The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Norton Paperback)
As it celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1998, Israel could count many important successes. Its population, six million, was ten times that of 1948. One third of the world's Jews were now living in Israel, speaking the Hebrew language that had been confined to the liturgy when Zionism was born. In its central aim of providing the scattered Jews with a haven, instilling in them a sense of nationhood, and forging a modern nation-state, Zionism has been a brilliant success. These achievements are all the more remarkable against the background of the appalling tragedy of the Holocaust. However, the conflict with the Palestinians, and with the Arab world at large, casts a long shadow over Israel's history. Israel's relationship with the Arabs has been marked by war and uneasy peace. What was promulgated in the 1920s as an "Iron Wall" strategy - dealing with the Arabs from a position of unassailable strength - was intended by its architects to yield a further stage where Israel would be strong enough to negotiate a satisfactory settlement with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbours. This Iron Wall has been constructed but the goal of comprehensive peace in the Middle East remains elusive. One of Avi Shlaim's aims is to explain how and why this is so. In this book, Shlaim places Israel's political and military actions under an uncompromising lens. He traces a pattern of policy from the goals of the early Zionists, through the wars that have marked much of Israeli history, to recent efforts to construct peace. This book draws on a great deal of new material which not only brings events alive, but also leads to fresh assessments and a better informed, more critical understanding of one of the world's most intense and intractable conflicts of modern times.
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Review:
In 1897, under order of First Zionist Congress president Theodor Herzl, two Austrian rabbis travelled to Palestine to explore the possibility of locating a Jewish state there. "The bride is beautiful," the rabbis cabled Herzl, "but she is married to another man." That "other man" was the Palestinian Arab nation, long established in the region as a political entity. Undeterred, Herzl pressed on with his programme of emigration, ignoring Palestine's existing occupants and creating in the process what came to be known as the "Arab question."
From the Back Cover:
In this far-ranging history, Avi Shlaim analyses that question in remarkable detail, tracing the shifting policies of Israel toward the Palestinians and the Arab world at large. Herzl, he writes, followed a policy that consciously sought to enlist the great powers--principally Britain and later the United States--while dismissing indigenous claims to sovereignty; after all, Herzl argued, "the Arab problem paled in significance compared with the Jewish problem because the Arabs had vast spaces outside Palestine, whereas for the Jews, who were being persecuted in Europe, Palestine constituted the only possible haven." This policy later changed to a stance of confrontation against the admittedly hostile surrounding Arab powers, especially Syria, Jordan and Egypt; this militant stance was a source of controversy in the international community, and it also divided Israelis into hawk and dove factions. The intransigence of those hawks, Shlaim shows, served to alienate Israel and made it possible for the Palestine Liberation Organisation and other Arab nationalist groups to enlist the support of the great powers that Herzl had long before courted. Both sides, in turn, had eventually to face the "historic compromise" that led to the present peace in the Middle East--a peace that, the author suggests, may not endure. --Gregory McNamee
'A milestone in modern scholarship of the Middle East' Edward Said
In the 1920s, Zionists developed the doctrine of the Iron Wall: negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength. Drawing on new material and interviews with many key participants, Shlaim places Israel's political and military actions under an uncompromising lens. Now updated with a new preface and new chapters on Israel's most recent leaders, Iron Wall is a fresh and informed account of one of the world's most intractible conflicts of modern times.
'Anyone wanting to understand the modern Middle East should start by reading this elegantly written and scrupulously researched book' Trevor Royle, Sunday Herald
'Fascinating ... Shlaim presents compelling new evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history' Ethan Bronner, The New York Times Book Review
'One of the best and most illuminating accounts of Arab-Israeli relations in years' Yaron Ezrahi, Foreign Affairs
'Highly readable ... the best, most comprehensive and generally fair-minded diplomatic history of the conflict yet published' Benny Morris, Journal of Palestine Studies
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- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 1435295137
- ISBN 13 9781435295131
- BindingLibrary Binding
- Number of pages670
- Rating
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