But if there was too little "regularization and organization," as Khalidi puts it, there was also far too much bureaucratization, authoritarian leadership and lack of accountability. The only way to overcome these impediments would have been to foster, not undermine, mass mobilization and democratic participation. But Fatah elites were always averse to participatory democracy. In such a milieu, self-deception all too easily took root in the leadership. Thus Arafat was capable, in 1972, of characterizing the Palestinian revolution as "a succession of temporary setbacks until final victory." Never mind that in 1970-71, the Palestinian resistance had been brutally crushed in Jordan (in the events of "Black September") and expelled to Lebanon. But how can such extraordinary defeats bring about victory? How can worsening conditions of operation lead to transformation without any thoroughgoing reassessment of the causes of failure and without devising more successful strategies of resistance?

Arafat's thinking has been far too prevalent in the Palestinian movement. It came into its own politically, as Gilbert Achcar has shown in Eastern Cauldron, after what he describes as the "catastrophic" liquidation of the Palestinian left's most progressive and committed cadres. This defeat led to a policy of increasing dependence on Arab dictatorships and the petrodollars of Gulf monarchies and to the deepening bureaucratization and corruption of the PLO, whose purse strings were controlled by Arafat.

Why did Arafat's conservative nationalist policies prevail after 1970? The reasons behind such developments were subject to considerable debate in the movement itself in that period, particularly on the Palestinian left; one wishes that Khalidi had examined more closely the period between Black September and the PLO's expulsion from Beirut in 1982, which he too quickly brushes aside in phrases like "the futility of exile politics." For it was precisely during the exile period in the early '70s, and after Black September, that a serious and democratic critique of the PLO developed. Within Fatah it was voiced by Husam al-Khatib, a member of the central committee who recognized that the defeat of the resistance in Jordan was not just about "the question of leaderships" (masalat al-qiyadat) but about revolutionary clarity, organizational structure and political form. What Khatib championed was "revolution within the revolution," an internal transformation of the PLO's structures that would foster popular participation and advance the organization's ends more effectively. Interestingly, Khatib referred to this process as an "internal intifada."

A similar critique of the PLO was advanced by Syrian Marxist philosopher Sadek Jalal al-Azm, who attributed the defeat of Black September to Fatah's capitulation to King Hussein and its policy of "non-interference" in Arab authoritarian regimes. For the PLO to achieve its desired objectives, he argued, it needed to assume the mantle of democracy and revolution in the whole Arab world. Only then could the Palestinians establish the political leverage that they lacked as a nation-in-exile. This would help them correct the balance of forces and push Israel and the West to recognize Palestinian self-determination. This road was arguably available to the Palestinians; at the very least it should have been considered among their historical options. Such a revolutionary road may well have been blocked and defeated by Israel and the United States. But it remained a road not taken, and it marks a possible alternative in the Middle East of the 1970s, destroyed by Arab authoritarian brutality, with the backing of Israel and the West. By re-examining this radical period in Palestinian history, Khalidi may well have recognized that bad leadership after 1948, as in the Mandate period, is a symptom of deeper causes. Nevertheless, The Iron Cage compels us to reflect more deeply on the problems that continue to bedevil the Palestinian movement.

Focused on the sources of the Palestinians' failure to build a state of their own, Khalidi does not explicitly advocate a particular solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (although a longstanding supporter of a two-state solution, he expresses doubts about whether even this will come to pass, given the enormous odds Palestine now faces). Since the 1967 war, the Palestinian national movement has formally adopted two main solutions to end the conflict with Israel: from the late '60s to the early '70s, a single democratic state in Palestine, which would incorporate all religious groups and existing populations; and, since 1974, a commitment to building a state on any liberated part of Palestine, formalized at the Palestinian National Council's 1988 meeting in Algiers into a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, in accordance with the international consensus. Contrary to conventional wisdom in the West, the two-state solution has long been the dominant program of the Palestinian movement, still supported by a majority of Palestinians and their representatives, including, implicitly, by Hamas, despite its maximalist rhetoric. Though most Palestinians have never regarded the creation of a state in 22 percent of their land to be a just resolution of the conflict, they have also viewed the end of the occupation as a necessary condition before other issues, such as the right of return and Israel's status as a Jewish state, can be discussed.

Ali Abunimah's principal argument in One Country is that Israelis and Palestinians are so deeply "intertwined" geographically and economically, and the occupation so deeply entrenched, that binationalism, or a single democratic state with equality and self-determination for both peoples, is "the only viable solution." (Similar arguments have been made in recent years by, among others, Tony Judt, Virginia Tilley, Meron Benvenisti and the late Edward Said.) For Abunimah, binationalism resolves many inherent problems with Zionism: its exclusivism; its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians (which is becoming increasingly popular in Israel, where Russian-born settler Avigdor Lieberman, an advocate of "transfer," recently joined Ehud Olmert's Cabinet); and its racist obsession with demography. It would also crucially allow the Palestinians to return to their usurped lands and to live in peace with Israelis on an equal basis.

What's missing in his account, however, is an appreciation of immediate Palestinian needs and strategies. Although Abunimah draws on a number of examples to support his proposal, including Northern Ireland and South Africa, the creation of a single democratic state is not a pressing demand for most Palestinians. Indeed, he concedes that today neither Palestinians nor Israelis want to live together in one state. What is more, if Palestinians have been struggling to no avail to implement the much less demanding two-state solution with international laws and resolutions solidly on their side, how can they be expected to work toward an end that is even less feasible than it was thirty years ago, namely ending political Zionism? Abunimah consoles us with the assertion that Israelis "do aspire to progressive values." It's hard to share his faith, however, with the erosion of the Israeli peace camp and a society permanently lurching to the right. So one cannot help but wonder: Is it fair to ask 3.5 million occupied Palestinians to wait for redress of their daily sufferings and national humiliation until there is sufficient support among both peoples for a binational solution?

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