Revisit Ghassan Kanafani's pivotal text in a new English edition. Kanafani presents a concrete analysis of the mass uprisings against Zionism, and for independence from British colonialism, taking place in Palestine from 1936 to 1939. With a methodical yet illustrative approach, Kanafani examines the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions that contributed to, and limited, the anti-colonial struggle in this period.
Translated by Hazem Jamjoum, with an introduction from Layan Sima Fuleihan and an afterword from Maher Charif
GHASSAN KANAFANI was a political activist, artist, and writer who gave his life for the Palestinian people. He took part in founding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and is the accomplished author of many short stories, novels, plays, articles, and studies. Kanafani was assassinated in Beirut by the Israeli Mossad in 1972.
LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN is a popular educator and organizer. She is the Education Director of The People's Forum and an editor of 1804 Books in New York City.
HAZEM JAMJOUM is a candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy in History and Middle Eastern Studies degree at New York University. His first literary translation of Maya Abu al-Hayyat's La Ahad Ya'rif Zumrat Damih received PEN America's nomination to the New York State Council for the Arts.
MAHER CHARIF is Head of the Research Department at the Institute for Palestine Studies, Associate Researcher at the French Institute for the Near East, and Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Saint Joseph University.
This book tells the story of the series of secret agents who, since Napoleon I and the Great Game, precipitated the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and then obtained control of the world's oil supplies - for the West in general, and for the Anglo-Saxon world in particular - at the price of two world wars and countless regional conflicts. Though this saga is akin to an adventure story, the immense misfortunes which have fallen upon the oil-possessing nations for over a century are far from the stuff of dreams.
Current events confirm that the black gold spies have a great future ahead of them. But they also remind us that the spy business is well on the way to being privatised, meaning that, to paraphrase Montesquieu, the days when espionage might have been tolerated when exercised by honest people are gone for good. Given that the Western powers are not about to drop their double standards when it comes to the protection of their oil interests, the future does not look too bright.
Hamas has ruled Gaza and the lives of the two million Palestinians who live there since 2006. Hamas Contained, first published in 2018, offers a history of the group, drawing on interviews with organization leaders and their publications. Tareq Baconi maps Hamas's thirty-year transition from fringe military resistance towards governance, culminating in Israeli efforts to contain the movement to the Gaza Strip. Baconi argues that under Israel's approach of managing rather than resolving the conflict, Hamas's demand for Palestinian sovereignty has effectively been marginalized in favor of military action against Hamas, and by implication, all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This dynamic-a violent equilibrium between Hamas and Israel and the movement's containment in the Gaza Strip-lasted for sixteen years, until it was decidedly shattered by Hamas's offensive on October 7, 2023.
Now with new material that provides an analytical framework and reflection on Hamas's offensive of October 7, 2023, and Israel's ensuing war on Gaza, Hamas Contained is an even more essential guide to understanding Hamas and the brutal violence of Israel's war on Palestinians.
Featuring a new prologue and conclusion and two new chapters on recent developments
With Hezbollah's entry into the Lebanese government in 2009 and forceful intervention in the Syrian civil war, the potent Shi'i political and military organization continues to play an enormous role in the Middle East. A hybrid of militia, political party, and social services and public works provider, the group is the most powerful player in Lebanon. Policymakers in the United States and Israel usually denounce Hezbollah as a dangerous terrorist organization and refuse to engage with it, yet even its adversaries need to contend with its durability and resilient popular support. Augustus Richard Norton's incisive account stands as the most lucid, informed, and balanced analysis of Hezbollah yet written--and this expanded and fully updated third edition features a new prologue and conclusion and two new chapters largely devoted to the group's recent activities, including its involvement in Syria. Hezbollah is a work of perennial importance and remains essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East.This edited volume makes an impassioned and informed case for the central place of Palestine in socialist organizing and of socialism in the struggle to free Palestine.