The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Martin Bunton (29-Aug-2013) Paperback

Very Short Introductions #359

by Martin Bunton

The conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the most highly publicized and bitter struggles in history. In this accessible and stimulating Very Short Introduction , Martin Bunton clearly explains the history of the problem, reducing it to its very essence--a modern territorial contest between two nations and one geographical territory. Adopting a fresh and original approach, each section covers a twenty-year span, to highlight the historical complexity of the conflict throughout successive decades. Each chapter starts with an examination of the relationships among people and events that marked particular years as historical moments in the evolution of the conflict, including the 1897 Basle Congress; the 1917 Balfour Declaration and British occupation of Palestine; and the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the war for Palestine. Providing a clear and fair exploration of the main issues, Bunton explores not only the historical basis of the conflict, but also looks at how and why partition has been so difficult and how efforts to restore peace continue today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Middle East, Israel, War, Audiobook

Unknown Binding

First published August 1, 2013

About the author

Dr. Martin Bunton teaches history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. His research has largely been centered on the modern Middle East, with a focus on administrative policy, taxation and land surveys. He received his PhD from Oxford University in 1998 and has served as a visiting fellow at Harvard.

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

”And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” – John 8:32

I do not know about “truth” – this is such a loaded word. But it is my firm belief that in studying history, “facts” will indeed free you from your misconceptions and prejudices.

Historical books always tend to be coloured by the bias of the writer. I am not talking of outright falsification here; even the most ethical and honest historians tend to interpret facts through the lenses of their own prejudice. True objectivity is impossible in practice – unfortunately, this is the human condition. And moreover, this is one of the charms of history books: the point of view of an erudite historian.

However, in the history associated with extremely emotional and disputed issues, multiple points of view are sometimes a burden. Here, we require to strip away the layers of obfuscation and interpretation which has accumulated over the years, and look at the facts in all their stark reality. We need to remove the flesh from the bones and look at the skeleton beneath.

That is what this slim book does wonderfully. After reading many books and articles from both the Palestinian and Israeli point of view over the years, I have finally come across a book which sets down the facts without embellishment and allows the reader to make his own informed opinions.
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Dr. Martin Bunton, an acknowledged scholar in Middle Eastern affairs, has divided the fractious and chaotic history of Palestine into six easily digestible chunks, five of them covering twenty years each and one covering a decade: a total of 110 years spanning from 1897 to 2007. They start with the concept of Zionism, first mooted as a political philosophy by Theodore Herzl in 1897, and end in 2007 with the nation of Israel standing firm and defiant and Palestine all but decimated.

What I learnt from the book:

1. Zionism as a political has been alive and kicking since 1897. Contrary to what many people believe, Israel was not created as a refuge for homeless Jewish refugees.

2. The formation of Israel was aided and abetted by Britain, without taking into consideration the opinions of the indigenous population.((‘Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad,’ [Arthur James Balfour, British Secretary of State] wrote in 1922, was ‘rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs and future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.’)

3. Golda Meir's statement that "there were no Palestinians" is factually correct. But what she does not say is that there were no Israelis either. There was a region called Palestine, which was home to thousands of Arabs, who were forcibly displaced by European settlers supported by the West. And always, the larger chunk of land was given to the minority settlers.

4. There were many times when Arabs could have made a tough bargain with Israel. But they were divided among themselves, and the majority of the Arab nations were not very concerned about Palestinians until recently, when a sort of Pan-Arab consciousness seems to be emerging.

5. Even though a two-state solution has been proposed and in principle accepted by the UN, there is very little chance of it ever becoming reality, as immigration to Israel keeps on increasing leading to the construction of illegal colonies Palestinian lands. This has pushed the already marginalised Palestinians to the wall, leading to them becoming more and more violent, which in turn allows Israel to use disproportionate force.
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Dr. Bunton did not spring any surprises on me: I was gratified to find that my grasp of the history of the conflict was more or less correct. However, the facts and the dates, set down in black and white, provided a detailed picture one of the greatest injustices of the twentieth century.

This book taught me that the historical legitimacy of Israel depends on whether one believes the Bible to be history or mythology.

[Arwa Aburizik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book is mostly accurate and constitutes a great effort in summarizing such a complicated history in a short book. I have a problem with some of the wording that the author ( and the world at large) uses. For example:

1- Early in the book, while describing the attitude of Israel towards the land allocated to it by the UN, the author describes the borders of Israel as “ contested, or fragile”. A more accurate description of the borders of Israel would be: illegal. Israel is the only state in the world that I know of whose vague about its borders. It is like an amoeba that refuses to commit to its shape on the map, or worse, it is like a cancer that cannot be trusted to contain itself without expanding and metastasizing. “Fragile/contested” is an understatement.

2- The author’s wording is biased towards describing arabs as terrorists and Israeli’s as Activists. For example, he described Ben-Gurion as taking a “highly activist stance towards Israel and against Palestine, threatening retaliation with an iron fist”. But he describes the Arabs as being “belligerent” in the Khartoom meeting when they adopted an equally activist stance towards Palestine and against Zionism and refusing negotiations.

3- The author very quickly goes over the description of the so-called panic flight of Palestinians in 1948. The author uses the word Palestinians “fled” their homes. It is prudent to use caution when interpreting the word “fled”. If the Palestinians fled their homes, it is because they were faced with an unequal threat that they could not confront. We only hear of people “fleeing” their homes these days in the context of tornadoes or natural disasters where the terrorizing forces are bigger than technology, planning, reason and negotiation. The Palestinians did not willfully seek immigration to better places with more attractive opportunities. But rather, escaped a natural disaster, systematically carried out by Israeli’s to terrify the Palestinians with massacres ( e.g. Deir Yassin Massacre) and then expelling them from their homes, and bulldozing their homes. Just by observing the palestinian fate it is easy to infer that the terror that led them to flee was prodigious. After “fleeing” they were killed in Jordan (1970), in Sabra and Shateela in Lebanon and endured poverty and discrimination wherever they roamed.

4- When commenting on Sabra and Shateela, the author mentions that the massacre was carried out by the Lebanese, with the “help of protective Israeli’ forces” and their nighttime raids. I think this is a place where the author, again can use the word "terrorist attacks" to describe the Israeli actions. But the unfortunate truth is that the term "terrorist" is limited to describing Arabs and muslims.. Same thing goes for using the term “gorilla” attacks. This is very similar to portraying the Native Americans as an animal population, with no language, emotions, and no culture, an effort to normalize expelling them from their homes and minimize the crimes against humanity.

5- I dislike the use of the word “independence of Israel” in 1948. Israeli lands were never occupied by anyone other than their rightful Palestinian owners. When Israel was born and brought to existence, the Israeli’s could have celebrated ”the successful occupation of Palestine and the expulsion of its people”, but not Israel’s independence.

6- The author uses the word "humiliating" to describe the defeat of Jamal Abdel Nasser against Israel. Nasser fought and was defeated, but he was proud and not humiliated. I think the only thing that is humiliating about that era is the stance the world took against the crimes against palestinian humans.

[Siddharth · Rating 4 out of 5]

By the time the war ended, Britain had put her signature on a confusing array of promises and declarations. She had pledged the future disposition of Palestine to no less than three different real or imagined allies. First, Britain’s high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, made promises to Sharif Husayn, the Hashemite ruler of the Hijaz region of Arabia, about the creation of an independent Arab kingdom. Secondly, Britain officially recognized the long-standing claims of her French allies to Syria, while staking claims of her own. Third, promises were made to Zionist leaders in London. A fourth set of commitments, spurred by US President Woodrow Wilson, was broadcast about the rights of all peoples to independence and self-determination.

The British! Always the fucking British!

***

Very Short Review: A balanced, incisive history of the messy Israel-Palestine conflict.

Read in July 2015

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like to think I'm fairly well-informed about the contours of the I-P conflict, but I had never read a book-length recounting of the whole history. This was a good place to start. It's very short (it's part of Oxford University Press's "very short introductions" series), but hits all the major events and manages to do so--from what I can tell--without oversimplifying.

Bunton emphasizes that (seemingly) irreconcilable claims to the same piece of land--not "ancient religious hatreds"--are what lie at the heart of the conflict. This has been true virtually from the get-go, when Great Britain, in the wake of World War I, made inherently incompatible promises--or at least promises that were in serious tension--both to provide for Palestinian self-government and a Jewish homeland in the same territory.

This book is, as far as I can tell, extremely even-handed, though Bunton isn't afraid to issue judgments on one side or the other. Unfortunately, it ends on the pessimistic note (which won't shock anyone who's been following the news lately) that a two-state solution may be farther away than ever. The book also includes a guide to further reading, which makes it even more valuable as a jumping-off point for understanding the history of the conflict.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously I have been aware of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the enhanced warfare of the past year has grabbed headlines but I only had a cursory knowledge. Martin Dunton's very short introduction was an excellent, even-handed survey of the past one-hundred or so years from the birth of Zionism through the activism of Theodor Herzl to Hamas' stunning electoral victories in 2006 (this book was released in 2013 and one wishes there was a second edition that updated the conflict to the present). Israel's quest for a permanent land was reasonable and garnered extensive sympathy following the atrocities of the Holocaust and yet the land they initially acquired in Palestine was not that of historic biblical Judea and Samaria but rather the more fertile agricultural land. Land settlement was further complicated in that there were always large populations of Arabs on lands claimed by Israel. The British failed to provide Palestine with a political legislature which led to disorganized Palestinian leadership. Palestine was frequently a pawn of other Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan.

It's clear that both sides are culpable in the ongoing conflict, whether through political intransigence (Dunton stresses that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is far more political than it is religious), violence, and a refusal to share the land. This is a good starting point for understanding this long-entrenched quagmire.

[Kaelan Ratcliffe ▪ كايِلان راتكِليف · Rating 4 out of 5]

Understanding Palestine

My second book on the topic this year (the first being A Convenient Hatred: A History of Antisemitism) and a very riveting account of the conflict. Having finished this short introduction, I already have in my sights some more opinionated books on the topic such as Norman Finkelsteins works and Ilan Pappés. However, this does serve as a solid, unbiased standpoint for a reader to springboard off into whatever deeper reading they would like to partake in regarding this topic.

There are some pretty stellar reviews already on here, so I will keep this short so as to entice potential readers into opening the pages of this book without putting them off with unnecessary depth (it is only 114 pages long after all).

I appreciated the fact Mr Burton is transparent regarding a few points I hadn't realised before.

1. The recent biblical connotations attached to Israels need to exist is just that. Recent.
2. Palestinians have been abused by competing powers in the middle east throughout the conflict, and even used by their own groups. A truly desperate situation.
3. If Arab nations had stopped maytring the Palestinians, or using them to achieve political kudos, then perhaps we would have seen a quicker resolution.
4. Hardliners building illegal settlements are going to cause more bloodshed. Period.

[Brookie Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew next to nothing about the history of this conflict & this book was a solid introduction to a very complex issue.

[Lea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less of a general primer on the conflict but mostly a historical overview that focuses on land development, geopolitics, agriculture and treaties. While I appreciate the overall attempt to stay relatively unbiased, it made for quite a dry reading.

[Lauren Kenyon]

normalize learning more about something by reading A BOOK about it

[Lee Collier · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a good factual overview of the problems that have surfaced between the Palestinian and Israeli people over a 100 year span but it is outdated at this point, being published in 2013 it only accounts for events up to that time. I think my biggest learnings from this are simply that other countries or kingdoms ruling over lands from afar only cause chaos...I am looking at you, the British Empire. Their involvement post WWI was messy at best and the constant realignment would have been a frenzy to behold. The Ottoman involvement before hand was something I would like to further understand as it seems the problem stemmed from an invasion within this land by that empire in the 1800s.

Overall there was a quote by Barrack Obama in the book that stood out to me:

This is just really hard...This is as intractable a problem as you get.

This pretty much aligns with my thoughts after reading this historical accountance...it is messy, more so than most understand. My next read on this subject will be The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917–2017 which is written by a Palestinian author. I am open to reading an account by an Israeli author if one can be recommended!

[em · Rating 4 out of 5]

like many i have been horrified by the images and reports on the news of what is happening in Gaza. However I have very little knowledge on the actual situation and what has happened throughout the past 75 years between Israel and Palestine. This is the first book I read to learn about it so I can be as informed as possible

[Michael Huang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Britain defeated Ottoman Empire to gain control of lots of the latter’s territories. 100 years ago in 1923, it obtained a mandate to essentially administer the area called Palestine. This was some quarter of a century after the 1st Zionist conference and Britain is now in full support of establishing a national home for the Jews. Who would’ve thought it’s so difficult to make two people reside in the same area peacefully? Why don’t people move to that area so these other people can live here just like a lord drew it on his paper? Neither side was pleased with Britain and now even US is having a rift with them. Britain would challenge the UN to come up with a plan. UN did and Britain didn’t want to cooperate. So a quarter century after the League of Nations mandate Britain would pack up and leave.

The state of Israel would be founded (in 1948) as the Brits left. The new country will then immediately fight a war with its neighbors. Israel won. And now 78% of the mandate Palestine was under Israeli control. Moreover, the rest of the area was now controlled by neighboring Arab countries: Gaza Strip under Egypt and West Bank under Jordan.

20 years would pass before another war from the neighbors, this time Israel won again. (There shouldn’t be any surprise: Ben Gurion believed that a constant show of military superiority would eventually force the neighbors to accept Israel. Ben Gurionism says no attack on Israel will go unpunished.) Now the entire region was under Israeli control. The Palestinian Arab refugees, meanwhile, had been living under unbearable occupation, giving birth to extremists including Hamas which sought explicitly to eliminate Israel.

25 years later, in 1993, Oslo accord was signed. Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel would recognize each other. PLO would renounce violence and a Palestinian Authority (PA) would be formed and given a territorial base to start self-governance. But neither side’s leaders can convince their people to prepare for compromises. Extremists would assassinate Israeli PM Rabin for forfeiting “land intended by God exclusively for Jews”. Hamas would challenge PA and effectively run the Gaza Strip. Increasing suicide bombing gave Netanyahu (who ran as Mr. Security) the premiership. He slowed the peace process which further worsened the economic woes of the Palestinians, which then undermined the credibility of PA leaders who believes in negotiation.

30 years later in 2023, we just witnessed another horrendous attack by Hamas. The response will be — if history is any guide — strong and broadly supported by Israelis. The result is likely more casualty and misery. In 2003 a total of 2400 Palestinians and 800 Israelis would lost their lives in their last (major) conflict — that’s almost exactly how many American died on 9/11, though as a population, we are 22 times larger than the two combined. Bunton did a really good job writing this VSI — you can imagine the urge to put all those scholarly details for such a long-lasting and charged conflict. But he delivered a readable, concise, and balanced narrative on the 100+ year history. Let’s hope the history of the next 100 years will be a less depressing one.

[Masrur · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book serves as a very good introduction to the complicated conflict. There are a few small things that I thought could be better. I felt that it was poorly written. I often found myself re-reading a sentence to figure out what the author was trying to say. Second, the book is weak in points of politics. We hear very little about the actual formation of the state of Israel. This is clearly a massive point in history. It becomes apparent that the author's strength is in land and agriculture rather than politics, where things become a little bit fudged. Third, the book lacks important details that a short introduction needs. There is no clear description of the contested borders to start you off. Although there are maps, they are difficult to read in print since the greys look so similar. Some maps also lack a key.

Overall, it is a good starting point to begin your education about Palestine-Israel, but don't let it be your only education.

[Sofia]

I read my textbook y'all

[Preetam Chatterjee]

Martin Bunton’s contribution to Oxford’s Very Short Introduction series offers a concise, balanced overview of one of the world’s most complex conflicts.

In under 200 pages, Bunton manages to present key historical milestones while engaging critically with competing narratives.

The book begins with the late Ottoman period, emphasising that both Jewish and Arab national identities evolved within broader imperial and colonial contexts.

Bunton avoids treating 1948 as an isolated rupture, instead situating it within decades of demographic change, land politics, and imperial intervention.

One of Bunton’s key strengths is narrative symmetry without false equivalence. He presents Israeli and Palestinian perspectives clearly, while also acknowledging asymmetries in power, territory, and international backing—particularly after 1967.

The chapters on peace processes, intifadas, and settlement expansion are especially clear, making the book ideal for students encountering the topic for the first time. Bunton also addresses myths and misconceptions, including the idea that the conflict is purely religious or ancient.

While brevity limits depth, the book succeeds as a foundational text. It neither advocates nor apologises, making it one of the most reliable introductions available.

Recommended.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual with this series, it delivers. The author wisely took a "just the facts" approach for such a loaded issue. I found the segments on the early Zionist settlement and the mandate period to be particularly of interest due to my lack of knowledge about the issue. I also found helpful his reprinting of key historical documents (the Balfour declaration, UN Resolution 242). I was a little disappointed with the bibliography because it did not contain a bibliographical essay, but I suspect the author scrupulously made this choice to avoid controversy.

Unfortunately, the book demonstrates that the resolution of the problem is not getting any easier.

[James Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to have a better, historical understanding of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so I did a little digging and made a list of books that might help. The Very Short Introduction series has been helpful to me in other areas, so I started with this book. I can’t judge it for comprehensiveness or bias, since it’s by first foray into a book-length treatment of the subject. But, given the pro-Israel focus of the right wing in the US, I wanted to find something stating the Palestinian case with as little prejudice as possible. The sequence of the states in the title itself seemed to promise that. And that seems to have been the case.

Unfortunately, the current, ongoing fascist coup in the US makes my liberal attempt to shore up my knowledge of international affairs seem like a quaint indulgence. I’m not sure when I’ll find the time and mental energy to continue with the books on my list for a fuller consideration of why the—whatever word you choose is problematic—“situation” in the Middle East seems so intractable.

Thus, while I am little qualified to judge it, this introduction provided a good enough place to start. But I won’t really know until I’ve done more reading on the subject.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good, short read if you want to catch up on the facts of the conflict (at least up to around 2012). For further reading, I suggest Routledge Handbook on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which makes a point of delineating the Israeli and Palestinian narratives on both sides, and the difference in interpretation of the "facts" that lead to the intractable conflict between the two. Very worth picking up one or both so you can stop using "it's complicated" as an excuse to avoid taking a position.

4/5 stars

[Ricky McMaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Compelling in spite of the increasingly depressing content. Could do with a new edition covering the last ten years or so.

[Elena Lange · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, yet informative. But also non-bias

[Alex Jones]

Still don’t get it

[KC · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the third book in the "Very Short Introduction" series, and I have to say, these books, while short, seem to make no attempt to be engaging or interesting in style or tone. They seem to be invariably dry, academic, and textbook-like. While I appreciate the breath that they cover in a condensed scope, they are far more laborious than they ought to be.

Nevertheless, the topic and the information provided are very worthwhile. The Palestinian–Israeli Conflict is a tangled web, but there were a few things that I was not aware of that I learned, particularly about the origins:

(1) "Palestine" never existed independent of the Ottoman empire, which allied with Germany during World War I.
(2) Losing WWI was the setting in which Britain (the foot in the door for the rest of the West, including the USA) got involved.
(3) There was a Jewish National Fund eyeing the territory in question as early as 1901.

Those facts really helped my contextualize the "how did we get here" question, which previously, I had only been aware of post-WW2 Zionist movements that had been a source of conflict.

Anyhow, it is all still very complicated, but this dry yet informative book helped clear up a few things.

[Kate Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have literally never heard anything unbiased about this conflict before so this was definitely intriguing to learn about, considering how much misinformation there is out there. I don’t side with Israel as much anymore after reading this. It’s now clear to me that supporting an independent nation for Jews (what was proposed in the early 1900s) is different than supporting the state of the Israeli government and what it is doing today (greediness in trying to take ALL of Palestinian land instead of the areas Palestine itself proposed to give). I just wish there was more information about the creation of Israel as a state. This book kind of glossed over that, saying that Jews just started flocking there in masses. Why? Why there? When did Israel become a recognized country? So that’s why only 4 stars from me

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides an excellent historic insight on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores the numerous attempts for and against peaceful land negotiations between the two traumatised peoples with an honest, unbiased and comprehensive goal of curing ignorance and establishing a clearer understanding of both sides of the argument.

[Gabe Hawkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am occasionally tasked with evaluating books claiming to act as introductions to topics on the Middle East, and this is one of the better ones. It’s a general overview presented in a “just the facts” kind of way that would make an excellent spring board into proper research on the topic. It’s a very quick read.

[Tracy]

Although it was written in 2013 so excludes developments from the past decade or so, this was very concise (to the point of being dry - these really do read as mini textbooks so come prepared) and very focused on facts so it makes a good primer for learning about this conflict.

[Julia Gifford · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you don't know much about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this is a great place to start. Consise, logical, readable, insightful.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entirely historical and focused on events. Very little sense of the competing nationalisms and how each of them can justify their respective intransigences.

[Susan Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent concise history, balanced and highly informative.

[Jazli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff