Palestine Reading List
We put together this list of readings in order to offer people a bank of knowledge on all things related to Palestine. We feel it is important to read some of these works to learn about the Palestinian cause. Only through knowledge we can get a deeper understanding of what is currently ongoing and its history. We know these books are long, but reading even one of them will provide you with a much more in-depth understanding of Palestinian history.
These books can be found at your local library, university libraries, online for free in PDF, or second hand! Below you can also find a list of media sources you can follow.
Books
History
- Said, Edward W. The question of Palestine. 1992.
- Masalha, Nur. Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History. 2018.
- Pappe, Ilan. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine. 2007.
- Pappe, Ilan. The idea of Israel: A history of power and knowledge. 2014.
- Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian identity: The construction of modern national consciousness. 2010.
- Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. 2020.
- Kanafani, Ghassan. The 1936-39 revolt in Palestine. Committee for Democratic Palestine, 1972.
- Regan, Bernard. The Balfour Declaration: empire, the mandate and resistance in Palestine. 2017.
- Khalidi, Walid. Before their diaspora: a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876-1948. 1984.
- Khalidi, Walid. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. 1987.
Post-1948
- Chomsky, Noam, and Ilan Pappé. On Palestine. 2015.
- White, Ben. Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide. 2014.
- Essa, Azad. Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel. 2023.
- Massad, Joseph. The persistence of the Palestinian question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians. 2006.
- Omer, Mohammed. Shell Shocked: On the Ground Under Israel’s Gaza Assault. 2015.
- Said, Edward W. The politics of dispossession: The struggle for Palestinian self-determination, 1969-1994. 2012.
- Zureik, Elia, David Lyon, and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, eds. Surveillance and control in Israel/Palestine: Population, territory and power. 2010.
The Nakba 1948
(‘disaster’ in Arabic)
- Abdo, Nahla, and Nur Masalha, eds. An oral history of the Palestinian Nakba. 2018.
- Masalha, Nur. The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising history, narrating the subaltern, reclaiming memory. 2012.
- Masalha, Nur. The politics of denial: Israel and the Palestinian refugee problem. 2003.
- Sa’di, Ahmad H., and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the claims of memory. 2007.
General Books
- Brand, Laurie A. Palestinians in the Arab World: Institution building and the search for state. 1988.
- Pappe, Ilan. A history of modern Palestine: One land, two peoples. 2004.
- Khalidi, Rashid. The iron cage: The story of the Palestinian struggle for statehood. 2007.
LGBTQI+ & Gender Topics
- Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera. Militarization and violence against women in conflict zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian case-study. 2009.
- Abdulhadi, Rabab, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber, eds. Arab and Arab American feminisms: gender, violence, and belonging. 2011.
- Farris, Sara R. In the name of women’s rights: The rise of femonationalism. 2017.
- Farris, Sara R. The political economy of homonationalism. 2018.
- Elia, Nada. Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine. 2023.
Media
- Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. 2010.
- Landy, David, Ronit Lentin, and Conor McCarthy, eds. Enforcing Silence: Academic Freedom, Palestine and the Criticism of Israel. 2020.
- Matar, Dina, and Zahera Harb. Narrating conflict in the Middle East: discourse, image and communications practices in Lebanon and Palestine. 2013.
- Pappe, Ilan. Ten myths about Israel. 2017.
- Said, Edward W., and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the victims: Spurious scholarship and the Palestinian question. 2001.
Activism: BDS and Social Movements
- Barghouti, Omar. BDS: Boycott, divestment, sanctions: The global struggle for Palestinian rights. 2011.
- Davis, Angela Y. Freedom is a constant struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement. 2016.
- Hill, Marc Lamont and Mitchell Plitnick. Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. 2021.
- Klein, Naomi. The case for sanctions against Israel. 2012.
- Wiles, Rich. Generation Palestine: Voices from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement. 2013.
Peace-talks
this section lists books recounting the history of the peace processes and their failures
- Aruri, Naseer H. Dishonest broker: the role of the United States in Palestine and Israel. 2003.
- Chomsky, Noam. Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. 1983.
- Honig-Parnass, Tikva. The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine. 2011.
Zionism
- Masalha, Nur. A land without a people: Israel, transfer and the Palestinians 1949-96. 1997.
- Shohat, Ella. On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements. 2017.
Environment
- Molavi, Shourideh C. Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance. 2024.
- Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. Waste Siege: The life of infrastructure in Palestine. 2019
Settlements
- Kotef, Hagar. The Colonizing Self. (2020).
- Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (2012)