Can a devout Jew be a devout Jew and drop the belief in the rebuilding of the Temple? Can a devout Muslim be a devout Muslim and drop the belief in the sacredness of the Rock? Can one right (the right of return) be given up for another (the right to live in peace)? Can one claim Palestinian identity and still retain Israeli citizenship? What is a Palestinian state worth? For over sixty years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been subjected to many solutions and offered many answers by diverse parties. Yet, answers are only as good as the questions that beget them. It is with this simple, but powerful idea, the idea of asking the basic questions anew, that the renowned Palestinian philosopher and activist Sari Nusseibeh begins his book. What Is a Palestinian State Worth? poses questions about the history, meaning, future, and resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Deeply informed by political philosophy and based on decades of personal involvement with politics and social activism, Nusseibeh's moderate voiceÑglobal in its outlook, yet truly grounded in his native city of JerusalemÑpoints us toward a future which, as George Lamming once put it, is colonized by our acts in this moment, but which must always remain open.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A teacher, a scholar, a philosopher, and an eyewitness to history, Sari Nusseibeh is one of our most urgent and articulate authorities on the conflict in the Middle East. From his time teaching side by side with Israelis at the Hebrew University through his appointment by Yasir Arafat to administer the Arab Jerusalem, he has held fast to the principles of freedom and equality for all, and his story dramatizes the consequences of war, partition, and terrorism as few other books have done. This autobiography brings rare depth and compassion to the story of his country.

"A clear, trenchant book on a topic of enormous importance . . . a courageous plunge into boiling waters. If The One-State Solution helps propel forward a debate that has hardly begun in this country it will have performed a signal scholarly and political function." ---Tony Judt, New York University ". . . a pioneering text. . . . [A]s such it will take pride of place in a brewing debate." ---Gary Sussman, Tel Aviv University "The words ‘The One-State Solution' seem to strike dread, at the least, or terror, at the most, in any established, institutional, or mainstream discourse having to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . . . It therefore takes great courage---and I use the word literally---to title explicitly a book under that infamous label. . . . Virginia Tilley is blessed with such courage and complements it with the requisite academic erudition. . . . Weaving her way through the historical progression of Zionism and through late 20th century and current international and Middle Eastern politics, she shows how the additional, pernicious state of settlement expansion (abetted by other massive human rights violations that go with the occupation) has brought us to the point where only a one-state solution can provide a just peace (and not just a state of conflict management going under the misnomer of peace)." --- Anat Biletsky, Middle East Journal Recent events have once more put the Israeli-Palestinian issue on the front page. After decades of failed peace initiatives, the prospect of reconciliation is in the air yet again as the principal actors maneuver to end the conflict and---the world hopes---bring peace to the region. A one-state solution is a way toward that peace and needs serious, renewed consideration. The One-State Solution explains how Israeli settlements have encroached on the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to such an extent that any Palestinian state in those areas is unworkable. And it reveals the irreversible impact of Israel's settlement grid by summarizing its physical, demographic, financial, and political dimensions. Virginia Tilley elucidates why we should assume that this grid will not be withdrawn---or its expansion reversed---by reviewing the role of the key political actors: the Israeli government, the United States, the Arab states, and the European Union. Finally, Tilley focuses on the daunting obstacles to a one-state solution---including major revision of the Zionist dream but also Palestinian and other regional resistance---and offers some ideas about how those obstacles might be addressed. Virginia Tilley is Chief Research Specialist in the Democracy and Governance Division of the Human Resources Council in Cape Town, South Africa.

The biggest obstacle to Palestinian statehood may not be Israel In September 2011, president Mahmoud Abbas stood before the United Nations General Assembly and dramatically announced his intention to achieve recognition of Palestinian statehood. The United States roundly opposed the move then, but two years later, Washington revived dreams for Palestinian statehood through bilateral diplomacy with Israel. But are the Palestinians prepared for the next step? In State of Failure, Middle East expert Jonathan Schanzer argues that the reasons behind Palestine's inertia are far more complex than we realize. Despite broad international support, Palestinian independence is stalling because of internal mismanagement, not necessarily because of Israeli intransigence. Drawing on exclusive sources, the author shows how the PLO under Yasser Arafat was ill prepared for the task of statebuilding. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, used President George W. Bush's support to catapult himself into the presidency. But the aging leader, now four years past the end of his elected term, has not only failed to implement much needed reforms but huge sums of international aid continue to be squandered, and the Palestinian people stand to lose everything as a result. Supporters of Palestine and Israel alike will find Schanzer's narrative compelling at this critical juncture in Middle Eastern politics.

In The Story of Reason in Islam, leading public intellectual and political activist Sari Nusseibeh narrates a sweeping intellectual history—a quest for knowledge inspired by the Qu'ran and its language, a quest that employed Reason in the service of Faith. Eschewing the conventional separation of Faith and Reason, he takes a fresh look at why and how Islamic reasoning evolved over time. He surveys the different Islamic schools of thought and how they dealt with major philosophical issues, showing that Reason pervaded all disciplines, from philosophy and science to language, poetry, and law. Along the way, the best known Muslim philosophers are introduced in a new light. Countering received chronologies, in this story Reason reaches its zenith in the early seventeenth century; it then trails off, its demise as sudden as its appearance. Thereafter, Reason loses out to passive belief, lifeless logic, and a self-contained legalism—in other words, to a less flexible Islam. Nusseibeh's speculations as to why this occurred focus on the fortunes and misfortunes of classical Arabic in the Islamic world. Change, he suggests, may only come from the revivification of language itself.

A critical examination of the history of US-Palestinian relations The United States has invested billions of dollars and countless diplomatic hours in the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution. Yet American attempts to broker an end to the conflict have repeatedly come up short. At the center of these failures lay two critical factors: Israeli power and Palestinian politics. While both Israelis and Palestinians undoubtedly share much of the blame, one also cannot escape the role of the United States, as the sole mediator in the process, in these repeated failures. American peacemaking efforts ultimately ran aground as a result of Washington’s unwillingness to confront Israel’s ever-deepening occupation or to come to grips with the realities of internal Palestinian politics. In particular, the book looks at the interplay between the U.S.-led peace process and internal Palestinian politics—namely, how a badly flawed peace process helped to weaken Palestinian leaders and institutions and how an increasingly dysfunctional Palestinian leadership, in turn, hindered prospects for a diplomatic resolution. Thus, while the peace process was not necessarily doomed to fail, Washington’s management of the process, with its built-in blind spot to Israeli power and Palestinian politics, made failure far more likely than a negotiated breakthrough. Shaped by the pressures of American domestic politics and the special relationship with Israel, Washington’s distinctive “blind spot” to Israeli power and Palestinian politics has deep historical roots, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate. The size of the blind spot has varied over the years and from one administration to another, but it is always present.

A profoundly different way of looking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Reporting from Jerusalem for The New York Times and Fox News respectively, Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, witnessed a decades-old conflict transformed into a completely new war. The West has learned a lot about asymmetrical war in the past decade. At the same time, many strategists have missed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become one of them. This book shows the importance of applying these hard-won lessons to the longest running, most closely watched occupation and uprising in the world. The entire conflict can seem irrational -- and many commentators see it that way. While raising their own family in Jerusalem at the height of the violence, Myre and Griffin look at the lives of individuals caught up in the struggles to reveal how these actions make perfect sense to the participants. Extremism can become a virtue; moderation a vice. Factions develop within factions. Propaganda becomes an important weapon, and perseverance an essential defense. While the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to achieve their goals after years of fighting, people on both sides are prepared to make continued sacrifices in the belief that they will eventually emerge triumphant. This book goes straight to the heart of the conflict: into the minds of suicide bombers and inside Israeli tanks. We hear from Palestinian informants who help the Israeli military track down and kill Palestinian militants. Israeli settlers in isolated outposts explain why they are there, and we hear the frustrations of a Palestinian farmer who has had his olive grove cut in half by Israel's security barrier Shows the important lessons that can be learned by viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example of modern, asymmetrical war Authored by long-time reporters on the Middle East, the book provides a balanced and detailed look at the fighting based on first-hand experience and hundreds of interviews Explains how the landscape of the conflict changed and why the traditional approach to peacemaking is no longer valid With a new perspective on what's really going on in Israel and the Palestinian territories, The Familiar War is a book that will inform the debate on the Middle East and the future of the peace process, as well as our understanding of other conflicts around the world.