MERIP Media Resource List, February 2, 2006

AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS on the following topics:
- New MERIP book published about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- How recent events are related to the failures of the Oslo Accords of 1993
- How cultural and social trends are part of Israeli-Palestinian political battles
 
The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (Stanford University Press)
Edited by Joel Beinin and Rebecca L. Stein
 
JOEL BEININ
Joel Beinin is professor of Middle East history at Stanford University. With Zachary Lockman, he coedited Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation (South End Press, 2001). In 2002, he served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. He also serves on the editorial committee of Middle East Report .
 
REBECCA L. STEIN
Rebecca L. Stein is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University. She is the coeditor, with Ted Swedenburg, of Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2005) and a contributing editor of Middle East Report .
 
About the book:
 
In the wake of a shocking Hamas victory in Palestinian elections, and uncertainty about Israel's political future, what are the prospects for comprehensive peace between Israel and Palestine? What accounts for the growing popularity of Hamas in the post-Oslo era? After the 1993 Oslo Accords people across the world anticipated the onset of peace and an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By the fall of 2000, with the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising and the rise of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to power, the so-called peace process was declared moribund. What is the relationship between the Oslo Process and this second Palestinian uprising? What kinds of cultural and social trends have accompanied these political shifts?
 
A new volume, The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 takes on these contentious, often polarizing issues. The contributors to this collection include scholars, journalists and activists, conversant in Arabic and/or Hebrew, whose approach to the conflict has been formed by years of residence in the region.
 
The editors show how the Oslo process "failed to create the necessary conditions for a just and lasting peace in the region." They contend that Oslo did not change the balance of power in the region, as it consigned Palestinians to an inferior status for at least the interim five-year period and established no mechanism to prevent Israel from taking unilateral measures in the Occupied Territories, and thus failed to create the conditions necessary for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Since 2000, Palestinian impoverishment, increased incarceration and the growing popularity of the militant Islamist group, Hamas can be traced to the 1993 Oslo accords, and the neo-liberal, economic vision of its architects. While political and economic investigations are at the book's core, it also addresses questions of cultural production, and the ways that "everyday political battles are waged through artistic and consumptive processes."
 
The authors contest the representation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as one between two monolithic people and positions. Instead, the book reveals a more complex political reality with political and social differences on both sides of the Green Line. Sections entitled "Inside Palestine: Occupation, Social Movements and Governance" and "Inside Israel: Militarism, Citizenship and Struggle" explore the voices of dissent in the feminist peace movement, contesting interpretations of history, varieties of nationalism and political identity (Zionist versus Postzionist; Hamas versus Fatah), and minoritarian politics.
 
In addition to scholarly articles, the volume includes documents, maps, poetry, and graphic art.
 
Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures, and published in cooperation with the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).
416 pp.
$21.95 (paperback); ISBN: 0-8047-5365-2
4 tables, 10 illustrations, 6 maps
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5364%205365%20
 
To arrange a book signing with the editors please call Puja Sangar at Stanford at (650) 724-4211.
 
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For more information, contact Michelle Woodward, MERIP Media Coordinator, at (202) 223-3677, or merip.media@merip.org.  Media Resource Lists are an initiative of the MERIP Media Outreach Program.

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