Avi Shlaim Research Articles

Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine

Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine

“PRE-Postmodern”

For some years now, an opposition has been drawn, not only among Israeli academics but among politicians and journalists as well, between Jewish nationalist or Zionist thought and the kind of thinking that is called “postmodern.” The argument is that a Zionist cannot be a postmodernist and vice versa, the two being incompatible. It appears that this opposition originated with an identification made between “post-Zionist” historical revisionism (of the kind associated with Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Simha Flapan, and Tom Segev) and postmodernist methods, assumptions, and claims. In some cases, the identification was made by the “new historians” themselves. While there is considerable bad blood between post-Zionist scholars and those, inside and outside the academy, who defend one or another version of the Zionist narrative, it needs to be demonstrated that postmodernism has nothing to do with their adversarial relations. The effort of this article is to show that, even before postmodernism was heard of, nationalist thinkers such as Rabbi A. I. H. Kook (1865 – 1935), Rabbi M. A. Amiel (1883 – 1946), Rabbi Abraham Hazan (1920 – 2003), and Professor André Neher (1914 – 1988) mounted Zionist arguments of a sort that we now regard as poststructuralist or postmodern.

Shlomo Sand's <em>The Invention of the Jewish People</em> and the End of the New History

Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People and the End of the New History Derek J. Penslar (bio) Israel’s “New History” has itself become history. What in the late 1980s and 1990s appeared to be shocking revelations about Israeli policy in 1948 have become anodyne. In Israeli academia, many of the New Historians’ arguments have become mainstream, as they have been debated, examined, and found to be by and large accurate. What is more, the New Historians’ findings now spur little controversy in Israeli society as a whole. Some Israelis outside of academia have developed a more critical approach to their country’s past, but many more have responded to the nearly constant Israeli-Arab strife of the past decade by forming a jaundiced view of the country’s historical record and justifying Israeli aggression and brutality as unfortunate but necessary measures in an endless war against an unappeasable foe. Thus recent revisionist accounts of the 1967 war have received far less press and been far less controversial than their predecessors on 1948 and 1956. So what, Israelis may ask, if, as Tom Segev’s massive tome on 1967 argues, Israel hankered for war in order to pull the country out of the funk induced by the 1966 recession?1 Assuming, as many Israeli Jews do, that the Arab foe is implacable, it does not matter to them if Israel was the aggressor in this or any other circumstance, as the only alternative to aggression is destruction. (The most prominent of the New Historians, Benny Morris, has himself come to espouse this view.) The decline of the New History is part of a general crisis of historical consciousness in contemporary Israel. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Israelis took umbrage at the New Historians’ criticisms of their country’s behaviour in 1948 because they felt an intimate connection with the state and a need to defend its virtue. By the noughts of the twenty first century, however, Israel had completed a longstanding process of transformation into a highly [End Page 156] individualistic consumer society, and with the exception of the radical right, it had lost the sense participating in a heroic political venture. Israelis are increasingly alienated from their own history, seeing a chasm between their world and that of the first generations of the state. In the midst of this historical anomie, however, lies one certainty. Ongoing conflict with the Palestinians and hostile global public opinion encourage retreat into the panic room of Jewish peoplehood. The State of Israel, which its founders hoped would be fundamentally different from the diaspora, is now seen as its extension—no less threatened, no less unjustly maligned. Thus it is no surprise that in our own day the most notorious critique of Israel generated by one of its own intellectuals does not offer, as did New Historians like Benny Morris or Avi Shlaim, an archive-based, carefully documented counter-narrative of Israel’s political and military history, but rather a polemical attack against the very concept of Jewish peoplehood. Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People became a cause celèbre almost immediately upon its publication four years ago. The book’s arguments are by now well known—that the Jews of the Common Era were mostly descended from converts or converts themselves, and therefore not tied in any genetic or historical manner to Eretz-Israel; that Zionist scholarship has cleverly obscured this fact by acknowledging the extent of Jewish conversion over time but inventing a Jewish demographic as well as spiritual origin in the land of Israel; that Jews comprise a religious civilization, not a people, because they lack a secular literary culture; that the State of Israel anxiously seeks to compensate for its own lack of ethnic integrity by employing its scientists to obsessively search for unique Jewish genetic material over the ages; and that the bankruptcy of Zionist assertions of Jewish peoplehood is apparent from the Jewish state’s reliance upon religious law, symbols and concepts in its government and public culture. I would like to evaluate these arguments and speculate why this book has enjoyed such popularity, in Israel and...

The Iron Wall Revisited

More than a decade after the publication of his acclaimed The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, Avi Shlaim returns to Ze'ev Jabotinsky's theory as a framework for understanding Israel's Arab policies, this time focusing on the post-1967 period. The author revisits the theory's formulation by the leader of Revisionist Zionism in 1923 and its near total convergence with the (unacknowledged) strategy followed by Labor Zionism. Examining each Israeli government since 1967, he shows that all zealously followed stage one of Jabotinsky's strategy (constructing an “iron wall” of unassailable military strength) but that the lesser known stage two (serious negotiations with the Palestinians after being compelled by stage one to abandon all hope of prevailing over Zionism) has been completely ignored except by Yitzhak Rabin. Indeed, the recent periods have witnessed a full-blown return to the iron wall at its starkest, with increasing resort to violence and unilateralism.

Avi Shlaim, Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (New York: Vintage Books, 2007). Pp. 768. $35.00 cloth, $19.00 paper, $19.00 e-book.

Avi Shlaim, Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (New York: Vintage Books, 2007). Pp. 768. $35.00 cloth, $19.00 paper, $19.00 e-book.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. Review Essay: The Armenian Question * Ermeni Meselesi Hallolunmuştur: Osmanlı Belgelerine Göre Savaş Yıllarında Ermenilere Yönelik Politikalar [The Armenian Question Resolved: Policies Toward the Armenians in the War Years according to Ottoman Documents]1 By Taner Akçam. Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations, by Avi Shlaim. Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State, by Marc Valeri. Images of the Prophet: Narratives of the Prophet of Islam across the Centuries, by Tarif Khalidi. The Arabs, A History, by Eugene Rogan. Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, by Christopher Caldwell. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen, by Lisa Wedeen.

Israel and Palestine: reappraisals, revisions, refutations

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. Israel and Palestine 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.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. Last Chance: The Middle East in the Balance, by David Gardner. Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest, by Lawrence Davidson. Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace, by Avi Shlaim. King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life, by Nigel Ashton. The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran, by Yossi Melman and Meir Javedanfar. The Crisis of Islamic Civilization, by Ali A. Allawi. Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey, by M. Hakan Yavuz. Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France and Turkey, by Ahmet T. Kuru.

Interview: Israeli New Historian Avi Shlaim

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Israel's Midwife: Golda Meir in the Closing Years of the British Mandate

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See Meir Avizohar et al. (eds.), Golda: Growth of a Leader, Tel Aviv, 1994, pp. 169–234. See also Marie Syrkin, Golda Meir: Woman with a Cause, New York, 1961; Peggy Mann, Golda: The Life of Israel's Prime Minister, London, 1972; Ralph Martin, Golda: The Romantic Years, New York, 1988. 2. Yossi Goldstein, Eshkol: A Biography, Tel Aviv, 2003, pp. 260–263. 3. Palestine Post, 26 March 1946. For the full text of her testimony, see Azriel Karlibach, (ed.), The Anglos-American Commission of Inquiry, Tel Aviv, 1946, Vol. II, pp.473–485. 4. For details of ‘Black Saturday’ see Louise Fisher (ed.), Moshe Sharett: The Second Prime Minister, Jerusalem, 2007, pp. 285–298. 5. Rina and Yaacov Sharett (eds.), Imprisoned With Paper and Pencil, The Letters of Moshe and Zipporah Sharett during the period of his detention by the British in Latrun, Tel Aviv, 2000. 6. Hatsofe, 4 July 1946. 7. See Ilana Kaufman, ‘Political Activity on behalf of the National Institutions’, in Avizohar et al. (eds.), Golda: Growth of a Leader, pp. 200–205. 8. On the King David attack see Menachem Begin, The Revolt, Tel Aviv, 1974, pp. 295–316. 9. For the Morrison–Grady Plan see Gabriel Sheffer, Moshe Sharett: A Biography of a Moderate Leader, Oxford, 1996, pp. 192–218. 10. Kaufman, ‘Political Activities’, pp. 200–204, for the Paris meeting see Yossef Heller, ‘From Black Saturday to Partition’, Zion, Vol. 43, Nos. 3–4, 1979, pp. 114–161. 11. For the discussions in Mapai see protocols of Mapai secretariat, September 1946, Labour Party Archives, 26/46. 12. On the 11 settlements see Goldstein, Eshkol, pp. 264–268. 13. Protocols of the Twenty Second Zionist Congress, Jerusalem, 1947, pp. 90–96. 14. Golda Meir, My Life, New York, 1975, p. 112. 15. Meron Medzini, The Proud Jewess: Golda Meir and the Vision of Israel—A Political Biography, Jerusalem, 1990, p. 130. 16. Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion, Tel Aviv, 1978, Vol. II, p. 661. 17. Yehuda Slutsky (ed.), History of the Haganah, Tel Aviv, 1972, Vol. III, p. 1195. 18. Kaufman, ‘Political Activities’, pp. 217–219; Medzini, The Proud Jewess, pp. 131–132. 19. For the first Golda–Abdullah meeting see her report, Central Zionist Archives, S25/4004, 20 November 1947. 20. For her activities in Jerusalem in December 1947 and January 1948 see Gedalya Yogev (ed.), Political and Diplomatic Documents, Jerusalem, 1980; and David Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Tel Aviv, 1982. 21. Menachem Meir, My Mother: Golda Meir, New York, 1983, p. 114. 22. For the full text of her speech see Marie Syrkin (ed.), Golda Meir Speaks Out, London, 1973, pp. 73–79. 23. Kaufman, ‘Political Activities’, pp. 221–222. 24. Details of her fund raising achievements are noted in Ben-Gurion, War Diary, pp. 107–371. 25. For Ben-Gurion's remarks see Meir Avizohar and Avi Bareli (eds.), Now Or Never: Mapai Discussions in the Last Year of The British Mandate, Beit Berl, 1989, pp. 377–381. 26. Meir, My Life, p. 113. 27. Avizohar and Bareli, Now Or Never, pp. 357–358. 28. For the feelings of the Political Department staffers see Political and Diplomatic Documents and Ben-Gurion's War Diary. 29. Yossef Almogi, Under the Burden of the Crossbar, Jerusalem, 1980, p. 79. 30. For the second Meir–Abdullah meeting see her report to the People's Administration, 12 May 1948; Zeev Sherf, Three Days, Tel Aviv, 1981, p. 63; and for the collusion theory see Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, New York, 1988. 31. Protocols of the People's Administration, 12 May 1948, pp. 80–110.

Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace by Avi Shlaim

Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat, telling the story of the men who have acted out the Middle Eastern tragedy of the past six decades comes in different versions. The latest of these...

‘Who would dare to make it into an abstraction’: Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah

‘Who would dare to make it into an abstraction’: Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah

Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security &amp; Foreign Policy (review)

Reviewed by: Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security & Foreign Policy Shlomo Aronson Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security & Foreign Policy, by Zeev Maoz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. 714 pp. $ 45.00. This book was written by a "strategist," as described by the author, as against the "linear" approach based on documents, which, in his view, is common to historians. The main thesis of this book is that Israel's foreign and security policies were, and still are, caught between two poles: that of unwarranted paranoia, and that of unjustified arrogance. The criticisms of both policies are not new, regardless of their various forms and contents, and some were born with Israel itself. Yet the author did not feel obliged to add to previous critical opinions—many among them politically inspired—any new data, anchored in serious archival research, done in the newly opened American, British, French, German, Israeli, and former Soviet primary sources (I acknowledge that primary Arab sources are usually unavailable). Moreover, the author declares at the opening of his book that historical research is not necessary in order to offer "strategic," i.e., value-bound, advice or a "critical" analysis of Israel's problems, even though he engages in most parts of the book in historical issues, already much debated, pertaining to the same problems. As a "strategist," the author feels free to find evidence for his "critical" analysis wherever he can find it, though he avoids archival research, but his information on Israel's foreign policy decisions and Israel's wars was is based upon secondary sources. Several among them, such as Avi Shlaim, Motti Golani, Tom Segev, and others, are criticized for ideological bias or missing facts, but they are clear-cut "histories" used by a "strategist" for his own purposes. Several other works used by him, including their methodology, were published more than three decades ago, when "perceptions" attributed to Israel's policy makers substituted for the missing primary sources, or indeed seemed to IR experts to be an analytical tool replacing them almost altogether. The necessary givens of Israel's domestic political system, based as it is on multi-party coalitions, elected by a proportional ballot, were mentioned, but hardly connected to the strategic-political developments around it; we learn about them by using both newly opened and older primary sources. The analyses of Arab sources—all of them secondary—would have benefited from either the knowledge of Arabic or some expertise in using authorized translations. The use of the late Malcolm Kerr's Arab Cold War (Kerr was a distinguished "Arabist," who had declared President Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and the ensuing peace process between Israel and Egypt "a betrayal of the Arab cause" and Israel as the factor which prevented the Arabs from pursuing normal national development) may be a tribute to Professor Kerr's memory, after his death at [End Page 199] Hezbollah's hand while serving as President of the American University in Beirut, simply because he was an American. The author's contempt for "historical" research leads him, to begin with, to several, surprising observations, which are "historical" all the same, among them that "Israel is by far [reviewer's italics added] the most conflict-prone state in modern history." One need only think of Prussia-Germany, starting with Frederick the Great, all the way through the Danish, the Austrian, and the French Wars, to WWI and WWII, with the millions who died as a result of them, or of revolutionary France, the Napoleonic wars, or France's colonial wars before and after its defeat in 1870, in order to criticize our "critical" author for simple, and yet arrogant ignorance, which might have been avoided if his historical—comparative—knowledge had been acquired first. Yet his treatment of Israel's wars is in many cases totally, or almost totally, the result of his pre-conceived "criticism." A major theme in the author's discussion of Israel's security policy is its nuclear program, which was David Ben-Gurion's main aim thanks to Israel's alliance with France in the Sinai Campaign—a central explanation...

Yet More Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain

For thirty years past, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has sustained lectures on aspects of British history and literature, now under the genial chairmanship of Professor William Roger Louis, historian of the British empire, who has edited several volumes of the proceedings. This fourth volume, Yet more Adventures with Britannia, offers twenty-one articles, all original, some of them startling. A still topical opening article by Bernard Porter on the admission of terrorists to Great Britain between 1850 and 1914 discusses the doctrine of asylum, and the contempt for foreigners that it showed beside liberal principle. Liberal principle gets another sharp look from Antony Best, as he looks over right-wing and left-wing attitudes to the conflict between Japan and China in the 1930s. Ferdinand Mount discusses Anthony Powell, who was his uncle, and finds A Dance to the Music of Time an admirable guide to twentieth-century Britain. There are perceptive essays on Waugh and Larkin, and S.J.D. Green attributes the decline of the puritan ethic to the impact of rationing, and so to dealings in black markets, in both World Wars. Anne Chisholm's talk on ‘Frances Partridge: the last of the Bloomsberries’ reveals that much of the hard work for Strachey and Fulford's splendid edition of the Greville Memoirs was done for Strachey by Ralph and Frances Partridge, with whom he shared a house; but never acknowledged by Fulford, who took the edition over after Strachey died. (Of that edition, in eight volumes in 1938, Macmillan only printed 600 copies for sale, so that it has become a rare book instead of the familiar text it should be.) Niall Ferguson re-examines the origins of the Great War of 1914, from an unexpected angle: that of the holders of government bonds, and comes to an unexpected conclusion—they were thoroughly surprised, in the teeth of all the talk by diplomatic historians of a long-expected world struggle. Avi Shlaim re-examines the Balfour Declaration, and agrees with Elizabeth Monroe that, ‘Measured by British interests alone, it is one of the greatest mistakes in our imperial history’. Brian Bond wrestles with the myth of Oh! What a lovely war. Alex Danchev indicates how badly Arthur Bryant mishandled the diaries of Lord Alanbrooke, and Richard Drayton gives an account of capitalist-imperialist skulduggery in British Guiana which disgraces both the British and the United States governments—in the 1950s. He ties this in with much more recent events, concluding that ‘It is certainly time for British and American policy-makers to take stock of their capacity for evil’. This valuable miscellany concludes with a list of all the essays read since 1975.

Informal Groups of States and the UN Security Council

This article discusses the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council. First, I argue that informal groups have proliferated in response to systemic change. Second, these groups serve as a mechanism that allows for exit from structural constraints of the Security Council and voice for stakeholders in a conflict. In effect, they may narrow the operational and participatory gap growing out of the multiple incapacities that prevents the Council from formulating an effective response to crisis situations. Third, the processes of diplomatic problem solving and its collective legitimation have become increasingly decoupled. The former tends to be delegated to informal groups or coalition of states, while the Council provides the latter. I illustrate how these findings affect one's understanding of power, legitimacy, and change in the theory of international relations.This article is the extensively revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System in 2003. The project received financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom (Grant No. R42200024335), and the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford. The UN Studies Program at Yale University was a frequent host and home over recent years. I would like to express my gratitude for the long-term support and advice of Karl Kaiser, Bruce Russett, James Sutterlin, and especially Neil MacFarlane. I also wish to thank Mats Berdal, Richard Caplan, Sam Daws, Kurt Gaubatz, Marrack Goulding, Jean Krasno, Edward Luck, David Malone, Lisa Martin, James Mayall, Joseph Nye, Adam Roberts, Avi Shlaim, Ngaire Woods, and two anonymous referees for comments and criticism.

Israeli-Jordanian dialogue, 1948-1953: cooperation, conspiracy, or collusion?

Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue, 1948-1953: Cooperation, Conspiracy, or Collusion? by Yoav Gelber. Brighton, UK and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2004. ix + 294 pages. Notes to p. 346. Bibl. and sources to p. 349. $75. The relationship between Hashimite rulers of Jordan and Zionist leaders of Yishuv, and then Israel, offers a fascinating case of possibilities and limitations of private dialogues among public enemies. Too often, attempts to explore this nuanced and difficult relationship have been sidetracked by polemic, whether over existence of collusion between 'Abdullah of Transjordan and his Jewish counterparts during period leading up to establishment of Israel in 1948 or in more recent times. Yoav Gelber's new book explores Israeli-Jordanian relations during and after 1948 war, in often-neglected period after Israel came into being but before rise of Jamal 'Abd al Nasir's contentious panArabism. While book occasionally falls back into tired polemics over wealth of detail on post-1948 dialogues between (Trans) Jordan and Israel offers a real contribution to history of region. Gelber's polemic against New Historians, which he presents as central to his project, is weakest part of book. Gelber is particularly exercised by Avi Shlaim's claims about an explicit agreement between Abdullah and Jewish leadership over future of Palestine. Gelber claims that the documentary evidence on contacts between Israel and Jordan in 1948 and after simply refutes Shlaim's surmises and conclusions (p. 4). The voluminous evidence in book does not allow so conclusive a verdict, however. Evidence of internal disagreements among Israeli leadership about relations with 'Abdullah does not prove, as Gelber suggests, that an agreement did not exist at diplomatic level. His account of first four days of fighting, in which Arab Legion and Israeli forces did not come into conflict, suggests that some prior understanding may well have been in effect, at least until agreement broke down over Jerusalem (pp. 11-12). His chief piece of evidence that contrary to contemporary and later allegations of collusion, in Jewish eyes Legion was primary enemy (p. 20) is remarks made by David Ben Gurion on June 18, well after conflict in Jerusalem would have invalidated an agreement had it existed. In other words, evidence remains frustratingly inconclusive. That Gelber's exhaustive search for decisive evidence failed to produce a smoking gun suggests that one may never be found. Far stronger than polemic is Gelber's meticulous tracing of Jordanian-Israeli contacts over a turbulent and uncertain period. …

A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians (review)

Reviewed by: A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians James Renton A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, by Sahar Huneidi, with a foreword by Walid Khalidi. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001. 348 pp. $65.00. Over the past decade and a half a new generation of Palestinian and Israeli historians have published a substantial body of revisionist scholarship concerning the emergence and perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although these scholars do not constitute a monolithic or uniform entity in either methodology or conclusions, there exists among them a common will to deconstruct what are seen as the myths that have underpinned and shaped both Zionist collective memory and historical writing. Intrinsically linked with this project is the creation of a space in which the previously marginalized voice of Palestinian narratives is given special focus, an attempt to subvert the power effects of Zionist discourse. One of the key bones of contention that emerged out of these analyses, with a particular focus on the foundation of the Jewish state and the birth of the Palestinian Refugee problem, was the role played by Great Britain, which had occupied the country during the First World War and had officially been the mandatory [End Page 197] power since 1923. Scholars such as Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé have argued that although Great Britain was predominantly perceived by Zionists to have been an obstructive force in the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, it played an important function in its establishment as well as preventing the possibility of Palestinian national independence. More recently historians such as Tom Segev have begun to re-examine the development of the conflict under the British mandate, arguing its importance in fostering the significant growth of the Zionist project in Palestine that made a Jewish state possible. Sahar Huneidi’s work, A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, is an addition to this welcome trend of placing the crucial inter-war period under fresh scrutiny. Huneidi’s study concerns the record of Herbert Samuel as the first High Commissioner of the British civil administration in Palestine from 1920 to 1925. Although a Jew and staunch pro-Zionist, Samuel was traditionally seen by Zionists as having been a disappointment. His tenure as Commissioner was thought to have been marked by a policy of overt appeasement towards the Arab population in the face of violent opposition, particularly after the Jaffa riots of 1921. As a result, according to this view, Samuel pursued a minimalist interpretation of the British Government’s commitment to create a Jewish national home, as declared in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. In contrast to this interpretation, Bernard Wasserstein’s classic work1 on the period presented a much more complex and nuanced picture of Samuel’s administration. Wasserstein’s work highlighted the fundamental tension between Samuel’s British Imperialism, Liberalism, and Zionism, his belief in both the need and possibility of obtaining the acceptance of the Palestinian Arab population for the British mandate, and his unremitting commitment to creating the Jewish national home. Samuel continually attempted to incorporate Palestinians within the administration, claiming to treat the Arab population as though there was no Zionist policy, contending that the latter was misunderstood and did not threaten their rights or position in the country. At the same time, he proceded to put into practice a passive policy that allowed for and fostered the growth of a Jewish national home, reflecting the gradualist Zionism that had prompted his desire to serve in Palestine, a cause to which he remained faithful throughout his administration. However, in her analysis Huneidi goes much further and places Samuel’s Zionism at the very center of his policies as High Commissioner, reducing his attempts to placate Palestinian Arabs as mere lip service to the dual obligations of the Balfour Declaration and the mandate. Such efforts are referred to as either meaningless rhetoric or tactical [End Page 198] manoeuvres that had no relation to his objectives or policies. In answer to her central question—was Samuel an impartial administrator?—Huneidi puts forward an emphatic no, asserting that he clearly and consistently betrayed obligations to Palestinian...

Reviews of Books:The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World Avi Shlaim

Reviews of Books:The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World Avi Shlaim

‘No Common Ground’: Joseph Massad and Benny Morris Discuss the Middle East

If there has been little purposeful dialogue in recent years between Israeli and Palestinian political leaders, the extent of intellectual exchange across one of the world's most pronounced diplomatic fault lines has also been conspicuously modest. The two traditions are not on talking terms. 'The most demoralising aspect of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict', according to the Palestinian academic and writer, Edward Said, 'is the almost total opposition between mainstream Israeli and Palestinian points of view.... There is simply no common ground, no common narrative, no possible area for genuine reconciliation'. In that same article in the London Review of Books (14 December 2000), Edward Said suggested that respected Palestinian and Israeli historians and intellectuals should hold a series of meetings 'to try to agree a modicum of truth about this conflict ... which in turn might reveal a way out of the present impasse'. Not a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least not yet, but perhaps something along the lines of a 'Historical Truth and Political Justice Committee'. The obvious way of examining the potential of Edward Said's proposal is to engage prominent Palestinian and Israeli academics in discussion. That's what History Workshop Journal has done. Joseph Massad is a colleague of Edward Said at Columbia University in New York, where he is Assistant Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History. His most recent publication is Colonial Effects: the Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York, 2001). He was in Amman at the time this discussion was recorded in July 2001. Benny Morris is, with Avi Shlaim, perhaps the most prominent practitioner of what has been called the 'new' or 'revisionist' school of Israeli history, and is the author of Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (London, 2000). He is Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He took part in the discussion from Dartmouth College in New England, where he was a visiting professor. Professor Massad and Professor Morris had never met prior to this conversation. Both participants have had the opportunity to revise and correct their contributions. I moderated the discussion from London on a conference phone call. Andrew Whitehead

LAILA PARSONS, The Druze Between Palestine and Israel, 1947–49, St Antony's Series (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000). Pp. 197. $65.00 cloth.

Laila Parsons situates her study alongside those of the so-called new historians of the Arab– Israeli conflict who in recent years have rewritten large parts of the dominant narratives of the “traditionalist” historians. One of elements of these narratives has been the assumption that the struggle between Arabs and Jews was a starkly bipolar affair, with a relatively small number of Jews in conflict with a much larger, monolithic population of Arabs. Recent “revisionist” works, however, have shown that this interpretation is inaccurate. For example, an integral part of Zionist policy was to make contact with various Arab leaders and groups before, during, and after the emergence of the State of Israel and forge relationships that could advance the movement's geopolitical agenda. Scholars who have worked on this question include Avi Shlaim (Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine and The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine, 1921–1951) and Kirsten Schulze (Israel's Covert Diplomacy in Lebanon). In The Druze Between Palestine and Israel, a compact and narrowly focused study based on the author's doctoral thesis, Parsons skillfully employs archival sources in Israel, as well as published accounts in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, to show how Zionist officials developed relationships with Druze leaders and representatives and how these links could benefit both sides.