Palestine

In early 2020, the Trump administration unveiled a plan of that name, presented as a route to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In practice, it treated the continuation of Israeli control over the occupied territories as a settled matter. Azmi Bishara uses that moment as a starting point to trace how the occupation came to be treated as normal, and he examines Palestine as a case of settler colonialism that has since taken on the character of an apartheid system.

Drawing on wide-ranging research and a substantial body of theory, Bishara considers how the long-running debate over the Jewish Question intersects with what he terms the Arab Question, and how that intersection complicates any claim to Palestinian nationhood. He also looks at why the Palestinian national movement fell short of securing self-determination, and how the Palestinian Authority came to operate under occupation. His central argument is that questions of nationality and settler colonialism cannot be resolved without first acknowledging the historical wrongs done to Palestinians since the Nakba.

Bishara frames Palestine less as a dilemma that clever policy design could fix and more as a problem that demands justice. He notes that efforts by some regional governments to sideline the Palestinian cause and move closer to Israel have sharpened this point, and have strengthened Palestinian engagement with international justice movements.

The book offers a grounded account of the present political situation in Palestine, along with a new way of thinking about what its future might involve.