Professor Emeritus at Queen's University in Ontario and founder of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar, he died on 16 January at the age of 84.
Since the 1970s, his writings on the state and its functions - surveillance, power and oppression - have become standard reading in sociology and the study of social development. He was particularly known for his commitment to and defence of Palestinian rights inside and outside Israel, as well as his detailed description of Israel's colonialist project in Palestine.