Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- Chronology
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel
- 1 Fin de Siècle (1856–1900): Social Tranquillity and Political Drama
- 2 Between Tyranny and War (1900–1918)
- 3 The Mandatory State: Colonialism, Nationalization and Cohabitation
- 4 Between Nakbah and Independence: The 1948 War
- 5 The Age of Partition (1948–1967)
- 6 Greater Israel and Occupied Palestine: The Rise and Fall of High Politics (1967–1987)
- 7 The Uprising and its Political Consequences (1987–1996)
- 8 A Post-Zionist Moment of Grace?
- 9 The Suicidal Track: The Death of Oslo and the Road to Perdition
- Postscript: The Post-Arafat Era and the New Sharon Age
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary of Names
- Glossary of Terms
- Index
8 - A Post-Zionist Moment of Grace?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- Chronology
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A New Look at Modern Palestine and Israel
- 1 Fin de Siècle (1856–1900): Social Tranquillity and Political Drama
- 2 Between Tyranny and War (1900–1918)
- 3 The Mandatory State: Colonialism, Nationalization and Cohabitation
- 4 Between Nakbah and Independence: The 1948 War
- 5 The Age of Partition (1948–1967)
- 6 Greater Israel and Occupied Palestine: The Rise and Fall of High Politics (1967–1987)
- 7 The Uprising and its Political Consequences (1987–1996)
- 8 A Post-Zionist Moment of Grace?
- 9 The Suicidal Track: The Death of Oslo and the Road to Perdition
- Postscript: The Post-Arafat Era and the New Sharon Age
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary of Names
- Glossary of Terms
- Index
Summary
In the 1990s, the Israeli universities became the venue for a lively and fascinating debate on Israeli history and sociology. Towards the end of the decade the debate even spread over to the public arena through a number of articles in the leading newspapers, and, on several occasions, was the subject of heated discussions in the electronic mass media. A closer look in other areas shows how, during that period, the debate extended beyond the boundaries of the relevant academies into the domains of the arts, films, poetry, literature and journalism. The most obvious characteristic of this debate was the willingness of a considerable number of Jews in Israel to reassess the hegemonic ideology of the Jewish State – Zionism. While the critique varied in its intensity, and in the courage with which it was given expression, it was voiced by a variety of people, some of whom identified themselves as Zionists, while others declared themselves to be anti-Zionists. The most useful way of describing this movement of critique was to call it ‘Post-Zionism’. The Post-Zionist debate, however, did not attract anyone beyond the chattering and writing classes of Israeli society. It was, then, an elitist exercise, with possibly wider implications for the society as a whole. It is nonetheless a chapter in the history of the land whose significance time could only reveal with hindsight.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Modern PalestineOne Land, Two Peoples, pp. 253 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006