Countdown to Statehood, based on Arabic, English, and Hebrew language sources, analyzes the form that the Palestinian state is likely to take. The book looks at past institution-building patterns in the West Bank and Gaza, the relationship between the PLO and the local Palestinians, and the nature of the conflict with Israel from 1967 through the first year of the Palestinian Authority under Arafat’s leadership.
A major reference point in this analysis is the Zionist experience of state-building in Israel’s own pre-independence era. Not only did the Zionist experience serve as a model of a successful protagonist that Palestinians wished to emulate, but both also began as diaspora-based. These similarities and, even more so, the dissimilarities between these two struggles for national determination allow the reader to assess the potential likenesses and disparities of the future Palestinian state compared to its Israeli counterpart. The concluding chapter analyzes the findings in the broader context of third-world state-building by arguing, contrary to the common wisdom that ‘war makes the state, ‘ that more peaceful routes to statehood lead to better states in the post-independence era.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1. Territorialization and State Formation: The Palestinian Experience in Comparative Perspective>
Chapter 2. The PLO, Territorialization, and Palestinian State Formation
Chapter 3. Territorializing the PLO: The PLO and Mass Mobilization
Chapter 4. Education and State Building
Chapter 5. The Intifada and State Building>
Chapter 6. The Madrid Peace Process and the Challenge of the Inside
Chapter 7. Countdown to Statehood
Conclusion: Palestinian State Building and the Postcolonial State
Notes
teliography
Index
About the author
Hillel Frisch is Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, The Hebrew University, Israel. He has previously published (with Shmuel Sandler)
Israel, the Palestinians and the West Bank: A Study in Intercommunal Conflict.