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rosepoints's review against another edition
4.0
this is an excellently thorough legal analysis of the israeli state, starting from its inception to its current occupation of palestine. noura erakat has a keen eye to detail as she combs through israel's use of lew and legal precedents, and i genuinely learned so much from the book. she argues that law and politics are inseparable for israel's occupation of palestine and she points out how the interpretation and application of the law has enabled israel to maintain its settler-colonial status over palestinians. i especially appreciated her discussion on the oslo accords, which i personally did not understand very well prior to reading this book.
as a reader with limited understanding of the law, i found this book to be clear in its arguments. every piece of jargon that is mentioned is thoroughly explained and defined. however, it still doesn't change the fact that this book is a deep dive on a particular aspect of palestinian history and israeli occupation. this book took me a long time to read, and i copiously took notes while reading it in order to stay abreast of what was being described. if you don't know anything about palestine, i would suggest "the hundred years' war on palestine" by rashid khalidi as a starting point rather than this book.
i also think that erakat is better at writing about the law rather than the history. politics has both intertwined so thoroughly that i can't imagine a book like this without the historical context, but the sections that dissected the law and the reasonings behind them were far clearer than the historical background to them. it doesn't diminish the strength of the book overall, but i did continually notice that throughout my reading of it.
altogether, a powerful legal analysis that needs to be more commonly read imo!
as a reader with limited understanding of the law, i found this book to be clear in its arguments. every piece of jargon that is mentioned is thoroughly explained and defined. however, it still doesn't change the fact that this book is a deep dive on a particular aspect of palestinian history and israeli occupation. this book took me a long time to read, and i copiously took notes while reading it in order to stay abreast of what was being described. if you don't know anything about palestine, i would suggest "the hundred years' war on palestine" by rashid khalidi as a starting point rather than this book.
i also think that erakat is better at writing about the law rather than the history. politics has both intertwined so thoroughly that i can't imagine a book like this without the historical context, but the sections that dissected the law and the reasonings behind them were far clearer than the historical background to them. it doesn't diminish the strength of the book overall, but i did continually notice that throughout my reading of it.
altogether, a powerful legal analysis that needs to be more commonly read imo!
goddessofwhatnot's review against another edition
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.75
The history of “Israel-Palestine conflict” from a legal perspective. This was a tough one, in that it helps illustrate the SCALE of deep and systemic injustice Palestine has faced (and will likely continue to face)
flexmentallo's review against another edition
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.5
Bleak but deeply informative. I'm not a lawyer, but I found this 'legal history' of Israel's crimes and Palestine's failures to be genuinely fascinating. Erakat has a keen analytical mind, and her book is a deeply-researched and well-argued look at a decades-long legal problem. We like to talk about the intractability of the Israel/Palestine debate, but Erakat approaches the issue with a moral clarity that shows that it didn't have to be this way. This is a problem that is the result of a thousand different choices made by the international community to deny Palestinians their rights and overlook the abuses of a settler colonial superpower.