Christison has described the ideological shift she made from "Reagan Republican" to foreign-policy critic as "a slow evolution" that was facilitated by the move she and her husband made away from Washington, D.C. to New Mexico.

In her book, Perceptions of Palestine, Christison examines how perceptions, attitudes, and policies of the United States government towards the Palestinians and Israel over the last century have contributed to the irresolution of the conflict. The United States' special relationship with Israel is said by Christison to have undermined Palestinian political claims and downplayed the seriousness of their tragedy. According to the Arab Studies Quarterly, the questioning of this lack of moral equality in American responses and treatments of both Arab and Jewish tragedies is a major theme of Christison's book.

Books

• Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (Hardcover 1999) University of California Press. ISBN 0520217179.[1] (Updated softcover version released in 2001)
• The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story (2002) Sunlit Hills Press. ISBN 097125480X.[2]

Articles in the Journal of Palestine Studies

• "The American Experience: Palestinians in the US" (1989)
• "Dilemmas of Arab Christianity" (1992)
• "Macro Microcosm" (1992)
• "The City and Its People" (1993)
• "Pax Americana" (1995)
• "A Frank Examination" (1995)
• "Uneven but Invaluable" (1996)
• "US Policy and the Palestinians: Bound by a Frame of Reference" (1997)
• "US Policy Realities" (1997)
• "A Morality Tale?" (1998)
• "Selective Memory?" (1999)
• "'All Those Old Issues': George W. Bush and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" (2004)