Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare

Since the brutal attacks of October 7, 2023, the Gaza strip - home to over 2 million Palestinians - has once again become a critical flashpoint in the Middle East. As the world looks on in horror at the renewal of intense violence between Hamas and Israel, Gazans are engulfed by a humanitarian and security crisis that shows no signs of abating. How did Gaza become the site of such devastation? And what does the future hold for this small strip of land?

In this urgent book, Julie M. Norman and Maia Carter Hallward provide a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to Gaza�s political history. Combining a nuanced narrative with hard-hitting reflections from everyday Gazans, the book tells the dynamic story of how Gaza became an epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a pivotal hot-spot in the region. It also tells the story of a place that, for many residents, is defined by much more than violence or suffering, revealing the resilience and determination of those who live there.

As the world grapples with how to envision Gaza after the latest devastation, this book provides a crucial foundation that unpacks the territory�s history through the voices of its civilians, who are all too often absent from debate.

Julie M. Norman is a leading expert on the Israel-Palestine conflict, with over twenty years of experience as a scholar and practitioner in the region. She is an Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at University College London (UCL), and a Senior Associate Fellow on the Middle East at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). She is the author of multiple books and articles on political violence, nonviolence, and resistance in the Middle East, including The Palestinian Prisoners Movement (2021) and The Second Palestinian Intifada (2010), and she is the co-author (with Maia Carter Hallward) of Understanding Nonviolence (2015). She has worked as a consultant with the British Council in Iraq, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Lebanon, and NGOs in Egypt and Israel-Palestine, and she has provided expert analysis to the US Department of State, the US Institute of Peace, the UK Foreign Office, and the UK Ministry of Defence. She is also a frequent commentator on Middle East politics, foreign policy, and international conflict on the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, and other media outlets.

Maia Carter Hallward has over twenty years of experience in the field of international peace and conflict resolution, including living and researching in conflict zones in the MENA region. She is Director of the PhD Program in International Conflict Management and Professor of Middle East Politics at Kennesaw State University and served as Chief Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. She is the author or co-author of eight books and dozens of articles on Middle East politics, nonviolent resistance and civil society activism including NGOs and Human Rights (2021, with Charity Butcher), Transnational Activism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2013), Struggling for a Just Peace (2011) and a forthcoming Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies. She regularly serves as an external evaluator for research projects, has served on multiple grant award panels, and was a Fulbright Scholar for Conflict Resolution in Jordan.