Rosemary Sayigh

Diana Allan

A Living Archive of Palestine

Voices of the Nakba

As the Israel-Palestine conflict rages on, it is increasingly important to understand the history of the Palestinian people. Rosemary Sayigh's The Palestinians is a classic of radical history. Through extensive interviews with Palestinians in refugee camps, she provides a deeply-moving, grassroots story of how the Palestinians came to be who they are today. Reissued with an extensive new foreword by Noam Chomsky, which brings the story that Sayigh tells up-to-date in the context of the Hamas victory and the war in Lebanon, this book is both a fascinating historical document and an essential insight into the situation in the contemporary Middle East.

From Peasants to Revolutionaries

The Palestinians

A People's History Recorded by Rosemary Sayigh from Interviews with Camp Palestinians in Lebanon

Palestinians, from Peasants to Revolutionaries

This book brings together testimonials from people of different nationalities and professions who are 'pro-Palestinian', whether as scholars, film-makers, artists, musicians, activists, or NGO workers. Using what oral historians call the 'focused life history', renowned scholar, Rosemary Sayigh, invites her contributors to describe the experiences, events, motives and feelings that led them to support the Palestinian cause. The book is the first of its kind in Palestiniography and includes voices from countries across the world. A chapter is dedicated to each country and contributors are asked to reveal how they 'discovered' Palestine - given that Palestine is rarely mentioned in school textbooks or university courses - whether by travel, friendship, study, membership in a political party or book group. They are also asked to detail what specific forms their engagement has taken - ranging scholarly, creative, militant, or charitable - and what their hopes are for the international solidarity movement. Finally, each contributor reflects on if they feel a just and equitable solution can ever be achieved for Palestinians, and if they accept the label 'pro-Palestinian' or would rather define their relationship to the Palestinians in some other way. With testimonies from both high profile and grassroots activists, the book is a rich and personal selection that reflects the diversity, dynamism and global nature of the movement for Palestine.

Testimonies from the Global Solidarity Movement

Becoming Pro-Palestinian

From Peasants to Revolutionaries : a People's History

Palestinians

As the Israel-Palestine conflict rages on, it is more important now than ever to understand the history of the Palestinian people. Rosemary Sayigh's The Palestinians is a classic of radical history. Through extensive interviews with Palestinians in refugee camps, she provides a deeply-moving, grassroots story of how the Palestinians came to be who they are today. In their own voices, Palestinians tell stories of the Nabka and their flight from their homeland.

An oral history of the Palestinian people. Rosemary Sayigh allows the countless ordinary Palestinians she interviewed to tell us their own history: life before Zionism; the war of 1948; and life in exile in the refugee camps of Lebanon and elsewhere.

As the Israel-Palestine conflict rages on, it is more important now than ever to understand the history of the Palestinian people. Rosemary Sayigh's The Palestinians is a classic of radical history. Through extensive interviews with Palestinians in refugee camps, she provides a deeply-moving, grassroots story of how the Palestinians came to be who they are today. In their own voices, Palestinians tell stories of the Nabka and their flight from their homeland. Sayigh's powerful account of Palestinians' economic marginalisation the social and psychological effects of being uprooted and the political oppression which they have faced continues to resonate today. Reissued with an extensive new foreword by Noam Chomsky, which brings the story that Sayigh tells up-to-date in the context of the Hamas victory and the war in Lebanon, this book is both a fascinating historical document and an essential insight into the situation in the contemporary Middle East.

Visiting Professor the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies Rosemary Sayigh

This is the story of the Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon, one of the most vulnerable communities in a country torn apart by armed factions. Drawing on oral history, it presents a compelling portrait of their experience of attack and aggression, air raids, massacres and summary executions, how they organized to defend themselves and how they related to one another during these successive crises. Rosemary Sayigh explains the origins and history of the refugee camps, the rise of the Amal militia and the Palestinians' relationship with Syria and with the various Lebanese groups. She makes the complex maze of Lebanese politics intelligible and brings to life a communal experience essential for understanding Palestinian attitudes towards other developments in the region.

Too Many Enemies

This is the story of Shateela camp and its people, the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, one of the most vulnerable communities in a country torn apart by perpetual political anarchy and cruel violence. Drawing on oral history, it presents a compelling portrait of their experience of war-attack and aggression, bombings, abductions, executions and massacres-how they organized their own defence and survival, and how they related to one another during their successive crises.

First-generation Palestinian refugees recall life before and after the Nakba

رؤية جديدة لل (محلي) و (الوطني)

تجسيدات الهوية لدى مخيمات اللاجئين الفلسطينيين

An acclaimed economist and lifelong Palestinian nationalist Yusif Sayigh (1916-2004) came of age at a time of immense political change in the Middle East. Born in al-Bassa, near Acre in northern Palestine, he was witness to the events that led to the loss of Palestine and his memoir therefore constitutes a vivid social history of the region, as well as a revealing firsthand account of the Palestinian national movement almost from its earliest inception. Family and everyday life, co-villagers, landscapes, pleasures, outings, schooling, and political figures recreate the vanished world of Sayigh's formative years in the Levant. An activist in Palestine, he was taken prisoner of war by the Israelis in 1948. Later, as an economist, he wrote extensively on Arab oil, economic development, and manpower, teaching for many years at the American University of Beirut and taking early retirement in 1974 to work as a consultant for a number of pan-Arab and international organizations. A single chapter on Palestinian politics provides insights into his later activist work and experiences of working as a consultant with the Palestine Liberation Organization to produce an economic plan for an eventual Palestinian state. This fascinating memoir by a pioneer and major figure of the Palestinian national movement is a welcome addition to the growing literature on Palestinian life during the first half of the twentieth century as well as an account of some of the most pressing political and economic issues to have faced the Arab world for the better part of the twentieth century.

Rosemary Sayigh

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