The Historian versus the Political Scientist: Works on the Arab–Israeli Conflict and Israel in 2003 (Review Article)

Abstract

Generally speaking the disciplines of history and political science do not sit well together. Some political scientists charge that historians are mere glorified storytellers; whilst historians argue that political scientists are too journalistic rather than scientific. The truth of course as Alan Dowty from the University of Notre Dame points out is that there is need to combine what he terms as the 'the historians meticulous attention to primary sources with a political scientist's sensitivity to conceptual implications of the evidence'. In other words there is a compelling need to understand the exact context in which a piece of documentary evidence such as Cabinet papers was set. In looking at a new set of publications about the State of Israel and the ArabIsraeli conflict, it is worth noting the various disciplines and the limitations of each one when employed independently of one another. A seeming endless amount of material continues to be published concerning Israel's bi-lateral relations with various countries. These range from standard run-of-the-mill diplomatic memoirs, which are sometimes rather thinly disguised as autobiographies to the more thematically based books that examine the bi-lateral relationship within a given context usually strategic, cultural or domestic politics. Unsurprisingly, Israel's so called special relationship' with the United States still receives the greatest coverage, and if the number of recent PhDs being examined is anything to go by, then this fixation is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. In addition to scholarly works, we see in this arena an attempt by recent diplomatic histories and memoirs to shape current debates by revelation.