K Nakhleh and E Zureik (ed) The Sociology of the Palestinians. London. Croom Helm, 1980. 
(Third World Quartely, January 1983, Volume 5, No. 1)

Until perhaps the mid-1970s, the conflict in the Middle East was treated predominantly as an Arab-Israeli confrontation. More recently, and as a result of the wide-ranging recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) by the international community, as the representative of a legitimate national liberation movement, a shift in perception has occurred, and increasingly the conflict is seen as a Palestinian-Zionist struggle. This volume, edited by two Palestinian scholars, takes a step further by attempting a wide-ranging survey of the Palestinians themselves, both those who still live within the geographic boundaries of Palestine, and the scattered Palestinian communities which are to be found in nearly every Arab country.
The seven contributions included in this volume cannot claim to present a comprehensive picture. Indeed, they only cover a small part of the Palestinian diaspora. They do suggest, however, that not withstanding their dispersal, the Palestinians in the various host countries do retain a certain degree of homogeneity, not least, because both Israel and the Arab countries insist, in their different ways, on reinforcing the Palestinians' perception of themselves as a distinct and separate national community.
The demographic development of the Palestinian people from the early years of the British Mandate to the present is examined by Kossaifi. This, the opening chapter of the book, serves to underline the dispersion of the Palestinians, who since 1948 have ceased to exist as a coherently defined social and economic unit.
It also serves to emphasise the difficulties involved in presenting a coherent picture of a community dispersed in more than eight countries with varying social, economic and political conditions. Zureik, dealing with Palestinian class structure, tries to show that the Zionist colonisation of Palestine, even during the years of the Mandate, effectively thwarted the development of the Palestinian community both socially and economically. He makes the important point that, although in the post-1948 period there was a marked similarity between Jordanian and Israeli policies vis-g-vis the Palestinians, an essential and all-important difference was that while Jordanian policies were aimed at safeguarding the authority of an autocratic monarchy, Israeli rule, especially in the post-1967 period, went beyond general questions of security with the aim of futhering 'national' goals as defined by Zionist ideology.
Casting a rather hasty look at the conditions of the Palestinians in some Arab host countries, Arruri and Farsoun stress that the Palestinians' dispersal has led to the emergence of a rather peculiar situation. The Palestinians, who cannot be termed an ethnic minority in those countries, are nevertheless the subject of discrimination and restrictions concerning movement, emplbyment, participation in political life etc, in nearly every Arab country. This, despite the wealth, position and influence which some of them enjoy, particularly in the Gulf states. Even in Jordan, where they constitute the majority of the population, they are in effect a 'minority.' This in the authors' view has enabled, or rather forced them, to re-create much of their pre-diaspora social relations, and paradoxically helped sustain their identity as Palestinians.
Nakhle takes on a rather difficult task in attempting to analyse the role of intellectuals in Palestinian society. He sees them as performing a double role, both as 'managers of legitimation' and as 'producers of revolutionary consciousness.' He seems, however, to be talking about an 'intelligentsia' rather than intellectuals as such, and his 'dual role' theory does not seem to be saying more than that a minority of people who have had some formal education, as opposed to the vast majority of their peers, tend to disseminate and propagate radical ideologies. The best contributions to this volume are the ones by Lustick and Tamari, dealing with Israeli methods of control, and the social and economic transformation of the West Bank and Gaza in the post-1967 period. Lustick notes that the Palestinians living within Israel's 1967 boundaries have been particularly quiescent, as compared to Palestinians elsewhere. He attributes this to Israeli policies which are based on three principles: segmentation, dependence, and co-optation. Successful though this has been, he sees the 1967 war, which resulted in ending the isolation of the Palestinians in Israel, as signalling a new upsurge which could turn out to be impossible to control. Tamari on the other hand, in examining the economic integration of the West Bank and Gaza into the Israeli economy, the creation of a reserve army of cheap Arab labour, and the transformation of Arab villages into a stagnant non-productive unity, concludes that it is this economic transformation, rather than political issues such as settlements, which presents a major obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.