Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution (Indiana Series in Arab & Islamic Studies) - Hardcover

Robinson, Glenn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253332176 ISBN 13: 9780253332172

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1997

Synopsis

" ...provides a unique analysis of the various facets of grassroots organizations and their interaction with the emerging state institutions...a major and very timely contribution." - Ann Lesch. In this well-informed and accessibly written book, Glenn E. Robinson traces the emergence of a new political elite in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1980s and the grassroots political and social revolution it launched during the Intifada. Local self-help organizations forged in this period - student groups, labor unions, women's committees, agricultural relief committees, medical relief associations, and voluntary works organizations - took power away from the notables (the traditional landowning elite) and began building popular institutions which organized Palestinian society and which Israel found impossible to eliminate. Yet, in the post-Oslo period, power in the post-intifada polity was captured by an outside political force: Yasir Arafat and the PLO. The resulting disjunction between the grassroots popular authority of the new institutions and the centralizing, authoritarian tendencies of the PLO undermines the prospects for building a stable Palestinian state.

About this title

Review

"[O]ffers a sophisticated analysis of the political struggles that have taken a toll on the Palestinian nationalist movement." Foreign Affairs"

"[This book] is clear, well-documented, and helps debunk culturally essentialist explanations of Arab authoritarianism... [A] fair and sensitive account and contains the best available assessment of the Intifada's political aftermath among Palestiians. An added bonus is that the book is written in an accessible style with enough historical background and contextual explanation to make it ideal as a text for courses in Middle East politics or the politics of revolutions." AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REV"

"[O]ffers a sophisticated analysis of the political struggles that have taken a toll on the Palestinian nationalist movement." --Foreign Affairs

"[This book] is clear, well-documented, and helps debunk culturally essentialist explanations of Arab authoritarianism... [A] fair and sensitive account and contains the best available assessment of the Intifada's political aftermath among Palestiians. An added bonus is that the book is written in an accessible style with enough historical background and contextual explanation to make it ideal as a text for courses in Middle East politics or the politics of revolutions." --AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REV

About the Author

Glenn E. Robinson is Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and Research Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California-Berkeley.

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253332176
• ISBN 13: 9780253332172
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248