Saree Makdisi's "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation."

In his expertly written book, "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation", Palestinian-American professor Saree Makdisi provides an exhaustive look at the daily experiences that shape Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. Makdisi teaches English and Comparative Literature at UCLA, and is a frequent commentator on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Makdisi's book catalogues the policies and procedures of occupation from the point of view of its victims, the Palestinians. Most significant, however, is that the book suggests that occupation is merely a feature of an ongoing Israeli policy of slow transfer of the native Palestinian population from their lands. This policy predates the founding of the state, and all of the various practices of the occupier: illegal settlement, land confiscation, home demolition and so on, serve this ultimate purpose.

The first section of the book, "Outsides", details the various policies and practices that control Palestinians' access to the world outside their towns and villages, each town's growing isolation from neighboring ones, as well as the Palestinian experience - or lack thereof - of mobility. All this is taking place, we learn, while Israel expropriates more and more of the most agriculturally-valuable Palestinian land, whether by building its Separation Wall deep into Palestinian territory and miles away from the armistice line of 1967, or through the building and expansion of illegal settlements reserved exclusively for Jewish Israelis.

Through numerous individual stories, Makdisi shows the impact of the enormous wall that Israel has built in violation of international law on occupied Palestinian territory. Makdisi describes the effect of this wall on individual farmers and agricultural workers, as well on children going to school or Palestinians seeking medical care in hospitals in neighboring cities. Makdisi also explains the system of Jewish-only bypass roads that are built to connect illegal settlements across the West Bank, and from which Palestinians are barred, and the system of checkpoints that compliments it.

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Most revealing are the abuse, humiliation, injuries, and even deaths among Palestinians that take place at these checkpoints. Makdisi writes: "this soldier is convinced that the only function of his checkpoint is to 'put pressure on the Palestinian population'" (52). All segments of the Palestinian population must contend with the life-threatening danger of crossing Israeli military checkpoints where they brave the ruthless and arbitrary enforcement of military law by soldiers armed to the teeth and often drunk on the power they have been granted. Makdisi quotes a soldier describing the experience this way: "It's a mighty feeling. It's something you don't experience elsewhere. You know it's because you have a weapon, you know it's because you are a soldier. You know all this, but it's addictive" (54).

In the second section of the book, "Insides", Makdisi focuses on the impact of occupation on the more personal spaces in Palestinian life, namely the impact on families. The often insurmountable challenges faced by Jerusalem residents in maintaining their residency status in their native and ancestral city, as well as the profound torment of families torn apart by Israeli military law and applying for "family re-unification", and the devastating twin policy of home demolitions take center stage in this section. We learn that Israel maintains a separate set of laws for Palestinians, or non-Jews born in Jerusalem, than it does for Jewish Israelis. Just as the Law of Return in Israel applies to Jews worldwide but does not apply to native Palestinians wishing to return to their homes, we learn that being born in Jerusalem alone does not make one a full resident in the city.

We also learn that Palestinians living inside Israel, while they are considered citizens of the state, do not enjoy the rights and privileges associated with nationality. This legal dichotomy allows Israel to confer upon Jews only a whole host of rights that it does not extend to its non-Jewish population, thereby institutionalizing discrimination amongst its citizenry. Makdisi explores this in detail, and shows how both the laws and legal institutions of the state and the absence of a written constitution - something the United States administration was quick to insist that the new Iraqi government should have immediately but Israel still lacks sixty years after its founding - all diminish Israel's often repeated claim that it is a "secular democracy".

In the final section, "Coda", Makdisi draws logical comparisons between the failed and unsustainable South African Apartheid regime and the military occupation regime that rules Palestinian life today, drawing on a wealth of data and observations by Israeli, international, and Palestinian experts. He concludes that "mutual and domestic cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis is not only feasible; it offers the only alternative, the real hope for peace in the long run (296)."

Reading this book is second only to taking a journey into Palestinian life and standing in line at a checkpoint, with the hundreds of other Palestinians whose fate is controlled by a soldier in an occupation army. At the end of the experience, just as with a visit into this world where the minutiae of daily life are dictated by the Israeli military, one is left with more than just an understanding of the workings of occupation. We realize that the occupation in all its monstrousness is simply a tool to achieve the transfer of the native Palestinian population, a policy that the fathers of Zionism envisioned before 1948 and that their grandchildren persist in today.