The Question of Palestine (1979)

A landmark statement of the Palestinian case in English, by the literary critic Edward Said, author of Orientalism. Its publisher calls it the first book to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate. Read it to understand where much of today's Palestinian argument in the West comes from: Said writes as an exile, with scholarship and open conviction, and makes no pretense of neutrality. It appeared in 1979, long before the Oslo Accords, so treat it as a primary document of a perspective rather than a guide to recent events, and turn to Khalidi for the fuller history.