Research Guides: Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Resource Guide for BenU: Historical Background

History of the Conflict

Here are histories of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and histories of modern Israel and Palestine, for those who want to read about the conflict itself in detail.

Please note: this Crash Course video was published in 2015, 8 years ago.

A History of Modern Israel by Colin Shindler
ISBN: 9781107671775
Publication Date: 2013-03-25
"Colin Shindler's remarkable history begins in 1948, as waves of immigrants arrived in Israel from war-torn Europe to establish new cities, new institutions, and a new culture founded on the Hebrew language. Optimistic beginnings were soon replaced with the sobering reality of wars with Arab neighbours, internal ideological differences, and ongoing confrontation with the Palestinians. The author paints a broad canvas that affords unusual insights into Israel's multicultural society, forged from more than one hundred different Jewish communities and united by a common history."
A History of Modern Palestine by Ilan Pappe
ISBN: 9780521683159
Publication Date: 2006-07-31
Tracing the history of Palestine from the Ottomans in the nineteenth century, through the British Mandate, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent wars and conflicts which have dominated this troubled region, Ilan Pappe's widely acclaimed A History of Modern Palestine provides a balanced and forthright overview of Palestine's complex history. Placing at its centre the voices of the men, women, children, peasants, workers, town-dwellers, Jews and Arabs of Palestine, who lived through these times, this tells a story of co-existence and co-operation, as well as oppression, occupation, and exile, exposing patterns of continuity as well as points of fracture.
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
ISBN: 1627798552
Publication Date: 2020-01-28
"In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, 'in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.'
Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective."
The Israel-Palestine Conflict by James L. Gelvin
ISBN: 9781107613546
Publication Date: 2014-01-13
"...a compelling, accessible and current introduction for students and general readers. The book traces the struggle from the emergence of nationalism among the Jews of Europe and the Arab inhabitants of Ottoman Palestine through to the present, exploring the external pressures and internal logic that have propelled it. Placing events in Palestine within the framework of global history, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History skilfully interweaves biographical sketches, eyewitness accounts, poetry, fiction, and official documentation into its narrative."
Under Crescent and Cross by Mark R. Cohen
ISBN: 9780691010823
Publication Date: 1995-10-22
"The exacerbation of Arab-Israeli conflict at the time of the Six-Day War in 1967 gave birth in some quarters to a radical revision of Jewish-Arab history. At stake was the longstanding, originally Jewish, "myth of the interfaith utopia" in which medieval Muslims and Jews peacefully cohabited in Arab lands - a utopia that many Arabs claimed had continued until the emergence of modern Zionism. Some Jewish writers challenged this notion with a "countermyth of Islamic persecution," suggesting that Jews fared not much better socially and politically under Islamic rule than they did under Christendom. Full of implications for Jewish, Islamic, and European historians, both myths form the backdrop of this provocative book aimed at enriching our understanding of medieval gentile-Jewish relations."

Podcast: Wiser World Podcast
A podcast recommendation for those who'd like a beginner's foundation on understanding the conflict.

Recent History and Perspectives on the Conflict

From the BBC: "The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on Israel on 7 October, with hundreds of gunmen infiltrating communities near the Gaza Strip. More than 1,400 Israelis were killed, while the Israeli military says more than 220 soldiers and civilians, including women and children, were taken to Gaza as hostages."

According to BBC correspondent Frank Gardner, "All Western leaders have called on Israel not to breach international humanitarian law, yet that is exactly what UN agencies are now accusing Israel of doing as it bombs crowded areas and forces more than a million people out of their homes."

Sources: https://pcpsr.org/ and https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44124396

Hamas Contained by Tareq Baconi
ISBN: 9780804797412
Publication Date: 2018-05-15
"Hamas rules Gaza and the lives of the two million Palestinians who live there. Demonized in media and policy debates, various accusations and critical assumptions have been used to justify extreme military action against Hamas."
The Forgotten Palestinians by Ilan Pappé
ISBN: 9780300184327
Publication Date: 2013-07-23
"For decades, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have lived as Israeli citizens within the borders of the nation formed at the end of the 1948 conflict. Occupying a precarious middle ground between the Jewish citizens of Israel and the dispossessed Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Palestinians have developed an exceedingly complex relationship with the land they call home; however, in the innumerable discussions of the Israel-Palestine problem, their experiences are often overlooked and forgotten."
City on a Hilltop by Sara Yael Hirschhorn
ISBN: 9780674975057
Publication Date: 2017-05-22
"Since 1967, more than 60,000 Jewish-Americans have settled in the territories captured by the State of Israel during the Six Day War. Comprising 15 percent of the settler population today, these immigrants have established major communities, transformed domestic politics and international relations, and committed shocking acts of terrorism... In this deeply researched, engaging work, Sara Yael Hirschhorn unsettles stereotypes, showing that the 1960s generation who moved to the occupied territories were not messianic zealots or right-wing extremists but idealists engaged in liberal causes. They did not abandon their progressive heritage when they crossed the Green Line. Rather, they saw a historic opportunity to create new communities to serve as a beacon―a “city on a hilltop”―to Jews across the globe. This pioneering vision was realized in their ventures at Yamit in the Sinai and Efrat and Tekoa in the West Bank. Later, the movement mobilized the rhetoric of civil rights to rebrand itself, especially in the wake of the 1994 Hebron massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein, one of their own."
Zionism and Its Discontents: a Century of Radical Dissent in Israel/Palestine by Ran Greenstein
ISBN: 9780745334677
Publication Date: 2014-10-20
Ran Greenstein challenges the hegemony of mainstream nationalist narratives "by focusing on four different, but at the same time connected, attempts which stood up to Zionist dominance and the settlement project before and after 1948": the Palestinian Communist Party, the bi-nationalist movement, the fate of these movements in the period after 1948, and the radical anti-Zionist Matzpen group, which operated from the early 1960s–80s.
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
ISBN: 9780894108570
Publication Date: 1998-11-01
Stories by one of the most celebrated Palestinian writers.
Palestine Speaks by Mateo Hoke (Editor); Cate Malek (Editor)
ISBN: 9781642595406
Publication Date: 2021-11-02
"The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been one of the world’s most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises for over four decades. In this oral history collection, men and women from Palestine—including a fisherman, a settlement administrator, and a marathon runner—describe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the historic crisis. Other narrators ABEER, a young journalist from Gaza City who launched her career by covering bombing raids on the Gaza Strip."
The Palestine Nakba Decolonisation
ISBN: 9786613520005
"This book explores new ways of remembering and commemorating the Nakba - the most traumatic catastrophe that ever befell Palestinians. Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practise a professional historiography but an ethical imperative."

Historical Background to the Conflict

According to Joana Ricarte, in her book "The Impact of Protracted Peace Processes on Identities in Conflict",

"The historical roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict date back to much earlier than the decision to partition the land between two peoples, which led to the creation of the Israeli State in 1948 and the beginning of the official dispute between Arabs and Jews. This moment was—and is—of central importance for the current format of the conflict and the following attempts to solve it. However, the narratives that have created the rationale for the discourses, policies and practices of conflict that prevail until today were actually formed in the first half of the twentieth century. These have arisen in the context of the establishment of the Zionist Movement and the subsequent attempts made by the British Mandate to conciliate the intentions of the latter and the claims of the autochthonous population of Palestine—the Palestinians—after the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire (Ricarte 10)".

A Concise History of the Middle East by Arthur Goldschmidt Jr.; Aomar Boum; Lawrence Davidson
ISBN: 9780813349626
Publication Date: 2015-07-28
"This book explores the evolution of Islamic institutions and culture, the influence of the West, the modernization efforts of Middle Eastern governments, the struggle of various peoples for political independence, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the reassertion of Islamic values and power, the issues surrounding the Palestinian Question, and the post-9/11 Middle East."
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris; Charles Tripp (Contribution by); Julia A. Clancy-Smith (Contribution by); Israel Gershoni (Contribution by); Roger Owen (Contribution by); Yezid Sayigh (Contribution by); Judith E. Tucker (Contribution by)
ISBN: 9780521811200
Publication Date: 2003-12-11
"Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem was published in 1988. Its startling revelations about how and why 700,000 Palestinians left their homes and became refugees during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 undermined traditional interpretations as to whether they left voluntarily or were expelled as part of a systematic plan. This book represents a revised edition of the earlier work, compiled on the basis of newly-opened Israeli military archives. While the focus remains the 1948 war and the analysis of the Palestinian exodus, the new material contains more information about what happened in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, and how events there led to the collapse of Palestinian urban society. It also sheds light on the battles and atrocities that resulted in the disintegration of rural communities. The story is a harrowing one. The refugees now number four million and their existence remains a major obstacle to peace."
New Babylonians by Orit Bashkin
ISBN: 9780804778756
Publication Date: 2012-09-12
" Although Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi patriots, their community―which had existed in Iraq for more than 2,500 years―was displaced following the establishment of the state of Israel. New Babylonians chronicles the lives of these Jews, their urban Arab culture, and their hopes for a democratic nation-state. It studies their ideas about Judaism, Islam, secularism, modernity, and reform, focusing on Iraqi Jews who internalized narratives of Arab and Iraqi nationalisms and on those who turned to communism in the 1940s. As the book reveals, the ultimate displacement of this community was not the result of a perpetual persecution on the part of their Iraqi compatriots, but rather the outcome of misguided state policies during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sadly, from a dominant mood of coexistence, friendship, and partnership, the impossibility of Arab-Jewish coexistence became the prevailing narrative in the region―and the dominant narrative we have come to know today. "
Expulsion of the Palestinians by Nur Masalha
ISBN: 9780887282355
Publication Date: 1992-06-01
"In this meticulous work, based almost entirely on Hebrew archival material, Nur Masalha examines the Zionist concept of "transfer," or the expulsion of the Palestinian population to neighboring Arab lands. Masalha establishes the extent to which "transfer" was embraced by the highest levels of Zionist leadership, including virtually all the Founding Fathers of the Israeli state."
The Land Called Holy by Robert L. Wilken
ISBN: 9780300054910
Publication Date: 1992-11-25
"Drawing on both primary texts and archaeology, Wilken traces the Christian conception of a Holy Land from its origins in the Hebrew Bible to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in the seventh century."
Year of the Locust by Salim Tamari; Ihsan Salih Turjman
ISBN: 9780520287501
Publication Date: 2015-08-18
Year of the Locust captures in page-turning detail the end of the Ottoman world and a pivotal moment in Palestinian history. In the diaries of Ihsan Hasan al-Turjman (1893–1917), the first ordinary recruit to describe World War I from the Arab side, we follow the misadventures of an Ottoman soldier stationed in Jerusalem. There he occupied himself by dreaming about his future and using family connections to avoid being sent to the Suez. His diaries draw a unique picture of daily life in the besieged city, bringing into sharp focus its communitarian alleys and obliterated neighborhoods, the ongoing political debates, and, most vividly, the voices from its streets―soldiers, peddlers, prostitutes, and vagabonds. Salim Tamari’s indispensable introduction places the diary in its local, regional, and imperial contexts while deftly revising conventional wisdom on the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson
ISBN: 9780060915339
Publication Date: 1988-09-14
"This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation, showing the impact of Jewish character and imagination upon the world."
The Making of the Medieval Middle East by Jack Tannous
ISBN: 9780691179094
Publication Date: 2018-12-04
"A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the story In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam."
A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin
ISBN: 9780195139419
Publication Date: 2000-07-27
"Where did the Jews come from? How did they retain their strong sense of community through centuries of dispersion? How have the Jews of the present, with their proud ethnic identity and thriving national home, emerged out of the downtrodden Jews of the past? Such questions arise naturally in the minds of anyone contemplating the long history of Jewish people. In one concise, authoritative volume, A Short History of the Jewish People provides insights and answers."