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The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994

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Ever since the appearance of his groundbreaking The Question of Palestine, Edward Said has been America's most outspoken advocate for Palestinian self-determination. As these collected essays amply prove, he is also our most intelligent and bracingly heretical writer on affairs involving not only Palestinians but also the Arab and Muslim worlds and their tortuous relations with the West.

In The Politics of Dispossession Said traces his people's struggle for statehood through twenty-five years of exile, from the PLO's bloody 1970 exile from Jordan through the debacle of the Gulf War and the ambiguous 1994 peace accord with Israel. As frank as he is about his personal involvement in that struggle, Said is equally unsparing in his demolition of Arab icons and American shibboleths. Stylish, impassioned, and informed by a magisterial knowledge of history and literature, The Politics of Dispossession is a masterly synthesis of scholarship and polemic that has the power to redefine the debate over the Middle East.

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

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About the author

Edward W. Said

232 books4,250 followers
(Arabic Profile إدوارد سعيد)
Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.

Educated in the Western canon, at British and American schools, Said applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating the gaps of cultural and political understanding between the Western world and the Eastern world, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.

As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. Said’s model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle-Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among the scholars of Oriental Studies, philosophy, and literature.

As a public intellectual, Said was a controversial member of the Palestinian National Council, because he publicly criticized Israel and the Arab countries, especially the political and cultural policies of Muslim régimes who acted against the national interests of their peoples. Said advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure equal political and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel, including the right of return to the homeland. He defined his oppositional relation with the status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has “to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual” man and woman.

In 1999, with his friend Daniel Barenboim, Said co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, which comprises young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians. Besides being an academic, Said also was an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations about music. Edward Said died of leukemia on 25 September 2003.

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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
Profile Image for Jeanette .
41 reviews
March 25, 2013
I want to be an informed supporter of global political empowerment for oppressed people. As a Jewish American, I have been taught to support Israel and hope that I too will celebrate there someday. But I can't. I can't because displacing another oppressed people in the name of religion doesn't fly.

This book is an excellent historical and theoretical look review of the Palestinian struggle, and Israel's blood-stained hands.
6 reviews4 followers
September 9, 2010
Israel: An intolerably immoral existence.

If there is any cause in this whole wide world where the obvious, glaring injustice of it all has been summarily ignored and dismissed by most of the world's leading intellectuals, it is the cause of the Palestinian freedom movement.

Said's (pronounced Sayid)--a Palestinian Arab of Christian descent--was that rare voice which informed the world of the Zionist duplicity, in a way that laid bare the untold sufferings of over 4 million of its inhabitants in the most lucid manner possible. For over three decades, Said's was a lone cry in the New Yorkian wilderness, which drew attention to the State of Israel's Ocean liner of lies ever since (and even before) it came into existence.

Said's pain and melancholy comes through, etched in every page of this book and makes for frightful reading. Given the supposed openness of the media in democratic nation-states, it's shocking how through over 5 decades, the combined might of Zionism's religious fanaticism, the traditional incompetence of ruling monarchies in the Arab world, the West's moral ambivalence to call the Israeli spade a bloody shovel and the Zionist lobby in Washington have been able to keep an entire nation of millions in a sort of permanent exile.

This book neatly divided in 3 parts critiques everything that is wrong and tragic about the Palestinian movement with merciless felicity and attention to detail that a proper understanding of this cause deserves. Of course, he is severe (and justifiably so) on Israel, but it is his attacks on the rest of the Arab world and the dishonest intellectuals of the western world that makes for fascinating reading. Truly, an intellectual like Said, rarely ever loses his relevance or goes out of fashion. This book is a priceless gem, to be read and re-read by anyone who wants to move beyond standard middle-east explanations, terrorism clichés and the rhetoric of "with us or against us".
Profile Image for 'Izzat Radzi.
149 reviews65 followers
March 24, 2022
Maybe—so far—had become my all time best.

Such a fulfilling as well as engaging read.
Fulfilling because of the pleasure obtained not just from the discourse, but also the beauty of language used and the well-put reasoning.
Engaging because I was writing notes here and there (I read it in chronology of time published instead of usual front-to-back page manner) then found later Said was referring to this book and that author. It was as if one were having direct conversation with the author.

Longer, more comprehensive review later.
Profile Image for Griffin Postley.
49 reviews3 followers
January 23, 2022
My favorite essay from this collection recounts Said visiting Jerusalem 40 years after he fled as a child. It's melancholic gaze at the shifting fates of the land and its occupants strikes me at the core. It felt so common in that kind of experience but so powerfully empathetic as a result.
Profile Image for Ryan.
387 reviews14 followers
October 1, 2025
I've been interested in the history of Palestine for a long time, and this year I started to really become obsessed. It started when I stumbled upon a book in Philadelphia, and has been quite the journey. But lately I realized that all the words I have read have been written by Jews. It was time for a Palestinian voice, and just about every other author I read mentioned Edward Said.
I like a lot about The Politics of Dispossession but what I liked the most was that Said focused not only on Palestine, but on the whole region and the people who inhabit it. I hadn't thought about it until I read this book, but of course that makes sense; Palestinians have been scattered all over the world (but especially the area immediately surrounding historic Palestine), and have been for a while, so in order to learn about them we need to learn about the different countries they now reside in.
In addition to history and facts about many areas—Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt—he also wrote about current events. Since these essays are from 1969-94, wrote a bit about the (first) Iraq war. I was only a child at the time, but I remember the buildup, all the ribbons tied around trees, and hearing about how evil Saddam was. I remember “us” kicking ass and destroying the opposition. I also remember hearing that US troops shot at the backs of the retreating Iraqi army, but I didn't really have the intelligence to fully grasp what that meant. Obviously I've since learned that the war had nothing to do with freeing anyone, that the US military is full of cowards who are too dumb to think for themselves, and that things aren't always what they seem. I wish I would have read (and been able to comprehend) Said's essays back then.
Said writes about Iraq being a cultural hub for all of the Arab world; how they had some fantastic universities and how women were freer than they were in a lot of other countries in the region. Comparing that to the Iraq of 2025, after another, longer war and way too many sanctions, makes me physically sick.
Martin Buber harped a lot about how the Jews moving to Palestine, first and foremost, need to learn the culture of those around them. Learn what makes their neighbors tick, how to speak the language, and the history and norms of the area. Said agrees, and takes it a step further: He points out how, in addition the US not having any solid Arab studies programs and the lack of books translated to English from Arabic, most Arabs hardly know anything about western culture. It seems so obvious, but knowing your neighbors makes for a lot less tumultuous life.
That said, I did get frustrated with Said's writing at times. It felt like (and I have at least a dozen examples circled in the book) that Said confuses Jews, zionists, and Israelis, and uses all the interchangeably. Not all Jews are zionist, not all zionists are Jews, not all Jews are Israeli, etc It freaks me out when people don't know that, especially when one of the people is an intellectual who wrote a lot about Palestine and Israel. There's also a weirdness around Said not saying anything about how the vast, vast, vast majority of zionists are Christian (perhaps because he is a Christian). He talks about how all the politicans in the US “scramble for Jewish votes,” which to me seems crazy. Less than two and a half percent of the US population is Jewish (that's around 7.5 million people); some of them can't or don't vote and some aren't zionist. It seems like what he meant to say is that politicians scramble to get the zionist—largely Christian—vote. Said also claims that zionism benefits Jews; I would argue that zionism benefits zionists, the majority of whom are not Jewish. Finally, his repeated use of the term “Judeo-Christian” shows us what he really thinks.
Despite the most recent essay in this book being thirty-one years old, almost everything he talks about is relevant today. Starting in the 1970s, politicians referred to any Palestinian who even criticized Israel as terrorists; this is still going on, and has only gotten worse. Golda Meir, one of the first prime ministers of Israel, said that Palestinians don't exist; this is something we still hear from just about every zionist. Said was freaked out that (I don't remember the exact number) the US giving Israel over $50 billion in a few year span; now Israel gets ten times that every year. It feels like more people are talking about this stuff now, but reading about how much nothing has changed for the better sure makes me feel hopeless.
If you're interested in learning more about Palestine, but have only read books from non-Palestinians, Edward Said will fill that gap. This book is very educational, and not only has he written tons more, but this book is also filled with other recommended reading. It has flaws, sure, but it's a necessary read for anyone who cares that children are being starved to death simply because they happened to be born Palestinian.
Profile Image for Luqman Tarmizi.
41 reviews3 followers
October 29, 2023
Kisah Palestin-Israel adalah kisah tentang sebuah bangsa yang telah dinyahmilik segalanya dari tangan mereka oleh entiti Zionis melalui aneka cara: tanah, negara, bahasa, identiti, bahkan hak untuk hidup dan wujud.

Inilah maksud the “politics of dispossession” yang sekian lama menjadi polisi rejim apartheid Zionis, lalu diadaptasi oleh rejim negara-negara Arab yang menanggapi Palestin sebagai beban yang terpaksa dipikul.

Namun bangsa Palestin enggan menyerah tanpa melawan. Justeru mereka bangkit mengolah kembali naratif bangsa mereka di bawah bingkai “the story of resistance and liberation”.

Profile Image for Robert Wechsler.
Author 9 books146 followers
May 8, 2019
A collection of essays divided into three parts. I read the first and third parts, with a focus on the first: Palestine and Palestinians. I found it valuable to see the history of Israeli-Palestinian and U.S.-Palestinian relations from a Palestinian-American’s point of view, especially one that sympathizes with Palestinians, but is sometimes critical of its leaders. Although the book is 15 years old, things haven’t changed significantly since then, except for Gaza. The book is well-written and very skimmable.
Profile Image for Tim.
337 reviews277 followers
July 25, 2025
Said’s collection of essays grapples with the formation of a Palestinian political and national identity in light of a colonialist background of takeover and attempted erasure. His essays here show how resistance to Zionism which came into Palestine as a very clearly defined ideology has forced the Palestinians as we know them into a position they never wanted. This forced identity was foreign to the people of Palestine because it was an identity based around the new nation-state system which would eventually be imposed upon the entire Arab region against their will. The politics of dispossesion become a necessity to survive and in most cases a direct reaction to an existential reality of theft, death and destruction by a foreign entity.

only in a crisis, individual or historical, does it become obvious what a sensitive combination of interrelated factors the human personality is—a combination of capacities created in the distant past and of opportunities divined in the present; a combination of totally unconscious preconditions developed in individual growth and of social conditions created and re-created in the precarious interplay of generations. (p, 15)

What does it mean to be Palestinian and how is this identity seen as a necessary reaction and form of resistance to a Zionist imposition? Resistance to erasure is certainly one of the main factors determining what it means to be Palestinian and the denial of rights, land and life has been there since the writings of Theodore Herzl in the late 19th century and long before October 7, 2023.

Said passed away in 2003 yet these essays seem to be a reaction to the present. Israeli propaganda constantly insults us by assuming that no one is capable of reading the past. Nothing has changed in the Zionist agenda, racist attitude, sense of entitlement or continuous settlement and theft of Palestinian land. Their methods of intimidation, control of treaties and ceasefire agreements have always been imposed from a position of power backed by the West and have always been unacceptable to Palestinians, in fact have not included anything designed to benefit them despite public proclamations. The "realities on the ground" through increased settlement and occupation have proven this to be true. Oslo was a joke and so are the current ceasefires with Hamas.

This is critical to understand historically and infuriating when applied to the present. The Zionist attempt at erasure and denial of Palestinian identity has been remarkably consistent, even the language of propaganda as you'll see here has hardly changed. The issues involved are not new although many of the solutions (the infeasibility of a 2-state solution for example) are changing and gaining greater clarity in light of ever more genocidal actions. Said’s legacy is one which inspires greater solidarity, clearer boundaries both literally and ideologically and a sense of justice which is universal and applies not only to Palestine but to resistance towards colonialism and dispossession everywhere.
Profile Image for Henry B.
30 reviews
December 8, 2023
"There's only one way to anchor oneself, and that is by affiliation with a cause, with a political movement. There has to be some identification, not with the powers that be, with the Secretary of State or the great leading philosopher of the time or the sage; there has to be an affiliation with matters involving justice, principle, truth, conviction. Those don't occur in a laboratory or a library. For the American intellectual, that simply means, at bottom, in a globalized environment, that there is today one superpower, and the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, based upon profit and power, has to be altered from an imperial one to one of coexistence among human communities that can make and remake their own histories together. This seems to me to be the number one priority - there's nothing else." (p. 317) go off king
Profile Image for Rachel Dows.
624 reviews16 followers
September 4, 2019
So, so thick. Read this when you have mindspace to dedicate to extremely complex concepts.
Profile Image for Jeff Bozell.
28 reviews
November 9, 2021
Interesting perspectives on the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Gets a bit repetitive as it is his collection of published articles.
Profile Image for Jasper Sendler.
80 reviews2 followers
January 3, 2022
The clarity with which Said sees the suppression of the Arab world is remarkable. A brave scholar who called it how he saw it, a great loss to those who are oppressed.
Profile Image for Razan.
446 reviews11 followers
February 17, 2025
Published in 1994 & tragically still relevant today. A worthwhile read for anyone keen to get a glimpse of an under-represented perspective from a major advocate of the two-state solution. The author discusses the Oslo accord, various peace processes & initiatives; why perhaps they may have failed. Most importantly, he calls for empathy, reconciliation & understanding for all involved, to recognise their mutual suffering and humanity.

"The march towards self-determination can be done only by a people with democratic aspirations and goals, or it is not worth the effort."

R.I.P, Legend. 🖤
Profile Image for Yonis Gure.
117 reviews29 followers
February 11, 2021
These searing essays are pure gold. In this collection, Edward Said looks at the palestinian struggle for statehood and self-determination, and how it's been negated by U.S/Israeli policy. I very much appreciated how Edward Said unloaded upon Thomas Friedman's Book 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' in one of the later essays. To think, I was going to buy that book. If I could quarrel with one thing, it would be Edwards tendency to self-pity, which leads him to express a high sense of injury and victimhood that got annoying at times. I'm referring to certain passages in the midsection of this collection. But all in all, marvellous work from a man who I greatly admire.
Profile Image for Reenie.
257 reviews16 followers
March 3, 2009
It's dense, but it's well worth perservering. The rule of thumb I've come to apply to Edward Said's writing is that the later it was written, the easier it is to read. The essays written before about 1975 can be quite a struggle to pull apart, just because of the sentence construction, but by the mid-80s it's all quite readable, and much the better for being more direct.

Reading Said's amazing work is an essential part of understanding the central problems and challenges of the Middle East, and unfortunately it's a perspective of which too few people seem to be aware.
9 reviews3 followers
Read
May 31, 2015
An anthology of Said's journalistic writing about Palestine from 69 to 94, what do you expect? A good source for analysis and politically relevant Said quotes, but please don't let it be your only source for understanding Palestinian history.
Profile Image for Rachel.
Author 6 books12 followers
August 21, 2007
People accused Said of being not political enough! He gave of himself tirelessly.
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