Saree Makdisi - Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

An extraordinarily detailed portrait of the Palestinian condition for general readers. Weaves together a tapestry of harrowing narratives in a lucid and measured tone.

Times Higher Education Supplement

How do you review a book that articulates what your life under occupation is like so honestly and clearly that you are left feeling shocked and angry? To an outside world that sees only the issues of peace and terrorism, occupation loses its significance and becomes a mere abstraction. This book brings it back to reality. Any reader who wants to understand how Palestinians live under Israeli occupationwill find a more accurate picture here than in the newspapers.

Najwa Najjar, Frontline

A compelling account of the lives of ordinary Palestinians suffering under occupationand a reminder that a true peace can be built only on justice.

Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa

These stories of everyday Palestinians seeking to achieve the impossibleordinary lives in the West Bank or Gazawill move some readers to tears. Not suicide bombers or terrorists, but people who would be just like you and I, if they werent living where they are.

Alasdair Buchan, Diplomat

Makdisi is possibly the best Palestinian representative in the United States, truly able to convey the despair and anger of West Bank and Gaza citizens. This book is essential reading.

Jonathan Mok, GlobalComment

The most accessible and penetrating guide to the occupation. Makdisi shows that the so-called peace process has in fact accelerated the dispossession of the Palestinian people. A must-read.

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University, and author of The Iron Cage

Saree Makdisi, in Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation , describes how, although the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is ultimately enforced by the armed forces, it is an occupation by bureaucracy: it works primarily through application forms, title deeds, residency papers and other permits. It is this micro-management of the daily life that does the job of securing slow but steady Israeli expansion.

Slavoj Zizek, The Guardian

Saree Makdisi has written a harrowing and authoritative account of the Palestinian ordeal, as well as providing a brilliantly argued, against-the-grain plea for a one-state, secular, democratic solution to the conflict. This book needs to become required reading for all persons of good will who seek a peaceful future for these two long-tormented peoples.

Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the U.N. Human Rights Council

A fascinating, heart-wrenching account of the current situation in Palestine. Despite nearly two decades of the Oslo peace process, which led to the setting up of an independent Palestinian Authority, Makdisi shows how Palestinians have in fact no independence, no authority, and no control over most aspects of their everyday lives.

Yitzhak Laor, Israeli poet and novelist, author of And With My Spirit My Corpse

Books such as Saree Makdisis Palestine Inside Out should not be an easy readbut should reach the soul of the reader, awakening or revitalizing.

Jim Miles, Palestine Chronicle

Palestine Inside Out is unique in that it addresses in a highly readable manner the institutional framework of the Palestinian tragedy, portraying the hardships inflicted on Palestinians by military incursions, checkpoints, the separation wall, and, above all, by military occupation. Readers of Makdisis book will be informed and troubled.

John Dugard, former Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the U.N. Human Rights Council

A detailed account of Palestinians lives of roadblocks, arbitrary arrests, raids, curfews, economic stagnation, Palestine Inside Out explains in factual language how Zionism has turned the persecuted into the persecutors.

Monocle

Saree Makdisis integrity and keen eye make this account of everyday Palestinian life under Israeli occupation an authoritative, riveting, and affecting book that deserves a wide readership.

Tariq Ali, author of The Clash of Fundamentalisms

Palestine Inside Out is a moving and thought-provoking account of Palestinian daily life under the occupation. After twenty years of covering the conflict I still found myself shocked.

Gideon Levy, correspondent and columnist, Haaretz (Israel)

If you want to understand both the fury and the silent resentments of millions of Palestinians inside the Israeli occupation, read this book. It will compel you to see occupation not as an abstraction but as a day-today horror which should arouse the conscience of the world.

Howard Zinn, author of A Peoples History of the United States

The combined weight of personal stories of abject suffering, harsh statisticsand facts on the ground make Makdisis case that the occupation is destroying the Palestinian people, and possibly any chance for peaceful coexistence.

Publishers Weekly