Michael Bröning has presented a well-informed and extensively researched analysis of contemporary Palestinian political structures and movements. He not only shows a deep understanding of the historical, cultural and political landscape of the region, but he also has, because of his position as the director of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation's Jerusalem Office, direct access to the most prominent figures in current Palestinian politics. He is thus able to strengthen his arguments by various voices from all political factions.

Bröning's approach to his topic, the politics of change in Palestine, is programmatic. While the book offers an illuminating analysis of both Hamas and Fatah as well as the Palestinian National Authority and current forms of nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation, the reader might be surprised by the absence of an explicit examination of the Palestine Liberation Organization, still the institution officially representing Palestine on the international scene, or of the influences of the Israeli occupation, which effectively controls more than 62 percent of the West Bank. This, however, is due to the focus on changing political relations and standpoints, which an attentive observer of the developments in the last five years might indeed be missing in the PLO's or Israeli's political debates. Bröning thus provides a fresh and inspiring perspective on Palestine today without lapsing into too optimistic predictions.

Especially interesting is Bröning's analysis of Hamas's forms of governance and sources of identity, as information on internal structures and processes of the party are rare. Without neglecting Hamas's previous, largely anti-Semitic rhetoric of armed resistance and non-cooperation, Bröning succeeds in showing that the party's controversial charter does not play a central role in its self-conception and policies anymore. Rather than the Taliban or al-Qaeda, it is Turkey's ruling party, the AKP, that is presented as the role model for contemporary Hamas. Furthermore, Bröning demonstrates that, even though Hamas has not and most likely will not formally recognize Israel's legitimacy in the near future, it nonetheless has made important concessions, particularly the pragmatic endorsement of the two-state solution, which implies a de facto acceptance of the State of Israel.

While this has been largely ignored by Western politicians and has led most governments to continue to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization, Bröning unmasks the frequent hypocrisy behind such policies. He shows, for example, that Fatah's program contained, until 2009, statements as repellent as one finds in the Hamas charter without facing similar international rejection. Rather, and this is another highlight of the book, Fatah has only recently undergone an extensive reform process, in which the party overcame its two main obstacles: a non-representative leadership structure and a political program reduced to the demand for an independent Palestinian state. The party's Sixth General Conference in 2009 successfully introduced broad reforms to challenge these obstructions. These reforms and the Palestinian Authority's current state-building program, mainly influenced by prime minister and former World Bank official Salam Fayyad, led Bröning to express at least limited optimism regarding the party's future. For a deeper engagement with the topic, the author has also provided an English translation of the PA's new government program.

Nonetheless, one informed by a more critical reading of the neoliberal state-building project might find Bröning's conclusion that criticism of Fayyad's economic policies seems exaggerated to be a bit hasty. Palestinian researchers such as Sam Bahour, Adam Hanieh, Raja Khalidi and Sobhi Samour have shown that Fayyad's program not only faithfully follows a global neoliberal consensus designed by the Bretton Woods institutions — resulting in major public-sector cutbacks and the exploitation of cheap Palestinian labor — but that it may also lead to further economic dependence on the Israeli state. By formalizing a truncated network of industrial zones and cantons entirely dependent upon the Israeli infrastructure of control to function, it would complicate the establishment of a truly independent Palestinian state. A deeper engagement with these criticisms would have been desirable.

Bröning further surprises with insider information about the most important resistance movements in Palestine and the Diaspora such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, the Free Gaza Movement and the Stop the Wall Campaign. He rightly illustrates that, contrary to most media representations, especially of the two intifadas, nonviolence has been a central feature of Palestinian resistance from the very beginning. He elaborately demonstrates that, no matter the concrete and immediate results, nonviolent forms of resistance are the only feasible responses to the occupation. These alone put the lie to the Israeli claim of an intrinsically violent Palestinian counterpart as legitimization for the ongoing theft of Palestinian lands and penetration of Palestinian spaces.

One might have wished for some voices outside established, often highly elitist, party or organizational structures, and one stumbles a bit over Bröning's normative definition of what has to count as inherently (non-) violent or as a legitimate form of resistance. The book nonetheless presents a highly valuable and enriching analysis of contemporary Palestinian politics that no one interested in the Arab-Israeli conflict should miss. The fact that some of the author's predictions, such as a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, have been overtaken by the events of the so-called Arab Spring does not make his claims less valid, but provides a complex background for a nuanced reading of the book.