Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration

Cambridge Middle East Studies #27

by Laleh Khalili

Many decades have passed since the Palestinian national movement began its political and military struggle. In that time, poignant memorials at massacre sites, a palimpsest of posters of young heroes and martyrs, sorrowful reminiscences about lost loved ones, and wistful images of young men and women who fought as guerrillas, have all flourished in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine tells the story of how dispossessed Palestinians have commemorated their past, and how through their dynamic everyday narrations, their nation has been made even without the institutional memory-making of a state. Bringing ethnography to political science, Khalili invites us to see Palestinian nationalism in its proper international context and traces its affinities with Third Worldist movements of its time, while tapping a rich and oft-ignored seam of Palestinian voices, histories, and memories.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Middle East

274 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2002

About the author

Laleh Khalili is an Iranian American and Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London. She was formerly a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

She graduated from University of Texas, and received her PhD from Columbia University. Her primary research areas are logistics and trade, infrastructure, policing and incarceration, gender, nationalism, political and social movements, refugees, and diasporas in the Middle East.