brave and provocative new film, Rabin's assassination was not just the act of one fanatic; it was the culmination of a hate campaign that emanated from the rabbis and public figures of Israel's far right. Winner of a Human Rights Film Network Award at the Venice Film Festival.

A look at Jewish settlers in the West Bank and their allies - Jewish and non-Jewish alike - in Israel, America and Europe. The origins of the settler phenomenon, which reach back almost half a century, are explored along with a look at who THE SETTLERS are today and how they impact the Middle East peace process.

Amos Gitai (Rabin, The Last Day; Kadosh; Free Zone) returns to the occupied territories for the first time since his 1982 documentary Field Diary with this portrait of the citizens, Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to overcome the consequences of occupation. WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER shows the human ties woven by the military, human rights activists, journalists, mourning mothers, and even Jewish settlers. Faced with the failure of politics to solve the occupation issue, these men and women rise and act in the name of their civic consciousness. This human energy is a proposal for long-overdue change.

The film tells the compelling and moving stories of two remarkable young women living in Gaza and the struggle of Gazans trying to maintain their humanity and humor while hoping to find some sense of normality in a world that is anything but normal.

Disturbing, powerful and emotionally devastating, TEARS OF GAZA is less a conventional documentary than a record–presented with minimal gloss – of the 2008 to 2009 bombing of Gaza by the Israeli military. Photographed by several Palestinian cameramen both during and after the offensive, this powerful film by director Vibeke Løkkeberg focuses on the impact of the attacks on the civilian population.

Filmed during the 2014 siege of Gaza, which left 507 children dead and 3,598 wounded, ’Born in Gaza’ follows a group of young children growing up in a war zone.

As a child, Ibtisam Barakat wanted nothing more than to become a writer. This wasn't a common path for a girl living in the politically tumultuous Palestine of the 1970s, but she found inspiration in pen pal correspondence and from the adults who encouraged her dream. Still, the most surprising turn of events for Ibtisam happened when her mother decided that she, too, wanted to defy circumstances and seek an education. In this stand-alone, lyrically written memoir, Ibtisam picks up where Tasting the Sky left off, taking readers through her high school years.

When fourteen-year-old Liyanne Abboud, her younger brother, and her parents move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and must deal with the tensions between Jews and Palestinians.

"When a war ends it does not go away," my mother says. "It hides inside us ... Just forget!" But I do not want to do what Mother says ... I want to remember. In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home. Transcending the particulars of politics, this illuminating and timely book provides a telling glimpse into a little-known culture that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace.

A deeply personal, first hand-account of non violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, the footage was later given to Israeli co-director Guy Davidi to edit. Structured around the violent destruction of each one of Burnat's cameras, the filmmakers' collaboration follows one family's evolution over five years of village turmoil.

Tells the story of a Palestinian father and daughter who united Arab and Israeli factions to create a non-violent movement and save their village from destruction by Israel's Separation Barrier.

Explores the four-decade-old Israeli military legal system in the Occupied Territories. The film records the testimonies of the military legal professionals who were the architects of the system and helped run it in its formative years.