Search results for ""Author Barry Rubin""

This book is a comprehensive overview and analysis of the Palestinians’ travail as they move from revolutionary movement to state. Barry Rubin outlines the difficulties in the transition now underway arising from Palestinian history, society, and diplomatic agreements. He writes about the search for a national identity, the choice of an economic system, and the structure of government.Rubin finds the political system interestingly distinctive—it appears to be a pluralist dictatorship. There are free elections, multiple parties, and some latitude in civil liberties. Yet there is a relatively unrestrained chief executive and arbitrariness in applying the law because of restraints on freedom. The new ruling elite is a complex mixture of veteran revolutionaries, heirs to large and wealthy families, professional soldiers, technocrats, and Islamic clerics. Beyond explaining how the executive and legislative branches work, Rubin factors in the role of public opinion in the peace process, the place of nongovernmental institutions, opposition movements, and the Palestinian Authority’s foreign relations—including Palestinian views and interactions with the Arab world, Israel, and the United States.This book is drawn from documents in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, as well as interviews and direct observations. Rubin finds that, overall, the positive aspects of the Palestinian Authority outweigh the negative, and he foresees the establishment of a Palestinian state. His charting of the triumphs and difficulties of this state-in-the-making helps predict and explain future dramatic developments in the Middle East.

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The Palestine Liberation Organization is now almost a government in Gaza and the West Bank. In this in-depth account of its ideology, strategy, and tactics, its relationship to other Arab states, and its confrontations with Israel, Barry Rubin documents how the PLO was transformed from revolutionary organization into the administrator of its own territory.

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No region of the world has been more affected by the forces of instability and the factors of war and insecurity than has the Middle East. The area has seen more violence and conflict in the last three or four decades than all of the other world regions put together. Moreover, conflict in the area has an international significance far beyond its borders. These events and issues have also been of the greatest international and academic interest, with much study generated.The editor's choice of materials in this new Routledge collection is based on an effort to cover a full range of issues concerning external and internal threats to the stability of Middle Eastern states as well as the means by which they try to ensure their security both at home and abroad. The topics include military, ideological, sub-national, Islamist, and economic challenges. In geographic terms it encompasses the greater Middle East: the Arab world, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and Afghanistan.

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