Customer Reviews

The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction

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This book is a rock solid introduction to the Israel/Palestine conflict. I've always been interested in the topic, but I don't have the time to tackle one of the huge academic tomes out there. This book was the just the ticket - a concise and factual account written in a breezy, informed style. The text is chunked up nicely and the chapter summaries are particularly helpful.

Over a brisk 182 pages, the author lays out the situation from ancient times until the death of Arafat and beyond. The facts, dates, wars and peace plans come at you fast and furious, but the author guides you through with clarity, the occasional chuckle, and constant astonishment - from Israel's stunning military victory in the Six-Day War to the audacity of their land grabs to the terrible plight of Palestinian refugees.

A lot of people choose sides in this conflict like they choose sports teams and then root accordingly. I'm guilty of that to some degree, but, because of this book, I feel like I've developed a more sympathetic and balanced view.

This is an excellent primer, covering everything from scholarship about the Biblical and pre-Biblical settlement of the Levant, to the Al-Aqsa intifada.

The style of the book is accessible and non-academic -- a change when compared with most books on the Middle East -- but not "cutesy" in the style of Dummies or Idiot's books. A high school student should not have a problem reading this book, but some other readers might find the definitions and asides jarring (like the one explaining a "Pyrrhic victory").

If you're interested in what you see in the news, or wonder about the reasons for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, get this book.

However, if you believe that God gave either side a deed to the land, or that the promises of the Ottoman or British empires should be enforced in blood, you might be disappointed.

Of the books I have read this is by far the most balanced description of the conflict. I have purchased and read several books in an effort to get a better understanding of the nature of the conflict in the Middle East. The two prior books on the subject claimed objectivity, but but were soon to show a clear favoritism. One book strongly favored the Arab side, while the other was blatant propaganda for Israel.

This book delivered was the least biased of any I have read, providing an insight into the plight of both sides involved and why each side feel they have the rightful claim to the disputed land. This book will not attempt to solve the conflict, but it will leave you with an understanding of how the conflict reached its current position. Of the books I have read this is by far the most balanced description of the conflict.

Good quick summary of history. Necessarily limited for its brevity, but a useful primer. Reasonably balanced.

This is a good book to pick up if you want to spend a day or two finding out about what is at the heart of the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Unlike mainstream sources of US media and blatent anti-Palestinian sources of information, this book actualy deals with the social and historical issues at hand.

Read this if you want a source heavy on HISTORY and INFORMATION and light on POLEMICS.

This book provides a succinct, quality, and extremely well-researched history of the conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian people. A must-read for anyone who watches the news and has desired more information about the origins and bases of this long-term conflict.

I had not read a history of the conflict before reading this book. I liked the quotes on the back of the book about it being a basic introduction and being "balanced". I was a little teeny bit leery of the references to Chomsky in the reading list, but not enough to pass it by.

As I read the book, I became increasingly suspicious that I was not getting an unbiased perspective at all. One example of this is the author spending only one paragraph on the holocaust, saying that is was basically beside the point of the book. This seemed odd to me at the time.

If you read only this book, you will come away from it with a deep sympathy for the Palestinians, a deep anger at Israel, and a mild annnoyance with some of the neighboring Arab states and other countries such as Britian. But you will have been deceived.

After I read the book, I started reading "A Case For Israel" by Dershowitz. The more I read that book, the more incensed I became at the ommisions in this book. Going back to the holocaust example, I realized that the author had failed to mention the close ties and active collaboration between the Palestinian leadership and the Nazis during the Second World War. The Palestinian leadership (the grand mufti Husseini) clearly envisioned his own "Final Solution" to the Isreal problem. Beside the point? I hardly think so!

This is but one example of the egregious ommisions. The fact that this book is described as unbiased is laughable. Now it is true that if you read "The Case for Israel" you will hear the other side of the same coin. But there is a difference. Dershowitz openly admits his agenda at the beginning of his book, and states that he is making a case, advocating a certain position. I appreciate that honesty. But if someone writes a blatantly biased book and presents it as a unbiased overview - that I have little respect for. The sad thing is that I wouldn't be surprised if the author of this book actually thinks that he is unbiased.

Having said all this, reading both books isn't a bad way to go. You'll get both sides of the argument. Just don't buy the line that this book is "balanced". It is anything but that.

There are plenty of facts in this book. But just how well does it educate the reader about why there is a conflict between the Arabs and Israel? In my opinion, not very well.

Harms argues there were people in the Levant 100 years ago. And that the majority of them were not Jewish. Um, so what? When the Levant has been most heavily populated, by the way, the majority of the population has indeed been Jewish, both in recent times and in ancient ones.

In addition, there is a reason that there were relatively few Jews in the Levant for many centuries, and even relatively few Jews in the Jewish capital, Jerusalem. It was very difficult for Jews to overcome regulations against immigrating to the region, buying land, building homes on land, or earning money there. Once the Jews were emancipated, it is no surprise that many of them wanted to move to what is now Israel.

Although the territory involved is far different, one can see a similar pattern in Russia. For some time, after the Mongols killed most of the Russians, the Mongols were a big majority in Russia (although the total population was, of course, rather low). Eventually, however, the Russians returned. Harms does not make this point.

Nor does Harms explain that there were plenty of Jews available to populate the Levant once they got their emancipation. Those Jews bought land at high prices. Yes, there were and are more Arabs than Jews. But Arabs live on about 5.5 million square miles of land, while Israel, even if one includes the West Bank, is less than 11,000 square miles, 500 times less.

That would have put some of the conflict into perspective, and reminded people that it does not infringe on the rights of others when one buys land on the open market at a fair price.

This book, rather than accepting the fact of Jewish emancipation, blatantly sympathizes with racist opposition to Jews having human rights in the Levant. Of course, as Harms says, the reader will be the judge of whether he's showing bias. Well, I've made my judgment!

We do not need the mix of statements from propagandists contained in this book. We need an explanation of how things went wrong and what forces are keeping them wrong. And this book not only fails to supply this but is part of the problem.