Product Description

Reflections on the causes and consequences of the Israel-Palestine conflict, by the author of The Iron Wall. “The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.”
—Avi Shlaim, from Israel and Palestine

With characteristic rigor and readability, Avi Shlaim reflects on a range of key issues, transformations and personalities in the Israel-Palestine conflict. From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the failure of the Oslo peace process, from the 1948 War to the 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel and Palestine places current events in their proper historical perspective. It assesses the impact of key political and intellectual figures, including Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon, Edward Said and Benny Morris; it also re-examines the United States’ influential role in the conflict, and explores the many missed opportunities for peace and progress in the region. Clear-eyed and meticulous, Israel and Palestine is an essential tool for understanding the fractured history and future prospects of Israel-Palestine. .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84499 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 392 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781844673667
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Shlaim (Lion of Jordan), an Israeli army veteran and international relations professor at Oxford University, offers a penetrating critique of Zionism in these reviews and essays collected from the last 30 years. He focuses on the three main watersheds—Israel's establishment, the Six Day War of 1967 and the Oslo Accords of 1993 and offers valuable commentary on current scholarship—saving his sharpest criticism for Benny Morris, a former colleague in Israel's school of new historians, a group who made their name by refuting early historical accounts of Israel's creation and the displacement of Palestinians. But while he illuminates unfamiliar corners and characters in the Arab-Israeli impasse, such as a Syrian dictator who briefly pursued peace before getting swept from power and executed, Shlaim too often lets his politics seep into his work, omitting important details that should shape the debate: he describes Professor Norman Finkelstein as merely a well-known critic of Israel, ignoring Finkelstein's rather incendiary comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. Shlaim's book is an important one, but some readers might think that he gives short-shrift to the Israeli side of this divisive debate. (Oct.)
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Review
Noted historian Shlaim presents a collection of hard-hitting pieces about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict….Shlaim is an important, sage, reasoned voice on the course of Israeli-Palestinian relations. (Kirkus Reviews )

About the Author
Avi Shlaim is a Fellow of St. Anthony’s College and a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2006. His books include Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace; War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History; The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations. He lives in Oxford.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic work from Avi Shlaim
The major theme of Avi Shlaim's previous book, 'The Iron Wall', was that Israel has throughout its history readily resorted to military force rather than engaging in meaningful diplomacy. In Avi's 'Israel and Palestine' he analyzes four portions of history, including (as he calls them) 1948 and beyond, to Oslo and beyond, the breakdown of the peace process, and perspectives. What I found most appealing about this particular text was Avi's discussion and analysis of literature written by scholars, historical figures, as well as popular figures. This includes, but it not limited to, Nur Masalha, Ilan Pappe, Itamar Rabinovich, Benny Morris, Asher Susser, Ian Black, George and Douglas Ball, Fouad Ajami, Hanan Ashrawi, Meron Benvenisti, Colin Shindler, Moshe Arens, Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernard Wasserstein, Dennis Ross, Yossi Beilin, Norman Finkelstein, Bauch Kimmerling, and Edward Said. If some of these names are not familiar to you, I encourage you to look them up. You will uncover that Shlaim is striving to provide detailed scholarly accounts of each individual and their contributions to the interpretation of history with regard to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. And, as always, Shlaim's use of primary sources is extremely well done.

Please, anyone who wishes to understand the conflict, read and learn. Most people (including myself) are not capable of reading the primary literature. But at least analyze the work of those that dedicate their entire lives to history and scholarship.

A little too anxious to conform to fashionable ideology
Shlaim believes that "job of the historian is to judge". This seems, alas, to entail some noticeable shoe-horning of reality to fit the requirements of ideological fashion and convenience.

There are some interesting passages here, but Shlaim's slightly facile and romantic positions are all too easy to take from the safe distance of Oxford, where Fatah's constitution can be read with agreeable detachment "Article (12): Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
Article (19) ... this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated."

(There can be little responsible doubt about what "complete liberation of Palestine" or "eradication of 'Zionist' ... cultural existence" would concretely entail under an Islamic state, or even under a secular majoritarian hegemony, if such a thing could actually be achieved).

Generally, there is a too strong a sense of distortion of the historiographic project by an anxiety to conform to the uncomplicated ideological preferences of his northern european hosts. These are not perspectives that would ever be seen as more than fashionable posturing by an electorate in Israel, particularly by the 40% or more whose families have concrete experience of living in Arab countries before the Jewish nakba began in 1948, generating, by the 1970s, even more Jewish Arab refugees than Palestinian refugees.

The purely ideological section devoted to Benny Morris is diagnostic of Shlaim's predicament. It fails to engage with a single issue of technical historiography, and devotes itself instead to ad hominem fulminations against Morris's failure to be limited by the bounds of Shlaim's preferred, and structuring, ideology - namely that "the Palestinians, by any reckoning, can only be seen as the victims" while only the Israelis are to be seen as aggressive. Regardless of the evidence, apparently.

Fatah's Constitution, and Hamas's Charter, documents which are eloquently expressive of the history and balance of forces in these organisations, but uncongenial to Shlaim's romantic ideology, are not brought to the reader's attention.

Meanwhile, the review of this book by Benny Morris in The New Republic is worth reading, I think.

Josephus Flavius partially reincarnated



Israel and Palestine


The author claims to be a historian. His new volume starts with the erroneous maps. Along with his editors he publishes the map of the Mandatory Palestine omitting the East Bank.
The demilitarized zone of Al Auja occupied by Egypt in 1948 is not shown, Gaza lacks the Egyptian occupation time line, Syrian occupation of the Upper Jordan River Basin and Hammat Gader on the Yarmouk River in Palestine is not shown. These parcels of land were legally given to the Jewish state in Palestine by the United Nations. This is missing on Avi Shlaim's maps and the innocent reader may think that his cartography is a true representation of history.
The same reader is misled by the phrase "Arabs had recognized Israel in Rhodes." The Rhodes negotiations established the ceasefire and dealt with the armistice lines only. They created the incongruous enclaves in Jerusalem.
On page 358 the author recalls the exciting meeting of public intellectuals at Seville, Spain where the "classical European music" was piped in and where he rubbed shoulders with David Barenboim (the same David Barenboim, the conductor who during his lecture tour of Harvard saw fit not to mention at all his life as an Israeli citizen. His Harvard brochure did not contain such taboo words as "Israel", "Jew" or "Tel Aviv"). Mr Shlaim sings dythirambs to the late Edward Said, a member of the Arab Christian elite in Levant. However the Christan background and the thorough westernization of Mr Said are not disclosed upfront to the naïve reader.
Avi Shlaim boldly writes about "two warring tribes in Palestine". Mr Shlaim should be advised that we deal with many Jewish tribes in modern Palestine as well as with many Arabic speaking tribes. We may count North African Jews, Romanian Jews, Jews from Iran and Bukhara as well as Bedouin, Arabs of Acre and the Arab Christians of Bethlehem to name a few. All these tribes are distinct groups of people.
The author writes in tragic terms about violence, destruction on both sides of the conflict. It is far from truth. The whole Palestine including Israel has experienced a huge construction boom for the last 100 years. The construction during the last century simply dwarfs some wrecking damage to the Palestinian (Israeli) infrastructure.The development and overdevelopment are remarkable. Not a single stone is left unturned in Palestine including proper and improper Israel.
The author bestows on Israel a title of "military superpower", and calls Palestinians ( meaning Arabs of Palestine) a weak and vulnerable community " still at the stage of struggling for statehood". Mr Shlaim should be reminded that Arabs of Palestine (with the help of the British imperialists) created a viable Kingdom of Jordan which they support and many Arabs worked hard to build the State of Israel.
In one breath he writes that "real peace is between equals". Let's stop here and ponder Avi Shlaim's logic. According to it peace between the Palestinian Kingdom of Jordan and the Palestinian State of Israel is impossible. However both sides while unequal in economy and military might are largely peaceful and even concluded a peace treaty!
Mr Shlaim attacks the Israeli historian Benny Morris. He writes "...nationalist versions of history are simplistic, seductive and self serving..." I find it laughable since the author pays attention mostly to rulers (see his book "Lion of Jordan"), disregards the class struggle and raises high the banner of the Arab nationalism. He laments that Palestinians do not have tanks while Israel sends its Merkava war machines into the Arab settlements. He blames Israel for violation of "a long series of agreements" and notes that "Palestinians can only be seen as victims". "Israel is aggressive", says he and trumpets, "Palestinian David is facing Israeli Goliath."
The asymmetry of warfare is troublesome for this historian. The war theatre is not set right.
In the chapter 30 the author grows indignant defending Norman Finkelstein who makes fun of the Holocaust ("There are so many Holocaust survivors that I do not know who died.") Mr Finkelstein probably got on his mind only rich and important German, Austrian or Italian Jews who were not killed on the same scale as the impoverished Jews in the Pale of the Eastern Europe. The majority of the Jewish citizens of the facsist countries of Germany (including Austria) and Italy did survive and managed to reach the safety of America or quiet corners of Europe.
On page 282 the author designates "Arab demands on Palestine" as moderate. But it depends. The prevailing stance of the Levantine Arabs is annihilation of Israel. Some Arabs stop short of killing/expelling all Jews but they do not want Jews to have their self-government, they prefer Arabs to be the masters of their Jewish subjects as in the good old time.
Avi Shlaim, the self-styled Arab apologist, writes "Palestinian people ...aspire, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity."
It should be noted that 10 million Arabs occupy and inhabit 85% of the historic Palestine leaving to the mostly urban 5 million Jews just 15% of the land. Arabs do have a large piece and can wage peace at their will and the will of their handlers and preachers.
It is amazing that Avi Shlaim is deaf to the Jewish Palestinian peasants (see ethnic cleansing of Gaza) and it is imperative to ask what is his motivation to be so unfairly pro-Arab and forgetful towards his Jewish brethren who barely survive in the hostile Holy Land.
It seems to me that the key to his thinking may be found in his accolades to Albion ("a great gift we still enjoy on this island").
Mr Shlaim is a citizen of Great Britain, a country which owned and cut Palestine according to the British Empire's designs of the 20th century.
Mr Shlaim is a professor at Oxford University where it is awfully hard to support the sovereign Jews and not to judge them harshly. He wants to be a good servant for people who pay his handsome salary and may admire his "balanced act". Then and there he may be welcome at high circles of privilege. And what about his tribesmen in a backwater province of Judea? They are primitive and weak. Some of them would be elated to be at his seat which is like a throne to them.
Mr Shlaim loves to write about monarchs and other VIPs, not about the decimated people, ordinary folks who came to their Palestinian homeland and claimed just one tenth of it.
It seems to me that Avi Shalaim is fashioning himself after the ancient historian Josephus Flavius who decided to drop his rebellious Judean compatriots and serve the Roman Empire. His life story is remarkable.
We might also remind ourselves that this story (history) repeats itself as a farce.