This is a purely subjective list pulled from the larger list under Educational Resources.  What might your Top 5 plus a movie be?  We invite you to join the conversation.

Ateek, Naim Stifan.  Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (1989).  Ateek applies Liberation Theology to the present conditions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.  An Anglican priest and Palestinian citizen of Israel, Ateek is the founder and director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

Bennis, Phyllis.  Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer (2012).  A basic text on the origins and various aspects of the conflict.

Hass, Amira.  Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege (1996).  This is a powerful description of the situation in this tiny, densely-packed territory, which has lived under intensifying siege by Israel since the start of the Oslo peace process 20 years ago.  Hass is an Israeli journalist, writing for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who lived in Gaza for several years and now lives among Palestinians in Ramallah.  Although an older book, it provides good background to the frequent Israeli assaults on Gaza, particularly the invasion of 2008-2009.

Pappe, Ilan.  The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).  This is a scholarly description, based on declassified Israeli military archival material, of the calculated planning behind Israel’s decision to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population in 1948—a decision that resulted in the expulsion from their homes and land of over half the Palestinian population.  Pappe is one of the “new” Israeli historians.

Tolan, Sandy.  The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (2007).  This book is wonderful way to start learning about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Tolan records the history of the conflict through the stories of a Palestinian family dispossessed in 1948 and the Bulgarian Jewish refugee family that came to live in the Palestinians’ home.  The book helps us understand the conflict through its very personal dimensions.

5 Broken Cameras (90 minutes) 2013.  Directed by an amateur Palestinian videographer and an Israeli filmmaker, this is a personal first-hand account of years of nonviolent resistance in the Palestinian West Bank village of Bil’in, threatened by an expanding Israeli settlement.  Palestinian villager Imad Burnat filmed the village’s weekly protests against the encroachment of the Israeli settlement and the Separation Wall being built through village land and, in the course, of filming lost five video cameras to Israeli military violence.  The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2013.