Books: Palestinians inside Israel


Scroll down to see the books in this category.

These collections of books have been assembled from many sources of recommended reading on Israel/Palestine, including: the United Church of Christ (UCC) and UCC PIN, Sabeel, Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP) and others.

Presented in the following categories on individual pages:
About/By Palestinian Christians
Religion; The Bible; Christian Zionism
History
Personal Histories: Memoirs, Autobiographies
Political Analysis; Diplomatic History
The Current Situation
• Activism; Resistance; Solidarity; Intersectional Justice
Novels; Short Stories; Poetry

Palestinians inside Israel
Zionism; Jewish Identity
Faith Relations; Anti-Semitism
Visual Arts; Crafts  (poetry moved to new list)
Tourism; The Politics of Tourism
Children’s Books
Please note: some books are listed in more than one category.

Please send us your suggestions for additions to these lists; contact us at [email protected].

The order of the books within each category is random and is not related to the importance of the work.

Citizen Strangers, by Shira Robinson
Following the 1948 war and the creation of the state of Israel, Palestinian Arabs comprised just fifteen percent of the population but held a much larger portion of its territory. Offered immediate suffrage rights and, in time, citizenship status, they nonetheless found their movement, employment, and civil rights restricted by a draconian military government put in place to facilitate the colonization of their lands. 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. For the next two decades Palestinians held a paradoxical status in Israel, as citizens of a formally liberal state and subjects of a colonial regime. Neither the state campaign to reduce the size of the Palestinian population nor the formulation of citizenship as a tool of collective exclusion could resolve the government’s fundamental dilemma: how to bind indigenous Arab voters to the state while denying them access to its resources. More confounding was the tension between the opposing aspirations of Palestinian political activists. Was it the end of Jewish privilege they were after, or national independence along with the rest of their compatriots in exile? As Shira Robinson shows, these tensions in the state’s foundation―between privilege and equality, separatism and inclusion―continue to haunt Israeli society today.


The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel, by Ilan Pappé
For more than 60 years, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have lived as Israeli citizens within the borders of the nation formed at the end of the 1948 conflict. Occupying a precarious middle ground between the Jewish citizens of Israel and the dispossessed Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Palestinians have developed an exceedingly complex relationship with the land they call home; however, in the innumerable discussions of the Israel-Palestine problem, their experiences are often overlooked and forgotten. In this book, historian Ilan Pappé examines how Israeli Palestinians have fared under Jewish rule and what their lives tell us about both Israel’s attitude toward minorities and Palestinians’ attitudes toward the Jewish state. Drawing upon significant archival and interview material, Pappé analyzes the Israeli state’s policy towards its Palestinian citizens, finding discrimination in matters of housing, education, and civil rights. Rigorously researched yet highly readable, The Forgotten Palestinians brings a new and much-needed perspective to the Israel-Palestine debate.


The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide , by Susan Nathan
The pioneering autobiographical story of a British Zionist in her fifties who moves to Israel and chooses to live among 25,000 Muslims in the all-Arab Israeli town of Tamra, a few miles from Nazareth. Susan Nathan’s revelatory book about her new life across the ethnic divide in Israel is already creating international interest. At a time when Middle Eastern politics (in many ways central to the current world disorder) have become mired in endless tit-for-tat killings, Susan Nathan is showing – by her own daily example – that it is perfectly possible for Jews and Arabs to live peacefully together in a single community, recognising their common humanity.

The author’s familiarity with the former injustices of apartheid South Africa enables her to draw telling comparisons with the state of Israel. The increasing segregation of, and discrimintation against, the million-strong Arabic population of Israel is something she witnesses at first hand, but in describing her experiences in Tamra she is as observant of Arab frailties as of Jewish oppression.

Written with warmth, compassion and humour, ‘The Other Side of Israel’ is one courageous woman’s positive life-enhancing response to a situation in which entrenched attitudes lead only to more violence and bloodshed.


Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within, by Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman
Arguing that a comprehensive and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depends on a resolution of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict within Israel as much as it does on resolving the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, this timely book explores the causes and consequences of the growing conflict between Israel’s Jewish majority and its Palestinian-Arab minority. It warns that if Jewish-Arab relations in Israel continue to deteriorate, this will pose a serious threat to the stability of Israel, to the quality of Israeli democracy and to the potential for peace in the Middle East. The book examines the views and attitudes of both the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority, as well as the Israeli state’s historic approach to its Arab citizens. Drawing upon the experience of other states with national minorities, the authors put forward specific proposals for safeguarding and enhancing the rights of the Palestinian minority while maintaining the country’s Jewish identity.