Booklist
If you only have time to read one book on the conflict, JVP's Liat Weingart suggests Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000) by Avi Shlaim, while Plitnick recommends Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2000) by Charles Smith.
- HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT
- THE UNITED STATES' ROLE IN THE CONFLICT
- THE 1948 WAR
- EARLY YEARS OF ISRAEL
- PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM AND HISTORY
- ZIONISM
- THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS IMPACT ON JEWS AND ISRAEL
- FIRST INTIFADA
- THE OCCUPATION
- CAMP DAVID II AND SECOND INTIFADA
- VOICES OF PEACE
- MORE IMPORTANT READING
Charles Smith. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2000) (Probably the most balanced basic history. Very readable, and the best introductory text.)
Avi Shlaim. Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000) (Excellent historical study of Israeli policy towards the Arab world since 1948.)
Avi Shlaim. War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1994) (Short book giving a very general overview of the Middle East in the 1980s and early 90s. Goes beyond Israel and thus demonstrates how Israel both affects and is affected by other regional crises)
Ilan Pappe (Editor) Israel/Palestine Question. (1999) (Collection of revisionist essays covering many aspects of the conflict throughout the years.)
Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine (1990) (A Palestinian History of the conflict.)
Tom Segev. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (2000) (Extensive study of period of the Palestinian Mandate, especially of Britain?s role in creating the conditions that would lead to the conflict as we know it today.)
Meron Benvenisti. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. (2000) (The former deputy mayor of Jerusalem explores the process by which the geography of Israel has been ?made Jewish? in an effort to eliminate the Palestinian connection to the land.)
Walter Laqueur & Barry Rubin (editors) The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (2001) (Very mainstream collection of many documents, reports, and speeches from throughout the history of the conflict.)
Gershon Shafir. Land Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: 1882-1914 (Acute analysis of how the beginnings of the conflict played out on the ground among laborers and in the economy of Palestine.)
THE UNITED STATES' ROLE IN THE CONFLICT
Noam Chomsky. Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. (1999) (Chomsky charts the US-Israel relationship throughout the years. He makes the case that US interests have driven this relationship.)
William Quandt. Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967 (2001) (Detailed history of the peace process by a scholar and former National Security Council official in the Ford and Carter administrations.)
George Ball. The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present. (A highly critical analysis of the U.S. support for Israel by a former Assistant Secretary State.)
Abraham Ben-Zvi, Decade of Transition: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Origins of the American-Israeli Alliance. (1998) (Academic study based on declassified documents that explain the origins of the US-Israel alliance between 1958-1968.)
Avner Cohen. Israel and the Bomb. (1998) (Currently, the best work available on the Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons and U.S.'s role in the process.)
J.J. Goldberg. Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment. (1996) (Highly readable, journalistic study of the power, influence and limits of the Jewish establishment in determining American policy decisions.)
Naseer Aruri. Dishonest Broker: The US Role in Israel and Palestine (2003) (Hard-hitting analysis demonstrating how the US has exacerbated, rather than mediated, the conflict.)
Stephen Zunes. Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (2002) (Excellent analysis
Benny Morris. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. (1987) (The most famous work on the creation of the refugee crisis. Though Morris has been criticized from all sides, this work remains the best and most detailed account of how the Palestinians were driven from their homes during the war for Israel's birth. This book was re-released in 2003 as The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. The updated version features new research and more information, but also some more questionable conclusions than the original.)
Avi Shlaim and Eugene Rogan. War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. (2001) (Edited collection of essays on different aspects of the history of 1948. In particular, Rashid Khalidi?s critique of Palestinian behavior during the 1948 war is extremely important reading.)
Avi Shlaim. The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine, 1921-1951 (1999) (Excellent account of the collusion by Israel & Jordan in 1948-49 to divide Palestine between them.)
Khalidi, Walid, All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. (1992) (Encyclopedic account of Palestinian villages destroyed during the 1948 war.)
Simha Flapan. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. (1987) (Early, and sometimes flawed work by a leading leftist politician addressing many of the myths surrounding the creation of the Israeli state. Very readable and a good introductory text, but must be balanced with better researched works.)
Ilan Pappe. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-51. (1988) (Important revisionist work on the British role in the early Arab-Israeli conflict.)
Tom Segev. 1949: The First Israelis. (1986) (Early re-examination of the issues surrounding Israel's founding by a leading Israeli journalist/historian. Particularly interesting for its chronicle of how Middle Eastern Jews were treated in Israel?s early years.)
Amos Elon. Israelis: Founders and Sons. (1971) (Classic portrait of the early days of Israel and Israel's conflicts and contradictions from a Labor Zionist perspective.)
Masalha, Nur. Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought: 1882-1948 (1992) (Hard-hitting, sometimes overly speculative, examination of political trends that led to expulsion of Palestinians.)
Fouzi El-Asmar, To Be an Arab in Israel.(1978) One of the few Palestinian-Israeli takes on the first ten years of the Israeli occupation)
Sabri Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel. (1977) (A Palestinian-Israeli chronicle of the life of Arabs in Israel from 1948-1966)
PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM AND HISTORY
Baruch Kimmerling & Joel Migdal. The Palestinian People: A History. (2003) (Historical account of the Palestinian people.)
Rashid Khalidi. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. (1997) (Excellent analysis of the development of the Palestinian National consciousness during the early part of the century.)
Walid Khalidi. Palestine Reborn. (1993) (Essays on Palestinian nationalism by a leading Palestinian academic.)
Muhammad Y. Muslih. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. (1988) (Intelligent account of the early years of Palestinian Nationalism?thru 1920s)
Beshara Doumani. Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (1995) (Academic study of Palestinian life under the Ottoman Empire).
Edward Said & Christopher Hitchens (editors). Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (1988) (Collection of essays from many authors exposing poor scholarship which has served to severely distort the question of the Israel-Palestine conflict.)
Shaul Mishal & Avraham Sela The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Coexistence (2000) (In-depth exploration of Hamas in all its dimensions.)
Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics (1984) (Comprehensive political analysis of the Fatah movement and the internal dynamics of the PLO.)
Theodor Herzl. The Jewish State (1896) (The founding father of political Zionism?s seminal text.)
Zeev Sternhell. The Founding Myths of Israel. (1997) (A scholarly critique of the Israeli Labor Party that argues the Labor party was less committed to socialist ideals than to nationalism.) duh
Ian Lustick. For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. (1988) (Excellent study of the ideas and motivations of Jewish fundamentalists and an examination of fanatical religious Zionism.)
Boas Evron and James Diamond. Jewish State or Israeli Nation. (1995) (Excellent analysis of the conflicts between Israel as a secular state and a religious nation. Raises questions about Jewish nationhood and whether Israel is more properly defined as a Zionist or a Jewish state.)
Laurence J. Silberstein. The Post Zionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture. (1999) (Useful discussion of the debate within Israeli society over the future of Israeli identity as a Jewish state or a state of its citizens.)
Bernard Avishai. The Tragedy of Zionism: How Its Revolutionary Past Haunts Israeli Democracy (Critical appraisal of the diverse history of Zionism.)
Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996) (An examination of how Arab and Jewish workers in pre-state Palestine influenced each others? political development.)
THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS IMPACT ON JEWS AND ISRAEL
Peter Novick. The Holocaust and American Life (1999) (Fascinating, ground-breaking analysis of America of how Americans have become obsessed with the Holocaust. Doesn't deal very directly with Israel, but has lots of implications for US attitudes and ideas about Israel.)
Tom Segev. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. (1993) (Israeli journalist/scholar analyses the effect that the Holocaust has had on the Israeli psyche and how it has become a dominant theme in Israeli life. Also gives damning analyses of lack of action from Zionists in Palestine during World War II and poor treatment given to survivors in early Israel.)
Marc Ellis. Beyond Innocence and Redemption: Confronting the Holocaust and Israeli Power: Creating a Moral Future for the Jewish People. (1990) (Examines the theological Implications of the Holocaust for Jewish and Israeli perceptions of their own power.)
Finkelstein, Norman/Birn, Ruth Bettina. A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. (1998) (A clear and powerful refutation of Daniel Goldhagen?s ?Hitler?s Willing Executioners?.)
David Grossman. The Yellow Wind. (1988) (Eloquent account of an Israeli novelist and his experiences during the early days of the Intifada.)
Norman Finkelstein. The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years.(1996) (Finkelstein's account of the Intifada, as a Jew staying with a Palestinian family in Beit Jala.)
Zachary Lockman & Joel Beinin (Editors). Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Jewish Occupation. (1989) (Containing first-hand accounts of the Intifada.)
Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way (1982) (A personal diary of a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation)
Staughton Lynd, Sam Bahour, and Alice Lynd (eds.) Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1998) (Pesonal histories and reflections of many different Palestinian narrators)
Robert Friedman, Zealots for Zion (1992) (Interviews with and analysis of Israeli settlers on the West Bank, looking deep into their ideology and motivations.)
Amira Hass. Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege. (2000) (An Israeli reporter's extraordinary account of her experiences living in Gaza.)
Yaron Ezrahi. Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel. (1997) (A fascinating one that delves into the Israeli mindset and the difficulties of dealing with Jews having power for the first time in generations.)
Penny Rosenwasser. Voices from a 'Promised Land': Palestinian and Israeli Peace Activists Speak Their Hearts (1992) (Vivid interviews with Israeli and Palestinian activists, mostly women, about the experience of the conflict and occupation)
CAMP DAVID II AND SECOND INTAFADA
Tanya Reinhart. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 (2002) (Meticulously researched and powerfully argued account of the collapse of Oslo, Camp David and the beginning of the second Intifada.)
Roane Carey. The New Intifada: Resisting Israel?s Apartheid (2001) (Collection of essays from a diverse group analyzing all aspects of the state of affairs between Israel and the Palestinians)
Ramzy Baroud (editor) Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion, 2002 (2003) (Crucial eyewitness accounts detailing what they saw during the infamous Israeli invasion of the Jenin refugee camp)
Edward Said. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (2000) (Numerous essays that are deeply critical of the Oslo Peace Process, and offer an explanation as to why the process collapsed.)
Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2005) A critique of Alan Dershowitz's Chutzpah as well as the concept of the "new Anti-Semitism" and a review of Israel's human rights record during the second intifada.
Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marc H. Ellis (editors). Beyond Occupation: American, Jewish, Christian, and Palestinian Voices for Peace. (1990) (Edited collection of essays about the Occupation.)
Roane Carey & Jonathan Shainin (editors). The Other Israel: Voices Of Refusal and Dissent (2002) (A collection of essays from Israeli activists, academics, and refuseniks)
Hanan Ashrawi. This Side of Peace: A Personal Account (1996) (Ashrawi's autobiographical work that reveals much about Palestinian politics and the hope for peace.) Adam Shatz, editor. Prophets Outcast: a Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Zionism and Israel (2004) (Essays by Jews who had different views of Zionism and Israel, both past and present)
Yael Zerubavel. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (1995) (Fascinating exploration of collective Jewish mythology, and how this mythology was altered and adapted for use to form parts of the collective Israeli ideology)
Norman Finkelstein. Image and Reality of Israel-Palestine Conflict. (1995) (Rather radical series of critiques of other revisionists including biting criticism of Benny Morris's book of Palestinian refugees.)