Thinking about social movements and obstacles to protesting globally: lessons from Palestine

Books reviewed: The Palestinian Prisoners Movement, by Julie M. Norman, and Palestinian Women and Popular Resistance, by Liyana Kayali, are important books that contribute innovative empirics and theoretical observations to conversations that take place in the disciplines of sociology and political science, in particular, between scholars who research social movements and contentious politics. Looking at the trajectory of anti-occupation and national liberation movements in Palestine since the establishment of the state of Israel, with a focus on the two decades preceding the Oslo agreements and those after, Norman and Kayali discuss what happens when the opportunities for mobilisation gradually foreclose and, consequently, what shape do social movements take in such circumstances. To do so, they focus on prisoners and non-activist women. Both authors examine the negative influence that the post-Oslo consolidation of the occupation has had on these two populations but, at the same time, highlight how the political work of prisoners and politically unaffliated Palestinian women—seemingly at the margins of anti-occupation movements—has created innovative strategies of mobilisation, quite central to larger dynamics of contentious politics