Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War [Hardcover]

Benny Morris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 1994

This book looks at the development of Israeli-Arab relations during the formative years 1949 to 1956, focusing on Arab infiltration into Israel and Israeli retaliation. Palestinian refugee raiding and cross-border attacks by Egyptian-controlled irregulars and commandos were a core phenomenon during this period and one of the chief causes of Israel's invasion of Sinai and the Gaza strip in 1956.
Benny Morris probes the types of Arab infiltration and the attitude of Arab governments towards the phenomenon, and traces the evolution of Israel's defensive and offensive responses. He analyzes Israeli decision-making processes, including the emergence and ultimate failure of Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett's dissident policy of moderation, and describes in detail the history of the Arab infiltration, including the terrorist-guerrilla raids by state-organized Fedayeen in 1955-6, and of the IDF raids of Qibya, Nahhalin, Kinneret, and the Sabha.
This was a precedent-setting period in the making of Israeli defense policy, and this pattern of raiding and counter-raiding served to define Israeli-Arab relations during the subsequent four decades. In this pioneering study Morris deepens our understanding of the current tuation in the Middle East and of the prospects for a lasting peace there.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"No one henceforth will be able to write on this period without reference to this basic study....Told with high regard for sources, in a smoothly written narrative that leaves the reader with a sense for how deep the antagonism between Arabs and Israelis really is."--Foreign Affairs

"Morris has thoroughly combed newly opened archival material...and newly published studies, to produce an exhaustive, often revealing...account of those seven years of Arab-Israeli hostilities."--The Jerusalem Report

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Benny Morris is at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 20, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198278500
• ISBN-13: 978-0198278504
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,784,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential history, July 27, 2001

By 

Kerry Levenberg "kerrylev" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Paperback)

Wow, one review here is from the "expert" Daniel Pipes who, after the Oaklahoma City Bombing, suggested in USA Today that the blame belongs to Muslim extremists. What a fascinating and disturbing ideologue.

I can only suggest that the information here largely comes from from primary Israeli sources.

Judge for yourself. I found it important.

4.0 out of 5 stars Benny Morris before he read Samuel Huntington, October 29, 2011

By 

Christopher M. Whitman Jr. "I can actually ch... (Marlborough, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Paperback)

Benny Morris is a rather decent historian, even if he has rather poor analysis skills later in his life. This book was written about the issue of "infiltration" into Israel from 1949-56. Morris systematically deals with Israeli-Jordanian modes to resolve the issue. He details Israeli policy and how it was seized to use excessive force unnecessarily, further worsening the situation. He discusses Jordanian clamp downs and proposals to stop because the Jordanians (and Egyptians) had no interest in war with Israel, not getting invaded by them on "retaliatory" raids. It is not a tough read, but a necessary one in the field of Middle Eastern studies. And the best part is, this is still before Morris read Huntington and actually did decent research, comparatively speaking.

12 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Israel's Border Wars, April 12, 2001

By 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Paperback)

Israel's leading revisionist historian returns to the archives and argues that Israel was ultimately the party most responsible for keeping the Arab-Israeli conflict going right after the 1948 war. With their eyes on gaining more Arab territory, Israeli leaders did not take advantage of the peace offers coming from Jordan and Syria. Most important, according to Morris, Israelis misinterpreted the many thousands of Arab infiltrators each year into their country, turning simple refugees trying to reclaim their houses and farmers working their fields into politically motivated enemies. Far from sponsoring these attacks, Arab regimes actually opposed them. Oblivious to the limited, even defensive nature of 90 percent of the raids, Israelis retaliated against Arab neighbors with great force, killing Arab civilians without mercy. This in turn led Arab governments to reply by organizing state-run guerrillas, known as fedayeen. Before you know it, the Suez War resulted, and with it the enduring enmity that has long characterized the Arab-Israeli conflict. Like revisionist historians reviewing Soviet-U.S. relations, Morris is determined to show, against all experience and commonsense, that the democratic and liberal country is the one that initiated, maintained, and benefited from conflicts. Let's just say that if David Ben-Gurion was, in Morris' description, a "virtuoso manipulator of facts," then Morris has established himself as a virtuoso manipulator of archival records.

Middle East Quarterly, September 1994