How can irregular political situations, which impact the lives of millions, become normalized? Specifically, within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how can 50 years of Israeli control over the Occupied Territories become accepted within Israeli society as a normal, possibly even banal phenomenon? Conversely, how can such a situation be estranged from daily reality, denied any relation to who "we" are? This volume explores these questions through the lens of two central discourses that dominate the Israeli debate regarding the future of the Occupied Territories: 1) Occupation Normalization Discourse, which portrays Israeli control of the territories as a "normal" part of life; 2) Occupation Estrangement Discourse, which portrays this situation as distant from Israeli reality. In addressing these discourses, the authors develop a new methodological tool, Dialectic Discourse Analysis, which examines discourse as a process of perpetual positing and synthesis of oppositions through the discursive construction, differentiation and mediation of self and other. Through this approach, the authors illustrate that these discourses are dialectically constituted in opposition to one another, feeding off one another, each enabling the other to exist. This dynamic has resulted in a fixed discourse, preventing any progress towards a synthesis of oppositions.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is frequently characterised by the violence between the two sides, beneath€which lie a whole series of issues and disagreements. This book uniquely brings together Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints on key topics, providing an invaluable guide to the latest thinking on the major topics that the peace process will be based around.

A great deal of political and academic responses to the Israel/Palestine conflict have construed the Palestinians as an object of Western and Israeli discourses, rather than their own Palestinian discourse. This has hindered understanding of the internal mechanisms involved in the production of the Palestinian conditions. Palestinian Political Discourse presents an in-depth examination of Palestinian political discourse since an-Nakba in 1948 and stitches together the underlying mechanisms and rules that have shaped Palestinian politics, in turn synthesizing, interpreting and scrutinizing these rules. Studying the question of Palestine discursively offers new ways to rethink political agency, structures, identity, institutions and power relations while interpreting Palestinian actions. This book adds new understanding to Palestinian political agency by explaining how political actions were constructed. Discourse analysis methodology underlies the critical examination of the genealogy of concepts and frames that have oriented Palestinian political thought. Contrary to established views that ascribe shifts in Palestinian politics primarily to external factors and international changes, this book demonstrates how transformation has been a continuing inbuilt feature within the discursive regime and that dramatic shifts were only effects of much deeper, slowly evolving changes. Examining discourse, and thus language, offers an exceptional possibility to see from the Palestinian perspective. As such, this book provides material vital to the deeper interpretation of the Palestinian question. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Israel-Palestine studies, Middle East studies, and discourse analysis.

Essays that analyze the integration and segregation processes that are an integral part of the broader historical trends shaping Israel/Palestine. Controversy surrounds Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the radical national and religious agendas at play there have come to define the area in the minds of many. This study, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding the process of “normalization” in the life of Jewish residents. Considering a wider range of historical and structural factors in which the colonization of the West Bank developed, it allows placing its origins and everyday reality into a wider perspective. The works collected consider the transformation of the landscape, the patterns of relationships shared by the region’s residents, Palestinian and Jewish alike, and the lasting effects of Israel’s settlement policy. Stressed in particular are such factors as urban planning, rising inequality and the retreat of the welfare state, and the changing political economy of industry and employment. Contributions by Lee Cahaner, Honaida Ghanim, Ruthie Ginsburg, Daniel Gutwien, Assaf Harel, Miki Kratsman, David Newman, Amir Paz-Fuchs, Wendy Pullan, Yael Ronen, Erez Tzfadia, Hadas Weiss and Haim Yacobi “The settlements are studied in their full diversity and heterogeneity, shattering a common prejudice to look mainly at the religious-nationalist, ideologically driven among them. The authors show in detail how the colonization project involves communities and agents coming from all sectors of Israeli society.” —Ariella Azoulay, author of Potential History

Many observers have portrayed the Oslo Process as a milestone in the peacemaking process between Palestinians and Israelis. In this controversial and groundbreaking new work, McMahon challenges the interpretation of the Oslo Process as a breakthrough or new beginning in Palestinian-Israeli relations. He argues that the Oslo Process affected no discursive or non-discursive change and that the Oslo Process in fact institutionalized the analytics practices involved in Israeli and Palestinian relations. It should, McMahon concludes, be no surprise that the process ended with direct Palestinian-Israeli violence. This book will be crucial reading for scholars of Israeli and Palestinian relations as well as anyone who is interested in understanding what discursive change must occur for peace between Israel and Palestinians to be established and sustained.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has raised a plethora of unanswered questions, generated seemingly irreconcilable narratives, and profoundly transformed the land’s physical and political geography. This volume seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region that is now known as Israel and Palestine and its peoples—both those that live there as well as those who relate to it as a mental, mythical, or religious landscape. Engaging the perspectives of a multidisciplinary, international group of scholars, it is an urgent collective reflection on the bonds between people and a place, whether real or imagined, tangible as its stones or ephemeral as the hopes and longings it evokes.