The Biggest Prison on Earth: The History of the Israeli Occupation

In this comprehensive survey of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe exposes the history of one of the world's most prolonged and tragic conflicts.

Locating the occupation within a wider historical context that stretches back to 1948, Pappe dismisses the conventional view that the 1967 war emerged out of the blue, 'forcing' Israel to occupy the contentious territories. Using recently declassified archival material, Pappe analyzes the establishment of legal and security infrastructures that were put in place to control the population, revealing harsh oppression that was never advertised in international headlines, and which passed without any substantial Palestinian resistance for the first twenty years of its existence. Then turning to the years that have passed since the resistance began in 1987, Pappe offers hopeful visions of a future of reconciliation and peace.

ILAN PAPPE is Professor of History at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, and the author of over a dozen books including the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. In 2017, Pappe was awarded the Middle East Monitor’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Palestine Book Awards.