Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures)
by Shira Robinson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (10)
CONTENTS List of Illustrations Note on Translations and Transliterations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. From Settlers to Sovereigns 2. The Formation of the Liberal Settler State 3. Citizenship as a Category of Exclusion 4. Spectacles of Sovereignty 5. Both Citizens and Strangers Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
Part of: Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures (51 books)
"A remarkable book . . . a detailed panorama of the many ways in which the Israeli state limited the rights of its Palestinian subjects." —Orit Bashkin, H-Net Reviews
Following the 1948 war and the creation of the state of Israel, Palestinian Arabs comprised just fifteen percent of the population but held a much larger portion of its territory. Offered immediate suffrage rights and, in time, citizenship status, they nonetheless found their movement, employment, and civil rights restricted by a draconian military government put in place to facilitate the colonization of their lands. Citizen Strangers traces how Jewish leaders struggled to advance their historic settler project while forced by new international human rights norms to share political power with the very people they sought to uproot.
For the next two decades Palestinians held a paradoxical status in Israel, as citizens of a formally liberal state and subjects of a colonial regime. Neither the state campaign to reduce the size of the Palestinian population nor the formulation of citizenship as a tool of collective exclusion could resolve the government's fundamental dilemma: how to bind indigenous Arab voters to the state while denying them access to its resources. More confounding was the tension between the opposing aspirations of Palestinian political activists. Was it the end of Jewish privilege they were after, or national independence along with the rest of their compatriots in exile? As Shira Robinson shows, these tensions in the state's foundation—between privilege and equality, separatism and inclusion—continue to haunt Israeli society today.
"An extremely important, highly scholarly work on the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians." —G. E. Perry, Choice
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Review
"In recent years the concept of settler colonialism has become a fashionable if controversial way of understanding the Palestine-Israel conflict. It draws parallels between the Zionist movement and European settlers in North America, Australia and elsewhere who built their own societies and economies while excluding, dispossessing or eliminating the natives. There are some obvious differences. But Jewish immigrants who were fleeing anti-Semitism were also settlers. Robinson uses that framework to study the Palestinian minority left in Israel after 1948 and the paradox of their being second-class citizens living under a military government, but with democratic rights, and in a Jewish state surrounded by Arab enemies. Superbly researched using archival and a wealth of other sources in Arabic and Hebrew."--10 Must-Read Histories Of The Palestine-Israel Conflict by Ian Black, Literary Hub
"Robinson's well-researched and detailed account of Israel's dramatic formation period and the creation of what she calls 'a liberal settler state' is a welcome academic addition to Israeli and Palestinian historiography."--Joseph Dana "The National"
"Robinson's framework succeeds in moving 'beyond the conceptual straitjacket' that tends to trap other studies that examine Zionism purely as a purely settler-colonial movement, precluding any attempts to examine Israel as part of the global history of liberalism. We are encouraged not to view these currents as mutually exclusive; Israeli policies of early statehood encompassed elements of both settler colonialism and liberal democracy."--Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud "The Tel Aviv Review of Books"
"Citizen Strangers is an extremely important, highly scholarly work on the conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians . . . The book is based on exemplary original research involving extensive use of both Hebrew and Arabic archives and newspapers, as well as interviews . . . This is an essential work for scholars (including serious nonspecialists) and policy-makers concerned with Israel/Palestine or broadly with ethnic conflict and colonialism. Summing Up: Essential."--G. E. Perry "CHOICE"
"Shira Robinson brilliantly demonstrates that the treatment of Palestinian citizens in Israel is a mirror of Israel itself. Carefully tracing the historical dynamics of the institutions that constructed Palestinian residents as both liberal citizens and colonial subjects, Robinson shows how these institutions also shaped Israeli citizenship, legal order, and society."--Gershon Shafir, University of California "San Diego"
"Shira Robinson offers a rich analysis of the politics and laws that shaped Palestinian citizenship in Israel, the complexities of liberalism, and issues of control and domination in settler colonial states to illuminate the historical roots of Israeli politics toward Palestinians today."--Hassan Jabareen, General Director of Adalah "The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel"
"The paradox that cleaves the title of this exceptional book into two goes to the heart of its revelatory findings: a state that is both liberal and settler-colonial is an oxymoron. Robinson's absorbing, meticulously researched account decisively historicizes Israel's contradictory combination of colonial subordination at home with pretensions to democracy abroad."--Patrick Wolfe "La Trobe University"
"Robinson describes techniques of exclusion with a concreteness and detail that is useful and compelling. The book is therefore an important addition to the empirical literature on Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and the theoretical frame leads to further debate about how this treatment is best conceptualized."--Aziza Khazzoom "American Historical Review"
"Shira Robinson has authored a remarkable book. Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler Stateprovides a detailed panorama of the many ways in which the Israeli state limited the rights of its Palestinian subjects; it reveals the latter's acts of refusal and resistance; and it provides incredible insights on Israeli perceptions of citizenship and sovereignty.[T]he conceptual and temporal paradigm suggested in this book will inspire many scholars working in the field. Indeed, Citizen Strangers is a great academic achievement that reveals much about the past and helps us understand, with tragic clarity, the realities of the present."--Orit Bashkin "H-Net Reviews"
"This well-researched book thus provides essential context for current events in the occupied Palestinian Territories and is required reading for anyone interested in exploring the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."--Kabir Altaf "Dawn"
About the Author
Shira Robinson is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University.
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Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures)
Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel's Liberal Settler State (Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures)
Product details
ASIN : B00F2NY0NI
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : 9 October 2013
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From other countries
Jaime Enrique Babka
5.0 out of 5 stars A settler colonial state since the beginning
Reviewed in the United States on 26 October 2014
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
This book answers questions many have had about the 1948-67 period, the period of the so-called "good" and "little" Israel. For anyone who has looked at the map of the 1947 UN Partition Plan which allocated about 56% of mandatory Palestine to the Jewish state -- a territory in which in any event the Palestinian Arab population would still have numbered almost half of the total population- - and then looked at what became the 1948 boundaries of the State of Israel, certain questions naturally arise. Post-1948, Israel had control of 78% of the mandate territory, a gain of 22% overall, and at least half of the lands that would have formed the Palestinian Arab state. What happened in those lands- - the "Occupied Territories" of 1948? This book provides some very particular and detailed answers to that question, which underscore several issues. First of all, the racialist and racist nature of the State of Israel since its birth. Second, the quandary over how to treat Palestinians who were in this case citizens but who could not be or ever become part of the body of a self-described Jewish State. Third, the brutally violent nature of the dispossession and dislocation of the Palestinian population in those areas, which offers a clear preview of the post-1967 policies of Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza (i.e. in what was left of the lands that were supposed to form the Palestinian Arab state). In fact, in that light, Robinson's book should be read in conjunction with Gershon Gorenberg's The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements 1967-77, which substantiates the origins of the settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza in mainstream Labor Zionism, not the right wing, or the religious, or the right-wing religious. This book is therefore an important part of the scholarship that demystifies and deconstructs the narratives of mainstream Zionism, and by bringing into sharp focus the settler colonial character of Israel since 1948 establishes a lucid continuity in the policies and practices of the Israeli state towards the Palestinian people.
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Ilkay Tas Gursoy
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 November 2014
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Excellent book on the past and present violent transformations and the arising dilemmas in Palestine-Israel.
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Trent Bailey
4.0 out of 5 stars Get ready for the truth about Zionism!
Reviewed in the United States on 26 May 2018
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
Great book, gives context to what Israel really is. A must read. Perhaps the most sourced historical text I have ever read.
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QQQ
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent core text on a vital question
Reviewed in the United States on 2 December 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This book is beautifully written by an author who knows the conflict in great detail, approaches it with rare historical erudition and appreciates the nuances of its politics. That's not to say people won't argue with some of its points -- this is inevitable -- but this book belongs on the short list of anyone with a serious interest in this crucial question: how Palestinian citizens of Israel have been reconfigured as a minority safely marginalized in an ethnic state that views the entire Palestinian population as a fifth column. Over the last twenty years, the politics of this long-ignored population have been reviving in the hands of a new generation of skilled Palestinian activists and professionals who are raising legal and ethical challenges to Israel's laws and doctrine regarding Jewish statehood. With the question of their identity and position in the Jewish state finally moving into the center of attention where it belongs, skilled studies like this are must-reads. Playing catch-up on titles that have come out over the last decade, I confess I'm halfway through it so I can't be sure it will sustain me through the whole argument, but based on the early chapters I believe Citizen Strangers should be considered one of the core texts on Palestinian citizens of Israel, along with the works of master scholars such as Nadim Rouhana, Elia Zureik and Ilan Pappe (not to exclude others).
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Isabel Salichs
5.0 out of 5 stars So insightful!
Reviewed in the United States on 26 July 2020
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Fascinating read. Very well researched and deep knowledge on the subject.
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John N. Freitas
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on 30 May 2015
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
Well researched, well written.
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