War in Iran
The headlines are built on long histories and debates.
Posted on in Hot Topic
Gaza
After two years of bombing, officials have finally agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza. These 9 books detail Gaza's history for context.
Posted on October 16, 2025 in Hot Topic
Weizman, Eyal. The least of all possible evils: humanitarian violence from Arendt to Gaza. Verso, 2012 (c2011). 196p ISBN 9781844676477, $26.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE April 2013
This rich, original work explores the problem of choosing the lesser evil in situations in which no option is morally acceptable. Tracking this issue back to 18th-century discussions of providence and theodicy, and even further to Saint Augustine, the author’s focus is on the ways in which “the principle of the lesser evil” is implicated in the “humanitarian present,” marked by a “collusion of these technologies of humanitarianism, human right and humanitarian law with military and political powers.” Weizman (spatial and visual cultures, Goldsmiths, Univ. of London) adds to earlier works such as David Kennedy’s The Dark Sides of Virtue (CH, Dec’04, 42-2466) and Fiona Terry’s Condemned to Repeat? (CH, Apr’03, 40-4891) in examining the limitations of the humanitarian movements of the last 40 years, and the ways in which humanitarian thinking has become incorporated into military and political strategies, facilitating and legitimizing the use of violence. He includes excellent case studies with illustrations of humanitarian crises ranging from the Ethiopian famine of the early 1990s to Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2009. The book is highly accessible for all readership levels. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. —J. D. Moon, Wesleyan University
Roy, Sara. Hamas and civil society in Gaza: engaging the Islamist social sector. Princeton, 2011. 319p ISBN 9780691124483, $35.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2012
This is an outstanding study of social institutions (i.e., schools, health clinics, orphanage centers, women’s centers, and even economic enterprises) mainly in Gaza but sometimes in the West Bank, particularly those connected to Hamas. It is based on extensive research over 25 years that includes personal visits, meetings, and interviews. It is well documented, thorough, and objective. Roy (Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard Univ.) challenges the widespread view that demonizes Hamas as “an insular, one-dimensional entity” devoted only to “terror.” She instead emphasizes the movement’s “capacity for moderation, accommodation, and transformation,” showing how it has adapted to changing circumstances over time and is not narrowly religious in its devotion to community development and is fundamentally more a nationalist than a religious movement. A short postscript focuses on the devastating Israeli attack on Gaza, including social institutions, in 2008-09. Anyone looking for an in-depth study of the history, ideology, and activities of Hamas will find Roy’s book indispensable, as will those concerned with broader topics such as civil society (and democratization) in relation to Islam and Islamist movements. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. —G. E. Perry, Indiana State University
Feldman, Ilana. Governing Gaza: bureaucracy, authority, and the work of rule, 1917-1967. Duke University, 2008. 324p ISBN 9780822342229, $79.95; ISBN 9780822342403 pbk, $22.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE June 2009
Feldman (anthropology and international affairs, George Washington Univ.) carefully analyzes the everyday work activities and practices of the civil service bureaucracy in Gaza during the British Mandate (1917-48), when the territory was an integral part of Palestine, and during the succeeding era of the Egyptian Administration (1948-67), when it was more closely linked to Egypt. She adds a brief but valuable comparative review of the Israeli occupation since 1967. In focusing on the daily activities of government in absence of a stable state structure and of a recognized legitimacy, Feldman describes the interaction of reiterative authority (the regularity of bureaucratic procedures) and tactical policies (the responses to exceptional circumstances). “Most of the governmental practice of the British Mandate and the Egyptian Administration was characterized by constraints–limited financial resources, tentative in relations with the territory being governed, anxious about overextending its reach,” she states. Indeed, in these unusual circumstances, Gaza was remarkably well governed. Suggested for libraries with major interests in the Middle East, especially Palestine and Israel, and in anthropological analysis of bureaucratic responses to daily needs and pressures. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. —B. Harris Jr., Occidental College
Hevelone-Harper, Jennifer L. Disciples of the desert: monks, laity, and spiritual authority in sixth-century Gaza. Johns Hopkins, 2005. 211p ISBN 0801881102, $39.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2006
Hevelone-Harper (history, Gordon College) engages in a sustained critical analysis of the Christian monastic movement that arose in and around Gaza in the sixth century CE, giving particular attention to the correspondence of Barsanuphius and John. In doing so, she makes an original, important contribution to the scholarship of early Christian monasticism. Three aspects of the book’s method and approach are particularly significant. First, the author argues convincingly that letters provide readers with a less polished, more varied, and more complex picture of ascetic life and practice than other more carefully constructed literary forms that emerged from early Christian monasticism. She uses this complexity to her advantage, revealing how much of the social and religious texture of late antique Gaza can be seen through these letters. Second, she lays bare the tensions present within the monastic communities of Gaza, as well as those that existed between the monks and the larger world of the laity beyond the monastery. Finally, she demonstrates with real subtlety how spiritual authority developed and came to be transmitted among the monastic communities in Gaza. A first-rate work of scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty/researchers. —D. E. Burton-Christie, Loyola Marymount University
Gordon, Haim. Beyond intifada: narratives of freedom fighters in the Gaza Strip, by Haim Gordon, Rivca Gordon, and Taher Shriteh. Praeger, 2003. 162p ISBN 0-275-97129-5, $44.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE October 2003
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places in the world and has some of the most squalid Palestinian refugee camps. The wretchedness of life has led to hopelessness, despair, and a militant desire for freedom and an end to the Israeli occupation. Therefore, it is not surprising that the first intifada, or mass uprising, of the Palestinians in the occupied territories started in the Gaza Strip in 1987. The first intifada ended in 1993 in the aftermath of the Oslo Peace Accords with hopes that the Palestinians’ desire for a viable state would be realized through diplomatic means. However, the Oslo “peace process” soon unraveled. The 2003 uprising is certainly built on the first intifada. In this highly readable book, two Israeli scholars and a Palestinian freelance journalist explain the plight of the Palestinians through personal narratives of six Palestinians. Their painful stories present unique appreciation of the complexities of the forces that have shaped the Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation since 1987. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers as well as students and scholars. —N. Entessar, Spring Hill College
Ben-Bassat, Yuval. Late Ottoman Gaza: an Eastern Mediterranean hub in transformation, by Yuval Ben-Bassat and Johann Buessow. Cambridge, 2024. 206p bibl index ISBN 9781316518199, $110.00; ISBN 9781009002899 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE June 2025
Although news of Gaza dominates today’s headlines, the area has received little scholarly coverage of its history in English. Ben-Bassat (Univ. of Haifa, Israel) and Buessow (Ruhr Univ. Bochum, Germany), both scholars of Ottoman Palestine, fill this void with their latest work. The authors show that late Ottoman Gaza was the economic and transportation hub of southern Palestine, a center of Muslim religious education, a socially diverse community, and the site of increasing imperial and regional political turmoil following the British occupation of Egypt. Gaza, lacking a natural port, developed more like inland cities of the region than coastal port cities, such as Beirut and Jaffa. Of greatest interest here is the analysis of urban-rural relations, both economically and politically, and the systematic study of the neighborhoods that make up the city of Gaza. Drawing from a wealth of memoirs and archival material, especially from the Ottoman archives, Bassat and Buessow have produced a highly detailed and valuable study of the city and neighboring villages, complete with numerous maps and aerial images. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. —R. W. Zens, Le Moyne College
Open Gaza: architectures of hope, ed. by Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp. Terreform/American University in Cairo, 2021. 348p bibl ISBN 9781649030719, $70.00; ISBN 9781649030726 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE November 2021
Searching for ways that fortitude, resistance, and imagination can work in an area characterized by unimaginable despair and degradation is the driving logic of this book. The book’s specific focus is the Gaza Strip, an area roughly the size of Mobile, Alabama, occupied and controlled by Israel despite having a Palestinian population of 1.8 million. The book’s broader project is to present visions and architectural or urban interventions of all scales intended to improve the lives of its inhabitants—in many ways rethinking the very strategies that those inhabitants use to not only survive but make a life for themselves. Besides offering descriptions of the systems of tunnels used to transport, among other things, medicines, building materials, and individuals visiting their families, the book also presents propositions for ecologically based zones and cities, projects centered on water remediation and collection, residential developments of all scales, places for learning and making, and ways to occupy spaces and rebuild from the rubble resulting from the all-too-frequent Israeli bombings. Open Gaza is an urgent plea for humanitarianism and imaginative, critical involvement, needs that become more pronounced with each passing day. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers. —L. E. Carranza, Roger Williams University
Gaza as metaphor, ed. by Helga Tawil-Souri and Dina Matar. Hurst & Company, 2016. 267p afp ISBN 9781849046244 pbk, $24.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE November 2016
In these 21 short pithy essays, Gaza is variously viewed as overcrowded, economically unsustainable, a strip of land, a humanitarian disaster, a heart of darkness and tunnels, a microcosm of humanity and generosity, a symbol of resistance and defiance, an open air penitentiary or, worse, a zoo, a vast torture chamber, a closed cyst (under blockade since 2006), grass to be mowed periodically (by F-16s and other US financed weapons systems), and an archive of the Palestinian condition. The writers include the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) commissioner-general, some Israeli as well as many Palestinian and other academics, artists, and a clinical psychologist. The purpose of Gaza as Metaphor is, in its coeditors’ words, “to humanize it, maybe even to change it … through metaphors” and, despite Gaza’s isolation and destruction, point to “its centrality to the Palestinian cause and to the unfinished struggle for national dignity everywhere.” The book conveys images of the traumatic impact of the 50-day war waged in the summer of 2014, which killed 2,131 Palestinians, including 504 children, 66 Israeli soldiers, and five civilians in Israel, and further ruined Gaza’s infrastructure. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. —C. M. Henry, retired from the University of Texas at Austin
Filiu, Jean-Pierre. Gaza: a history, tr. by John King. Oxford, 2014. 422p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9780190201890, $29.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE May 2015
In this thoroughly researched, comprehensive, and deftly written historical account of the Gaza Strip beginning with the Hyksos from 18th century BCE and extending to the present, Filiu (Sciences Po, Paris) has arguably written the best book on Gaza’s history. He shows the historical intricacies between political and military developments and how such processes have shaped the Arab-Israeli conflict. In his most interesting discussion, Filiu provides a superb account of the complexity of Palestinian political revolts and the shaping of political authority in Gaza in the context of regional and global conflicts. Gaza’s chronological history ends with a discussion on the ongoing rivalry between Islamists and secular nationalists, which has become increasingly contentious in response to the ongoing stalemate in the peace process with Israel, and the international community’s failure to successfully interfere in order to resolve the conflict. While the chronological account leaves out some significant discussions, such as everyday politics in Gaza, as in Asef Bayat’s Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (CH, Aug’10, 47-7167), Filiu is at his best when he engages with various sources in uncovering histories mostly ignored or even unknown to many. A must read for students and scholars of the modern Middle East, and anyone who wants to understand Palestinian history. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic libraries. —B. Rahimi, University of California San Diego