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Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is the outstanding book on Israeli foreign policy, now thoroughly updated with a new preface and chapters on Israel's most recent leaders
In the 1920s, hard-line Zionists developed the doctrine of the 'Iron Wall': negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength, and only when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours.
This doctrine, argues Avi Shlaim, became central to Israeli policy; dissenters were marginalized and many opportunities to reconcile with Palestinian Arabs were lost. Drawing on a great deal of new material and interviews with many key participants, Shlaim places Israel's political and military actions under and uncompromising lens.
His analysis will bring scant comfort to partisans on both sides, but it will be required reading for anyone interested in this fascinating and troubled region of the world.
'The Iron Wall is strikingly fair-minded, scholarly, cogently reasoned and makes enthralling ... reading' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph
'Anyone wanting to understand the modern Middle East should start by reading this elegantly written and scrupulously researched book' Trevor Royle, Sunday Herald
'A milestone in modern scholarship of the Middle East' Edward Said
'Fascinating ... Shlaim presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history' Ethan Bronner, The New York Times Book Review
Avi Shlaim is Professor of International Relations at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) and War and Peace in the Middle East (1995).
- Sales Rank: #284778 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-07-30
- Released on: 2015-07-30
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
In 1897, under order of First Zionist Congress president Theodor Herzl, two Austrian rabbis traveled 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 program of emigration, ignoring Palestine's existing occupants and creating in the process what came to be known as the "Arab question."
In this far-ranging history, Avi Shlaim analyzes 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 Organization 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
From Publishers Weekly
Optimism about the prospects for a Middle East peace agreement has accompanied the recent election of Ehud Barak as Israel's prime minister, but if this book is any indication, the war over Israel's history is likely to rage on. Shlaim (War and Peace in the Middle East, etc.) is a leader among revisionist historians who are challenging Israel's most cherished myths about itself: that it has been a peaceful nation forced into war by bellicose Arab neighbors incapable of accepting its existence. A professor of history at Oxford, he covers relations between Israel and the Arabs from Israel's 1948 War of Independence to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's electoral defeat this past May. Rarely have as many fresh details been presented together about Israel's inner political scene and the Jewish state's contacts with the Arab world in its early years. Shlaim ably sets out the belief, shared by Israeli leaders of all political stripes, that the country had to build up an "iron wall" of strength and security in order to bring Arab leaders to the negotiating table (Shlaim himself thinks the iron wall was a mistake). But Shlaim's revisionist enthusiasm too often gets the better of him: he fails to marshal the necessary evidence to support his contention that Arab rulers were "prepared to recognize Israel, to negotiate directly with it, and even to make peace with it." Shlaim's explanations of Arab political constraints, especially the pragmatism of Arab rulers relative to the extreme anti-Israel sentiment of the Arab street, is illuminating. But his view of Palestinian terrorism as a reaction to Israeli militarism is far too simplistic. Revisionism is one thing, but Shlaim employs a double standard: while he tends to view Israeli leaders, most notably Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, as villains, he heaps praise on the "realism" of Arab leaders. A comprehensive, balanced history of Israel's history with its Arab neighbors needs to be written, but this is not it. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In the last two decades, Shlaim (international relations, St. Anthony's Coll., Oxford Univ.) has emerged as a leading figure among the Israeli historians challenging the Zionist account of the birth of the Jewish state and the country's policies toward the Arabs. In this path-breaking book, he presents a detailed account of Israel's failed relationship with the Arab world over the past 50 years and offers a sophisticated critique of Israel's "Iron Wall" strategy. The author relies on a variety of primary sources, including documents in the Israel State Archives and Britain's Public Record Office, as well as interviews with key personalities to provide readers with a highly original and objective account of Israel's foreign policy toward the Arab world. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.ANader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
58 of 66 people found the following review helpful.
Avi's use of primary sources makes this a compelling book
By A Customer
Avi Shlaim has painstakingly gone through the Israeli state archives as well as the public record office in London and interviewed many prominent notables including Abba Eban, King Hussein, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and many other major players for this massive history of modern Israel and its relations with the Arab world. All of this massive research and inquiry has culminated in what is one of the most complete and compelling history books written about Israel. Uncompromising in his inquiries, Shlaim addresses the problems that both sides faced during their struggles for supremacy in British Palestine.
Starting with the Prologue, Shlaim begins with an interesting look at the early years of Zionism, which began as a nationalist movement in Europe. Shlaim makes some good points regarding its birth as a response to European anti-Semitism and the inability of some Jewish groups to fully integrate into European society (many exceptions to this existed however). We get insights into all the major Zionist figures including Birnbaum, Herzl, Weizmann, Jabotinsky, and the mastermind himself, Ben-Gurion. The problems faced by the early Zionist movement can be summed in an interesting early statement from a fact-finding mission sent by Herzl, which stated [about Palestine], "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." Meaning that the proposed land coveted by the Zionists already had a population of predominantly Arabic speaking peoples. Here begins the conflict that Shlaim writes about.
Shlaim goes over the relentless and systematic approach of early Zionist leaders to court all the prominent leaders of the early 20th century by telling them what they wanted to hear. The Ottomans were offered money and investment for their cooperation, while the British were given promises that the new Jewish state would be a British colony, and so on. Two forces emerged from the early Zionists according to Shlaim. One group wanted a complete population transfer and a new Jewish majority state planted in the area, while another group sought a partition plan that would give them a state, while leaving some territory for the Arabs. Both camps varied in terms of how they viewed the natives of the area. Some like Jabotinsky, Shlaim contends, basically viewed the Arabs as savages who could be easily removed in order for the Jews to have a homeland. Others were more conciliatory towards the Arabs and sought some sort of co-existence.
Israel was born during the tumultuous events following the UN resolution 181 to partition the region. The new state of Israel had many anomalous problems such as an Arab population that was nearly half the population of Israel itself. After decades of selective political pressure, the new state of Israel emerged as the most powerful state in the region. Shlaim correctly points out that the new state of Israel was not a David battling the Goliath of the Arab world. On the contrary, the new state had a military that was twice the size of the ill-equipped Arab adversaries it faced. Shlaim does a great job in showing what was reality and was fiction. The Arabs were never told to leave by surrounding Arab nations, but fled after hearing about massacres like Deir Yassin and in some cases were expelled by Israeli forces in order to create a decisive Jewish majority in Israel. The result was the Palestinian refugee problem that came to be the biggest obstacle to peace during the subsequent peace talks at Lausanne. The views of both sides by this time had become uncompromising. Shlaim points out that the Arab states opposed the creation of Israel from the outset for the simple reason that it was based upon an undemocratic process that would give Jews dominant political power, while nearly half the population was still Arab. In addition, leaders like Menachem Begin (once a terrorist commander of the extreme nationalist Irgun) proclaimed that, "The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized.... Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (biblical Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever." So while the Arabs sought to extinguish the state of Israel in 1948 as something they had never agreed to, the Israeli view was that they too wanted all of British Palestine. Preferably without any Palestinians left to oppose them.
The details of the wars in 1956, 1967, 1973, and the invasion of Lebanon are quite interesting as well. Israeli leaders often had conflicting views as to how to pursue different goals that Shlaim correctly describes as Byzantine in complexity. We learn that France and Britain were Israel's main allies during the early years and in order to maintain its military advantage, the Israelis even turned to Germany only a decade after WWII and the tragedy of the Holocaust for arms. Effectively outmaneuvering the Arab states through smart diplomacy, the Israelis managed to maintain the upper hand over the years. Shlaim goes over the political process and interaction before and after the 1967 with great detail in a section entitled "Poor Little Samson." This is a reference to the Israeli leadership's attempt to depict Israel as an underdog, when in reality they had the military advantage from the beginning. The saber rattling of the Arab states is interesting to read about as well. Why did Nasser order the removal UN peacekeepers in the Sinai? To appease the Arab critics who complained that he was "hiding" behind the UN. From Israel perspective, this made war a possibility though. Both sides misinterpreted each other's moves and this led to war, according to Shlaim.
I have compared Shlaim's work with many other books I've read, and have found this book to be one of the more objective books about Israel. It is critical of all groups involved and presents an honest attempt to analyze the conflict using mostly primary sources. I would recommend reading Shlaim's work along with other similar works such as "Righteous Victims" by Benny Morris. Highly recommended.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
An Alternative View of the Conflict
By David Lindsay
The Arab-Israeli conflict has seemingly gone on forever and the problems seems intractable. The Iron Wall questions the conventional American view that the Israelis have always been the good guys. The book was written by Avi Shlaim an Israeli historian who is a professor at Oxford University. Shlaim's parents immigrated to Israel in 1951. He served in the Israeli Army in the 1960s and since then has pursued an academic career in England. Shlaim is often employed by the BBC as an expert on the conflict. Your attitude to this book will depend on your politics, Shlaim's views will probably appeal more to Europeans than Americans.
The Iron Wall is well written and easy to read. It is also long at over 900 pages. The book starts in the 1890s when Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian journalist decided that the Jews should form their own state in Palestine. The European Jews who visited the region considered themselves superior to the peasant Arab farmers who occupied this backwater of the Ottoman Empire. Schlaim implies that they brought with them a colonialist mindset. He states that the Zionists believed it was important to befriend the great power of the day and they got into the habit of avoiding direct negotiation with the primitive Palestinians. Before 1945 this was Britain, and after 1945 it was the US. In 1917, Chaim Weizmann, a British citizen and government scientist, convinced the British foreign secretary to sign the Balfour Declaration. At that time the land belonged to Turkey and the Jews represented less than 10% of the population. Weizmann later became the first President of Israel.
Schlaim argues that the only way to establish a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority in an area populated overwhelmingly by non-Jews was to expel the non-Jews. The success of Zionism came at the expense of the Palestinians most of whom became refugees. Before the 1948 war Jews represented about 30% of Palestine's population. After the war, the Jewish share of the population of Israel was 82%. Israel claims that any ethnic cleansing was purely accidental.
Shlaim claims that David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first leader, established a preference for military over political solutions when dealing with the Arabs. Military conquest replaced political dialogue. As a result relations foundered and, at times, descended into war. Shlaim challenges the notion that Israel wanted an accommodation with the Palestinians. The phrase Iron Wall, is borrowed from a 1923 article by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founding father of Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinsky viewed the creation of an unassailable Zionist power base - political, diplomatic, and military - as the only way to convince the Arabs to desist from their effort to obliterate the Jewish national cause. Shlaim claims that Jabotinsky intended that this would lead to a further stage where Israel would be strong enough to negotiate a satisfactory peace with its neighbors. This never happened. Shlaim's view is that Israel can only have peace with the Arabs when it is prepared to meet them half-way.
In the 1967 war Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Those areas have been occupied for nearly 50 years but the Arabs have never been granted Israeli citizenship. What to do about the occupied territories has been a problem ever since. There are over 500,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Shlaim disagrees that Prime Minister Barak made a "generous offer" at Camp David in 2000. He explains that the Palestinians wanted a return to the 1967 borders, including east Jerusalem. They also wanted a sovereign Palestinian state. This is what Clinton encouraged Arafat to believe was on offer if he attended the 2000 summit. Clinton was anxious to make history before he left office. Shlaim claims that Arafat was offered neither a credible peace nor a viable Palestinian state. Israel wanted to keep its settlements in place. This was an offer that Arafat could not accept.
Shlaim places the blame for the collapse of the peace process in 2000 squarely on Israel, which "reneged on its side of the deal." Clinton and Barak then claimed that there was no "Palestinian partner for peace" which was untrue. The success with which they propagated this fiction provided the basis for the subsequent ascendency of the right in Israeli politics. Shlaim claims that a `Palestinian partner' has existed since at least 1993 - in fact the Palestinian leadership and the Arab states have been calling for a two-state settlement since the late 1970s. More generally, Shlaim argues that to blame Palestinian rejectionism for the continued conflict is "completely inadequate and self-serving".
In Shlaim's view Prime Minister Netanyahu "is like a man who, while negotiating the division of a pizza, continues to eat it." The continued settler expansion in the West-Bank has made a "two state solution" more and more difficult. The settlers seem there to stay. The recent nationality law proposed by Netanyahu would exclude non-Jews in Israel from "national rights," while at the same time officially defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. This illustrates that a "one state solution" is also problematic. Israel cannot be both a state which discriminates against non-Jews and a democracy. Shlaim fears that Israel will become like apartheid South Africa.
Shlaim believes that the US is no longer perceived as an honest broker by the Palestinians, especially after Camp David. The U.S. does not seem able to control Israel's leaders. Shlaim quotes the still-relevant words of Moshe Dayan, who delivered the 1967 victory. "Our American friends give us money, arms and advice. We take the money, we take the arms but we decline the advice." Bill Clinton comes across in Shlaim's narrative as weak, duplicitous, and biased. The reality is that Israel would not be able to survive for very long without American support. In the diplomatic arena, Israel relies on America to shield it from the consequences of its habitual violations of international law. Shlaim wants the US to bring Israel into line before it becomes an international pariah.
As a reader of the New York Times, Shlaim did not present a version of the conflict that I fully recognized. The Palestinians are usually depicted as dangerous, unreasonable and irrational. The Iron Wall is a fascinating read.
137 of 165 people found the following review helpful.
By far, the best account of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
By amira berzi
I have searched over and over for an objective non-prejudiced book recollecting the events and issues that shaped the Mideast conflict.The only book I have found that is characterized as such is The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim. Given the fact that this issue is so complex, and since the factors affecting the conflict include-among others-sensitive issues like religious beliefs, racism and roots; often with an emotional dimension, most writers tend to be on one side or the other, almost always biased. This book is not only accurate, but more importantly very interesting as it reveals the most intriguing details about the people who shaped this history and events of the said conflict. Most books I read are either written by Arabs and so clearly overlooking the emotional value of the land to the Jews, or by Westerners, who always seem to neglect the basic Arab side of the story. I am very impressed by the comprehensiveness of the book. Although Shlaim does not draw conclusions (he only accounts for the background and tells the facts), the book is very 'intelligent' as it helps analyze the problem in a way different from all the other accounts of the Arab Israeli conflict. I wish everyone who holds a biased opinion as regards the Middle East-especially out of ignorance of the complete story-reads this book.
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