Israel and Palestine - Alternative Perspectives on Statehood

For decades, Israeli Jews, Palestinians, and Israeli Arabs have been engaged in a debate about past history, present options, and future possibilities. Basic questions of citizenship, religion, political tactics, democracy, the rule of law, and a host of other matters are abandoned, revived and modified in an intellectual exchange between representatives of all three communities that is as old as the political conflicts that have marked the region. The high stakes, intense emotions-and meager results-of the "peace process" lend particular importance and salience to these discussions.

The sophistication of these debates will come as a surprise to many observers who might have concluded that there is no escape from the present impasse and little possibility for a just settlement of the grievous divisions in the region. Given the pivotal role of the United States in the Middle East, it would be particularly helpful if Americans' understanding of the issues went beyond the superficiality that often passes for political discussion and media coverage. Whatever the outcome of the discussions currently under way, the central commitment of the Oslo Accords to the two-state solution has long been the foundation of American diplomacy and is the starting-point of Washington's most recent attempt to revive the moribund peace process.

Important segments of public opinion in the three communities, however, have started to question the possibility-and, more importantly perhaps, the desirability-of a two-state solution. Their doubts have set in motion a lively and important debate, and this book is designed to introduce American readers to the terms of that discussion. It features essays by well-known Israeli academics, both Jewish and Palestinian, as well as contributions from non-Israeli citizen Palestinian, and American scholars. It is the first to bring together a wide range of views and perspectives by influential scholars from various disciplines as well as from activists to bear on a very topical subject with international ramifications.

List of contents

Introduction: The Picture
John Ehrenberg

Section 1: Overviews
Chapter 1: Facing the Music: Israel, Palestine, and the Politics of Partisan Delusions
Stephen Eric Bronner

Chapter 2: Making Sense of the Nakba: Ari Shavit, Baruch and Zionist Claims to Territory
Ian S. Lustick

Chapter 3: Israel and the Closing of the American Jewish Mind
Richard Silverstein

Chapter 4: The Root Causes Of Enduring Conflict: Can Israel And Palestine Co-Exist?
Jeffry Frieden

Chapter 5: Reclaiming Human Rights: Alternative Paths to an Israeli/Palestinian Peace
Micheline Ishay and David Kretzmer

Section 2: Two States
Chapter 6: Not Exactly Apartheid: Between Settler Colonialism and Military Occupation
Honaida Ghanim

Chapter 7: The One-State Delusion
Assaf Sharon

Chapter 8: To What Extent Reconciliation? An Analysis of the Geneva Accord between Israelis and Palestinians
Yoav Kapshuk

Chapter 9: One Homeland, Two States: Planning Alternative Spatial Relations between Palestine and Israel
Rassem Khamaisi

Section 3: The One-State Alternative
Chapter 10: The Way Forward in the Middle East
Horit Herman Peled and Yoav Peled

Chapter 11: The One-State Solution and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Palestinian Challenges and Prospects
Leila Farsakh

Chapter 12: A One-State Solution? From a 'Struggle Unto Death' to 'Master-Slave' Dialectics
Raif Zreik

Chapter 13: Past and Present Perfect of Israel's One-State Solution
Moshe Behar

Section 4: Confederation
Chapter 14: Towards a Shared Vision of Israel and Israel/Palestine
Oren Barak

Chapter 15: Neither One nor Two: Reflections about a Shared Future in Israel-Palestine
Lev Luis Grinberg

Chapter 16: Between One and Two: Apartheid or Confederation for Israel/Palestine?
Oren Yiftahel

Chapter 17: Beyond Traditional Sovereignty Theory in Conflict Resolution: Lessons from Israel/Palestine
Amal Jamal

Conclusion: Out of the Darkness
John Ehrenberg

About the author

John Ehrenberg is Chair of the Political Science Department and senior professor of Political Science at Long Island University, Brooklyn. He has received the Alfred McCoy Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Political Science Association's Caucus for a New Political Science.

Yoav Peled is professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He received his PhD in political science from UCLA in 1982. His work has dealt with citizenship and ethnic politics in Israel and with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He co-authored the book Being Israeli: the Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2002), which won the Albert Hourani Prize of the Middle East Studies Association of North America for best book in Middle East studies in 2002. He is co-editor in chief of The Public Sphere: Tel Aviv Journal of Political Science (in Hebrew).

Contributors:
Oren Barak, lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Moshe Behar is Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester

Stephen Eric Bronner, director of global relations and professor of political science,, Rutgers University

Leila Farsakh, Palestinian political economist and associate professor of political science at University of Massachusetts, Boston

Jeffry Frieden, Stanfield professor of international peace, Department of Government, Harvard University

Honaida Ghanim, general director of "MADAR" the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (Ramallah) and a fellow, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Lev Luis Grinberg, political economist and sociologist in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben Gurion University, Israel

Micheline Ishay, University of Denver Distinguished Scholar, and professor of International Studies and Human Rights, Josef Korbel of School of International Studies, University of Denver, Colorado

Amal Jamal, chair of the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University and head of the Walter Leibach Institute

Yoav Kapshuk, Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University

Rassem Khamaisi, professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Israel

David Kretzmer, professor emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and professor of law at Sapir College School of Law

Ian S. Lustick, Bess W. Heyman chair in political science and professor of political science, The University of Pennsylvania

Assaf Sharon, academic director and research fellow at Molad, the Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, Jerusalem and assistant professor in the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv University

Richard Silverstein is a journalist, blogger and regular contributor to Mint Press News.

Raif Zreik, a Palestinian Israeli, currently teaching in the Law School, Carmel College and Minerva Humanities Institute, Tel Aviv University

Summary

This book is designed to introduce American readers to the terms of the discussion of a two-state solution. It is the first to bring together Jewish and Palestinian scholars, as well as non-Israeli citizen Palestinian and American Jews, to bear on a very topical subject with international ramifications.

Product details

• Authors: John Peled Ehrenberg, Yoav Ehrenberg Peled
• Assisted by: John Ehrenberg (Editor), Ehrenberg John (Editor), Yoav Peled (Editor), Peled Yoav (Editor)
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.07.2016
• EAN: 9781442245075
• ISBN: 978-1-4422-4507-5
• No. of pages: 396
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Israel, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / International Relations / Diplomacy, POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / Middle Eastern, Political structure & processes, Diplomacy, Palestine, Political structure and processes, Israeli Studies;Palestinian Studies