The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948 [Paperback]

Efraim Karsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2002

The Palestine War has been by far the most important military encounter in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This book examines the origins of the war and its progression through two distinct stages: the guerrilla warfare between the Arab and Jewish communities of Mandatory Palestine, and the conventional inter-state war between the State of Israel and the invading Arab armies. In doing so it assesses the participants, their war aims, strategies and combat performance. Finally, it examines the reasons for Israel's success in the face of seemingly impossible odds and for the failure of the Arab nations to turn their military and numerical superiority into victory on the ground.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Palestine War has been by far the most important military encounter in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel's survival and victory, coupled with the Palestinian dispersion and the creation of a lingering refugee problem, would redefine Middle Eastern political and military affairs for decades to come.

From the Publisher

This unique series studies every major war in history looking at all the aspects of war, from how it felt to be a soldier to the lasting impact of the conflict on the world around it.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Osprey Publishing (August 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841763721
• ISBN-13: 978-1841763729
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 0.2 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #683,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bias in favor of the truth is no fault, April 17, 2004

By 

Ariel Kronman (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948 (Paperback)

Karsh is perhaps the single best historian on the events surrounding Israel's independence in 1948 and any work of his is highly recommended. As far as the comments of the reader below go, Karsh wrote an entire book, "Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians'" that documents not only the inaccuracies but the emendations, misquotations, mistranslations and outright lies of the likes of Avi Shlaim. The latest salvo in this contest between true historians like Karsh and politically motivated absurdists like Shlaim can be viewed in a letter exchange between Karsh and Benny Morris in the March 2004 issue of Commentary Magazine available on-line in the Commentary Magazine website archive (though you may have to pay for access). Anyone considering the merits of Karsh's work would do well to start there. The point worth bearing in mind is that evenhandedness is fine as far it goes, but only so long as it does not result in giving equal time to facts and to distortions. Should, say, a scholar of the Holocaust who took the time out to write an entire book debunking Holocaust deniers give space to their distortions in a general introduction to the Holocaust? And while for complex psychological reasons painting liberal democratic and humane Western nations as demonic while refashioning rebarbative people and governments as noble victims gives comfort to many on the Left, it makes for no more valid history than the tendentious rantings of certain professors of English and Comparative Literature or Linguisitics about matters outside their fields of expertise. If you want to read lies too, fiction is often enjoyable. But don't miss Karsh if you'd actually like the facts. Oh, and as to the shock expressed by the reviewer below about the lack of footnotes: This book is a general introduction, a volume in a series of slender books on important wars put out by an English publishing house. There are no footnotes to any books in the series. The decision not to have footnotes, one would imagine, is likely that of the editors of the series, not the individual authors.

41 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise History of the 1948 War for Israeli Independence, April 5, 2003

By 

Maximillian Ben Hanan (Sacramento, California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948 (Paperback)

Osprey, a well-known publisher of militaria: campaign histories, troop studies, equipment analysis, etc., has brought this fine history of the 1948 War for Israeli Independence. The book uses another title for the conflict: The Palestine War of 1948, which is preferred in some British academic circles. Efraim Karsh is an Israeli academic working in the United Kingdom. He has extensively written covering different aspects of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The book is a concise (92 page) study of the conflict covering the rising paramilitary action before the British withdrawal until the eventual ceasefires declared between Israel and the Arab invaders. There is some analysis also of the Palestinian-Arab refugee issue as well as early Arab and Jewish state building. The real jewels of the book, of course, are its' many beautiful photographs, gorgeous illustrations, and helpful maps and graphs. A very useful timeline or chronology is also included. Karsh does include a bibliography, but doesn't use footnotes to reference his writing. His bibliography includes a wide variety of authors including Arabs, Israelis, anti-Zionists, and Zionists: Musa Alami, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Chaim Herzog, Efraim Karsh, Issa Khalaf, Rashid Khalidi, Walid Khalidi, Jon and David Kimche, Dan Kurzman, Walter Laqueur, and Natanel Lorch.

Another of the book's attractive aspects is that the book includes some oft forgotten details of the war. Some of these details include the fact that the people we now call Palestinians identified themselves as parts of a greater Arab nation rather than an individual people seeking individual sovereignty. Neither does Karsh forgot to include that the Jews have had a continuous presence in Israel for thousands of years. Many writers gloss over this fact and call the Israelis colonists, settlers, or foreign peoples. They are not. Israel is their home and has been for thousands of years. Karsh also writes about the early connections between the Nazis and the Arabs in Israel / Palestine.

I highly recommend this book as an excellent introductory volume to the 1948 War for Israeli Independence.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

58 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Priceless, concise study of Arab-Israeli issue., October 29, 2002

By 

M. D Roberts (Gwent, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948 (Paperback)

An absolutely compelling read on the Middle East by Efraim Karsh, the Head of Mediterranean Studies at Kings College, University of London.

Examined in detail are the origins and progressions of the conflict between the Jewish & Arab populations of `British' Mandatory Palestine, prior to the re-birth of the Jewish state in 1948, together with an in-depth study of the subsequent Arab invasion of Israel by the armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

The latter invasion of the Jewish state following an Arab decision to reject the UN Resolution calling for the partition of `Palestine' into two independent states, (one Arab & one Jewish with Jerusalem as an `international' city, with all citizens having the right of either Jewish or Arab citizenship).

Efraim Karsh provides excellent background material so relevant to any serious or sincere understanding of this time in history. He makes an essential reference to a direct quotation at the time of the public declaration of Jamal Al-Hussein, the Vice-president of the A.H.C. (Arab High Committee - the effective Palestinian-Arab `government');-

"We are sadly and PERMANENTLY determined to fight to the last man against the existence in our country of ANY Jewish state, no matter how small it is..."

Karsh also quotes with similar relevancy the damning , callous and chilling indictment of the prevalent hatred towards the Jews, still so soon after the Holocaust, when he makes reference to the general public circular of the same Arab High Committee which publicly declared;-

"The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the FINAL SOLUTION of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out."

The subsequent ensuing conflict based clearly upon an intended genocide resulting in the loss of some 1% of the fledgling Jewish states' population.

In further illustration of the context of the struggles in this land, Karsh proceeds to illustrate that the roots of this conflict and unrest stretch way back to the Roman destruction of Jewish statehood in the Land that subsequently became known later as `Palestine'.

Karsh declares that, despite having had a continuous presence in their own homeland without at any time having this presence severed, the Jews became a numerical minority under a long succession of foreign occupiers during the next 1,900 years or so. Such foreign occupiers including the Byzantines, the Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottoman Turks, the British and the Arabs. Highlighted is the fact that, despite these periods of foreign occupation, the Jews never gave up their claim/right to their homeland. Facts illustrated by Karsh by long forgotten or sidestepped by the international community.

Returning to the time of the British Mandate, Karsh also documents the Jewish immigration into Palestine and the treatment of what the British classed as `illegal immigrants' by the British forces occupying Palestine at that time. The provision of British concentration camps on Cyprus for those Jews `caught' and the Arab-Jewish-British struggles in the Land also being demonstrated.

Details and maps and plentifully provided and commendable detail is included relating to both sides in the conflict, plus the inevitable consequences & conclusions pertaining to the conflict itself are studied.

Karsh shows another oft-forgotten factor in that around the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which supported a Jewish homeland in then Palestine, resident Arabs actually welcomed the moves. Palestinian Arab residents having been recently subject to Ottoman rule and most of these Arab residents viewed themselves as subjects of the Ottoman empire and were themselves totally impervious to the nationalistic tendencies of small `extremist' groups. Hence the increasing Jewish presence of the post First World War years encountered little widespread opposition.

Of course events rapidly changed and Karsh documents these commendably, including how Britain (granted the League of Nations Mandate at San Remo in 1920) reneged on it's agreement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Britain, with a stroke of a pen, giving the huge majority of then Palestine to the formation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Britain, in furtherance of it's policy of Arab appeasement, proceeding to greatly restrict further Jewish immigration into the remnant of Palestine....the rest is history.

This is highly recommended, essential reading on the Palestinian-Israeli issue and is a priceless addition to anyone's library.

Approaching only 100 pages or so, this study is precise, concise and provides easy reference to those who do not wish to delve through enormous lengthy studies.

As one of a relatively new series of books, I can only recommend and encourage Karsh and other authors to publish additional such precise studies in this same series on the just as relevant issues surrounding the 1967 Six Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon conflict, plus the Palestinian intifadas and parallel issues.