Synopses & Reviews
Across the Wall arose from a unique collaboration between scholars from Israel and the Palestinian territories, seeking to arrive at a shared framework for studying the history of this troubled land. Ilan Pappé and Jamil Hilal, top academics in Israel and Palestine respectively, bring historians from both sides of the wall together for dialogue on history, identity, and the meaning of the conflict. In the volume, they argue persuasively for the concept of a 'bridging narrative', a historiographical discourse which can accommodate seemingly incompatible national meta-narratives. Proceeding from this innovative theoretical framework, Across the Wall then goes on to offer critical examinations of some of the most contested issues in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the 1948 Nakba, the 1967 war, the occupation, and the formation of the PLO. The result is a radical new take on the history of Israel/Palestine which transcends the biases inherent in both countries national narratives and points towards a new model for the historiography of conflicts.
About the Author
Jamil Hilal is a sociologist at Birzeit University and a senior research fellow at the Palestinian Institution for the Study of Democracy in Ramallah. He previously served as lecturer at the University of Durham, and was a research fellow at Oxford University. He is a founding member of the Palestinian Poverty Commission and a major contributor to its 1998 National Poverty Report. Hilal has been a member of the Palestinian National Council since 1983.
Ilan Pappé is currently a Chair in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, and the author of various books, including The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (I.B.Tauris).
Table of Contents
Palisad: Palestinian and Israeli academics in dialoge -- Jamil Hilal and Ilan Pappe * Politics and Identity -- Ehud Adiv * Oriental Othering and National Identit -- Dan Rabinowitz * The Shoah on Trial -- Moshe Zuckermann * Jerusalem 1948: The Phantom City -- Salim Tamari * Dis/Solving the Palestinian Refugee Problem -- Nur Mashala * Fear, Victimhood, Self and Other -- Ilan Pappé * Reflections on Contemporary Palestinian History -- Jamil Hilal * Palestinian Nationalism -- Issam Nahar * Gender, Nakba and Nation -- Rema Hammami * ‘Ethnocracy -- Oren Yiftachel * Democracy and the the Experience of National Liberation -- Musa Budeiri * The Derailment of Peace -- Lev Grinberg * Naming the Colonizer in Geographical Palestine -- Uri Davis * One-state Palestine: Past, Present and Future -- Ilan Pappé