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An Everyday Occupation
by Saree Makdisi
This book is not about suicide bombers. Tending one's fields, visiting a relative, going to the hospital: for ordinary Palestinians, such everyday activities require negotiating permits and passes, curfews and closures, "sterile roads" and "seam zones"—bureaucratic hurdles ultimately as deadly as outright military incursion. Not since the late Edward Said has there been such an articulate Arab voice on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In devastating detail, Saree Makdisi reveals how the "peace process" institutionalized Palestinians' loss of control over their inner and outer lives. He shows how Israel's massive concrete walls going up around Gaza and the West Bank isolate communities from their lands, their livelihoods, and each other. Through eye-opening statistics and day-by-day reports, we learn how Palestinians have seen their hopes for freedom and statehood culminate in the creation of abject "territories" comparable to open-air prisons. Anyone surprised at Arab anger or the election of Hamas must read this book. 33 photographs, 12 maps.
"Starred Review. The combined weight of personal stories of abject suffering, harsh statistics (in the past seven years, Israeli military operations have killed 854 Palestinian children) and facts on the ground make Makdisi's case that the occupation is destroying the Palestinian people, and possibly any chance for peaceful coexistence." - Publishers Weekly.
"Makdisi dismisses the efforts of some Israeli and Western leaders to resolve the conflict and create a Palestinian homeland (e.g., the 2000 Camp David compromise rejected by PLO leader Yasser Arafat) as both insincere and insufficient. Those looking for a moving and humane account of the lives of Palestinians will be rewarded, but readers expecting an evenhanded assessment will be disappointed." - Kirkus Reviews.
This information about Palestine Inside Out was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Follow Saree at http://sareemakdisi.net/
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