1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 544 pages
• Published by: Yale University Press April 21, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0300126964
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0300126969
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
• Weighs: 2 pounds

Product Review
Benjamin Kedar : "This is the best book by far on the war of 1948."-Benjamin Kedar, Professor of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Ronald W. Zweig : "This is a wonderful contribution to the historiography of the Israel/Palestine War of 1948. Morris has written a fresh account, substantiated by a lot of new documentation."-Ronald W. Zweig, Professor of Israel Studies, New York University

Product Description

This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side—where the archives are still closed—is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.

 

Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he looks at the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.

Reader Reviews
This mostly military chronicling of the first Arab-Israeli war, is a difficult read, because the prose is so dense and full of almost arcane military details. It is hard to get ones hands or head around the larger picture. I, for one was hoping for a much more coherent and self-contained piece, with larger explanatory themes to grab onto. I pretty much knew the outlines of the history here, but was hoping that this book would put the creation of the state of Israel into context, but sadly that is not what I got. That said, it is difficult to argue with the profusion of details if one is willing to get knee deep and wade into military arcania. The story Morris tells as best I can decipher it is this: Three years after the European Holocaust, and after the Jews had for 75 years been trickling into Palestine, a UN Mandate based on the arrangements of the Balfour Conference and a United Nations Resolution, brought the state of Israel into being. Although the Arabs had anticipated that this would happen, they were still shocked and remained disorganized. Fighting broke out immediately, but since the Jews were more highly motivated and better organized, they set a pattern that would be repeated in all of the subsequent wars, of quickly routing the Arabs and immediately began taking over Palestinian lands as spoils of war. At first the Jews were not bent on "ethnically cleansing" their new territory of all its Arabs. However, as Arabs who elected to stay under Israeli suzerainty were seen as traitors to the pan-Arabic cause, their voluntary exodus amounted to de facto and self-fulfilling ethnic cleansing, after which the new Jewish arrivals did not discourage. As far as atrocities were concerned, there were enough to go around, but Morris in the kind of balanced and fair-mindedness reflected throughout the book, takes the Israelis to task as being the more brutal of the two. According to him they had less reasons to trust the Arabs and usually shot first and asked questions later. Not enough non-military historical meat for me. Three Stars Comment | | (Report this)