The Biggest Prison on Earth · A History of the Occupied Territories

From the author of the bestselling study of the 1948 War of Independence comes an incisive look at the Occupied Territories, picking up the story where The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine left off.

Publishing on the fiftieth anniversary of the Six-Day War that culminated in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Pappe offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the world’s most prolonged and tragic conflicts. Using recently declassified archival material, Pappé analyses the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians – and the decision-making process itself – that laid the foundation of the occupation. From a survey of the legal and bureaucratic infrastructures that were put in place to control the population of over one million Palestinians, to the security mechanisms that vigorously enforced that control, Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world’s largest “open prison”.

‘[Pappé] boldly and persuasively argues for understanding the occupied territories as the world’s “largest ever mega-prison”...Pappe’s conclusions won’t be welcome in all quarters but this detailed history is rigorously supported by primary sources.’ --Publishers Weekly

'Ilan Pappé is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' --John Pilger

"Pappé has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappé believes could have been a better land of Palestine." --The Times Literary Supplement

Ilan Pappé 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.