Do you want to understand what is happening in Gaza and Israel? Don’t expect much help from mainstream media, or even from elite journalism. Don’t expect immediate accounts of the bloodshed to enlighten you or equip your students for anything more that “enemy/friend” thinking. For intelligent, politically challenging takes on Israel/Palestine, you need historical context and a big analytical frame.
In the CSSH archive, we have over 45 years of innovative scholarship on Israel/Palestine. And it resists wartime simplifications. Our authors make unconventional arguments, with conclusions that test the assumptions of establishment political commentary. CSSH articles explore new forms of solidarity and antagonism between Arabs and Jews, infrastructures of occupation and nation-building, partitioned economies, legal and bureaucratic authority, state and non-state terror, religious and secular political movements, and the elaborate forms of history, official and populist, that emerge across these domains of struggle.
Here are 10 of our best Israel/Palestine essays from the 2000s:
Charles Anderson 2021 “When Palestinians Became Human Shields: Counterinsurgency, Racialization, and the Great Revolt (1936–1939)”
Rephael G. Stern 2020 “Legal Liminalities: Conflicting Jurisdictional Claims in the Transition from British Mandate Palestine to the State of Israel”
Daniel Monterescu and Ariel Handel, 2020 “Terroir and Territory on the Colonial Frontier: Making New-Old World Wine in the Holy Land”
Lori A. Allen 2017 “Determining Emotions and the Burden of Proof in Investigative Commissions to Palestine“
Fredrik Meiton 2015 “The Radiance of the Jewish National Home: Technocapitalism, Electrification, and the Making of Modern Palestine”
Joyce Dalsheim 2010 “On Demonized Muslims and Vilified Jews: Between Theory and Politics”
Tamir Sorek 2008 “Cautious Commemoration: Localism, Communalism, and Nationalism in Palestinian Memorial Monuments in Israel“
Laleh Khalili 2007 “‘Standing with My Brother’: Hizbullah, Palestinians, and the Limits of Solidarity”
Ilana Feldman 2005 “Everyday Government in Extraordinary Times: Persistence and Authority in Gaza’s Civil Service, 1917–1967“
Robert Blecher 2005 “Citizens without Sovereignty: Transfer and Ethnic Cleansing in Israel“
