History

This page presents books previously featured as New and Notable. Titles are listed by year of publication (newest-oldest) and then alphabetically by author surname. Older entries can be found here.

 

Amnon Kapeliouk. Not By Omission: The Case of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War (Verso, 2022)

Publisher’s description: In this book, first published in Hebrew in 1975 and now available in English for the first time with an introduction by Noam Chomsky, Amnon Kapeliouk traces the policies and attitudes that led to the 1973 Arab-Israel war. He describes the multiple diplomatic overtures from Egyptian presidents Nasser and Sadat after 1967 that Israel ignored or contemptuously rejected, as well as the complacent attitude that had become fully entrenched in the Israeli military establishment. On the political level, the triumvirate of Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan and Israel Galili feature prominently as a study in arrogance and incompetence. Kapeliouk also notes the protest movement that arose among active-duty soldiers as well as veterans in the wake of the war demanding political accountability for the failures of the war. Finally, the book examines Israel’s policy of colonizing the territories occupied in 1967, starting with the Golan Heights and later spreading to the West Bank (“Judaea and Samaria”) and the Sinai – a policy that did much to convince the leaders of Arab states that war was their only option.

Reviews: none yet available

 

John Quigley. Britain and Its Mandate over Palestine: Legal Chicanery on a World Stage (Anthem Press, 2022)

Publisher’s description: When Britain took control of Palestine from the Turkish Ottoman Empire in World War 1, it tried to find a way to gain a legal right both to govern Palestine and to facilitate a Jewish national home there. It never found one. As a result, the changes it brought about in Palestine lack a legal basis.

Reviews: none yet available

 

Matthew Teller. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City (Profile Books, 2022)

Publisher’s description: In Jerusalem, what you see and what is true are two different things. Maps divide the walled Old City into four quarters, yet that division doesn’t reflect the reality of mixed and diverse neighbourhoods. Beyond the crush and frenzy of its major religious sites, much of the Old City remains little known to visitors, its people overlooked and their stories untold. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem lets the communities of the Old City speak for themselves. Ranging through ancient past and political present, it evokes the city’s depth and cultural diversity. Matthew Teller’s highly original ‘biography’ features the Old City’s Palestinian and Jewish communities, but also spotlights its Indian and African populations, its Greek and Armenian and Syriac cultures, its downtrodden Dom Gypsy families and its Sufi mystics. It discusses the sources of Jerusalem’s holiness and the ideas – often startlingly secular – that have shaped lives within its walls. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem is an evocation of place through story, led by the voices of Jerusalemites.

Reviews:

‘Teller, a freelance journalist and documentary-maker, combines millennia of Jerusalem’s history with insightful interviews with its residents, weaponising that unusual approach to present a subtle portrait of the current reality at the heart of the world’s most intractable and divisive conflict’ – Guardian

‘Teller is an informed, enthusiastic guide to one of the most contested sites in the world. He even had his bar-mitzvah at the Western Wall. But he underplays the ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem. Only one of the book’s 18 chapters is devoted to stories from the Jewish quarter’ – Financial Times

 

Lori Allen. A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2021)

Publisher’s description: This book offers a provocative retelling of Palestinian political history through an examination of the international commissions that have investigated political violence and human rights violations. More than twenty commissions have been convened over the last century, yet no significant change has resulted from these inquiries. The findings of the very first, the 1919 King-Crane Commission, were suppressed. The Mitchell Committee, convened in the heat of the Second Intifada, urged Palestinians to listen more sympathetically to the feelings of their occupiers. And factfinders returning from a shell-shocked Gaza Strip in 2008 registered their horror at the scale of the destruction, but Gazans have continued to live under a crippling blockade. Drawing on debates in the press, previously unexamined UN reports, historical archives, and ethnographic research, Lori Allen explores six key investigative commissions over the last century. She highlights how Palestinians’ persistent demands for independence have been routinely translated into the numb language of reports and resolutions. These commissions, Allen argues, operating as technologies of liberal global governance, yield no justice—only the oppressive status quo. A History of False Hope issues a biting critique of the captivating allure and cold impotence of international law.

Reviews:

‘[Palestinians] appear in her book as individuals and as a nation willing to abide by the international human rights law only to be rewarded by disregard and disrespect. This is a missing tale that has to be told and Allen tells it very well (…) Her method is anthropological by and large, which allows us access to the Palestinians’ deliberations, hesitations and expectations about the values and justice that such investigations could have brought with them and their reaction when they learned that there was no genuine will or intention to act upon these just values. In this respect, this is subaltern history at its best in which Palestinians are given agency even if it did not result in any change on the ground. Hence, principles of democracy, self-determination, human and civil rights, and the sanctity of human life were ignored or dwarfed when the Palestinians were the object of these inquires’ – H-Net

 

Shay Hazkani. Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (Stanford University Press, 2021)

Publisher’s description: In 1948, a war broke out that would result in Israeli independence and the erasure of Arab Palestine. Over twenty months, thousands of Jews and Arabs came from all over the world to join those already on the ground to fight in the ranks of the Israel Defence Forces and the Arab Liberation Army. With this book, the young men and women who made up these armies come to life through their letters home, writing about everything from daily life to nationalism, colonialism, race, and the character of their enemies. Shay Hazkani offers a new history of the 1948 War through these letters, focusing on the people caught up in the conflict and its transnational reverberations. Dear Palestine also examines how the architects of the conflict worked to influence and indoctrinate key ideologies in these ordinary soldiers, by examining battle orders, pamphlets, army magazines, and radio broadcasts. Through two narratives – the official and unofficial, the propaganda and the personal letters – Dear Palestine reveals the fissures between sanctioned nationalism and individual identity. This book reminds us that everyday people’s fear, bravery, arrogance, cruelty, lies, and exaggerations are as important in history as the preoccupations of the elites.

Reviews:

‘Shay Hazkani’s Dear Palestine is an innovative, compellingly written, and deeply researched contribution to the history of the 1948 Palestine war, the establishment of Israel, and the effacement of Palestine (…) He argues that the war and the events of its immediate aftermath were meaning-making and identity-making enterprises for both Arabs and Jews. Through mobilization for the war and its conduct, elites and soldiers constituted and contested collective identities, including Arab, Jew, Muslim, Palestinian, Israeli, Mizrachi, and Ashkenazi. His project is not so much to establish what identities prevailed during this time as to recover how individuals and institutions – especially war- and state-making institutions – produced and debated collective identities. He eschews the nationalist binaries of Arab and Jew as primary analytical categories and instead examines how collective identities were discursively generated (…) Dear Palestine is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The book is clearly written and accessible to advanced undergraduate students. Its introduction is as fine an overview of modern Palestinian history and the state of its historiography as I have seen’ – The American Historical Review

 

Arno J. Mayer. Plowshares into Swords: From Zionism to Israel (Verso, 2021)

Publisher’s description: In this authoritative text, Arno J. Mayer traces the thinkers, leaders and shifting geopolitical contexts that shaped the founding and onward development of the Israeli state. He recovers for posterity internal critics such as the philosopher Martin Buber who argued for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs. ‘A sense of limits is the better part of valour’, Mayer insists. Plowshares into Swords explores Israeli’s indefinite deferral of the ‘Arab Question’, the strategic thinking behind its settlement building and border walls, and the endurance of Palestinian resistance.

Reviews: none yet available

 

Jerome Slater. Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020 (Oxford University Press, 2021)

Publisher’s description: Every nation has narratives or stories it tells itself about its history but which typically contain factually false or misleading mythologies that often result in devastating consequences for itself and for others. In the case of Israel and its indispensable ally, the United States, the central mythology is ‘the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity’, as the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban famously said in a 1973 statement that has been widely quoted ever since. However, the historical truth is very nearly the converse: it is Israel and the United States that have repeatedly lost or deliberately dismissed many opportunities to reach fair compromise settlements of the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. The book reexamines the entire history of the conflict from its onset at the end of World War I through today. Part I begins with a reconsideration of Zionism and then examines the origins and early years of the Arab-Israeli state conflict. One chapter is devoted to the question of what accounts for the nearly unconditional US support of Israel throughout the entire conflict. Part II focuses on war and peace in the Arab-Israeli state conflict from 1948 through today, arguing that all the major wars – in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 – could and should have been avoided. This section also includes an examination of the Cold War and its impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Part III covers the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1917 through today, and examines the prospects for a two-state or other settlement of the conflict.

Reviews:

‘This provocative book deserves careful reading by scholars, diplomats, and citizens interested in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict or its potential resolution (…) In an analysis of more than a dozen wars and major armed clashes between Israel and Arab states or Palestinian militias, Slater accentuates Israel’s missed opportunities to make peace. While the only feasible, fair settlement after the wars of 1948–1949 and 1967 would have been a two-state solution, he finds that Israel decided to pursue domination through violence against its adversaries (…) Not everyone will accept Slater’s conclusions and prescriptions, but serious students of the regional conflict must grapple with his evidence and reasoning’ – Journal of American History

 

Francesca P. Albanese and Lex Takkenberg. Palestinian Refugees in International Law, 2^nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Publisher’s description: The Palestinian refugee question, resulting from the events surrounding the birth of the state of Israel seventy years ago, remains one of the largest and most protracted refugee crises of the post-WWII era. Numbering over six million in the Middle East alone, Palestinian refugees’ status varies considerably according to the state or territory ‘hosting’ them, the UN agency assisting them and political circumstances surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict these refugees are naturally associated with. Despite being foundational to both the experience of the Palestinian refugees and the resolution of their plight, international law is often side-lined in political discussions concerning their fate. This compelling new book, building on the seminal contribution of the first edition (1998), offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of various areas of international law (including refugee law, human rights law, humanitarian law, the law relating to stateless persons, principles related to internally displaced persons, as well as notions of international criminal law), and probes their relevance to the provision of international protection for Palestinian refugees and their quest for durable solutions.

Reviews:

‘The volume, based on a prior book by Takkenberg on the topic, is divided into three parts: the historical and legal foundations of Palestinian refugees’ rights; the story of their seventy years of exile; and paths to ensuring protection and building solutions. The authors address many of the prevailing arguments on the matter with well-documented legal references, covering the origins of the Palestinian refugee community, their collective and individual rights under a multitude of laws, their state of affairs in the four corners of the world today, and the obligations of states to facilitate their well-being, protection, and realization of legally sound “durable solutions”. Some of the key issues that the book answers are ones that many Israelis and Palestinians lightly throw around today, but often lack the depth or legal framing required to gain a fuller understanding. Significantly, the authors also examine how the issue of refugees was dealt with, and ultimately damaged, by the dragged-out Middle East peace process’ – +972 Magazine

 

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner. An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Force Made a Nation (Verso, 2020)

Publisher’s description: The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who believed that ‘the whole nation is the army’. In his mind, the IDF was to be an army like no other. It was the instrument that might transform a diverse population into a new people. Since the foundation of Israel, therefore, the IDF has been the largest, richest and most influential institution in Israel’s Jewish society and is the nursery of its social, economic and political ruling class. In this fascinating history, Bresheeth charts the evolution of the IDF from the Nakba to wars in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and the continued assaults upon Gaza, and shows that the state of Israel has been formed out of its wars. He also gives an account of his own experiences as a young conscript during the 1967 war. He argues that the army is embedded in all aspects of daily life and identity. And that we should not merely see it as a fighting force enjoying an international reputation, but as the central ideological, political and financial institution of Israeli society. As a consequence, we have to reconsider our assumptions on what any kind of peace might look like.

Reviews:

‘Haim Bresheeth-Zabner has written the definitive account of Israel’s thoroughly militarized society. He offers abundant evidence to support the central argument that military considerations dominate Israeli society and have made peace in the Middle East not only un-obtainable but “positively undesirable” (…) An Army Like No Other draws on substantial research that goes beyond the narrow confines of conventional military history’ – Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs

‘In Bresheeth-Zabner’s telling, all of Israeli society, culture and history has been bent by the gravitational force of its strongest institution, the army, to a single arc – the achievement of a racially pure Jewish democracy, eventually bereft of Palestinians. This is clearly not true. Nation states are motivated by more than one ideology, forged by more than a single institution. Even more importantly, as he notes himself, ideologies evolve with the men who shape them (…) But Bresheeth-Zabner’s book, strident at times, carefully argued at others, carries on in a tradition that is absent in everyday Israel, but vibrant and deeply fought in academic circles – questioning the role of the army in shaping the Israeli psyche’ – Financial Times

 

Lutz Fiedler. Matzpen: A History of Israeli Dissidence (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)

 Publisher’s description: This book explores the history of the Israeli Socialist Organization – Matzpen (compass) – that splintered off from the Communist Party of Israel in 1962. After the Six Day War of June 1967, Matzpen shook Israeli society, calling for a withdrawal from the recently occupied territories, and placing itself outside the national consensus. Even before the war, the group emphasised the colonial dimension of the conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which was irresolvable within the paradigm of the nation-state. Matzpen instead advocated for Israel’s de-Zionisation and a socialist revolution in the Middle East in order to both restore the rights of Palestinian Arabs and guarantee the existence of Israeli Jews as a new Hebrew nation. However, in the era after Auschwitz, when the Jewish world stood in almost unanimous solidarity with the Jewish state, Matzpen’s radical perspective was at odds with the history and memory of the Holocaust. Against this backdrop, this study places Matzpen’s political stance in its historical context and sheds new light on the political culture of Israel.

Reviews:

‘The Israeli leftist group Matzpen has already been the subject of several academic investigations, but Lutz Fiedler’s new book Matzpen: A History of Israeli Dissidence makes novel and important contributions to the topic. With a mastery of the archive and a powerful feel for the history of ideas, Fiedler locates Matzpen within the field of the global New Left of the 1960s and ‘70s, drawing connections not only to Europe but to the Arab world and the decolonizing countries of Africa. The book also describes, in gripping detail, how the group emerged through a meeting of minds between ex-members of the Communist Party of Israel and young bohemians, as well as the series of splits which led to its demise as the prospects for a Middle Eastern revolution appeared to recede. Unfortunately, the narrative is hampered by a disregard for some of the complexities of the Israeli society which Matzpen sought to transform, as well as by an ideologically heavy-handed attempt to ascribe the group’s failure to its supposed denial of the lessons of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the book’s treatment of the tension between national particularism and revolutionary universalism conveys vital lessons for today’s Left, which struggles with the same questions in different form’ – Tel Aviv Review of Books

 

Yotam Gidron. Israel in Africa: Security, Migration, Interstate Politics (Zed Books, 2020)

Publisher’s description: With an examination of Africa’s authoritarian development politics, the rise of Born-Again Christianity and of Israel’s thriving high-tech and arms industries, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the migration of Africans to Israel and back again, Gidron provides a comprehensive analysis of the various forces and actors shaping Israel’s controversial relationships with countries on the continent. In particular, the book demonstrates that Israel’s interest in Africa forms part of a wider diplomatic effort, aimed at blocking Palestine’s pursuit of international recognition. Though the scale of Israeli-African engagements has been little appreciated until now, the book reveals how contemporary African and Middle Eastern politics and societies interact and impact each other in profound ways.

Reviews:

‘Gidron’s contribution is highly readable, well-organised, balanced, and packed with fascinating historical detail. On this last point, Gidron’s analysis of the years 1957-66 – what has been referred to as the “honeymoon” or “golden age” in African–Israeli diplomatic relations – will be particularly illuminating to those unfamiliar with Israel-Africa ties. The book is also refreshing in that it takes African agency seriously, with chapter four chronicling the myriad incentives African states have had to expand ties with Israel (…) Israel in Africa’s key contribution, however, is that it captures the historical continuities and discontinuities in Israel’s relations with the continent. (…) What has stayed the same, the book shows, are the security logics that have often bound Israel and Africa together and at times pulled them apart: the Arab-Israeli rivalry, the issue of Palestine, Iran, migration management, and the long-standing need for fragile African regimes to secure patronage. By contrast, what has changed over the decades is that the civilian institutions of the Israeli state, and the Israeli state itself, have become far less central to how Israel engages Africa. (…) Into the breach have stepped a range of non-state actors, including private corporations and commercial networks closely tied to the Israeli security state, religious groups, and Israeli NGOs. (…) Israel in Africa is an excellent book that deserves wide-readership’ – African Arguments

 

Rashid Khalidi. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Metropolitan Books, 2020)

Publisher’s description: In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone”. Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members – mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists – The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

Reviews:

‘Drawing on family archives and stories passed down through the generations, his own experience in negotiations among Palestinian factions and with the Israelis, and the more conventional tools of the professional historian, Khalidi constructs a powerful argument about the nature of the Zionist claim to Palestine, framing it as a late instance of the settler colonialism that characterized much of British and, later, American imperialism. Not every reader will be comfortable with all of Khalidi’s arguments: few of the protagonists, on any side, come off well, and many Americans would cringe at the idea that they were complicit in imperialist expropriation and domination. But no one who cares about the Middle East’s central conflict can afford to ignore this perspective, and all policymakers need to grapple with its implications. This book pre­sents the most cogent, comprehensive, and compelling account yet of this struggle from the Palestinian vantage point, and it deserves a wide audience’ – Foreign Affairs

‘Khalidi’s multi-layered navigation and intertwined perspective masterfully integrates bottom-up socio-cultural and political history with top-down geostrategic analysis. The balance between the broader and the focused remains, admirably, guarded throughout the book (…) Many Palestinians and Israelis would read this book with frustration, each for different reasons. For Palestinians, Khalidi’s account is bitter because it re-narrates the disastrous failures, mismanagement, and divisions of their leadership from the time of the British Mandate right up until today. Sharply and unapologetically, traditional leaders, parties, and notables of Mandate Palestine are held accountable; their strategies against the Zionist project and the British, as well as their internal feuds, are scrutinized and exposed. Likewise, and even more critically, Khalidi exposes the PLO’s strategies and tactics both within the armed struggle and the “peace negotiations.” For many Israelis (and Americans), stressing the colonial surrogate nature of the Zionist project is morally unsettling and politically provocative’ – Jadaliyya

 

Matthew Hughes. Britain’s Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936-1939 (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Publisher’s description: In this complete military history of Britain’s pacification of the Arab revolt in Palestine, Matthew Hughes shows how the British Army was so devastatingly effective against colonial rebellion. The Army had a long tradition of pacification to draw upon to support operations, underpinned by the creation of an emergency colonial state in Palestine. After conquering Palestine in 1917, the British established a civil Government that ruled by proclamation and, without any local legislature, the colonial authorities codified in law norms of collective punishment that the Army used in 1936. The Army used ‘lawfare’, emergency legislation enabled by the colonial state, to grind out the rebellion. Soldiers with support from the RAF launched kinetic operations to search and destroy rebel bands, alongside which the villagers on whom the rebels depended were subjected to curfews, fines, detention, punitive searches, demolitions and reprisals. Rebels were disorganised and unable to withstand the power of such pacification measures.

Reviews:

‘The richness of this important book comes as much from private correspondence, diaries, regimental archives and in-house unit newsletters as it does from high-level military and colonial office records. Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of ‘primitive rebels’ is invoked to characterise the Arabs as a movement rather than an organisation, parochial rather than national, a ‘rural peasant-based insurgency.’ Arabic sources make clear that urban-rural divisions were hugely damaging. Carefully-honed British ‘divide and rule’ strategies worked – but against an already divided community. The officially-backed ‘peace bands’ (fasail as-salam) were the peak of collaboration in 1938. Hughes makes the important point that after 1945, when Jewish resistance to the Palestine Mandate began in earnest, the British never managed to split the Jews. British military and administrative superiority was overwhelming. ‘Only superbly-organised, united and ruthless guerrilla resistance could undercut such powerful civil military structures, and Palestinians fought with determination and little else, and often against each other,’ he concludes. The main effect of that defeat was to shatter the Palestinians for the existential war, known as the nakba, that they lost a decade later’ – LSE Review of Books

 

Andrew Ross. Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel (Verso, 2019) 

Publisher’s description: ‘They demolish our houses while we build theirs’. This is how a Palestinian stonemason, in line at a checkpoint outside a Jerusalem suburb, described his life to Andrew Ross. Palestinian ‘stone men’, utilizing some of the best quality dolomitic limestone deposits in the world and drawing on generations of artisanal knowledge, have built almost every state in the Middle East except their own. Today the business of quarrying, cutting, fabrication, and dressing is Palestine’s largest employer and generator of revenue, supplying the construction industry in Israel, along with other Middle East countries and even more overseas. Drawing on hundreds of interviews in Palestine and Israel, Ross’s engrossing, surprising, and gracefully written story of this fascinating, ancient trade shows how the stones of Palestine, and Palestinian labour, have been used to build out the state of Israel – in the process, constructing ‘facts on the ground’ – even while the industry is central to Palestinians’ own efforts to erect bulwarks against the Occupation. For decades, the hands that built Israel’s houses, schools, offices, bridges, and even its separation barriers have been Palestinian. Looking at the Palestine-Israel conflict in a new light, this book asks how this record of achievement and labour can be recognized.

Reviews:

‘Stone Men can be dry, lithic even, but it consistently provides insights into the troubled and troubling relationships between Israelis and Palestinians that are hard to come by elsewhere. Above all, it is a history of labour (…) The most painful sections of Stone Men – and the ones in which I most wished he would slow down and allow his interlocutors to emerge with more nuance and detail – draw on his interviews with Palestinian workers’ (…) Still, he repeatedly advances the contention that, in any prospective “final status” agreement, the work Palestinians have done building Israel should be taken into account, “that Palestinians have earned civil and political rights through their cumulative labour”. It is an unfortunate argument, employing a logic that Ross acknowledges has been used frequently by “settler-colonialists … to justify their expropriation of land from indigenous people”, that rights to land are gained only through its “improvement”. Contingent on denying the validity of any pre-Zionist Palestinian presence in the region, it repeats the historical erasure that Ross, in all but a few paragraphs of this volume, documents with such insight and dedication’ – Guardian

 

Tom Segev. A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019)

Publisher’s description: Ben-Gurion remains an enigma – he could be driven and imperious, or quizzical and confounding. In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around the man. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels, and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades. Along the way, Segev reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion’s secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel’s independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbours, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional ‘nutty moments’ – from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. (…) Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but rather a historical actor who belongs in the company of Lenin or Churchill – a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.

Reviews:

‘Tom Segev’s biography of the founding father of Israel is a deeply researched and insightful work (…) Segev’s work is underpinned by six previous books and he has drawn on masses of archival material, some of it never available before. He excels at combining a densely sourced and detailed narrative with trenchant judgements on the existential issues Ben-Gurion was involved in, often contradicting the leader’s self-serving version’ – New Statesman

‘Segev met Ben-Gurion once, in 1968, when he interviewed him at his home in Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev, for a Hebrew University student newspaper. Ben-Gurion was 82, but he was ‘still sharp and radiated power’. Segev, now 74, has spent four decades exploring Ben-Gurion’s impact on Israel, in a body of work that has no equal either for the brilliance of his storytelling or the ironies of his analysis. He is neither a sentimental apologist for Ben-Gurion nor a crusading dethroner in the style of the New Historians with whom he has often been grouped. He is, rather, a student of power, and is at once fascinated and horrified by what he sees’ – London Review of Books

 

Seth Anziska. Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Publisher’s description: Based on newly declassified international sources, Preventing Palestine charts the emergence of the Middle East peace process, including the establishment of a separate track to deal with the issue of Palestine. At the very start of this process, Anziska argues, Egyptian-Israeli peace came at the expense of the sovereignty of the Palestinians, whose aspirations for a homeland alongside Israel faced crippling challenges. With the introduction of the idea of restrictive autonomy, Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the chances for Palestinian statehood narrowed even further. The first Intifada in 1987 and the end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for a Palestinian state, but many players, refusing to see Palestinians as a nation or a people, continued to steer international diplomacy away from their cause. Combining astute political analysis, extensive original research, and interviews with diplomats, military veterans, and communal leaders, Preventing Palestine offers a bold new interpretation of a highly charged struggle for self-determination.

Reviews:

‘Preventing Palestine’s core argument is focused on the Camp David accords presided over by Jimmy Carter in 1978, which led the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, to agree to relinquish the Sinai to Egypt, in exchange for Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat’s promise to end the state of war and recognize the state of Israel. This was widely seen as both a great triumph for Carter and the single greatest leap toward peace in the Middle East since the end of the six-day war. Anziska has a different view. He finds the roots of the decades-long standoff that followed Camp David in Sadat’s preoccupation with regaining the Sinai, which allowed Begin to accelerate the settlements of the West Bank, a process which has continued unabated. He thinks the Egyptian president’s willingness to negotiate over the amorphous goal of Palestinian “autonomy” is at the heart of the stalemate which has prevailed (…) Anziska has made a major contribution to the history of this conflict’ – Guardian

 

Phyllis Bennis. Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer, 7^th ed. (Olive Branch Press, 2018)

Publisher’s description: If you have ever wondered ‘Why is there so much violence in the Middle East?’, ‘Who are the Palestinians?’, ‘What are the occupied territories?’ or ‘What does Israel want?’, then this is the book for you. With straightforward language, Bennis, longtime analyst of the region, answers basic questions about Israel and Israelis, Palestine and Palestinians, the US and the Middle East, Zionism and anti-Semitism; about complex issues ranging from the Oslo peace process to the election of Hamas to the Goldstone Report and Trump’s plan to move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Together her answers provide a comprehensive understanding of the longstanding Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This new edition includes sections on the continuing settlement crisis, Palestine in the Arab Spring, BDS and the Palestinian nonviolent movements, an update on Gaza, US-Israel relations after the election of Donald Trump as president and what’s ahead.

Reviews:

‘This short handbook can be read in an evening. It really is hand-sized, fitting in the palm. The language in it is so clear, it could be written for a non-English speaker or a school child. It was published in 2007. This subject is so fraught with emotion and intention it is difficult to just get the facts. In fact, this conflict may be the perfect place to begin to understand how “facts” are slippery things. Bennis has an opinion, but she is very good at tamping down the rhetoric and writing quietly. If you have read any of Bennis’ other works, you will find she tries to answer the most pressing questions people have first. That is, she will try to simply explain why there is fighting, or why suicide bombers appear on only side in the conflict. Her answers will raise more questions, which she tries to answer by going broader in the region and deeper into history. It is an organic method of setting out the issues and has the value of always providing at least a partial answer before we become overloaded with detail’ – The Bowed Bookshelf

 

Ronen Bergman. Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (Random House, 2018)

Publisher’s description: The Talmud says: ‘If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first’. This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes pre-emptively. In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman – praised by David Remnick as ‘arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter’ – offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions.

Reviews:

‘Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations is a remarkable work of nonfiction. Written like a fast-paced thriller, it provides a detailed history and analysis of almost all of Israel’s major (successful and unsuccessful) attempts to assassinate its presumed enemies. These include the killing of Abu Jihad, the PLO’s de facto military chief; the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s chief ideologue and spiritual mentor; the murder of Imad Mughnieh, the brain behind Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli targets; and many other lesser-known figures. It also includes accounts of the assassination of several Iranian nuclear scientists, which Israeli intelligence agencies undertook in order to derail Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. Bergman even hints at Israel’s complicity in Yasser Arafat’s death, although he refuses to endorse or refute this conclusion. The only major adversary that Israel has not been able to kill despite its best efforts is Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah (…) By the end of the book, one begins to wonder how and why the Israeli censors, who have often been at loggerheads with Bergman, allowed the publication of this tell-all book, since it portrays Israel in a negative light as a leading perpetrator of state terrorism. In fact, Bergman admits Israel’s culpability at the very beginning of the book when he writes, “Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world”. As one reads the book, one is left to wonder whether the book was published primarily to communicate to Israel’s adversaries that no one who crosses Israel’s path, now or in the future, is safe. In Bergman’s words, “The goal of deterrence is as important as the goal of preempting specific hostile acts.” In short, Bashar al-Assad beware!’ – National Interest

 

Michael Brenner. In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Publisher’s description: Many Zionists who advocated the creation of a Jewish state envisioned a nation like any other. Yet for Israel’s founders, the state that emerged against all odds in 1948 was anything but ordinary. Born from the ashes of genocide and a long history of suffering, Israel was conceived to be unique, a model society and the heart of a prosperous new Middle East. It is this paradox, says historian Michael Brenner – the Jewish people’s wish for a homeland both normal and exceptional – that shapes Israel’s ongoing struggle to define itself and secure a place among nations. In Search of Israel is a major new history of this struggle from the late nineteenth century to our time. When Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897, no single solution to the problem of ‘normalizing’ the Jewish people emerged. Herzl proposed a secular-liberal ‘New Society’ that would be home to Jews and non-Jews alike. East European Zionists advocated the renewal of the Hebrew language and the creation of a distinct Jewish culture. Socialists imagined a society of workers’ collectives and farm settlements. The Orthodox dreamt of a society based on the laws of Jewish scripture. The stage was set for a clash of Zionist dreams and Israeli realities that continues today. Seventy years after its founding, Israel has achieved much, but for a state widely viewed as either a paragon or a pariah, Brenner argues, the goal of becoming a state like any other remains elusive.

Reviews:

‘It is a rare history that compels the reader to think constantly about the present and even about the future. But that is what the historian Michael Brenner has accomplished in this meticulous journey through the labyrinth of yearning that has led to the modern State of Israel (…) In Search of Israel is especially illuminating on the pre-state period, and even well-informed readers are likely to find revealing nuggets, as when Vienna’s chief rabbi visited Theodor Herzl’s home and “caught Herzl lighting the candles on his Christmas tree”, Brenner says. In his diary, Herzl wrote that the rabbi “seemed upset by the ‘Christian’ custom. Well, I will not let myself be pressured!”’ – Moment

 

Norman G. Finkelstein. Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom (University of California Press, 2018)

Publisher’s description: The Gaza Strip is among the most densely populated places in the world. More than two-thirds of its inhabitants are refugees, and more than half are under eighteen years of age. Since 2004, Israel has launched eight devastating ‘operations’ against Gaza’s largely defenceless population. Thousands have perished, and tens of thousands have been left homeless. In the meantime, Israel has subjected Gaza to a merciless illegal blockade. What has befallen Gaza is a man-made humanitarian disaster. Based on scores of human rights reports, Finkelstein’s new book presents a meticulously researched inquest into Gaza’s martyrdom. He shows that although Israel has justified its assaults in the name of self-defence, in fact these actions constituted flagrant violations of international law. But Finkelstein also documents that the guardians of international law (…) ultimately failed Gaza. One of his most disturbing conclusions is that, after Judge Richard Goldstone’s humiliating retraction of his UN report, human rights organizations succumbed to the Israeli juggernaut. Finkelstein’s magnum opus is both a monument to Gaza’s martyrs and an act of resistance against the forgetfulness of history.

Reviews:

‘The sub-title of Gaza points to its two most striking qualities. As the word “inquest” indicates, the book is a meticulously detailed, logically-argued legal inquiry into the facts in order to come as close as possible to the truth. But the highly emotive word “martyrdom” points to Gaza’s other aspect: an impassioned anger at injustice and lies – a searing indignation reminiscent of the Hebrew Prophets. The unusual synthesis of these two qualities has always characterised Finkelstein’s work; but in Gaza each aspect reaches a higher level than ever before, because Palestinian martyrdom has never before reached such a peak of desperation nor has Israel ever before sunk into such an abyss of barbarism. Never before has Finkelstein deployed logical analysis and international law to such devastating effect; never before has his writing reached such heights of impassioned outrage. The combination means that the book is itself a precision-guided missile – brilliant, white-hot and accurately annihilating its intended targets’ – JJP signatory Deborah H. Maccoby

 

Ilan Pappé. Israel (Routledge, 2018)

Publisher’s description: Israel is not the only ‘new’ state around, but it is one of the few states whose legitimacy is still questioned, and its future affects the future of the Middle East as a whole and probably the stability of the international system all together. The reasons for this unique reality lies in its past and the particular historical circumstances of its birth. This book seeks to update analysis of the political history, contemporary politics, economics and foreign policy of this unique state. The first part of the book provides a general history of Israel since its inception until 2000. This general history evolves around the political development of the state, beginning with its origins in the early Zionist history (1882-1948) and ending with the turn of the century. The second part focuses on three contemporary aspects of present-day Israel: its political economy, its culture and its international relations. An epilogue describes Israel’s complex international image today and its impact on the state and its future. Providing a solid infrastructure from which readers can form their own opinions, this book offers a fresh perspective on developments both on the ground and in recent scholarship, and is essential reading for students, journalists and policy makers with an interest in Middle Eastern History, Jewish Studies and Israel Studies.

Reviews: none yet available

 

Jesse Bier. Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge (MIT Press, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Maps are widely believed to be objective, and data-rich computer-made maps are iconic examples of digital knowledge. It is often claimed that digital maps, and rational boundaries, can solve political conflict. But in Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine, Jess Bier challenges the view that digital maps are universal and value-free. She examines the ways that maps are made in Palestine and Israel to show how social and political landscapes shape the practice of science and technology. How can two scientific cartographers look at the same geographic feature and see fundamentally different things? In part, Bier argues, because knowledge about the Israeli military occupation is shaped by the occupation itself. Ongoing injustices – including checkpoints, roadblocks, and summary arrests – mean that Palestinian and Israeli cartographers have different experiences of the landscape. Palestinian forms of empirical knowledge, including maps, continue to be discounted. Bier examines three representative cases of population, governance, and urban maps. She analyses Israeli population maps from 1967 to 1995, when Palestinian areas were left blank; Palestinian state maps of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which were influenced by Israeli raids on Palestinian offices and the legacy of British colonial maps; and urban maps after the Second Intifada, which show how segregated observers produce dramatically different maps of the same area.

Reviews:

‘In her insightful ethnography of cartography (…) Bier embarks on an exploration of the history, practice, and implications of conducting geographic research in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Bier’s main thesis challenges the notion of impartiality in geography (…) Using the locations of various historic and present-day researchers, NGOs, and governmental authorities in the landscape, Bier problematizes our continued reliance on technology and the limitations of objectivity in the practice of mapping, now commonly referred to as GIS (geographic information sciences)’ – Journal of Palestine Studies

 

Ian Black. Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 (Penguin, 2017)

Publisher’s description: A century after Britain’s Balfour Declaration promised a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine, veteran Guardian journalist Black has produced a major new history of one of the most polarising conflicts of the modern age. Drawing on a wide range of sources – from declassified documents to oral testimonies and his own decades of reporting – Enemies and Neighbours brings much-needed perspective and balance to the long and unresolved struggle between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land. Beginning in the final years of Ottoman rule and the British Mandate period, when Zionist immigration transformed Palestine in the face of mounting Arab opposition, the book re-examines the origins of what was a doomed relationship from the start. It sheds fresh light on critical events such as the Arab rebellion of the 1930s; Israel’s independence and the Palestinian catastrophe (Nakba in Arabic) of 1948; the watershed of the 1967 war; two Intifadas; the Oslo Accords and Israel’s shift to the right. It traces how – after five decades of occupation, ever-expanding Jewish settlements and the construction of the West Bank ‘separation wall’ – hopes for a two-state solution have all but disappeared, and explores what the future might hold.

Reviews:

‘Enemies and Neighbours will not make easy reading for partisans on either side. Narratives are meticulously broken down and reshaped by inconvenient facts (…) Unlike previous histories of the conflict, this pays less attention to the diplomatic affairs of the world powers that played a role in the region and in Arab-Israeli relations. For some readers, this will feel like a drawback, but its relentless focus on Israelis and Palestinians, to the near exclusion of other players, is one of its strengths’ – Guardian 

‘Black is a journalist by trade, rather than an historian, but his book is stronger on scholarship than it is on dramatic drive, or what reporters call “colour”’. This is a meticulous, blow-by-blow chronicle of the events of the past hundred years in the Holy Land, drawing as scrupulously as its author can on sources from both sides of the conflict’ – Irish Times 

 

David Cronin. Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel (Pluto Press, 2017)

Publisher’s description: This is the controversial history of the British government’s involvement in the Zionist project, from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the present day. Written by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, the Declaration stated ‘His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object’. Its impact on history has been immense and still reverberates a century later, starting what has been referred to as a hundred years of war against the Palestinian people. This history focuses on the devastating events which resulted from the Declaration, such as the Arab Revolt, the Nakba and establishment of the state, the 1956 and 1967 wars, the Cold War and the Oslo period.

Reviews: 

‘Cronin demonstrates not only how brutal and racist were the policies pursued by Britain to, in the words of the declaration, “facilitate the achievement” of Zionist objectives in Palestine, but also how these policies continued even after the establishment of Israel … [T]hrough a meticulous analysis of British archival sources, Cronin presents an insightful chronological account of British support for Zionism and Israel in the past century’ – Journal of Palestine Studies

 

Gary Fields. Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror (University of California Press, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Enclosure marshals bold new arguments about the nature of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. Fields examines the dispossession of Palestinians from their land—and Israel’s rationale for seizing control of Palestinian land – in the contexts of a broad historical analysis of power and space and of an enduring discourse about land improvement. Focusing on the English enclosures (…), Amerindian dispossession in colonial America, and Palestinian land loss, Fields shows how exclusionary landscapes have emerged across time and geography. Evidence that the same moral, legal, and cartographic arguments were used by enclosers of land in very different historical environments challenges Israel’s current claim that it is uniquely beleaguered. This comparative framework also helps readers in the US and the UK understand the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in the context of their own histories.

Reviews:

‘The story of the transformation of the land in Palestine/Israel from the Ottoman period to the present takes up much of Fields’s book. But he tells it in a larger setting, tracing the idea of “enclosure” through England and North America before arriving at his discussion of the Palestinian landscape. What has happened there, he argues, belongs to a “lineage of dispossession” that can be followed back “to the practice of overturning systems of rights to land stemming from the enclosures in early modern England.” He describes at length how maps, property law, and landscape architecture were enlisted by modernizers from the seventeenth century onward in the Zionist practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to “gain control of land from existing landholders and remake life on the landscape consistent with their modernizing aims” (…) Reading Enclosure brings home the tragedy of such immense and irrevocable destruction. The sad truth is that the creation of gated communities and walled states is spreading well beyond the three regions he discusses and is fast becoming the norm in today’s world’ – New York Review of Books

 

Katharina Galor. Finding Jerusalem: Archaeology Between Science and Ideology (University of California Press, 2017; free download here)

Publisher’s description: Archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem capture worldwide attention in various media outlets. The continuing quest to discover the city’s physical remains is not simply an attempt to define Israel’s past or determine its historical legacy. In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is also an attempt to legitimate—or undercut—national claims to sovereignty. Bridging the ever-widening gap between popular coverage and specialized literature, Finding Jerusalem provides a comprehensive tour of the politics of archaeology in the city. Through a wide-ranging discussion of the material evidence, Galor illuminates the complex legal contexts and ethical precepts that underlie archaeological activity and the discourse of “cultural heritage” in Jerusalem. This book addresses the pressing need to disentangle historical documentation from the religious aspirations, social ambitions, and political commitments that shape its interpretation.

Reviews:

‘This is a courageous book. It describes and analyses what all archaeologists, when investigating ancient Jerusalem, are talking about – but not writing. Galor starts where other professional publications never arrive, even the author’s own earlier works (…) A must read for all professionals engaged in the field of cultural heritage and for everybody interested in Jerusalem. I highly recommend the book also as a complementary reading for biblical scholars and archaeologists of the Middle East, and for everybody who wants to learn about the reasons for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’ – International Journal of Middle East Studies

 

Guy Laron. The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East (Yale University Press, 2017)

Publisher’s description: An enthralling, big-picture history that examines the Six-Day War, its causes, and its enduring consequences against its global context (…) Many scholars have documented how the Six-Day War unfolded, but little has been done to explain why the conflict happened at all. As we approach its fiftieth anniversary, Guy Laron refutes the widely accepted belief that the war was merely the result of regional friction, revealing the crucial roles played by American and Soviet policies in the face of an encroaching global economic crisis, and restoring Syria’s often overlooked centrality to events leading up to the hostilities (…) In this important new work, Laron’s fresh interdisciplinary perspective and extensive archival research offer a significant reassessment of a conflict – and the trigger-happy generals behind it – that continues to shape the modern world.

Reviews:

‘Those who want to understand the conditions that led to the Six-Day War will find a good account, better than most earlier ones, in Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East. Laron examines the shifting configurations that preceded, and in some ways determined, the outbreak of the war: these included Lyndon Johnson’s stark turn away from John F. Kennedy’s policy of dialogue with and strong economic support for Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt (Nasser had promised Kennedy to keep the Israeli–Arab situation “cool” as the quid pro quo) and Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin’s increasingly belligerent moves toward Syria. Rabin, according to Laron, wanted to go to war with Syria and took every opportunity to push the Israeli cabinet in this direction in the critical months of spring 1967’ – New York Review of Books 

 

Albert Londres. The Wandering Jew Has Arrived (Gefen, 2017; first published 1930)

Publisher’s description: In 1929 Albert Londres, a non-Jew and renowned journalist, set out to document the lives of Jews at this time. His travels to England, Eastern Europe and finally Palestine produced the literary masterpiece, The Wandering Jew has Arrived. In the East End of London, Londres is moved by the unswerving faith of the Jews. In Eastern Europe he is astounded by the misery and plight he witnesses. The bleak picture is redeemed by his gentle humour, sharp observations and the unforgettable portraits he paints of the exotic individuals he encounters along his way. Londres vividly depicts the birth of Zionism and the wave of pogroms that propelled Jewish immigration to Palestine at the turn of the 20th century. In Palestine, he discovers the new ‘metamorphosed’ Jew, and his succinct, harrowing descriptions of the Arab massacres of the Jews of Hebron and Safed expose an age-old animosity that is still very much alive today. Presciently, Londres’ investigation provides startling insight into how the unthinkable – the Holocaust – could happen, sweeping across Europe barely a decade after the publication of his book. His evocative, passionately and very personally told story transports readers back to a pivotal moment in history and offers an invaluable perspective on Jewish life in the early twentieth century, on the nascent days of the State of Israel, and on the ongoing strife that has engulfed the region ever since. The Wandering Jew Has Arrived is as relevant today as when first penned.

Review by JJP signatory Deborah H. Maccoby:

Albert Londres was a famous French investigative journalist – the model for Hergé’s intrepid cartoon reporter Tintin. France’s highest award for journalism is called the Albert Londres Prize. Londres travelled the world exposing suffering and persecution; he wrote ‘Our profession is not to give pleasure or to do harm; it is to twist the pen into the wound’.

In 1929, Londres decided to investigate the Jews. The book that resulted is still widely read in France but the one English translation in 1932 quickly went out of print. Now The Wandering Jew Has Arrived has been retranslated into English by an Israeli and published in Jerusalem.

Londres begins in England,  land of the Balfour Declaration, but his interest is not in the settled Western Jews. He soon sets off to find   the ghettoised, persecuted Jews of Eastern Europe – the Wandering Jews of sub-Carpathian Russia, Bessarabia, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Poland. We encounter their horrifying conditions – extreme poverty, freezing cold, famine and atrocities carried out by Cossacks during pogroms.

Londres’ depictions contradict the current tendency to see Zionism as solely a settler-colonial movement; they enable the modern reader to understand why Zionism was seen by its early adherents as a solution, especially because – as Londres writes in relation to Polish Jews — ‘the United States and Canada have just closed their doors to them. Argentina demands 150 dollars. France makes it difficult’.

But the deeply religious Eastern European Jews he meets are not interested in Zionism. Londres asks a rabbi from Galicia (Poland/Ukraine) who has come to the East End of London to collect funds for his starving people – what he thinks of the Balfour Declaration. The reply is: ‘Mr Balfour is a lord, not a messiah’. These rabbis and their disciples are waiting for the Messiah who is not the assimilated atheist Theodor Herzl either.

In Kishinev, Londres meets a young pioneer from Palestine, trying in vain to interest the rabbis in Zionism. The Zionist exclaims in frustration: ‘Whoever put the idea of the Messiah into their heads…..By dint of waiting for him, they will all end up slaughtered. They are like the inhabitants of Stromboli, waiting for the volcano to erupt!’ To which Londres replies ‘you number fourteen million….you cannot all go and live in Palestine’.

Londres admires the fearless bearing of the young Zionist which contrasts so strongly with that of the fearful East European Jews: ‘His chest is not slumped; he stands straight, with proud shoulders. As he crosses the streets, he does not cast his eyes warily in every direction or quicken his steps…’.

He is critical of the Hassidic Jews’ submissiveness towards their Christian persecutors and their ruling rabbis yet also filled with awe at the reverence they give towards their sacred books, the Torah and the Talmud, the intricate rabbinical arguments over the correct interpretation of the Torah. This devotion reveals the secret of the survival of the Wandering Jew: the sacred books provide a home, a secure belonging of the mind. The Torah, says Londres ‘is their national flag, their patriotic hymn, their unknown soldier’. In a village synagogue – a wretched, broken-down shack – ‘the ecstatic gaze of those hollow Jews rose towards the Ark of the Torah. Of what import the misery of the dwelling? The treasure is up there!’

In Warsaw, Londres visits the Mesivta, the ‘great seminary of world Jewry’. Here 587 rabbinical students study ‘to the point of exhaustion, aberration and, one can even say without exaggeration, hallucination….it was not at all ridiculous, but very beautiful, moving, imbued with majesty and as respectable as madness’. It is made even more moving by our knowledge that in ten years this world will be annihilated.

Londres then embarks for Palestine, where he is enraptured by the new Jews of Zionism: ‘A revolution passed before my eyes. Where are my caftans, my beards, my sidelocks? Here are my Jews: heads uncovered, clean-shaven, with open collars, firm steps and chests raised high in the air…. From time to time, an extraordinary creature appears: a caftan, a beard, curls! As they pass him, the others discreetly shrug their shoulders. Who is this ghost?’

But for the first time the enmity of the Palestinian Arabs has been aroused against the Jews. They had not opposed the mainly religious refugees from Eastern Europe who, under the aegis of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, had established agricultural settlements within Ottoman Palestine. It was the Balfour Declaration that roused the anger of Palestinian Arabs because, as Londres points out, it reneged on Britain’s promise to the Arabs: ‘If victory [in the first world war] fell to the British, they promised to establish an Arab kingdom…victory came…the Arab kingdom vanished. Israel took its place’.

Londres however is on the side of ‘my Jews’. He rhapsodises over the achievements of the European Zionist pioneers in taming ‘the wild land’, as though the land was uncultivated before their arrival (the common European myth that has been exposed by modern scholars – for instance, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal in Palestinians: The Making of a People, Londres does not stop to find this out: ‘Doctors, teachers, lawyers, painters, poets all set out to tame the wild land with pickaxes and shovels. While one should acknowledge that the Arabs inhabited this land for centuries, it should also be noted that they did not complete the work. They lived here in the way beautiful wild creatures inhabit the jungle’.

He devotes a chapter to the 1929 massacres of Jews in Safed and Hebron, carried out by Palestinians. Despite his colonial mind-set and strong bias towards the Jews, Londres is too clear-eyed an observer not to link these massacres to the Palestinian awareness that the goal of Political Zionism is to possess the whole land.

According to Londres the Zionist Jews had become arrogant and done ‘stupid things’. Muslims had made repairs to the wall and alley adjoining the Western Wall through which Arabs walked with their donkeys while Jews were praying. In retaliation, ‘Around four hundred Young Jews proudly made their way to the Wall’ and ‘raised the blue-and-white flag, the new standard of the Land of Israel’. Londres calls this ‘the least diplomatic and most ill-advised act committed by the Jews since their return to Palestine… The impatience and pride of the young fellows handed the enemy the opportunity they were waiting for’.

This action took place – August 1929 – a month after the 16th Zionist Congress in Zurich, which, he writes, made clear the Zionist aim to gain ‘all of Palestine’. This triggered the riots that led to the Hebron and Safed massacres. To Londres it’s not the Zionist aim of gaining possession of the whole land that’s at fault, merely their manner of going about it: ‘Your old wanderer’s stick became haughty, like a halberd…. you let it drop coldly on the feet of the Arabs…What did your neighbour, the dear Arab, do?… He drew close, on tiptoe, and while you were vaunting your glory, he clobbered you in the neck’.

The book ends with Londres watching Jews on Rosh Hashonah (the Jewish New Year) carrying out the symbolic custom of casting into the sea the dust and debris from their pockets. Londres comments: ‘As long as they do not forget to drown their excess pride, everything will end well’.

Which it has clearly not. Zionists have commonly displayed excess pride although the central reason for the failure of the dominant, nationalist form of Zionism is the drive to gain the whole land – a goal that Londres does not condemn.

The great irony of this book is that the ultra-religious Jews – Londres’ ‘ghost’ of the ghetto past – nowadays set the agenda. Israel has become a ghetto state, immuring Jews and Palestinians inside a fortress wall and has produced a modern ghetto Jew, indifferent to the world beyond. The fundamentalist rabbis of the settlements believe the Messiah’s arrival is imminent. They abuse the treasured holy books in order to persecute in their turn.

A final note: Londres repeats the Zionist myth that the Romans expelled Jews from Palestine in 70CE after the destruction of the Temple. As Shlomo Sand points out in The Invention of the Jewish People, scholars have always known there was no expulsion; the Romans never deported whole peoples. The majority of Jews were already settled outside the Land of Israel by the first century CE and most of the Diaspora communities were made up of converts.

Londres shaped his book on the idea of the Wandering and Arrived Jew, perhaps a subconscious recall of antisemitic Christian ideas of Jews.  He writes, in relation to the Christian persecution of Jews, ‘And so the new passion of the Jews began. The cross that they had hewed for Jesus began to hound them’.

It could be reformulated as ‘From the accursed, suffering Wandering Jew to the redeemed, forgiven Arrived Jew’.

 

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan. Seizing Jerusalem: The Architectures of Universal Unification (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

Publisher’s description: After seizing Jerusalem’s eastern precincts from Jordan at the conclusion of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel unilaterally unified the city and plunged into an ambitious building program, eager to transform the very meaning of one of the world’s most emotionally charged urban spaces. The goal was as simple as it was controversial: to both Judaize and modernize Jerusalem. Seizing Jerusalem chronicles how numerous disciplines, including architecture, landscape design, and urban planning, as well as everyone from municipal politicians to state bureaucrats, from Israeli-born architects to international luminaries such as Louis Kahn, Buckminster Fuller, and Bruno Zevi, competed to create Jerusalem’s new image. This decade-long competition happened with the Palestinian residents still living in the city, even as the new image was inspired by the city’s Arab legacy. (…) Drawing on previously unexamined archival documents and in-depth interviews with architects, planners, and politicians, Nitzan-Shiftan analyses the cultural politics of the Israeli state and, in particular, of Jerusalem’s influential mayor, Teddy Kollek, whose efforts to legitimate Israeli rule over Jerusalem provided architects a unique, real-world laboratory to explore the possibilities and limits of modernist design – as built form as well as political and social action.

Reviews:

‘Alona Nitzan-Shiftan’s new book on the history of a city about which so much has been written seems timely and relevant, as does the use of the present participle in its title. Seizing Jerusalem suggests the immediacy and the driving currency of the ancient city’s still seething past. Among other resources, Nitzan-Shiftan’s examination makes use of recently accessed archival documents to recount the ambitious building program initiated in the weeks following the Six Day War, when, after seizing East Jerusalem from Jordanian control, the Israeli government decided unilaterally to unify the eastern and western halves of the city. Seizing Jerusalem traces the battles that ensued among an array of planners, architects, and their municipal and state bureaucratic counterparts in the decade after 1967, whose aim was to assert a compelling and legible architectural idiom for the newly unified Israeli capital’ – International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments

 

Ilan Pappé. Ten Myths about Israel (Verso, 2017)

Publisher’s description: In this groundbreaking book (…) Ilan Pappé examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. The “ten myths” that Pappé explores—repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, accepted without question by the world’s governments—reinforce the regional status quo. He explores the claim that Palestine was an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration, as well as the formation of Zionism and its role in the early decades of nation building. He asks whether the Palestinians voluntarily left their homeland in 1948, and whether June 1967 was a war of ‘no choice’. Turning to the myths surrounding the failures of the Camp David Accords and the official reasons for the attacks on Gaza, Pappé explains why the two-state solution is no longer viable.

Reviews:

‘Since Ilan Pappé completed his book, Israel has moved even further away from a two state solution. The ruling Likud Party’s central committee, early in 2018, endorsed a resolution calling for the annexation of the West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Netanyahu no longer speaks of the establishment of a Palestinian state. The very idea of a Palestinian state ever coming into existence is rejected by Israel’s current government. To understand how we have come to this point, and to consider how, in the face of the latest developments, we can look forward to a more hopeful future, this important book by Ilan Pappé is essential reading. Abandoning myths and confronting reality is an important first step forward’ – Mondoweiss

 

Ilan Pappé. The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories (Oneworld, 2017)

Publisher’s description: Pappé offers a comprehensive exploration of one of the world’s most prolonged and tragic conflicts. Using recently declassified archival material, Pappé analyses the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians – and the decision-making process itself – that laid the foundation of the occupation. From a survey of the legal and bureaucratic infrastructures that were put in place to control the population of over one million Palestinians, to the security mechanisms that vigorously enforced that control, Pappé paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world’s largest ‘open prison’.

Reviews:

‘Over 13 chapters Pappé argues that – rooted in a Zionist ethos committed to the purging of as many Palestinians from the Holy Land as possible and the caging of the rest – Israel systematically planned an elaborate set of legal, political, and physical constraints to lock the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to prevent them from achieving self-determination, or even basic human and civil rights. The text is useful for providing information on different periods of Israeli history and on some of the policy discussions that took place in Israel in response to the various wars and events in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. But beyond these, the book’s contributions are limited by three weaknesses: first, by the underlying assumption of Israeli guilt and malice; second, by ignoring the controversial nature of the topic and thus giving the reader an imbalanced assessment of the issues; and third, by the inability to see beyond the despair of the moment to something better or even different’ – Middle East Journal

 

Bernard Regan. The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine (Verso, 2017)

Publisher’s description: A hundred years after its signing, Bernard Regan recasts the history of the Balfour Declaration as one of the major events in the story of the Middle East. Offering new insights into the imperial rivalries between Britain, Germany and the Ottomans, Regan exposes British policy in the region as part of a larger geopolitical game. Yet, even then, the course of events was not straightforward and Regan charts the debates within the British government and the Zionist movement itself on the future of Palestine. The book also provides a revealing account of life in Palestinian society at the time, paying particular attention to the responses of Palestinian civil society to the imperial machinations that threatened their way of life. Not just a history of states and policies, Regan manages to brilliantly present both a history of people under colonialism and an account of the colonizers themselves.

Reviews:

‘The book is to be recommended even if you are already well versed in the history of the Mandate. Regan puts what took place in Palestine in both its global and its historical contexts, and looks more closely at economic issues than some other writers. He points out how at the time of the declaration imperialism was moving away from colonisation (physical settlement of conquered territory) and colonialism (achieving dominance through the acquiescence of at least a sector of the indigenous population), to the more modern quest for hegemony by controlling markets and resources. Yet it was a highly unusual concatenation of events that led to the strange hybrid of the Palestine Mandate, in which Britain – for the one and only time in its imperial history – indulged settler colonialism by a group of settlers who owed no allegiance to the metropolitan power’ – Balfour Project

 

Simon Schama. The Story of the Jews, vols. 1-2 (Bodley Head, 2013 and Vintage, 2017)

Publisher’s description: It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. It spans the millennia and the continents – from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia; a Syrian synagogue glowing with radiant wall paintings; the palm groves of the Jewish dead in the Roman catacombs. And its voices ring loud and clear, from the severities and ecstasies of the Bible writers to the love poems of wine bibbers in a garden in Muslim Spain. Within these pages, the Talmud burns in the streets of Paris, massed gibbets hang over the streets of medieval London, a Majorcan illuminator redraws the world; candles are lit, chants are sung, mules are packed, ships loaded with spice and gems founder at sea. And a great story unfolds. Not – as often imagined – of a culture apart, but of a Jewish world immersed in and imprinted by the peoples among whom they have dwelled, from the Egyptians to the Greeks, from the Arabs to the Christians. Which makes the story of the Jews everyone’s story, too.

Review by JJP signatory Deborah H. Maccoby, December 2017

The Story of the Jews was conceived simultaneously as a TV series and a book, with the book being based upon the highly successful 2013 TV series. Volume 1, The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words: 1000 BCE to 1492 CE, came out in 2013. Volume 2, entitled When Words Fail, was due to appear in September 2014, but its words failed to materialise at that time. After a three-year delay, Volume 2 has now appeared, but under a new title – Belonging. The book brings the story up to 1900 – to be completed in a third volume still to come.

The central theme of Volume 1 was that the true and eternal homeland of the Jews is the Book, the Jews being very aptly called ‘The People of the Book’; the indestructibility of the Book was seen as one of the main reasons for the survival of the People in the face of terrible adversity.

However, the original title of Volume 2 – When Words Fail – implied that it would show the ultimate failure of the Book – and of words in general – to guarantee the safety of the People, who would thus be forced to acknowledge that they needed a physical homeland – a State of their own. In a nutshell, this looked like a Zionist story. Despite the new title, this is indeed the overall story of Volume 2.

The title is clearly ironic. After the massacres and expulsions of the Middle Ages that ended Volume 1, Volume 2 takes us through the Renaissance – during which, together with the rediscovery of Greek and Roman culture, there was a renewed interest in the Hebrew Bible and Judaism – and the Enlightenment, which saw the emancipation of the Jews from the ghettoes and mediaeval restrictions. The high point of the sense of belonging was the friendship between Moses Mendelssohn and Gotthold Lessing. But Schama writes in the chapter devoted to this friendship: ‘Sometimes words misbehave’ and quotes from Mendelssohn, whom he describes as being ‘at a loss for words’ when faced with the re-emergence of fanatical hatred of Jews: ‘Delusion and fanaticism act, while all reason does is talk’.

In the book’s final chapter, Theodor Herzl concludes that ‘emancipation had failed…..there was only one salvation. Home’.

Schama espouses several clichés of the Zionist historian. During a brief account of Jews in the Muslim world, he writes: ‘There exists today a romance of Jewish life in the Muslim world, imagined as one of neighbourly harmony, irremediably altered by the rise of Zionism and the creation of Israel’.

Schama conveys the impression that there was little to choose between Muslim and Christian treatment of Jews; thus much emphasis is placed on the public beheading in Fez in 1834 of Sol Hachuel, a beautiful Jewish girl who refused to convert to Islam after being unjustly convicted of apostasy from it, and on the 1840 Damascus blood libel affair. But Schama’s presentation is contradicted by Bernard Lewis (no subscriber to any idealised ‘romance’ about the subject) in his book Semites and Anti-Semites, where he writes of Jews in the Muslim world: ‘their situation was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst, nor ever as good as in Christendom at its best….most of the characteristic and distinctive features of Christian antisemitism were absent…even the blood libel did not appear among Muslims until it was introduced to the conquering Ottomans by their newly-acquired Greek subjects in the fifteenth century’.

Another Zionist cliché is Schama’s implication that most Palestinian Arabs migrated to the Holy Land in the nineteenth century from Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon: ‘The whole of Palestine…was full of Arab immigrants’.

But in his book The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand points out that several early Zionist historians, including David Ben-Gurion, found convincing evidence that Palestinian Arabs – even allowing for waves of immigration – are mostly descended from the Jewish peasantry of ancient times. Sand quotes the early Zionist historian Itzhak Ben-Zvi: ‘Obviously it would be mistaken to say that all the fellahin are descendants of the ancient Jews, but it can be said of most of them, or their core’. Sand writes that it was only after it became evident that the indigenous population intended to resist integration with Zionism that the viewpoint of Zionist historians changed: ‘Very soon, the modern Palestinian fellahin became, in the eyes of the authorized agents of memory, Arabian immigrants who came in the nineteenth century to an almost empty country and continued to arrive in the twentieth century as the developing Zionist economy, according to the new myth, attracted many thousands of non-Jewish labourers’.

The ‘new myth’ having been discredited by the demolition of Joan Peters’ book From Time Immemorial by scholars such as Norman Finkelstein and Yehoshua Porath, Schama has reverted to the old myth.

But within the overall simplistic Zionist story, Belonging consists of many fascinating tales about Jewish individuals during Renaissance and Enlightenment times. Schama’s attitude is: the sense of belonging was an illusion, but there is still a lot to celebrate. As he said in a recent Guardian interview: ‘Wherever you look, the dawns are false. But the morning that follows the dawn can last a very long time’.

Schama seeks on the whole to escape from religious history: ‘There were of course the upholders of tradition….but then there were the rest of the Jews’. The book is mainly about ‘the rest of the Jews’. The result is an exuberant collection of picaresque tales about a dazzlingly varied cast of characters, across the globe and across four centuries.

Varied though the characters are, there is one quality that links most of them: showmanship. We meet Leone de Sommi Portaleone, known as Leone Ebreo, a 16th century Mantuan actor and theatre director; Jacob Judah Leon, known as ‘Templo’, ‘the first showman of the Bible’, who made a model Temple in 17th century Amsterdam; Daniel Mendoza, the 18th century Anglo-Jewish boxer, ‘who created the first thoroughly marketed sports celebrity cult’; Giacomo Meyerbeer, the German composer of the 19th century – ‘the first and most successful showman’ of musical performance. Jews are seen as ‘the impresarios of modernity’. Herzl, whose background as a dramatist is emphasised, is seen as ‘the dramaturge of a Jewish-national awakening’.

The chapter on the Dreyfus Affair opens with a description of film shorts that were made at the time about the case: ‘One way or another, the Jews and the movies were destined to come together’. By this point, the People of the Book seem to have morphed into the People of the Screen. It is clear that Volume 3 will focus on Hollywood as well as on the Holocaust and Israel.

The characters in Belonging are chosen in Schama’s own image. He himself is the arch-showman of Jewish history: Schama the Showman. The all-pervasiveness of Schama’s own personality works in the TV series, but in a written history we would expect the historian himself to take more of a back seat. But this is not a conventional history.

In a written history, the reader also becomes aware of errors. Schama seems too concerned with glittering showmanship to bother too much about accuracy of detail. In a review of the book in the TLS, Abigail Green wrote: ‘Any scholar who cares about Jewish history will forgive Simon Schama the odd error or omission, for this is a book that transcends the normal conventions of academic criticism’.

Carping though it may appear to mention just one of these errors, Schama presents an inaccurate version of the origin of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. He writes of the British Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities: ‘When George III succeeded to the throne in 1760, the two communities combined to form a “Board of Deputies” to make representations to the government and inaugurated its duties by presenting ceremonial congratulations to the new monarch’.

But, according to both Cecil Roth, in his book A History of the Jews in England, and the Board of Deputies’ own website, the real story goes: in 1760, the Sephardi community elders appointed a delegation of seven ‘deputados’ to present a loyal address to George III on the occasion of his accession to the throne. The Ashkenazi community (who, Roth writes, ‘though more numerous, were less assimilated and (with a few brilliant exceptions) came from a lower social stratum’) made a formal statement of protest to the Sephardic elders about being left out, and shortly afterwards formed their own ‘German Secret Committee for Public Affairs’. The two committees began to meet on an informal, ad hoc basis to discuss matters of importance to the Jewish community as a whole until they finally joined formally into one body in the early nineteenth century. As well as being accurate, this makes a better and more typically Jewish story, especially as Schama writes elsewhere in Belonging about friction between Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities.

But the book raises interesting questions about the meaning of belonging. To Schama, the very belongingness of the Jews in Europe during these four centuries – their centrality to modern life after their release from the ghettoes – ironically helped to bring about the revival of antisemitism, since Jews were blamed for the ills of modernity. Schama also asks, as he puts it in his JC interview: ‘If you go so far towards the host community, how do you retain a core sense of belonging to both the host community and your Jewish identity?’

On the whole, however, apart from the overall Zionist message, Belonging is short on analysis and explanatory theories – it is mainly narrative and descriptive. To sum up: this is a spectacular but superficial fireworks display of a book – a 700-page blockbuster, sumptuously produced and lavishly illustrated; ideal for the Chanukah/Christmas gift market and the coffee table.

 

Robert Serry. The Endless Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace: A Reflection from No-Man’s Land (Springer, 2017)

Publisher’s description: In this book a former United Nations Envoy offers an insider perspective on conflict management and peace efforts during the three most recent failed peace initiatives and three wars in Gaza. Robert Serry shares his reflections on walking the tight rope of diplomacy between Israel and Palestine and his analysis of what has gone wrong and why a ‘one-state reality’ may be around the corner. Offering fresh thinking on how to preserve prospects for a two-state solution, this book examines the UN’s uneasy history in the Arab-Israeli conflict since partition was proposed in resolution 181 (1948) and provides a rare insight into the life of a United Nations Envoy in today’s Middle East.

Reviews: none yet available

 

Gershon Shafir. A Half-Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict (University of California Press, 2017)

Publisher’s description: The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the world’s most polarizing confrontations. Its current phase, Israel’s ‘temporary’ occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, turned a half century old in June 2017. In these timely and provocative essays, Shafir asks three questions – What is the occupation, why has it lasted so long, and how has it transformed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? His cogent answers illuminate how we got here, what here is, and where we are likely to go. Shafir expertly demonstrates that at its fiftieth year, the occupation is riven with paradoxes, legal inconsistencies, and conflicting interests that weaken the occupiers’ hold and leave the occupation itself vulnerable to challenge.

Reviews:

‘Gershon Shafir, in his subtle history of the occupation, suggests that while the notion that the settlement project is “irreversible is best rejected…the remaining obstacles to territorial partition, though not insurmountable, are formidable”. Assuming that the so-called settlement blocs, most of them relatively close to the pre-1967 borders, would be annexed to Israel in exchange for more or less equal territory from inside Israel, he calculates that “only” some 27,000 settler households would have to be evacuated from Palestine as part of a workable peace agreement. Shafir also convincingly cites Shaul Arieli—a former colonel in the army, a member of the prestigious Council for Peace and Security, and an expert on the earlier rounds of negotiation and the feasibility of a future breakthrough—to the effect that the settlement project has, in practice, slowed to a trickle (…) [He] concludes that, in the absence of a viable plan for a single binational state, “the two sides are most likely to stumble ahead heedlessly”’ – New York Review of Books

 

Nathan Thrall. The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine (Metropolitan, 2017)

Publisher’s description: In a myth-busting analysis of the world’s most intractable conflict, a star of Middle East reporting argues that only one weapon has yielded progress: force. Scattered over the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace proposals, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions, and state-building efforts. The conventional story is that these well-meaning attempts at peacemaking were repeatedly, perhaps terminally, thwarted by violence. Through a rich interweaving of reportage, historical narrative, and powerful analysis, Nathan Thrall presents a startling counter-history. He shows that force—including but not limited to violence—has impelled each side to make its largest concessions, from Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution to Israeli territorial withdrawals. This simple fact has been neglected by the world powers, which have expended countless resources on initiatives meant to diminish friction between the parties. (…) Thrall’s important book upends the beliefs steering these failed policies, revealing how the aversion of pain, not the promise of peace, has driven compromise for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Reviews: 

‘[S]urveys the last five decades and comes to a remarkable conclusion: the only way to produce some kind of movement toward resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is to apply significant coercive force to the parties involved, and in particular to Israel. No amount of coddling and reassuring, no increased bribes in the form of more money or military aid, will have any effect on Israeli policy for the simple reason that Israel considers any sacrifice that would be necessary for peace far worse than maintaining the current situation (…) What would make a difference? According to Thrall, only coercion by those who have the power to coerce’ – New York Review of Books

‘The book is also informed by a deep understanding of US, Israeli and Palestinian politics. It is packed with new ideas and insights, and it poses a serious challenge to the conventional wisdom on the subject (…) Ironically, the main conclusion that emerges from Nathan Thrall’s account is that Israel does not understand the language of force. On the contrary, Israel is a past master in manipulating American resources to exact concessions and compliance from the Palestinian leadership. Equally depressing is his prediction that both Israel and the United States are unlikely to depart from their commitment to the status quo. Israel has consistently opted for stalemate rather than a two-state solution. The reason is obvious: the cost of a deal is higher than the cost of no deal. For the United States the potential benefits of creating a small, poor and strategically inconsequential Palestinian state are tiny compared with the cost of falling out with a powerful regional ally’ – Middle East Eye

 

Leslie Turnberg. Beyond the Balfour Declaration: The 100-Year Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (Biteback, 2017)

Publisher’s description: 2017 marks one hundred years since the Balfour Declaration (…) A century later, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians rages on, without prospect of a peace agreement any time soon. This timely book explores why innumerable efforts to resolve the conflict have always failed, and questions how an agreement could ever be reached. Shedding some much-needed light on many of the misconceptions of the Declaration, this book also navigates the complex history of the situation ever since. (…) At a time of global uncertainties and fears of terrorism, Turnberg offers a balanced look at how best to plot a course amongst shifting alliances and an ever-changing political climate. Why have negotiations between Palestine and Israel consistently broken down? Beyond the Balfour Declaration details what an agreement might look like, and the steps that need to be taken to begin the process.

Reviews:

‘On reading his book, there were many moments when I found myself noting his compassion and humanity, as well as his search for a balanced approach (…) Unfortunately, however, for reasons that will become painfully apparent below, I feel absolutely unable to recommend this book as the primer to understanding the conflict and the way out of the present impasse which he obviously intended it to be (…) I have basically have three problems with Turnberg’s methodology. The first concerns his treatment of historical fact. The second is his failure to provide clarity about what he believes to be the rights of each side. The third is his descent into essentialism’ – Balfour Project

 

Toufic Haddad. Palestine Ltd: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territories (I.B. Tauris, 2016) 

Publisher’s description: Despite their failure to yield peace or Palestinian statehood, the role of these organisations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally overlooked owing to their depiction as tertiary actors engaged in technical missions. In Palestine Ltd., Toufic Haddad explores how neoliberal frameworks have shaped and informed the common understandings of international, Israeli and Palestinian interactions throughout the Oslo peace process. Drawing upon more than 20 years of policy literature, field-based interviews and recently declassified or leaked documents, he details how these frameworks have led to struggles over influencing Palestinian political and economic behaviour, and attempts to mould the class character of Palestinian society and its leadership. A dystopian vision of Palestine emerges as the by-product of this complex asymmetrical interaction, where nationalism, neo-colonialism and ‘disaster capitalism’ both intersect and diverge.

Reviews:

‘The strength of the book is the way it methodically shows how any serious Palestinian autonomy was deliberately designed to fail from the beginning. Many Western donors in the 1990s and now claim that they’re acting in good faith, believing that being pro-Palestinian means funnelling more money into the Palestinian Authority (PA), and yet after decades of entrenched cronyism and Israeli occupation, at what point should the money simply stop, the PA be abolished and Israel forced to manage its own occupation and the people within it? This is a reality that Israel fears and explains why, despite the stream of invective against the PA from Israeli ministers, co-ordination between the PA and Israel is constant and unlikely to end’ – Mondoweiss

 

Mehran Kamrava. The Impossibility of Palestine: History, Geography and the Road Ahead (Yale University Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: The ‘two-state solution’ is the official policy of Israel, the United States, the United Nations, and the Palestinian Authority alike. However, international relations scholar Mehran Kamrava argues that Israel’s ‘state-building’ process has never risen above the level of municipal governance, and its goal has never been Palestinian independence. He explains that a coherent Palestinian state has already been rendered an impossibility, and to move forward, Palestine must redefine its present predicament and future aspirations. Based on detailed fieldwork, exhaustive scholarship, and an in-depth examination of historical sources, this controversial work will be widely read and debated by all sides.

Reviews:

‘His thesis is simple: there is no real hope for the formation of a meaningful Palestinian state – either through a one- or a two-state “solution” – but that does not mean that the Palestinian nation must fade. On the contrary, according to Kamrava, it is because there is no realistic chance of statehood that the Palestinian national identity (…) has grown even more important and more prominent’ – Middle East Monitor 

 

Mohammed Omer and Petter Bauck. The Oslo Accords: A Critical Assessment (American University in Cairo Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: More than twenty years have passed since Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization concluded the Oslo Accords, or Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements for Palestine. It was declared “a political breakthrough of immense importance.” Israel officially accepted the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the PLO recognized the right of Israel to exist. Critical views were voiced at the time about how the self-government established under the leadership of Yasser Arafat created a Palestinian-administered Israeli occupation, rather than paving the way towards an independent Palestinian state with substantial economic funding from the international community. Through a number of essays written by renowned scholars and practitioners, the years since the Oslo Accords are scrutinized from a wide range of perspectives.

Reviews: none yet available

 

Elie Podeh. Chances for Peace: Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (University of Texas Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: This innovative reexamination of thirty pivotal episodes in the Arab-Israeli conflict, beginning with the 1919 Faysal-Weizmann Agreement and ending with the 2008 Abu Mazen-Olmert talks, reveals both missed opportunities and realistic possibilities to negotiate lasting peace.

Reviews:

‘On a topic where every historical moment is rife with controversy, Podeh expertly tackles a central element: What were the opportunities to end the conflict and move toward peace? And when those diplomatic efforts failed, as they often did, who was to blame? Podeh looks at twenty-eight episodes from the Faysal–Weizmann agreement (1919) to the Abbas–Olmert talks (2008) and concludes that no single party is at fault across time. Arab States, Israel, and the Palestinians missed opportunities, though about half the time he argues that no one missed an opportunity (…) Podeh’s clarity and comprehensive treatment of the sources gives the reader ample opportunity not only to learn but also to constructively debate about how to understand the key decisions and episodes across decades of attempted peacemaking. This book is an excellent resource for those interested in the Arab-Israeli relationship or conflict resolution writ large’ – International Journal of Middle East Studies

 

John Quigley: The International Diplomacy of Israel’s Founders: Deception at the UN in the Quest for Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

Publisher’s description: During the early to mid-twentieth century, the Zionist Organization secured a series of political victories on the international stage, leading to the foundation of a Jewish state and to its ability to expand its territorial control within Palestine. The International Diplomacy of Israel’s Founders provides a revisionist account of the founding of Israel by exposing the misrepresentations and false assurances of Zionist diplomats during this formative period of Israeli history. By comparing diplomatic statements at the United Nations and elsewhere against the historical record, it sheds new light on the legacies of such leaders as Chaim Weizmann, David Ben Gurion, Abba Eban, and Shabtai Rosenne.

Reviews:

‘Quigley closes his book by noting that Israeli diplomats and politicians are not the only ones who lie in public and rationalize doing so with claims of overriding national interest. This is, of course, true. However, Israel might be seen as the most consistent purveyor of this practice. And now, it has a very convincing book devoted solely to its diplomatic deceit’ – Journal of Palestine Studies

 

Yakov Rabkin. What Is Modern Israel? (Pluto Press, 2016) 

Publisher’s description: Few countries provoke as much passion and controversy as Israel. What is Modern Israel? convincingly demonstrates that its founding ideology – Zionism – is anything but a simple reaction to antisemitism. Dispelling the notion that every Jew is a Zionist and therefore a natural advocate for the state of Israel, the author points to the Protestant roots of Zionism, thus explaining the particular support Israel musters in the United States. Drawing on many overlooked pages of history (…) Yakov Rabkin shows that Zionism was conceived as a sharp break with Judaism and Jewish continuity. Israel’s past and present must be seen in the context of European ethnic nationalism, colonial expansion and geopolitical interests, rather than as an incarnation of Biblical prophecies or a culmination of Jewish history.

Reviews:

‘In nine chapters, the author compares the Zionist claims to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) to rabbinical Jewish teachings. He shows that the Zionist narrative has little to do with Judaism. Leading representatives of Zionism have cherry-picked aspects from Jewish tradition to incorporate it into Zionist mythology (…) Rabkin’s book demonstrates that Zionism is not the sequel of Judaism. That Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state” seems to be pseudo-religious dogma, designed only by believers. Although presenting provocative views, the book is convincingly and boldly argued’ – Palestine Chronicle

 

Sara Roy. The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development, 3^rd ed. (Institute for Palestine Studies, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Sara Roy takes her meticulous study of the political economy of the Gaza Strip since the Israeli occupation in 1967 through to the impact, one year after, of Israel’s massive summer 2014 assault known as Operation Protective Edge. In the final edition of Roy’s ground-breaking work, she argues that Gaza’s trajectory over the last 48 years has reconstructed the territory from one that had been economically integrated and deeply dependent upon Israel and strongly tied to the West Bank, to an isolated and disposable enclave cut off from the West Bank as well as Israel and subject to ongoing military attacks. She further shows that these destructive transformations are becoming institutionalized and permanent; shaping a future for the Gaza Strip that is undeniably grim. Roy clearly demonstrates that Gaza’s debility not only is catastrophic but also deliberate and purposeful. Consequently, Roy argues that the de-development process she formulated and defined 30 years ago has approached its logical endpoint: rendering Gaza unviable.

Reviews: 

‘In this latest edition of The Gaza Strip, Roy enriches this meticulously detailed and pioneering political economy text with an in-depth and shocking reflection and analysis on the wars on Gaza. Written in the aftermath of the 2014 Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Roy serves as a scholar, and witness to unprecedented human, physical, and physiological destruction wrought on Gaza. Bringing her decades of experience in the region, and unrivalled knowledge of Gazan economy and politics, Roy reviews the impact of these most recent wars on Gaza from a multitude of perspectives. Beyond sophisticated data sets, The Gaza Strip chronicles shifting attitudes and the impact of massive long-term displaced people on societal cohesion, as well as the “new and relatively underreported consequence that has emerged from Gaza: “boat people”, Gazans fleeing by boat to Europe’ – Paige Brownlow

 

Thomas Suarez. State of Terror (Skyscraper Books, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Why has the Israel-Palestine ‘conflict’ endured for so long, with no resolution in sight? In this meticulously researched book, Thomas Suárez demonstrates that its cause is not the commonly depicted clash between two ethnic groups – Arabs and Jews – but the violent takeover of Palestine by Zionism, a European settler movement hailing from the era of ethnic nationalism. Tapping a trove of declassified British documents, much of which has never before been published, the book details a shocking campaign of Zionist terrorism in 1940s and 1950s Palestine that targeted anyone who challenged its messianic settler goals, whether the British government, the indigenous Palestinians, or Jews. Today’s seemingly intractable quagmire is that terror campaign’s unfinished business, an Israeli state driven by unrequited territorial designs and the dream of ethnic ‘purity’.

Reviews:

‘The book is a substantial work of historical scholarship of over 400 pages, including 680 endnotes, some of them long paragraphs quoting several sources (…) The story he tells is of a Zionist elite determined from the beginning to turn all of Palestine into a Jewish state in which the local non-Jewish Arab population would be either subjugated or expelled. The Zionists were quite willing to use violence and terrorism to achieve this aim, and the book traces the resulting unhappy history in detail, to the extent that, in places, it reads like a catalog of Zionist terror attacks (…) This book is true, and it is important. It proves beyond doubt that Israel is not the perpetual victim of Arab violence that it claims to be, but has been the aggressor throughout the history of the conflict’ – Mondoweiss

‘For many familiar with the history of the creation of Israel the received knowledge is that, in the aftermath of the Holocaust and in the pursuit of a safe haven for Jews, attacks were targeted by the incipient Israeli army on the British garrison in Palestine, and that in the quest for a state a number of atrocities were committed by small bands of extremists, the Irgun and Lehi (Stern) gangs, epitomised by the infamous massacre of Deir Yassin. Suarez research lead him to a very different narrative: these small bands of extremists were integral, structured components of the regular armed force, the Hagana of the Jewish Agency – no model of the Geneva Convention itself, with its elite corps, the Palmach, its assassination unit the Pum and its deployment of barrel bombs loaded with shrapnel. All five groups were engaged in the programme of intimidation and terror, where the end, Eretz Israel – an exclusively Jewish state stretching east from the Mediterranean to include Transjordan, and from Egypt to the Lebanese boarder – justified Revisionist Zionism’s means’ – JJP signatory Glyn Secker

 

Milton Viorst. Zionism: The Birth and Transformation of an Ideal (Thomas Dunne, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Viorst examines the evolution of Zionism, from its roots by serving as a cultural refuge for Europe’s Jews, to the cover it provides today for Israel’s exercise of control over millions of Arabs in occupied territories. Beginning with the shattering of the traditional Jewish society during the Enlightenment, Viorst covers the recent history of the Jews, from the spread of Jewish Emancipation during the French Revolution Era to the rise of the exclusionary anti-Semitism that overwhelmed Europe in the late nineteenth century. Viorst examines how Zionism was born and follows its development through the lives and ideas of its dominant leaders, who all held only one tenet in common: that Jews, for the first time in two millennia, must determine their own destiny to save themselves. But, in regards to creating a Jewish state with a military that dominates the region, Viorst argues that Israel has squandered the goodwill it enjoyed at its founding, and thus the country has put its own future on very uncertain footing.

Reviews:

‘What went wrong? That’s the unspoken question behind every page of Milton Viorst’s “Zionism”, a smart, analytical, engaging history of the people and ideas that built the state. Viorst, a former Middle East correspondent for the New Yorker, tells the story through the lives of eight preeminent leaders whose perseverance brought the country into existence and shaped its character – Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion, the Rabbis Kook (Abraham Isaac Kook and Zvi Yehuda Kook), Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu. But the unmistakable message of the book is that the Zionist project was derailed somewhere along the line and that only by grappling with its biggest questions can it be put back on track (…) [This is not] a work of new scholarship. Rather it is a concise history both of the ideas and the events that led Israel to the place it is today. In some places it falls back on a rote chronology of events; it is better when it analyses, synthesises and draws historical connections’ – Los Angeles Times

 

Ben White. The 2014 Gaza War: 21 Questions and Answers (Kindle edition, 2016)

Publisher’s description: Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in 2014 was unprecedented in its scope and brutality. Two years on, and many key issues surrounding the offensive remain poorly understood. Is Gaza still occupied? How and why did Israel launch ‘Operation Protective Edge’? Did Israel’s armed forces commit war crimes? Does Hamas use human shields – and what about the rockets? In this concise, well-sourced book, these commonly-asked questions and more are answered by journalist and author Ben White.

Reviews: none yet available

 

Hillel Cohen. Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 (Brandeis University Press, 2015)

Publisher’s description: In late summer 1929, a countrywide outbreak of Arab-Jewish-British violence transformed the political landscape of Palestine forever. In contrast with those who point to the wars of 1948 and 1967, historian Hillel Cohen marks these bloody events as year zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict that persists today. The murderous violence inflicted on Jews caused a fractious – and now traumatized – community of Zionists, non-Zionists, Ashkenazim, and Mizrachim to coalesce around a unified national consciousness arrayed against an implacable Arab enemy. While the Jews unified, Arabs came to grasp the national essence of the conflict, realizing that Jews of all stripes viewed the land as belonging to the Jewish people. Through memory and historiography, in a manner both associative and highly calculated, Cohen traces the horrific events of August 23 to September 1 in painstaking detail. (…) Sifting through Arab and Hebrew sources – many rarely, if ever, examined before – Cohen reflects on the attitudes and perceptions of Jews and Arabs who experienced the events and, most significantly, on the memories they bequeathed to later generations.

Reviews:

‘This is a remarkable book not only for its content but its structure as well. It is written in a non-linear fashion, using a question-and-answer format that breaks the story into small easily digestible chunks, and uses plain prose avoiding academic jargon and fancy theory. All this aims to remove the usual entry barriers that generally make academic work less accessible. And yet, its simple style does not make for simplistic analysis, nor does the easily flowing narrative come at the expense of the need to remain grounded in written documents and oral evidence, and use the standard tools essential to serious historical writing (…) The book is essential reading in order to gain a better understanding of the past, and is useful for drawing lessons for the present’ – +972 Magazine 

 

Richard Falk. Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope (Just World Books, 2015)

Publisher’s description: The distinguished legal scholar Richard Falk recently completed his term as term as UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestine. Now, with Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, he powerfully illuminates the transformation of the Palestinians’ struggle over recent years into a struggle for legitimacy, similar to that pursued by all the anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century. This shift, he writes in the Introduction, “is… reinforced by disillusionment with both Palestinian armed resistance and conventional international diplomacy, most recently dramatized by the collapse of direct negotiations on April 29, 2014… Such disillusionment also coincides with the spreading awareness that the so-called ‘two-state consensus’ has reached a dead end. Falk builds the book’s narrative around a series of essays originally published on his personal blog between 2010 and early 2014. It provides both a nuanced portrait of the development of the Palestinian resistance movement(s) and an appropriately strong focus on the key role that international law and institutions and global solidarity movements have played in this struggle. (…) He discerns numerous signs of hope that the Palestinian people can harness the growing international attention and solidarity their struggle has achieved and break free of the apartheid and occupation that they have long endured.

Reviews:

‘In these writings, Falk demonstrates that he is more than just an expert on international human rights. He is also an astute political observer and a compassionate and compelling moral voice’ – Electronic Intifada 

 

Norman G. Finkelstein. Method and Madness: The Hidden Story of Israel’s Assaults on Gaza (OR Books, 2015)

Publisher’s description: In the past five years Israel has mounted three major assaults on the 1.8 million Palestinians trapped behind its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Taken together, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defence (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014), have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile, a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions. On the face of it, this succession of vastly disproportionate attacks has often seemed frenzied and pathological. Senior Israeli politicians have not discouraged such perceptions, indeed they have actively encouraged them. After the 2008-9 assault Israel’s then-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, boasted, “Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded”. However, as Norman G. Finkelstein sets out in this concise, paradigm-shifting new book, a closer examination of Israel’s motives reveals a state whose repeated recourse to savage war is far from irrational. Rather, Israel’s attacks have been designed to sabotage the possibility of a compromise peace with the Palestinians, even on terms that are favourable to it. Looking also at machinations around the 2009 UN sponsored Goldstone report and Turkey’s forlorn attempt to seek redress in the UN for the killing of its citizens in the 2010 attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla, Finkelstein documents how Israel has repeatedly eluded accountability for what are now widely recognized as war crimes.

Reviews:

‘[A]n undiluted, undoubtedly powerful prosecution case against Israel over the death and destruction visited on Gaza by its military assaults since 2008. So far from seeing these onslaughts as retaliation against Hamas violence, he contends that they deliberately pre-empted peace feelers from the Islamic faction and sought to re-establish Israel’s regional deterrence after what Finkelstein sees as its clear defeat in the 2006 Lebanon war. While insisting that Palestinians have the legal and moral right to combat the occupation by force, he calls for mass non-violent resistance as the best means of defeating it’ – Independent 

 

Cherine Hussein. The Re-Emergence of the Single State Solution in Palestine/Israel (Routledge, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Providing the first in-depth intellectual and organizational mapping of the single state idea’s recent resurgence in Palestine/Israel, this book enquires into its nature as a phenomenon of resistance, as well as into its potential as a counterhegemonic force in the making against the processes of Zionism. Reconstructing this moment of re-emergence through primary material and interviews with diverse influential intellectuals – its analysis highlights their self-understandings, worldviews, strategies and perceptions of the phenomenon in which they are involved, while questioning whether the single state idea has the potential to become a Gramscian inspired movement of resistance against Zionism.

Reviews:

‘Hussein offers a pithy history of how the one-state option entered the public consciousness, highlighting a number of articles in American literary publications and surely more importantly “the extent to which ‘the facts on the ground’ created by Israel were irreversible, and how profoundly this reality had transformed the search for workable solutions and viable futures”. Importantly, she stresses that “the broad ideological orientations of single-state intellectuals are located within the realm of the secular” despite the majority of Palestinians being either proud Christians or Muslims. The challenge of including, say, Hamas in a one-state imagination, a group wanting an Islamic entity, is acknowledged. How to mainstream the one-state solution, to generate widespread support among Palestinians in the diaspora and in Palestine itself is a key question without any set answers’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Lena Jayyusi (ed.). Jerusalem Interrupted: Modernity and Colonial Transformation, 1917-Present (Interlink, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Most histories of twentieth-century Jerusalem published in English focus on the city’s Jewish life and neighbourhoods. This book offers a crucial balance to that history. On the eve of the British Mandate in 1917, Jerusalem Arab society was rooted, diverse, and connected to other cities, towns, and the rural areas of Palestine. A cosmopolitan city, Jerusalem saw a continuous and dynamic infusion of immigrants and travellers, many of whom stayed and made the city theirs. Over the course of the three decades of the Mandate, Arab society in Jerusalem continued to develop a vibrant, networked, and increasingly sophisticated milieu. No one then could have imagined the radical rupture that would come in 1948, with the end of the Mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel. This groundbreaking collection of essays (…) follows the history of Jerusalem from the culturally diverse Mandate period through its transformation into a predominantly Jewish city. Essays detail often unexplored dimensions of the social and political fabric of a city that was rendered increasingly taut and fragile, even as areas of mutual interaction and shared institutions and neighbourhoods between Arabs and Jews continued to develop.

Reviews:

‘The editor’s over-ambition here is forgiven with this fascinating greatest-hits package of underreported history. The Israeli state’s view of Jerusalem has been subject to the political climate and has adjusted its focus accordingly. But the Arab city, however defined, remains a buzzing hive, no matter how many residency permits get withdrawn. We’ve come a long way since having to prove and prove again that pre-Nakba Palestine was a bulging burgh of cultural variety. Jerusalem Interrupted resonates to reveal that the old days’ urbanities were remarkably matched with those today’ – Middle East Eye 

 

Noga Kadman. Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Villages of 1948 (Indiana University Press, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Hundreds of Palestinian villages were left empty across Israel when their residents became refugees after the 1948 war, their lands and property confiscated. Most of the villages were razed by the new State of Israel, but in dozens of others, communities of Jews were settled—many refugees in their own right. The state embarked on a systematic effort of renaming and remaking the landscape, and the Arab presence was all but erased from official maps and histories. Israelis are familiar with the ruins, terraces, and orchards that mark these sites today – almost half are located within tourist areas or national parks – but public descriptions rarely acknowledge that Arab communities existed there within living memory or describe how they came to be depopulated. Using official archives, kibbutz publications, and visits to the former village sites, Noga Kadman has reconstructed this history of erasure for all 418 depopulated villages.

Reviews:

‘Overall (…) an intelligent, well-researched and fluently translated (by Dimi Reider of +972 Magazine) book that casts new light on the ways in which the State of Israel and its institutions have tried to eradicate the memory of Palestinian habitation of Palestine and the social discourses and narratives which underpin this project’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Mansour Nasasra et al. (eds.). The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism: New Perspectives (Routledge, 2015)

Publisher’s description: The past decade has witnessed a change in both the wider knowledge production on, and political profile of, the Naqab Bedouin. This book addresses this change by firstly, endeavouring to overcome the historic isolation of Naqab Bedouin studies from the rest of Palestine studies by situating, studying and analysing their predicaments firmly within the contemporary context of Israeli settler-colonial policies. Secondly, it strives to de-colonise research and advocacy on the Naqab Bedouin, by, for example, reclaiming ‘indigenous’ knowledge and terminology.

Reviews:

‘Aside from recent campaigns around the Israeli government’s plans to forcibly relocate thousands of Bedouins, and the repeated demolitions of the village of al-Araqib, and the occasional mention of women’s craft cooperatives such as Laqiya, many interested in Palestine would be forgiven for knowing little of them. This edited volume comprehensively addresses this problem. It gives a broad, reasonably approachable – but also detailed – account of the 20^th-century history, political situation and social, economic and cultural dynamics of the Naqab Bedouins. It does so in a way which critiques the power relations inherent in much earlier scholarship and incorporates Bedouin voices both as authors and as interviewees. Unusually for edited volumes, there is also a clear and coherent progression through its subject. The introduction is an excellent (and rare) example of genuinely engaged academic writing, fully aware of the political and ethical implications of itself and its discipline’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Dion Nissenbaum. A Street Divided (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

Publisher’s description: It has been the home to priests and prostitutes, poets and spies. It has been the stage for an improbable flirtation between an Israeli girl and a Palestinian boy living on opposite sides of the barbed wire that separated enemy nations. It has even been the scene of an unsolved international murder. This one-time shepherd’s path between Jerusalem and Bethlehem has been a dividing line for decades. Peacekeepers that monitored the steep fault line dubbed it “Barbed Wire Alley.” To folks on either side of the border, it was the same thing: A dangerous no-man’s land separating warring nations and feuding cultures. The barbed wire came down in 1967. But it was soon supplanted by evermore formidable cultural, emotional and political barriers separating Arab and Jew. For nearly two decades, coils of barbed wire ran right down the middle of what became Assael Street, marking the fissure between Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem and Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem. In a beautiful narrative, A Street Divided offers a more intimate look at one road at the heart of the conflict, where inches really do matter.

Reviews:

‘Stories from this frayed pocket of the world are never simple. I yearn for a detailed map and player program. So, too, with A Street Divided, which at times struggles to keep events and characters clear. But Nissenbaum is a confident guide. His book reads like an epic multigenerational family saga, tracing the interlocking lives of a handful of neighbours whose relationships grow more strained with time. While their stories are mostly set in the recent past, Nissenbaum threads in historic events and characters that have shaped, reshaped and failed to shape a functional Israel. He zeros in on the centuries-old question: Why? (…) He offers no easy answers and no sure heroes. Well-meaning Westerners are reduced to frustration, fear and anger. There are glimpses of hope: Children play together on the streets; women trade hummus and bread; teens form an integrated peace choir. For all their efforts, they remain mired in a past that defies a different future’ – Star Tribune

 

Anders Persson. The EU and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1971-2013: In Pursuit of a Just Peace (Lexington Books, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Just peace has been much talked about in everyday life, but it is less well researched by academics. The rationale of this book is therefore to probe what constitutes a just peace, both conceptually within the field of peacebuilding and empirically in the context of the EU as a peacebuilder in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The EU has used the term just peace in many of its most important declarations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict throughout the years. Defining a just peace is about these declaratory efforts by the EU to articulate a common formula of a just peace in the conflict. Securing and building a just peace are about the EU’s role in implementing this formula for a just peace in the conflict through the creation of a Palestinian state. As the EU enters its fifth decade of involvement in the conflict, there can be little doubt that in common with the rest of the international community it has failed in its efforts to establish a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. While this is an inescapable overall conclusion from four decades of EC/EU peacebuilding in the conflict, it is, at the same time, possible to draw a number of other conclusions from this book. Most importantly, it argues that the EU is a major legitimizing power in the conflict and that it has kept the prospects of a two-state solution alive through its support for the Palestinian statebuilding process.

Reviews:

‘Persson examines the fraught and complex relationship between the European Union and Israel, a relationship often viewed by Jerusalem with suspicion, and, by Europe, with exasperation (…) This book is enlightening, challenging and well researched, and will serve to educate both layperson and specialist in an area that is in danger of becoming, in its current form, a political dead horse’ – International Affairs

 

Sherene Seikaly. Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2015) 

Publisher’s description: Men of Capital examines British-ruled Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s through a focus on economy. In a departure from the expected histories of Palestine, this book illuminates dynamic class constructions that aimed to shape a pan-Arab utopia in terms of free trade, profit accumulation, and private property. And in so doing, it positions Palestine and Palestinians in the larger world of Arab thought and social life, moving attention away from the limiting debates of Zionist-Palestinian conflict. Reading Palestinian business periodicals, records, and correspondence, Sherene Seikaly reveals how capital accumulation was central to the conception of the ideal “social man”. Here we meet a diverse set of characters – the man of capital, the frugal wife, the law-abiding Bedouin, the unemployed youth, and the abundant farmer – in new spaces like the black market, cafes and cinemas, and the idyllic Arab home.

Reviews:

‘Her account of the lives and ideologies of Palestine’s British Mandate-era middle classes is lucid, engaging, detailed and genuinely groundbreaking. Defying stereotypes of Mandate-period Palestinians as divided between a distant, dislocated upper class of “notables” and a majority of uneducated, rebellious peasants, Seikaly charts the complexities of Palestinian society of the time. Her subjects are the emergent middle classes — traders, lawyers, accountants, businessmen and senior officials (and their wives). The portrait is fascinating, but far from idealized (…) An absolute must-read’ – Electronic Intifada

 

Anne B. Shlay and Gillad Rosen. Jerusalem: The Spatial Politics of a Divided Metropolis (Polity, 2015)

Publisher’s description: Jerusalem has for centuries been known as the spiritual center for the three largest monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yet Jerusalem’s other-worldly transcendence is far from the daily reality of Jerusalem, a city bombarded by conflict. The battle over who owns and controls Jerusalem is intensely disputed on a global basis. Few cities rival Jerusalem in how its divisions are expressed in the political sphere and in ordinary everyday life. Jerusalem: The Spatial Politics of a Divided Metropolis is about this constellation of competing on-the-ground interests: the endless set of claims, struggles, and debates over the land, neighbourhoods, and communities that make up Jerusalem. Spatial politics explain the motivations and organizing around the battle for Jerusalem and illustrate how space is a weapon in the Jerusalem struggle. These are the windows to the world of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Based on ninety interviews, years of fieldwork, and numerous Jerusalem experiences, this book depicts the groups living in Jerusalem, their roles in the conflict, and their connections to Jerusalem’s development. Written for students, scholars, and those seeking to demystify the Jerusalem labyrinth, this book shows how religion, ideology, nationalism, and power underlie patterns of urban development, inequality, and conflict.

Reviews:

‘Shlay and Rosen, a sociologist and geographer respectively, explore the various geographic dynamics of Jerusalem and how the conflict plays out in specific locations. Their goal is not to “inflame or incite but to analyse and inform”. It is a worthy goal (…) Shlay and Rosen have crafted an approachable and provocative introduction to the spatial politics of the city of Jerusalem. They have navigated a complex and contentious terrain skilfully’ – LSE Review of Books

 

Efrat Ben-Ze’ev. Remembering Palestine in 1948: Beyond National Narratives (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Publisher’s description: The war of 1948 in Palestine is a conflict whose history has been written primarily from the national point of view. This book asks what happens when narratives of war arise out of personal stories of those who were involved, stories that are still unfolding. Efrat Ben-Ze’ev examines the memories of those who participated and were affected by the events of 1948, and how these events have been mythologized over time. This is a three-way conversation between Palestinian villagers, Jewish-Israeli veterans, and British policemen who were stationed in Palestine on the eve of the war. Each has his or her story to tell. These small-scale truths shed new light on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as it was then and as it has become.

Reviews:

‘In her book, Remembering Palestine in 1948: Beyond National Narratives, the author challenges the notion that remembrance of historical events is a nation-state affair alone. By conducting anthropological research among three groups of interlocutors, Ben-Ze’ev unravels different threads of memories that disrupt the tight fabric of a master narrative (…) Ben-Ze’ev’s comparative approach ultimately falls short of acknowledging the powerful effects that settler colonialism has on memory itself. Given that the production of memory cannot be extricated from the colonial imagination that is at the root of Israeli politics, the memories of Palestinian refugees and those of Palmach soldiers cannot match up. Ben-Ze’ev’s methodological choice to juxtapose Palestinian and Israeli memories thus remains a problematic one: the point is not simply that Jewish soldiers’ memories are part of a subnational narrative that confirms that there is no “coherent story of a war”. Rather, these subnarratives always contain undertones of a “definitive” Israeli history: in essence, the soldiers’ memories are inevitably centred on a desire to prove Israel’s status legitimate, no matter how precarious the state’s existence is rendered by prevailing national accounts or how problematic its political authority appears before international law’ – Historical Dialogues

 

Irus Braverman. Planted Flags: Trees, Land and the Law in Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Planted Flags tells an extraordinary story about the mundane uses of law and landscape in the war between Israelis and Palestinians. The book is structured around the two dominant tree landscapes in Israel/Palestine: pine forests and olive groves. The pine tree, which is usually associated with the Zionist project of afforesting the Promised Land, is contrasted with the olive tree, which Palestinians identify as a symbol of their longtime connection to the land. What is it that makes these seemingly innocuous, even natural, acts of planting, cultivating, and uprooting trees into acts of war? How is this war reflected, mediated, and, above all, reinforced through the polarization of the ‘natural’ landscape into two juxtaposed landscapes? And what is the role of law in this story? Planted Flags explores these questions through an ethnographic study. By telling the story of trees through the narratives of military and government officials, architects, lawyers, Palestinian and Israeli farmers, and Jewish settlers, the seemingly static and mute landscape assumes life, expressing the cultural, economic, and legal dynamics that constantly shape and reshape it.

Reviews:

‘The author synthesises an impressive range of (…) literature in revealing how the law is visible in the materiality of landscapes and tress and makes a broader point about the nature of landscapes as products of human agency and choice (…) Braverman employs a “legal ethnography” in crafting the empirical foundations of her story about landscape and conflict. This fieldwork, comprising scores of often riveting interviews with a range of Israeli, Palestinian, and North American actors, is extraordinary’ – International Journal of Middle East Studies

 

Jean-Pierre Filiu. Gaza: A History (Hurst, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Through its millennium-long existence, Gaza has often been bitterly disputed while simultaneously and paradoxically enduring prolonged neglect. Jean-Pierre Filiu’s book is the first comprehensive history of Gaza in any language. Squeezed between the Negev and Sinai deserts on the one hand and the Mediterranean Sea on the other, Gaza was contested by the Pharaohs, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Fatimids, the Mamluks, the Crusaders and the Ottomans. Napoleon had to secure it in 1799 to launch his failed campaign on Palestine. In 1917, the British Empire fought for months to conquer Gaza, before establishing its mandate on Palestine. In 1948, 200,000 Palestinians sought refuge in Gaza, a marginal area neither Israel nor Egypt wanted. Palestinian nationalism grew there, and Gaza has since found itself at the heart of Palestinian history. It is in Gaza that the fedayeen movement arose from the ruins of Arab nationalism. It is in Gaza that the 1967 Israeli occupation was repeatedly challenged, until the outbreak of the 1987 intifada. And it is in Gaza, in 2007, that the dream of Palestinian statehood appeared to have been shattered by the split between Fatah and Hamas.

Reviews:

‘Jean-Pierre Filiu’s authoritative and well-sourced history of Gaza from earliest times to the end of 2011 therefore fills a serious gap. Even those who know Gaza well will find much in this book – which, though broadly sympathetic to the Palestinians, is level-headed and unsentimental – to enlighten them, including his account of Egyptian rule from 1948 to the 1967 Six Day War, interrupted during the 1956 Suez war by the short and bloody “first Israeli occupation”’ – Independent

 

Norman G. Finkelstein. Old Wine, Broken Bottle: Avi Shavit’s Promised Land (OR Books, 2014)

Publisher’s description: My Promised Land by Haaretz journalist Ari Shavit has been one of the most widely discussed and lavishly praised books about Israel in recent years. (…) Were he not already inured to the logrolling that passes for informed opinion on this topic, Norman Finkelstein might have been surprised, astonished even. That’s because, as he reveals with typical precision, My Promised Land is riddled with omission, distortion, falsehood, and sheer nonsense. In brief chapters that analyse Shavit’s defence of Zionism and Israel’s Jewish identity, its nuclear arsenal and its refusal to negotiate peace, Finkelstein shows how highly selective criticism and sanctimonious handwringing are deployed to create a paean to modern Israel more sophisticated than the traditional our-country-right-or-wrong. In this way, Shavit hopes to win back an American Jewish community increasingly alienated from a place it once regarded as home. However, because the myths he recycles have been so comprehensively shattered, this project is unlikely to succeed.

Reviews:

‘Finkelstein’s latest devastating hatchet-job. Those like myself who enjoy the no-holds-barred, excoriating wit of Finkelstein’s “take-downs” (and I think most people do, apart from the targets and their supporters), will not be disappointed by this critique. It is as hard-hitting and entertaining as all his previous ones (…) With his usual brilliance, Finkelstein exposes (together with the many other contradictions, sentimentalities and hysterias in “My Promised Land”) the logical flaws in Shavit’s justifications for the creation of a Jewish majority ethnic nation-state by means of ethnic cleansing’ – JJP signatory Deborah H. Maccoby

 

Ran Greenstein. Zionism and Its Discontents: A Century of Radical Dissent in Israel/Palestine (Pluto Press, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Mainstream nationalist narratives and political movements have dominated the Israeli-Palestinian situation for too long. In this much-needed book, Ran Greenstein challenges this hegemony by focusing on four different, but at the same time connected, attempts which stood up to Zionist dominance and the settlement project before and after 1948. Greenstein begins by addressing the role of the Palestinian Communist Party, and then the bi-nationalist movement, before moving on to the period after 1948 when Palestinian attempts to challenge their unjust conditions of marginalisation became more frequent. Finally, he confronts the radical anti-Zionist Matzpen group, which operated from the early 1960s–80s. In addition to analyses of the shifting positions of these movements, Greenstein examines perspectives regarding a set of conceptual issues: colonialism and settlement, race/ethnicity and class, and questions of identity, rights and power, and how, such as in the case of South Africa, these relations should be seen as global.

Reviews:

‘While the long history of resistance to Zionism is the subject of Greenstein’s book, Zionism and Its Discontents is not a history of events but a history of thought in action – a chronicle of the internal debates, shifting ideological positions, political aspirations, failures, and successes of four different movements from before Israel’s establishment to the present day. Greenstein deftly parses the sometimes arcane theoretical disputes of anti-colonial and left-wing groups as they attempted to articulate a politics of resistance to Zionism across the tumultuous twentieth century (…) One of Greenstein’s most valuable insights relates to the failure of Jewish bi-nationalist movements to find Arab partners. The Arabs, Greenstein argues, recognized what the Jewish bi-nationalists could not: that the mainstream Zionist movement had the power to determine the shape of Jewish politics in Israel/Palestine, and that it had no intention of peacefully co-existing. The Palestinian leadership therefore met Zionist eliminationism with rejectionism – the refusal to recognize Jewish political rights out of fear that doing so would lead to Jewish domination of the Arab population’ – +972 Magazine

‘There is much to like in this book, even for those – I dare say, especially for those – opposing Greenstein’s political views. It traces the evolvement of the groups’ discourse and practice, attentive to their changing socio-historical context. While much of the scholarly ground has been previously covered, typically in monographs dedicated to one of the four groups, Greenstein’s work is erudite, comprehensive, and well written. It is accessible to both experts and laypersons, and can be quite fruitful for courses on Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, both for instructing students and to stir up conversation. It lacks substantive comparative discussion, either between the four groups, or between them and others. However, Greenstein does follow the flow of people and ideas between these groups. The book does not theorize its arguments, but it does include worthwhile observations, especially on how nationalism eclipses class and why binationalism prerequires reciprocity. Greenstein readily acknowledges his “wish to join the wave of studies that challenge the central assumptions of mainstream Zionism”, but fusing his sympathies with his objects of inquiry throughout the text may have done more damage than good’ – Ethnic and Racial Studies

 

Galia Golan. Israeli Peacemaking Since 1967: Factors Behind the Breakthroughs and Failures (Routledge, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Examining the Israeli-Arab conflict as an ‘intractable conflict’, Israeli Peacemaking since 1967 seeks to determine just which factors, or combination of factors, impacted on Israel’s position in past peace-making efforts, possibly accounting for breakthroughs or failures to reach agreement. From King Hussein’s little known overtures immediately after the Six-Day War, through President Sadat’s futile efforts to avoid war in the early 1970s, to repeated third-party-mediated talks with Syria, factors including deep-seated mistrust, leadership style, and domestic political spoilers contributed to failures even as public opinion and international circumstances may have been favourable. How these and other factors intervened, changed or were handled, allowing for the few breakthroughs (with Egypt and Jordan) or the near breakthrough of the Annapolis process with the Palestinians, provides not only an understanding of the past but possible keys for future Israeli-Arab peace efforts. Employing extensive use of archival material, as well as interviews and thorough research of available sources, this book provides insight on just which factors, or combination of factors, account for breakthroughs or failures to reach agreement.

Reviews:

‘Professor Golan manages to piece together the mostly frustrating story of the different attempts to bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict extending from what she justly sees as the Israeli failure to translate the colossal victory it gained in the Six Day War into some modus vivendi with its enemies, all the way up to the more recent 2008 Annapolis process – forty years of repeated and mostly failed attempts. Golan leads the readers through a maze of detailed analysis of more then a dozen attempts to reach a breakthrough in the massive barriers that time and again prevented the achievement of an end to what seems today to many observers an irresolvable conflict (…) Golan does not aspire to give a definitive answer to the troubling question why the Arab-Israeli is so intractable or perhaps even irresoluble. Even though her method and all the “factors” she uses as tools of elucidation do indeed shed some light on this intricate question, the reader may remain basically perplexed’ – Journal of Israeli History

 

Avi Shlaim. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, 2^nd ed. (W.W. Norton, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is the outstanding book on Israeli foreign policy, now thoroughly updated with a new preface and chapters on Israel’s most recent leaders. In the 1920s, hard-line Zionists developed the doctrine of the ‘Iron Wall’: negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength, and only when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours. This doctrine, argues Avi Shlaim, became central to Israeli policy; dissenters were marginalized and many opportunities to reconcile with Palestinian Arabs were lost. Drawing on a great deal of new material and interviews with many key participants, Shlaim places Israel’s political and military actions under and uncompromising lens. His analysis will bring scant comfort to partisans on both sides, but it will be required reading for anyone interested in this fascinating and troubled region of the world.

Reviews:

‘Shlaim traces the history of the principle of the “iron wall”, an idea seared deep into the Israeli psyche, particularly the political class. The original concept was developed in a 1923 article by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of the Israeli right, and can be summarized as supporting the erection of a figurative iron wall of Jewish military force against the Arabs. Shlaim traces both implicit and explicit reference to this idea throughout Israel’s history, in both words and actions. His strongest argument is that members of the Israeli leadership, with rare exceptions, have misinterpreted the concept, or at least not fully understood it. Shlaim writes that they have failed to realize that Jabotinsky thought an agreement with the Palestinians, and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, was possible. The thinking was that once military deterrence had been built, the Jews could negotiate from a position of strength. The Iron Wall argues that Israel has failed to understand this by consistently choosing the military option over diplomacy’ – Global Observatory

 

John Judis. Genesis: Truman, American Jews and the Origins of Israel (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2014)

Publisher’s description: There has been more than half a century of raging conflict between Jews and Arabs—a violent, costly struggle that has had catastrophic repercussions in a critical region of the world. In Genesis, John B. Judis argues that, while Israelis and Palestinians must shoulder much of the blame, the United States has been the principal power outside the region since the end of World War II and as such must account for its repeated failed efforts to resolve this enduring strife. The fatal flaw in American policy, Judis shows, can be traced back to the Truman years. What happened between 1945 and 1949 sealed the fate of the Middle East for the remainder of the century. As a result, understanding that period holds the key to explaining almost everything that follows—right down to George W. Bush’s unsuccessful and ill-conceived effort to win peace through holding elections among the Palestinians, and Barack Obama’s failed attempt to bring both parties to the negotiating table. A provocative narrative history animated by a strong analytical and moral perspective, and peopled by colourful and outsized personalities, Genesis offers a fresh look at these critical postwar years, arguing that if we can understand how this stalemate originated, we will be better positioned to help end it.

Reviews:

‘[C]learly written, packed with useful information, and Judis has a journalist’s eye for picking out colourful quotes and notes from historical archives. He goes into particularly fine-grain detail when it comes to President Truman’s relationship with the burgeoning Zionist lobby. Truman exhibited a casual anti-Semitism that was certainly not out of place in his day, but also counted Jews among his close friends and advisers (…) Judis’s claim that “American liberals, in the wake of the Holocaust and the urgency it lent to the Zionist case, simply abandoned their principles when it came to Palestine’s Arabs” is an important one, and is well-defended in this excellent book’ – Boston Globe

 

Menachem Klein. Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron (Hurst, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Most books dealing with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict see events through the eyes of policy-makers, generals or diplomats. Menachem Klein offers an illuminating alternative by telling the intertwined histories, from street level upwards, of three cities – Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron – and their intermingled Jewish, Muslim and Christian inhabitants, from the nineteenth century to the present. Each of them was and still is a mixed city. Jerusalem and Hebron are holy places, while Jaffa till 1948 was Palestine’s principal city and main port of entry. Klein portrays a society in the late Ottoman period in which Jewish-Arab interactions were intense, frequent, and meaningful, before the onset of segregation and separation gradually occurred in the Mandate era. The unequal power relations and increasing violence between Jews and Arabs from 1948 onwards are also scrutinised. Throughout, Klein bases his writing not on the official record but rather on a hitherto hidden private world of Jewish-Arab encounters, including marriages and squabbles, kindnesses and cruelties, as set out in dozens of memoirs, diaries, biographies and testimonies.

Reviews:

‘Klein’s story is written more from the streets, shared courtyards and markets than from the archives of politicians and bureaucrats. It draws on autobiographies, diaries and the Hebrew and Arabic press to recreate a lost world where two communities lived alongside each other, cooperated in shared institutions and respected each others’ religious traditions (…) a work of deeply humane scholarship’ – Guardian

 

Ilan Pappé. The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge (Verso, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has drawn on Zionism, the movement behind its creation, to provide a sense of self and political direction. In this groundbreaking new work, Ilan Pappe looks at the continued role of Zionist ideology. The Idea of Israel considers the way Zionism operates outside of the government and military in areas such as the country’s education system, media, and cinema, and the uses that are made of the Holocaust in supporting the state’s ideological structure. In particular, Pappe examines the way successive generations of historians have framed the 1948 conflict as a liberation campaign, creating a foundation myth that went unquestioned in Israeli society until the 1990s. (…) The Idea of Israel is a powerful and urgent intervention in the war of ideas concerning the past, and the future, of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Reviews:

‘Pappé places Zionism under an uncompromising lens. In his reading it was not a national liberation movement but a settler colonial project imposed on the Palestinians by force with the support of the west. From this premise it follows that the state of Israel is not legitimate even in its original borders, much less so within its post-1967 borders. To correct the injustice, Pappé advocates a peaceful, humanist and socialist alternative to the Zionist idea in the form of a binational state with equal rights for all its citizens’ – Guardian

 

Ahmed Qurie. Peace Negotiations in Palestine: From the Second Intifada to the Roadmap (I.B. Tauris, 2014)

Publisher’s description: The start of the twenty-first century in Palestine saw the breakdown of the Oslo Accords (which, signed in 1993 was an attempt to begin the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) give way to a turbulent period of dashed hope, escalating violence and internal division. Tracking developments from the Second Intifada of 2000 to Hamas’ 2006 electoral victory, former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie provides revealing and first-hand detail of the monumental changes that have rocked the peace process and the region as a whole. New proposals, such as the Arab Peace Initiative and the Road Map, and historic events, including the death of iconic leader Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza, are recognised to be of immense significance. However, it is Qurie’s unique position that reveals a new perspective of how they played out on the stages of Palestinian internal governance, regional politics and international diplomacy.

Reviews:

‘Qurie presents these events from a very personal point of view with no pretension to present a balanced perspective. History is often open to interpretation, and Qurie’s partisan analysis sheds important light on the wide divide between Israel and the Palestinians. The divide is not only about material assets: territories, Jerusalem, holy places and the rights of refugees. Rather, the divide also relates to the understanding of important concepts, such as sovereignty, responsibility and peace. This is a sombre book for those who believe that the differences between Israel and the Palestinians can be reconciled in the near future’ – Political Studies Review

 

Ron Schleifer. Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Publisher’s description: Psychological warfare, or psywar, has been a fixture of warfare and political hostilities ranging from total war and low-intensity conflicts (LICs), to ideological and organizational struggles since biblical times. However, its impact on political life has been more strongly felt since the latter half of the twentieth century, partly due to the ever expanding influence of Media. The first study to examine psywar in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this book presents an analysis of the Arab and Israeli struggles to gain the world’s sympathy and support. Opening chapters provide an overview of the main ideas in psychological warfare and the principles of psywar engagement. The book then traces the history of the psywar struggle in the Arab-Israeli conflict from the British Mandate to the more recent HAMAS abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

Reviews:

‘The book does lack theoretical depth but makes a series of important points about the role of psychological warfare in this long-standing intractable conflict’ – Rusi Jaspal

 

Lawrence Wright. Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David (Knopf, 2014)

Publisher’s description: A gripping day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference (…). With his hallmark insight into the forces at play in the Middle East and his acclaimed journalistic skill, Lawrence Wright takes us through each of the thirteen days of the Camp David conference, illuminating the issues that have made the problems of the region so intractable, as well as exploring the scriptural narratives that continue to frame the conflict. In addition to his in-depth accounts of the lives of the three leaders, Wright draws vivid portraits of other fiery personalities who were present at Camp David (…) as they work furiously behind the scenes. Wright also explores the significant role played by Rosalynn Carter. What emerges is a riveting view of the making of this unexpected and so far unprecedented peace. Wright exhibits the full extent of Carter’s persistence in pushing an agreement forward, the extraordinary way in which the participants at the conference—many of them lifelong enemies—attained it, and the profound difficulties inherent in the process and its outcome, not the least of which has been the still unsettled struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Reviews:

‘Perhaps the greatest service rendered by “Thirteen Days in September” is the gift of context. In his minute-by-minute account of the talks Wright intersperses a concise history of Egyptian-Israeli relations dating from the story of Exodus. Even more important is Wright’s understanding that Sadat, Begin and Carter were not just political leaders, but exemplars of the Holy Land’s three internecine religious traditions (…) Lawrence Wright makes a masterly case that it is time we gave Jimmy Carter full credit for all the lives his inspired diplomacy saved’ – New York Times

‘One of the many merits of Wright’s book is its evocation of the psychological duelling, in a closed setting, over thirteen days, of men veering between fury and fear of failure. They scream; they pack their bags; they reconvene – again and again. Another is to demonstrate, at a moment when the Israeli–Palestinian conflict looks more intractable than ever, how unswerving commitment allied to imagination and boldness can make something of nothing. The sine qua non, however, is political courage, an almost forgotten commodity’ – New York Review of Books

 

Simha Flapan. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (London, Croom Helm, 1988)