Customer Reviews

Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Institute for Palestine Studies Series)

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If the Bush Administration is seeking a real road map to peace, this should be its basis. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is and has always been about land. Dr. Fischbach has done the world a favor by providing us the detail we need about what land was taken, and how sane and factual negotiations about its particulars provide us with a pathway out of the death and destruction of the past 50 years. Please read this book and hope our leaders do as well.

This book studies the expropriation of the property of the Palestine refugees and the compensation issues and diplomatic activity that followed. Especially interesting (to me) is the discussion of the estimates of the dollar value of these losses. It is based primarily on the records of the UN Conciliation Commission on Palestine. It should be of the highest interest to anyone with an interest in the Israel Palestine problem and how it might be resolved. I must confess that I have only started reading this book and I am not a scholar- I am a lawyer- but I highly reccomend this book.

This book came about as a result of a project to commit the records of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestinians to CD format. Author Michael Fishbach was then given access to the records and has proceeded to navigate the vagaries of the issue of Palestinian refugee property--a sometimes obscure but always central issue of the Arab dispute with Israel. Carefully researched, meticulously documented, and well written, this book should be the foundation for many future studies of the issue.

The author remains coolly analytical and non-partisan in his approach, and this should be one of the abiding strengths of the book. Most treatments of the Arab-Israeli conflict are accused by one side or the other as being so completely biased as to be completely unreliable. Of course, some of them are, but the opposing camps of the issue tend to view any attempt at balance as favouring the other side. Fishbach's book is nothing if not balanced, and it would be very difficult to level the charge of bias against him (although I am sure it will be attempted). His is purely and simply a sober recitation of the facts of the case, as complicated as they are. This is to my reading a far more effective technique of assigning credit and laying blame than any polemic, regardless of how elegant the rhetoric .

What emerges from the conflicting figures (all provided in tables and summarized in the appendix) and diplomatic fencing (summarized neatly and matter-of-factly as the narrative unfolds) attendant upon the issue throughout its fifty-five year history is also a record of another sort: that of Israeli duplicity and obstructionism. Granted, both sides have kicked these properties around as a political football until Hell won't have them. And the author reveals all of the manoeuvering on either side. Nevertheless, it is the manipulative nature of the Israeli approach that stands out.

In the hands of a less skillful writer, this could turn into a slog through a trackless swamp, pursued only through a sense of duty. Fortunately, Fishbach is as adept at historiography as he is at compiling his evidence, and the book reads effortlessly despite its being long and dense with facts and figures.

Profound mind-opening evidence, that proves the truth about the evil deceit that has sought to justify a horrible crime against many thousands of innocent men, women and children, who were and are truly heirs to the blessing that God promised to the descendants of Abram. Profound, profound!