Strategy, unity and coercion: Lessons from the Palestinian struggle

The Palestinian issue is one of the most pressing moral quandaries and intractable political crises of our time. As activists work to challenge the status quo, scholars should be urgently yet meticulously poring over the collective experiences of this national movement and other national movements in the Mediterranean region, recovering practical lessons from their past failures and successes. In this review essay, we survey four superb recent works of scholarship that undertake this task. Together the books constitute an important, original contribution of archival and interview research conducted in at least six countries across four continents. We present each book’s core findings and strengths, identifying avenues of further research for the authors and broader scholarly community.