Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East and Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict are two tour-de-force works devoted to an analysis of the U.S. media as it reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both present devastating critiques of the media in its pro-Israel bias, and both are extensively documented, reflecting analytical scholarship in the finest tradition.
In awarding Sahar Khalifeh's Sura wa ayquna wa 'ahdun qadim (2002) the American University in Cairo's 2006 Naguib Mahfouz Medal, the jury aptly lauded this "narrative of loss par excellence . . . [as] simultaneously historiciz[ing] for the current Palestinian struggle while summoning a whole array of the symbolic." From its very title, The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant divulges its biblical symbolism, which will be made to bear here further layers of political allusion. Ostensibly the story of a doomed love and the desperate pursuit of its traces decades later, this is a novel of "national allegory," as in Fredric Jameson's formulation.
The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Israel-Palestine, by Nur Masalha. New York and London: Zed Books, 2007. 321 pages. Notes to p. 335. Bibliography to p. 354. Index to p. 366. $126.00 cloth; $36.00 paper.
The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to al-Aqsa, by Nigel Parsons. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. xxx + 319 pages. Appendices to p. 341. Notes to p. 394. Bibliography to p. 411. Index to p. 429. $95.00 cloth.
Between the Lines: Readings on Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. War on Terror, edited by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007. 335 pages. Notes on contributors to p. 341. Endnotes to p. 387. Index to p. 405. $17.00 paper.
Politics and Planning in the Holy City, by Gedalia Auerbach and Ira Sharkansky. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2007. 127 pages. Appendix to p. 136. Index to p. 138. $39.95 cloth.
A Stranger in the Land: Jewish Identity beyond Nationalism, by Daniel Cil Brecher, trans. Barbara Harshav. New York: Other Press, 2007. xiii + 366 pages. Bibliography to p. 372. $15.95 paper.
Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine, edited by Sandy Sufian and Mark LeVine. Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007. x + 311 pages. Index to p. 319. $80.00 cloth; $29.95 paper.
The West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Geography of Occupation and Disengagement, by Elisha Efrat. Oxon, U.K.: Routledge, 2006. xi + 206 pages. Glossary to p. 208. Bibliography to p. 212. Index to p. 216. $34.95 paper.
This section aims to give readers a glimpse of how the Arab world views current events that affect Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict by presenting a selection of cartoons from al-Hayat, the most widely distributed mainstream daily in the Arab world. JPS is grateful to al-Hayat for permission to reprint its material.