The volumes in this series select some of the most controversial episodes in history and consider their divergent, even starkly incompatible representations. The aim is not merely to demonstrate that history is “argument without end,” but to show that study even of contradictory conceptions can be fruitful: that the jettisoning of one thesis or presentation leaves behind something of value.
Contesting the Crusades
Norman Housley
Contesting the German Empire 1871–1918
Matthew Jefferies
Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War
Gary R. Hess
Contesting the French Revolution
Paul Hanson
Contesting the Renaissance
William Caferro
The Israel–Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories, Second Edition
Neil Caplan
Contesting the Reformation
C. Scott Dixon
Vietnam: Explaining America’s Lost War, Second Edition
Gary R. Hess
Second Edition
This edition first published 2020
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Edition History
Wiley‐Blackwell (1e, 2009)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Neil Caplan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.
Registered Office
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
Editorial Office
111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty
While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Caplan, Neil, 1945– author.
Title: The Israel‐Palestine conflict : contested histories / Neil Caplan.
Description: Second edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2019. | Series: Contesting the past | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019030495 (print) | LCCN 2019030496 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119523871 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119524038 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119524014 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Jewish‐Arab relations. | Arab‐Israeli conflict. | Israel–Foreign relations–Arab countries. | Arab countries–Foreign relations–Israel.
Classification: LCC DS119.7 .C3195 2019 (print) | LCC DS119.7 (ebook) | DDC 956.04–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030495
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030496
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: ©Istimages/Shutterstock
Dedicated with deep sadness to the many victims of this and other conflicts
| 1.1 | Palestine Losing Ground |
| Seth Ackerman, “Losing Ground,” Harper’s Magazine, December 2001, 88. Art by XPLANE (www.xplane.com). Used with permission. | |
| 1.2 | Shrinking Jewish National Home: Palestine 1922, 1948, and Israel 1948 |
| Israel’s Struggle for Peace, New York: Israel Office of Information, 1960, p. 8. | |
| 1.3 | Jewish Settlements in Palestine, 1855–1914 |
| Martin Gilbert, The Jewish History Atlas. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969, p. 79. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. © Sir Martin Gilbert. (http://martingilbert.com). | |
| 1.4 | The First Zionist Colony in Palestine, 1878 |
| Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948, Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984, 34. Used with permission. | |
| 2.1 | Palestine under British Mandate, 1923 |
| 5.1 | Peel Commission Partition Plan, July 1937 |
| 6.1 | United Nations Partition Plan, 1947 |
| 6.2 | Israel and Her Neighbours, 1949–1967 |
| 7.1 | Israel and Occupied Territories, 1967 |
| 11.1 | Settlement Blocs and Proposed Land Swaps during Annapolis Talks, 2008 |
| Gershon Shafir, A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017, p.119; copyright Shaul Arieli, Gershon Shafir, and the University of California Press. Used with permission. |
The June 1967 war in the Middle East marked my personal awakening, as a graduate student searching for an area of doctoral research, to the complexities of the Arab–Israeli conflict. My first impulse was a problem‐solving one, flowing naturally from local experience as my own country, Canada, was celebrating its centennial and engaging in lively public debates about how the English and French nations could continue living harmoniously under a single federal régime. But a year of exploratory reading and study in London unexpectedly sparked in me a fascination with the historical origins and development of the Arab–Israeli conflict, totally shifting my focus from the future to the past.
Since that time I have been researching, writing, and teaching almost exclusively about the history, diplomacy, and psychology of this dispute. Digging in archives through primary sources and writing articles and monographs for a scholarly audience are the activities I have enjoyed best as I became a self‐trained historian. At the same time I also developed a deep interest in and respect for the psycho‐social complexities of this protracted conflict.
Very little about the dispute and the attitudes of the various parties is simple and straightforward, making it especially difficult to summarize events and issues succinctly while doing justice to the complexities involved. To create this volume for Wiley‐Blackwell's Contesting the Past series I have combined lecture notes from introductory courses taught at various universities with some critical reflections about how the conflict is portrayed in academic and other writing. This book situates itself among several overview histories already available, but goes beyond the mere retelling of what happened to focus on a series of core arguments that seem to deadlock protagonists and historians alike.
One of the challenges in producing this book has been to choose an appropriate level of detail in setting out the history of the conflict. I have chosen to use the main text to provide a basic overview, while referring readers to sometimes lengthy endnotes for additional details, nuances, and contrary interpretations that could be consulted in accordance with each person's wish or need to know more.
Finally, a word about perceptions and bias. One of the hazards of writing on this subject is the near certainty that there will always be someone who will react to a word or phrase as being an oversimplification or a distortion of events or people's motivations. I have done my best to anticipate such reactions by carefully choosing my language with sensitivity to the subtleties of wording and tone. Readers, I hope, will appreciate my attempts to allow each of the contested versions of the history of this dispute to receive a fair hearing alongside its rivals.
I am grateful to have a number of colleagues and friends who have generously helped me by answering queries and by critiquing draft chapters. Several are bound to disagree with some aspects of my presentation of the history or the historians, so I will spare them the embarrassment of naming them here and instead have conveyed my thanks privately. Most generous of all, my wife Mara provided much‐needed emotional support and sacrifices that allowed me optimal conditions for long days of writing.
This new edition seeks, first, to update the timeline of events to include a number of significant developments that have taken place during the 10 years since publication of the first edition. To this end, the original concluding chapter of Part II (“Histories in Contention”) has been replaced by two new chapters.
Secondly, academic scholarship on the subject continues to grow, along with more popular presentations of the conflict. Accordingly, I have expanded endnote references to include selected new publications.
I was pleased to notice that two of the central concepts or threads used in the first edition have been replicated and further developed by other authors: viz., the focus on a mutual sense of victimhood of the main protagonists, and the treatment of the conflict as one based on competing narratives. The popularity of the latter approach is reflected in a variety of new studies1 as well as international pedagogical initiatives, as will be mentioned in Chapter 13.
During the last few years the Israel–Palestine conflict has marked a number of historic anniversaries. These have sparked not only specialized academic conferences but also public declarations by governments and Non‐Governmental Organizations (NGOs), along with an outpouring of new books, magazine articles, and radio and TV documentaries serving to refocus public attention on this unresolved conflict.
In 2017 alone there were no fewer than three major milestones to commemorate: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, 70 years since the historic United Nations (UN) Partition plan, and 50 years since the June 1967 war and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The year 2018 offered four additional milestones: the 70th anniversary of Israel's independence and of the Palestinian Nakba, 40 years since the 1978 Egypt–Israel talks at Camp David, and 25 years since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. These anniversaries were accompanied by either celebration or denunciation, in accordance with the positions of those marking the historical events. This revised edition of The Israel–Palestine Conflict was in preparation precisely while these special commemorations and retrospective reviews were circulating and generating critical reflections about strategic missteps or missed opportunities.
The decade between the first and second editions has seen several fresh attempts at resolving the conflict – none of them successful. The period has sadly witnessed new eruptions of violence and bloodshed, a notable decrease in trust between Israelis and Palestinians, and a corresponding deterioration of the quality of debate and discussion both among the parties on the ground and those observing it via the news media or academic institutions. Reflecting this downward spiral, the tone of many of my original concluding observations has been modified toward more pessimistic assessments (e.g. the title of the final chapter changed from “Overcoming” to merely “Grappling with the Obstacles”). Not only has the conflict come no closer to resolution in recent years; for many participants and observers in 2019, things are worse than ever.
Wherever they can be found, I give preference to citing primary sources and first‐person accounts, ahead of what historians classify as secondary sources. The former are the original, unvarnished building blocks needed to create any historical narrative: texts of public pronouncements, official or private correspondence, memoranda of conversations, minutes of meetings, personal diaries – generally, accounts of what happened given by people who were actually present when it happened. Many of these primary sources are conveniently available in documentary collections, notably:
Given the frequency of such references, they are given in short citation form in the endnotes. I also frequently refer readers to primary documents available online at https://naip‐documents.blogspot.ca, a collection of over 125 documents created to accompany Negotiating Arab–Israeli Peace, a book that I co‐authored with Laura Zittrain Eisenberg.3
Historians and other writers use such primary documents as raw material to craft their own treatments of the events, creating secondary works (articles, books) based on their own particular selection and organization of the materials and offering their personal interpretations of the events and protagonists. There is more on this in Chapter 12, “Writing about the Conflict.”
As English‐speakers we are foreigners vis‐à‐vis the main protagonists to this conflict. Their main languages of communication and publication are Arabic and Hebrew. Despite this linguistic barrier, we are nonetheless well supplied with a good sampling of works by Arabs and Israelis in English translation. Assuming that the bulk of my readers are not able to easily access materials in Arabic or Hebrew, I have cited English‐language sources almost exclusively. But, as my colleagues in the region rightly caution, on some issues – and especially the historians' debates (Chapter 12) – we outsiders get to see only the tip of the iceberg via translations. We miss out on detailed discussions and the rich variety of ideas that continue to circulate in Arabic and Hebrew academic literature, memoirs, fiction, and films.
While recognizing the greatly expanding use of web‐based resources, my endnote citations reflect my enduring belief that a full and proper study of this subject requires heavy reliance on old‐fashioned printed materials (books, journals, pamphlets, magazines) available on library shelves.