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In December 2010, the self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable vendor set off a wave of protests that have been termed the \"Arab Spring.\" These protests upended the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen while unsettling numerous other regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Dafna Hochman Rand was a senior policy planner in the U.S. State Department as the uprisings unfolded. InRoots of the Arab Spring, she gives one of the first accounts of the systemic underlying forces that gave birth to the Arab Spring. Drawing on three years of field research conducted before the protests, Rand shows how experts overlooked signs that political change was stirring in the region and overestimated the regimes' strategic capabilities to manage these changes. She argues that the Arab Spring was fifteen years in the making, gradually inflamed by growing popular demand-and expectation-for free expression, by top-down restrictions on citizens' political rights, and by the failure of the region's autocrats to follow through on liberalizing reforms they had promised more than a decade earlier. An incisive account of events whose ramifications are still unfolding,Roots of the Arab Springcaptures the tectonic shifts in the region that led to the first major political upheaval of the twenty-first century.

This book is a comparison of two ethnic-national \"apartheid\" states – South Africa and Israel – which have been in conflict, and how internal dissent has developed. In particular it examines the evolution of effective white protest in South Africa and explores the reasons why comparably powerful movements have not emerged in Israel. The book reveals patterns of behaviour shared by groups in both cases. It argues that although the role played by protest groups in peace-building may be limited, a tipping point, or ‘magic point’, can become as significant as other major factors. It highlights the role played by intermediate variables that affect the pathways of protest groups: such as changes in the international system; the visions and strategies of resistance movements and their degree of success; the economic relationship between the dominant and dominated side; and the legitimacy of the ideology in power (apartheid or Zionism). Although the politics and roles of protest groups in both cases share some similarities, differences remain. Whilst white protest groups moved towards an inclusive peace agenda that adopts the ANC vision of a united non-racial democratic South Africa, the Jewish Israeli protest groups are still, by majority, entrenched in their support for an exclusive Jewish state. And as such, they support separation between the two peoples and a limited division of mandatory Palestine / ‘Eretz Israel’. This timely book sheds light on a controversial and explosive political issue: Israel being compared to apartheid South Africa. Amneh Daoud Badran is Lecturer and Head of the Political Science Department, Al-Quds University, Palestine, and Honorary University Fellow, University of Exeter, UK. From 2001-2005, she was the Director of the Jerusalem Centre for Women, actively involved in Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding initiatives, and received the The Liberty Award by Dialogue on Diversity in 2003 in recognition of her work for the cause of conciliation and human rights. 1. Historical Backgrounds and Political Developments in Both Conflicts: A Comparison 2. Political Systems and Civil Society in Apartheid South Africa and Zionist Israel 3. The Politics and Roles of White Protest Groups in Apartheid South Africa 4. The Politics and Roles of Israeli (Jewish) Protest Groups 5. Conclusion Based on Comparative Analysis

Abeer Zayyad, a Jerusalem activist and archeological expert; Saman Khoury, co-chair of Palestinian-Israeli Peace NGOs; Dr. Nimrod Goren, director of Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies; Boat Rakocz, co-founder of the Tel-Aviv-Jaffa General Assembly and coordinator of the Vision Committee of the Popular National Assembly of the Israeli social protest movement; Emily Lawrence, University of Exeter (UK), BA International Relations and PIJ intern; and Hillel Schenker, co-editor of the PIJ. Zalzberg: I think, to close, that things happen a lot more quickly in the 21st century than they did in the 20th century. Because of these methods, because awareness can be shaped so quickly, everything that one is hearing now about social change means one has to act fast.

ABSTRACT IN SPANISH: Juan Goytisolo observó con entusiasmo, pero también con cierta preocupación, las noticias sobre las revoluciones que, desde comienzos de 2011, derrocaron varios regímenes autocráticos (en Túnez, Egipto y Libia), provocaron reformas en otros países (Marruecos) y condujeron a una guerra civil aún no terminada (Siria). Formuló sus opiniones sobre este proceso histórico en reportajes, ensayos y, sobre todo, artículos periodísticos publicados en El País. A partir de estos textos, me propongo comparar sus comentarios actuales con ideas expresadas desde finales del siglo xx y analizar las figuras argumentativas características de la visión goytisoleana de la historia reciente de África del Norte. // ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: Juan Goytisolo observed with enthusiasm, though with certain concern, the news about the revolutions that, since early 2011, overthrew several autocratical regimes (in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya), entailed reforms in other countries (Morocco) and caused a yet unfinished civil war (Syria). He gave his opinions on this historical process in reportages, essays and, mainly, articles published in El País. Based on these texts, I intend to compare his current comments with ideas he expressed in the late 20th century and to analize argumentation figures that are characteristic of Goytisolo's vision of the recent history of North Africa. Reprinted by permission of the Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft