The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge Middle East Studies) [Paperback]

Eugene L. Rogan (Editor), Avi Shlaim (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521794765 | ISBN-13: 978-0521794763 | Publication Date: February 16, 2001

By all accounts, the 1948 Palestine war was one of the most significant milestones in the modern history of the Middle East and remains one of the most intractable conflicts of modern times. Israelis call the 1948 war "The War of Independence" while Arabs call it al-Nakba or the disaster. The conventional Israeli version portrays 1948 as an unequal struggle between a Jewish David and an Arab Goliath, as a desperate, heroic, and ultimately successful battle for survival against overwhelming odds. In this version all the surrounding Arab states sent their armies into Palestine to strangle the Jewish state at birth and the Palestinians left the country on orders from their own leaders and in the expectation of a triumphal return. Since the late 1980s, however, a group of "new historians" or revisionist Israeli historians have challenged many of the claims surrounding the birth of the State of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war. The present volume was conceived as a contribution to the ongoing debate about 1948. The War for Palestine brings together leading Israeli new historians with prominent Arab and Western scholars of the Middle East who revisit 1948 from the perspective of each of the countries involved in the war. The result is a volume that is rich in new material and new insights and which enhances considerably our understanding of the historical roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Eugene L. Rogan is a Lecturer in Modern History of the Middle East, Fellow of St. Anthony's College, and Director of the Middle East Centre at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Frontiers of State in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 2000) and co-editor of Village, Steppe, and State: the Social Origins of Modern Jordan (St. Martin's, 1995). Avi Shlaim is a Professor of International Relations and Fellow of St. Anthony's College, University of Oxford, and he is also the Director of Graduate Studies in International Relations. He is the author of several books, the most recent one being The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Norton, 1999). Professor Shlaim is a frequent contributor to newspapers and a media commentator on Middle Eastern affairs.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

More than half a century has passed since the end of the 1948 Palestine War. The war, which the Israelis call the "War of Independence" and the Palestinians refer to as "the disaster," has been the subject of passionate public debate and numerous scholarly writings in recent years. The official Israeli version of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem has been challenged by, among other people, a group of Israeli scholars who are variably called the "new historians" or the "revisionists." In this edited volume, Rogan and Shlaim, two prominent scholars of the modern Middle East at the University of Oxford, have brought together leading Israeli revisionist historians with noted Arab and Western scholars to explain the historical and contemporary significance of the 1948 War from various perspectives. In addition to the editors themselves, contributors to this erudite and immensely informative volume include Rashid Khalidi, Benny Morris, Charles Tripp, Joshua Landis, Laila Parsons, Edward Said, and Fawaz Gerges. Their general consensus is that the Palestinian refugee problem resulted not from voluntary flight but from the specific policies of Zionist authorities during the creation of the state of Israel. Highly recommended for public and demic libraries. Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Historians who claim to be reinventing the wheel can be very irritating, but occasionally they can be useful. Rogan and Shlaim, prime proponents of the "revisionist" school among historians of the Arab-Israeli conflict, have assembled a series of essays that seek to dispel many of the "myths" surrounding the events of 1948, which created both the Israeli state and the Palestinian diaspora. Benny Morris asserts that the Palestinian exodus partially resulted from deliberate, long-planned Zionist hopes for "transfer" of population rather than the mere vagaries of war. Laila Parsons places Israeli-Druze cooperation within the context of anti-Muslim bias. Although some of the data presented here is new, the conclusions are not; the general tone of this anthology is anti-Zionist, and the use of "facts" is highly selective. Still, some of the essays provide interesting perspectives, and it is useful to be reminded that historical struggles are seldom as simple or noble as they may appear from a distance. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (February 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521794765
• ISBN-13: 978-0521794763
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,362,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Landis on Syria is smart, December 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge Middle East Studies) (Paperback)

It's unfortunate that the editor of this volume felt it necessary to close the book with an epilogue by a big name. At least some of the articles are better than that.

The most interesting piece, I think, is Landis on Syria's involvement in the 1948 war. Landis in fact contradicts the title of the volume -- "The War for Palestine" -- when he shows that Palestine and Palestinians were the last thing on Syria's mind in 1948 (and probably since then).

By looking at the diaries and unofficial documents of the president and prime minister of Syria during 1948, and by seeing what they had to say about why Syria was in the war in the first place, Landis makes obvious that it was FEAR OF JORDAN (and, of course, Great Britain), rather than any love of Palestinians, that pushed Syria into a conflict it most certainly knew it would lose.

In short, Syria was scared to death that Jordan's King 'Abdullah was about to fulfill his "Greater Syria Plan," namely the Jordanian annexation of Syria and Damascus. The animosity between Amman and Damascus is an old story, but Landis shows how Arab nationalism in the name of the Palestinians was the sheerest of cheesecloths with which simple Arab backstabbing was covered up.

The overriding concern of Syria, at least, was not to be pushed into the sea by Jordan. Not for the last time in Middle Eastern history, the Palestinians were only an easy PR excuse to mobilize troops -- first for Jordan, in an effort to impose the Greater Syria Plan, and then for Syria, in an attempt to stop it. Underneath it all, Landis argues that the hate that inspired the 1948 war was Arab vs. Arab.

Until the 1948 war is seen for what it was -- namely an Arab civil war, a war of Arabs against themselves -- the location of Israel in that war will never really be understood. And, I dare say, until the Arab countries honestly confront this war over Arab identity and nationalism, Israelis and Palestinians will continue to be the excuses -- the sheerest cheesecloth -- with which Arab governments cover over their weaknesses and ugly internecine stuggles.

I give the book five stars for Landis alone.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible, October 10, 2001

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge Middle East Studies) (Paperback)

These essayists (Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said and others), consider all previous historical accounts "Zionist propaganda," as Yehoshua Porath observes in his important summer, 2002 review in Azure. Actually, this book is propaganda, not the reverse. These essays weakly attempt to recast Israel's 1947 and 1948 fight for survival --- and fail.

There is nothing new to the idea that Israel instigated the flight of Arabs from Israel in 1947 and 1948, but the falsity of these accusations has been proved time and again by extensive historical research since 1948. Israel did not deliberately expel Arabs.

Taken on together, or case by case, such claims are easily disproved. Inhabitants of Saffuriya, for example, accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing. But in the 1930s, the village hosted anti-Jewish radicals and in 1948 it was headquarters for Arab Liberation Army leader Fawzi al-Qawuqji, who ignored the June 11, 1948 U.N. truce. Thus inhabitants fled en masse, expecting "revenge for their numerous onslaughts upon Jews," --- before the IDF captured the village, according to historical documents, military orders, oral testimonies and diaries cited in Yoav Gelber's Palestine 1948 (p. 165).

These authors also accuse Israel by selectively citing certain items but neglecting critical contextual factors that disprove their allegations.

Contrary to this book's contention, "civil war in Palestine" did not "break out" on Nov. 30, 1947. The "outbreak" wasn't spontaneous, but a well organized series of Arab riots and attacks targeting Jewish communities and people after Arab commanders, leaders and neighboring nations rejected the U. N. Partition Plan--which Israel had just accepted.

These authors, like many other anti-Israel dogmatists, harp on 100 Arabs killed at Deir Yassin. They neglect to mention that the village was a militant stronghold, and was central to Arab attacks on the roads to Jerusalem, intended to cut off the city's access to Jews. Iraqi combatants had settled in Deir Yassin, and joined local aggressors. Arab men dressed in women's clothes and opened fire. They weren't innocent civilians. Likewise, Arabs at a Haifa refinery murdered 50 Jewish civilian co-workers on Dec. 30, 1947 and Arabs slaughtered 80 civilian Jewish medical workers and professors on Apr. 13, 1948. The sole motivation were the victims' Jewish faith.

For his part, Rashid Khalidi focuses on 1948 Palestinian Arab failures--criticizing Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. Yet he ignores Haj Amin's alliance with Hitler, his wartime refuge in Berlin, his anti-Jewish Berlin radio broadcasts, and his personal request that Hitler refuse to spare 400,000 Hungarian Jews in exchange for military supplies. Haj Amin also elicited a Nazi promise to exterminate Israel's Jews. Nor does Khalidi mention Palestinian Arab murders of all but two 131 prisoners who surrendered at Etzion Bloc.

Avi Shlaim claims that Jewish soldiers vastly outnumbered 25,000 Arab soldiers. But as Porath notes, Israel's Jewish people totaled no more than 750,000, could find no more fighters, and exhausted their resources mounting their self-defense, while seven Arab nations opposing them could easily have drafted far more soldiers from their combined populations of more than 50 million.

Finally, comes the late Edward Said, writing on his family's "flight" from Jerusalem's Talbieh neighborhood. The details confirm--like many 1948, 1949 and 1950 Arab newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, U.N. and Arab League statements and personal Arab accounts--that Arab leaders' urgent calls for Palestinian flight, resulted in massive, voluntary urban Palestinian departures. Said claims to have been forced to leave. His own details contradict him.

Despite these essayists claims, 1947 and 1948 Arab attacks on Jews were very significant, and existential threats, just like frequent publicly announced plans to destroy Israel at its birth.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

40 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo to Avi Shlaim, October 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge Middle East Studies) (Paperback)

The reason why this book is very controversial in Israel is because it attempts to shatter all the myths surrounding the 1948 victory of the Jewish community in establishing a de-facto state without consideration to the Palestinian population. Myths such as "a land without people for a people without land", "arabs flee the fighting voluntarily", "Israel's victory is a miracle given that 5 arab states attacked concurrently" and "Israel accepted the 1947 UN partition while the Arabs rejected it", are proven to be false through a series of references to British and Israel archives that have been recently de-classified.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning how lies can be craftly fabricated and propagated down generations. I am pleased that some historians in Israel are accepting that the existence of Israel to fulfill the right to self-determination for the Jews can not be moraly justified if it deprives the Palestinians of their very same right, nor can this state expect itself to survive in peace and harmony if its grave mistakes are not recitifed.