The end of the British mandate in Palestine heralded the birth of the new state of Israel. It also marked the end of one of the most tumultuous and momentous chapters in Israeli history. But the new state, born into a hostile environment and struggling with the manifold demands of sovereignty, would have to face many post-Independence challenges to its existence, not least in the form of armed conflict and confrontation with its Arab neighbours. This volume examines the conflicts that from the 1948 until the 1967 Six Day War came to define the Israeli struggle for existence. In doing so,...

Israeli historiography has long been subjected to a sustained assault by self-styled new historians vying to expose what they claim to be the distorted Zionist narrative of Israeli history and the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have cast Israel as the regional villain, bearing sole responsibility for the cycle of violence in the Middle east since 1946.

Yaron Perry's account reveals, without bias or partiality, the story of the "London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews" and its unique contribution to the restoration of the Holy Land. This Protestant organization were the first to take root in the Holy Land from 1820 onwards.

Rethinking the Middle East runs counter to the received wisdom in modern Middle East studies. This discipline has been dominated by what may be termed a "culture of victimization"; it views the local populations of the Middle East Arabs in particular as the hapless victims of alien encroachment, and blames the region's endemic malaise on Western political and cultural imperialism. The author contends that the influence of the Great Powers has not been the primary force behind the region's political development, nor the main cause of its famous volatility. He argues that the main...

This volume provides a wide ranging historical survey of the special relationship between the Zionist movement and Israel with the Hashemite family and its far-reaching implications for Middle Eastern affairs in general, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. It includes chapters on Transjordan and the Yishuv, and the history of covert relations between Jordan and Israel.

Born amidst the ruin of World War II and into the Cold War environment of realpolitik, Israel has, since its earliest existence, commanded a place on the international stage out of all relation to its size, population or ambitions. This work, part of the series Israel: The First Hundred Years, examines Israel's experience in foreign affairs in its first 50 years of existence. Contributors ask to what extent an Israeli foreign policy can be said to be a Zionist foreign policy and analyse Israel's international role in the Cold War era. They also explore Israel's foreign policy relationships...

Volume 3 in a five-volume series giving a comprehensive evaluation of the first hundred years of Israel's history; Contributors include distinguished Israeli, European and American scholars; Since its founding in 1948 Israel has faced many political, social and indeed psychological challenges, unfamiliar to other nations based on the western democratic political model and peculiar to the Jewish State. The role of the army in a society on constant alert against war, the highly politicized issues of mass absorption of immigrants, the Holocaust, the relationship with the Palestinian population...

The end of the British mandate in Palestine heralded the birth of the new state of Israel. It also marked the end of one of the most tumultuous and momentous chapters in Israeli history. But the new state, born into a hostile environment and struggling with the manifold demands of sovereignty, would have to face many post-Independence challenges to its existence, not least in the form of armed conflict and confrontation with its Arab neighbours. This volume examines the conflicts that from the 1948 until the 1967 Six Day War came to define the Israeli struggle for existence. In doing so,...

The birth of the Zionist Movement, coming in the wake of Jewish emancipation in Western Europe and at a time of intensified persecution of Jewry in Eastern Europe, meant that for the first time since Jewish dispersion, the possibility of the Jews discarding their minority status in the lands they inhabited and creating their own home in their ancestral homeland became a reality, however incomprehensible it may have appeared in these early years. The next half a century saw great strides in the economic, social and political life of the Yishuv that culminated in the creation of the State of...

Israeli historiography has long been subjected to a sustained assault by self-styled new historians vying to expose what they claim to be the distorted Zionist narrative of Israeli history and the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have cast Israel as the regional villain, bearing sole responsibility for the cycle of violence in the Middle east since 1946.