Book Review Essay: Avi Shlaim’s Israel and Palestine

Abstract

Avi Shlaim introduces himself as belonging to the group labeled "the revisionist Israeli historians" or "the new historians," initially including scholars like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. The group emerged as holding views challenging the official version of the state of Israel, concerning almost every detail of that history, since the Balfour promise with which starts the book (Chapter one).

In the light of recent scholarship, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict appears as a succession of deceitful games and irrational paradoxes. The Balfour declaration, to begin with, was "a white Negro" (A. Koestler): "one nation promising another nation the land of a third nation." (4) Britain supported the aspirations of the Jews, but refused to recognize Arab independence in Palestine, although its envoy to King Hussein (1918), D.G.Hogarth, assured him that no people will be subjected to another.

Keywords: Israel New Historians, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East Studies

JEL Classification: N01, N15, N35, N45