Customer Reviews

Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture)

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This is an excellent example of applied case studies for the purpose of model and theory building. Lustick, an Israel politics specialist, looks at the attempts to resolve the status of Ireland in the 19th and early 20th centuries and Algeria in the period between 1945 and 1962. He tells the story with historical narrative but chops it into segments to fit the model that he builds so that the two cases can be compared. He then applies the conclusions of the model to Israel and the occupied territories and has a chapter telling the story of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute since the British mandate with the concentration on the period since 1967. This is a must read for all those interested in looking at the obstacles that must be overcome before Israel will withdraw from the territories and the conflict will be resolved. As the book was written in the early 1990s it does not include coverage of the Oslo process or the unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

I personally have read much on the Irish case as background to Northern Ireland, and found Lustick's account to be both accurate and compelling. His recreation of the Algerian events from 1958-61 was largely new to me, but I also believe in its accuracy and narrative power.