An essential insight into the central figure in the modern history of Israel and Zionism, this book explores the years that built up to the Six Day War and details crucial issues and events the world is still grappling with. This book traces Daniel Ben-Gurion's waning years in Israeli politics. After his resignation from the office of prime minister in 1963, the 'Old Man' soon lost faith in his self-chose successor, Levi Eshkol, and ceaselessly tried to undermine the latter's premiership, eventually forming a breakaway party. The events leading up to the Six-Day War in June 1967 caught...

Recounting the dialogue and related diplomatic activity that took place during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the Ben-Gurion and Eshkol premierships, this work recalls how, in the early 1950s, Israel secretly launched a project designed to achieve a nuclear option. It discusses how France initially supported the daring project and the attempt stood to engineer a dramatic change in Israel s strategic position vis-a-vis its neighboring Arab states and the wider international community. It recalls how Israel was adamantly opposed to the United States request to allow external...

Recounting the dialogue and related diplomatic activity that took place during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the Ben-Gurion and Eshkol premierships, this work recalls how, in the early 1950s, Israel secretly launched a project designed to achieve a nuclear option. It discusses how France initially supported the daring project and the attempt stood to engineer a dramatic change in Israel s strategic position vis-a-vis its neighboring Arab states and the wider international community. It recalls how Israel was adamantly opposed to the United States request to allow external...

The book uses papers released from Israeli, British and US State Department archives -- which demonstrate the thinking behind the diplomatic moves relating to the western powers' commitment to Jordan and the pro-Nasser policy of the Kennedy administration. The book examines Israeli efforts to preserve the stability of the Jordanian monarchy under king Hussein, as well as the territorial status quo between Israel and Jordan, in terms of the manoeuvrings of powerful factions in Israel to take advantage of the crisis so as to make territorial gains.

Although much has been written about David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel, he remains a deeply controversial figure. The author's aim in writing this study is not so much to defend or criticise Ben-Gurion as to give a detailed and accurate account of his attitude towards the Arab world in the period between the 1948 War and the Suez War. Shalom recognizes at the outset the distinction between policy and statements, between the operational and declaratory levels of policy. He is concerned not only with Ben-Gurion's practical policy towards the Arabs but with his views, his...