What do you think?
Rate this book
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
“Fascinating. . . . Shlaim presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history.”―New York Times Book Review For this newly expanded edition, Avi Shlaim has added four chapters and an epilogue that address the prime ministerships from Barak to Netanyahu in the “one book everyone should read for a concise history of Israel’s relations with Arabs” (Independent). What was promulgated as an “iron-wall” strategy―building a position of unassailable strength― was meant to yield to a further stage where Israel would be strong enough to negotiate a satisfactory peace with its neighbors. The goal still remains elusive, if not even further away. This penetrating study brilliantly illuminates past progress and future prospects for peace in the Middle East.
960 pages, Paperback
First published January 16, 2001
273 people are currently reading
4402 people want to read
About the author
Avi Shlaim
27 books226 followersAvi Shlaim FBA (born October 31, 1945) is an Iraqi-born British/Israeli historian. He is emeritus professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy. Shlaim is considered one of Israel's New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
July 4, 2017
A Game of Throne with a side plate of Hummus.
A very good if extremely annoying book.
Let's start with the good parts:
Fascinating detail, lots of personal stories and memoirs by Israeli politicians, a whirlwind of backstabbing, manipulation, ideology, pragmatism, and culture all over the place. As hectic as one might expect. The first half of the book covers mostly the 1948-1967 period, with strong focus on Ben Gurion, Sharett and Eshkol. Really neat. Another little-known piece that fascinated me: Israel was financing and training the armies of some 30+ African nations throughout the 50s.
The third quarter is mostly around 70-80s, and there's less drama there, mostly focus on the Israel-Egypt peace process and the slow churn of the 80s, with Israeli economy, political stalemate and the rise of the Palestinian national awareness as the major areas, the Oslo accords, and the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. Then, the final quarter covers the more recent era, roughly 90s through 2000s and a bit more, with the author turning glum along with the political picture, the post-9/11 era, the recent conflicts and such.
Written with good style and interesting prose, tons of new information, mostly from declassified Israeli archives, and stories laden with wit, character and personal goal, which give a good understanding of the key players and their motivations.
Now, the bad part:
This is a one-sided book. It is told entirely from the Israeli perspective, because among the nations and politicians mentioned, it's the only one to actually disclose its political history. We get nothing from Egypt, Syria, a few memoirs from the Jordanian King Hussein, and little else. We see the conflict, but we do not understand the motives of the non-Israeli side.
The author claims to be a neo-historian. It means he rejects the current convention of the Middle East conflict, and he potrays a picture that is a 180-degree turn from the established concensus. This already is a tricky start point. It's controversy for the sake of it, and you cannot base your book on it. By discrediting other people's work, you discredit your own. You can't really go about saying I'm right and everyone else is a clueless idiot. That does not sit well with history.
Personal interpretation of facts. This is indeed the third piece. The author interferes by giving us his opinion of what he reveals. No thank you. I am smart enough to make my own conclusions. I do not need the author to tell me 'the only logical conclusion is...' This isn't an episode of Ancient Aliens. I have my own brain to decide.
And herein lies the great annoyance of this book. Regardless of whether he's right or wrong, the author wants to show us his side. So he interjects every few pages and tells us why something is or something isn't. But he does this in a very uneven, un-methodical way.
He interprets only the actions of Israeli players never the non-Israeli ones. For instance, in the 80s, there were attempts to negotiate between Israel and Jordan - Shamir and King Hussein. At first, Shamir didn't want to meet with Hussein. Avi tells us this is because Shamir is anti-peace. Then, Shamir agrees to meet Hussein. The king decides not to. Avi tells us this is because King Hussein felt Shamir wasn't interested in peace. This is opinion versus fact, and it annoys me, because history then becomes mainstream news. I don't want news because I don't need to be fed propaganda, whatever or whoever spins it.
But Avi needs this - because it's the basis of his book. Without it, he doesn't have his radical new history. So at every turn, he goes on and on about why Israeli politicians did something, interpreting facts however he wants. He doesn't give us anything from the other side. Frankly, he can't, as there's no data, but without the understanding of the Arabs, you can't really figure out the Middle East conflict.
This also annoys me as a scientist - you need a consistent method in your work - either you interpret all facts and opinions equally or you do not. You cannot arbitrarily apply your own agenda as you see fit. That makes the book into a tantrum for the sake of sales rather than a book that tells a tragic chapter in history. And all this without even going into details as to who or why. History is not meant to lay blame or point fingers. History is meant to tell us what happened. We need to make our own decisions.
Avi thus turns from a historian into a politician.
He goes at length to discredit a whole bunch of people, especially in the last part of the book. He is quite disparaging toward a whole bunch of world leaders, and that's not a nice thing. It's not a historian's place to feel smug. Besides, why is there a need to blame? Why not just tell a story?
Another element here is - Avi is an Israeli. Is he pro-Israel? Nope. That would be boring. He needs a spin, otherwise no bestsellers. So he goes at length in proving how impartial and worldly he is by being highly anti-Israel in his book. That's cliche, dude. Best yet, leave the politics aside. Simple solution.
Looking at another book on the same topic, the one I recently read and reviewed - the Six-Day War, by Jeremy Bowen, it's a completely different story. The author here gives us fascinating stories, anectodes, quotes, silly remarks, ugly personal stories. He does not interpret them. He lets us decide. Imagine a movie where the director stops the action to explain what happened. Show versus Tell.
And so, this is a good book, but you need to not get angry for being spoonfed nonsense every few minutes. Put that aside, and you read a remarkable chapter in history, most of which you probably haven't read elsewhere.
If you're wondering what I think about old history versus new history, the answer is simple:
Like anything populistic, examine the leading 2-3 big lines of thought and then blend them together.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Hence, the Middle East.
QED.
Igor
A very good if extremely annoying book.
Let's start with the good parts:
Fascinating detail, lots of personal stories and memoirs by Israeli politicians, a whirlwind of backstabbing, manipulation, ideology, pragmatism, and culture all over the place. As hectic as one might expect. The first half of the book covers mostly the 1948-1967 period, with strong focus on Ben Gurion, Sharett and Eshkol. Really neat. Another little-known piece that fascinated me: Israel was financing and training the armies of some 30+ African nations throughout the 50s.
The third quarter is mostly around 70-80s, and there's less drama there, mostly focus on the Israel-Egypt peace process and the slow churn of the 80s, with Israeli economy, political stalemate and the rise of the Palestinian national awareness as the major areas, the Oslo accords, and the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. Then, the final quarter covers the more recent era, roughly 90s through 2000s and a bit more, with the author turning glum along with the political picture, the post-9/11 era, the recent conflicts and such.
Written with good style and interesting prose, tons of new information, mostly from declassified Israeli archives, and stories laden with wit, character and personal goal, which give a good understanding of the key players and their motivations.
Now, the bad part:
This is a one-sided book. It is told entirely from the Israeli perspective, because among the nations and politicians mentioned, it's the only one to actually disclose its political history. We get nothing from Egypt, Syria, a few memoirs from the Jordanian King Hussein, and little else. We see the conflict, but we do not understand the motives of the non-Israeli side.
The author claims to be a neo-historian. It means he rejects the current convention of the Middle East conflict, and he potrays a picture that is a 180-degree turn from the established concensus. This already is a tricky start point. It's controversy for the sake of it, and you cannot base your book on it. By discrediting other people's work, you discredit your own. You can't really go about saying I'm right and everyone else is a clueless idiot. That does not sit well with history.
Personal interpretation of facts. This is indeed the third piece. The author interferes by giving us his opinion of what he reveals. No thank you. I am smart enough to make my own conclusions. I do not need the author to tell me 'the only logical conclusion is...' This isn't an episode of Ancient Aliens. I have my own brain to decide.
And herein lies the great annoyance of this book. Regardless of whether he's right or wrong, the author wants to show us his side. So he interjects every few pages and tells us why something is or something isn't. But he does this in a very uneven, un-methodical way.
He interprets only the actions of Israeli players never the non-Israeli ones. For instance, in the 80s, there were attempts to negotiate between Israel and Jordan - Shamir and King Hussein. At first, Shamir didn't want to meet with Hussein. Avi tells us this is because Shamir is anti-peace. Then, Shamir agrees to meet Hussein. The king decides not to. Avi tells us this is because King Hussein felt Shamir wasn't interested in peace. This is opinion versus fact, and it annoys me, because history then becomes mainstream news. I don't want news because I don't need to be fed propaganda, whatever or whoever spins it.
But Avi needs this - because it's the basis of his book. Without it, he doesn't have his radical new history. So at every turn, he goes on and on about why Israeli politicians did something, interpreting facts however he wants. He doesn't give us anything from the other side. Frankly, he can't, as there's no data, but without the understanding of the Arabs, you can't really figure out the Middle East conflict.
This also annoys me as a scientist - you need a consistent method in your work - either you interpret all facts and opinions equally or you do not. You cannot arbitrarily apply your own agenda as you see fit. That makes the book into a tantrum for the sake of sales rather than a book that tells a tragic chapter in history. And all this without even going into details as to who or why. History is not meant to lay blame or point fingers. History is meant to tell us what happened. We need to make our own decisions.
Avi thus turns from a historian into a politician.
He goes at length to discredit a whole bunch of people, especially in the last part of the book. He is quite disparaging toward a whole bunch of world leaders, and that's not a nice thing. It's not a historian's place to feel smug. Besides, why is there a need to blame? Why not just tell a story?
Another element here is - Avi is an Israeli. Is he pro-Israel? Nope. That would be boring. He needs a spin, otherwise no bestsellers. So he goes at length in proving how impartial and worldly he is by being highly anti-Israel in his book. That's cliche, dude. Best yet, leave the politics aside. Simple solution.
Looking at another book on the same topic, the one I recently read and reviewed - the Six-Day War, by Jeremy Bowen, it's a completely different story. The author here gives us fascinating stories, anectodes, quotes, silly remarks, ugly personal stories. He does not interpret them. He lets us decide. Imagine a movie where the director stops the action to explain what happened. Show versus Tell.
And so, this is a good book, but you need to not get angry for being spoonfed nonsense every few minutes. Put that aside, and you read a remarkable chapter in history, most of which you probably haven't read elsewhere.
If you're wondering what I think about old history versus new history, the answer is simple:
Like anything populistic, examine the leading 2-3 big lines of thought and then blend them together.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Hence, the Middle East.
QED.
Igor
August 5, 2015
Barring the outstanding quality of this book and the depth of information presented within it, the fact that it took me ten months to finish The Iron Wall is in itself a reason to take a few seconds of my time to comment on it.
This book is a mammoth, especially for someone like me who wouldn’t term themselves a ‘fast reader’ by any means. It is so long, and so dense with facts, dates and events that I started off only reading about 10 pages a day before I had put it down in exhaustion. But the one thing that kept me coming back to it was Shlaim’s writing style and humanization of each Israeli prime minister.
The Iron Wall recounts every major event in Arab-Israeli history since Israel’s establishment, focusing on the Israeli government’s policies, motivations, reactions and internal politics. It’s a fascinating account of the internal affairs of one of the youngest and most controversial countries in the world.
It’s fair to say that this book is extremely Israeli-centric, in the sense that Shlaim delves deep into the psyche of each Israeli prime minister from David Ben-Gurion to Binyamin Netanyahu and explores their relationships with their surrounding ministers and cabinet. This seems like an obvious stylistic choice – almost inevitable, really – considering his emphasis is on Israel’s policies towards Arabs, and the prime minister is the ultimate policy- and decision-maker in Israel. Regardless, his choice to recount history in this way makes it more accessible and engaging because you start to anticipate what each PM will do given a particular problem. Each PM is so different, some more hardline (“hawkish”) and others more open to compromise (“dovish”) , and it’s interesting to see how the policies that come out of the government differ depending on which PM is currently in power. As the reader, you start to sympathise with some PMs more than others, depending on your personal stance on the matter.
Shlaim shows a clear distaste for the more hawkish prime ministers, but other than the occasional critical adjectives thrown in now and then this book is extremely objective and bases its content entirely on research from internal documents, state archives, interviews with senior officials and leaders, memoirs, and meeting minutes. You’d be hard pressed to find a more objective report on Israeli history.
Avi Shlaim is known as one of the best Israeli “new historians” and judging from this book he is very deserving of that reputation. He does a great job of dismantling the oft-repeated and frankly stale argument that Israel is a defenseless nation surrounded by aggressive and hostile Arab states, and reassembling it to show the truth on the ground, which is that since its establishment, Israel has been stubborn to the point of military aggression to ever compromise on any of the important problems that they themselves created: land, refugees, Palestinian rights and settlements. The only exception to this rule was during Yitzhak Rabin’s second term as prime minister, between the years of 1992 – 1995.
In short, this is a book that everyone should read, regardless of which “side” of the conflict you see yourself. It is a well-researched, highly authoritative book that lays out pretty much every important event that has occurred in Israel and in relation to Israel from 1947 to 1998.
This book is a mammoth, especially for someone like me who wouldn’t term themselves a ‘fast reader’ by any means. It is so long, and so dense with facts, dates and events that I started off only reading about 10 pages a day before I had put it down in exhaustion. But the one thing that kept me coming back to it was Shlaim’s writing style and humanization of each Israeli prime minister.
The Iron Wall recounts every major event in Arab-Israeli history since Israel’s establishment, focusing on the Israeli government’s policies, motivations, reactions and internal politics. It’s a fascinating account of the internal affairs of one of the youngest and most controversial countries in the world.
It’s fair to say that this book is extremely Israeli-centric, in the sense that Shlaim delves deep into the psyche of each Israeli prime minister from David Ben-Gurion to Binyamin Netanyahu and explores their relationships with their surrounding ministers and cabinet. This seems like an obvious stylistic choice – almost inevitable, really – considering his emphasis is on Israel’s policies towards Arabs, and the prime minister is the ultimate policy- and decision-maker in Israel. Regardless, his choice to recount history in this way makes it more accessible and engaging because you start to anticipate what each PM will do given a particular problem. Each PM is so different, some more hardline (“hawkish”) and others more open to compromise (“dovish”) , and it’s interesting to see how the policies that come out of the government differ depending on which PM is currently in power. As the reader, you start to sympathise with some PMs more than others, depending on your personal stance on the matter.
Shlaim shows a clear distaste for the more hawkish prime ministers, but other than the occasional critical adjectives thrown in now and then this book is extremely objective and bases its content entirely on research from internal documents, state archives, interviews with senior officials and leaders, memoirs, and meeting minutes. You’d be hard pressed to find a more objective report on Israeli history.
Avi Shlaim is known as one of the best Israeli “new historians” and judging from this book he is very deserving of that reputation. He does a great job of dismantling the oft-repeated and frankly stale argument that Israel is a defenseless nation surrounded by aggressive and hostile Arab states, and reassembling it to show the truth on the ground, which is that since its establishment, Israel has been stubborn to the point of military aggression to ever compromise on any of the important problems that they themselves created: land, refugees, Palestinian rights and settlements. The only exception to this rule was during Yitzhak Rabin’s second term as prime minister, between the years of 1992 – 1995.
In short, this is a book that everyone should read, regardless of which “side” of the conflict you see yourself. It is a well-researched, highly authoritative book that lays out pretty much every important event that has occurred in Israel and in relation to Israel from 1947 to 1998.
April 7, 2020
الجدار الحديدي: إسرائيل والعالم العربي
زار المؤرخ اليهودي أڤي شليم البحرين نهاية العام الماضي وقدّم محاضرة كانت غايةً في الجمال. بعد المحاضرة جرى توزيع نسخ من كتابه الجدار الحديدي، وهو كتاب ضخم تبلغ عدد صفحاته ٩٠٠ ويغطي تاريخ الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي منذ بدايات المشروع الصهيوني حتى العام ٢٠٠٦، ويستعين في النصف الأول من هذا التاريخ بكثير من المصادر والأرشيفات التي رفعت عنها السرية.
أڤي شليم من مواليد بغداد وهو مزدوج الجنسية إسرائيلي-بريطاني ويعمل كبروفيسور للعلاقات الدولية في جامعة أوكسفورد. ما يميّزه كباحث هو كونه أحد "المؤرخين الجدد"، وهم جماعة من الباحثين الإسرائيليين الذين كشفوا زيف الرواية الرسمية الإسرائيلية من خلال اعتمادهم على المصادر التي رفعت عنها السرية.
الطرح في الكتاب متزن ودقيق، رغم أن حقائق الصراع مريرة ومؤلمة. يأخذ الكتاب إسمه من مقال كتبه زاييڤ جابوتينسكي، وهو قائد حركة الصهيونية التصحيحية. قال جابوتنسكي في عشرينات القرن الماضي بأن الفلسطينيين شعب حي، ولا يعقل أن يرضخوا للاستعمار الصهيوني ويقبلوا بوجود كيان يهودي دون مقاومة، ولذلك فلا بد من بناء قوة عسكرية يهودية "الجدار الحديدي" قادرة على صدهم وهزيمتهم. وبعد أن ينخر اليأس فيهم من توالي الخسائر، فلا بد أن يؤدي هذا لصعود طبقة معتدلة مستعدة للتفاوض، فحينها يجب على اليهود -وهم في موضع القوة- أن يسعوا للسلام الذي يكفل لهم دولتهم.
على مدار العقود الطويلة التي يغطيها الكتاب، اتبعت الحكومات الإسرائيلية المتعاقبة، سواء من اليمين أو اليسار هذه الاستراتيجية، وتحديدًا الشق الأول منها، حتى باتت القوة العسكرية هدفًا في حد ذاتها لدى البعض. ربما يكون إسحاق رابين هو السياسي الإسرائيلي الوحيد الذي كان مستعدًا للانتقال للمرحلة الثانية.
تاريخ الصراع مرير وأليم وأكاد أجزم أن غالبية أبناء جيلي لا يعرفون عنه إلا القليل، ليس لندرة المصادر، بل لعدم الاكتراث بالدرجة الأولى. في عبارة منسوبة إلى موشي ديان، رئيس الدفاع الإسرائيلي حينها، قال فيها أنه لا يخشى العرب لأنهم لا يقرؤون، وإذا قرأوا فإنهم لا يفهمون، وإذا فهموا فأنهم لا يطبقون. فهل نستطيع تكذيب مقولته هذه بشكل عملي؟
يختم أڤي شليم كتابه باقتباس حزين للعالم المعروف ألبيرت آينشتاين يقول فيه:
"التعاون المباشر بين اليهود والعرب هو السبيل الوحيد لصنع حياة كريمة وآمنة.. ما يحزنني ليس هو نقص فطنة اليهود عن إدراك هذه الحقيقة، بل نقص عدالتهم."
زار المؤرخ اليهودي أڤي شليم البحرين نهاية العام الماضي وقدّم محاضرة كانت غايةً في الجمال. بعد المحاضرة جرى توزيع نسخ من كتابه الجدار الحديدي، وهو كتاب ضخم تبلغ عدد صفحاته ٩٠٠ ويغطي تاريخ الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي منذ بدايات المشروع الصهيوني حتى العام ٢٠٠٦، ويستعين في النصف الأول من هذا التاريخ بكثير من المصادر والأرشيفات التي رفعت عنها السرية.
أڤي شليم من مواليد بغداد وهو مزدوج الجنسية إسرائيلي-بريطاني ويعمل كبروفيسور للعلاقات الدولية في جامعة أوكسفورد. ما يميّزه كباحث هو كونه أحد "المؤرخين الجدد"، وهم جماعة من الباحثين الإسرائيليين الذين كشفوا زيف الرواية الرسمية الإسرائيلية من خلال اعتمادهم على المصادر التي رفعت عنها السرية.
الطرح في الكتاب متزن ودقيق، رغم أن حقائق الصراع مريرة ومؤلمة. يأخذ الكتاب إسمه من مقال كتبه زاييڤ جابوتينسكي، وهو قائد حركة الصهيونية التصحيحية. قال جابوتنسكي في عشرينات القرن الماضي بأن الفلسطينيين شعب حي، ولا يعقل أن يرضخوا للاستعمار الصهيوني ويقبلوا بوجود كيان يهودي دون مقاومة، ولذلك فلا بد من بناء قوة عسكرية يهودية "الجدار الحديدي" قادرة على صدهم وهزيمتهم. وبعد أن ينخر اليأس فيهم من توالي الخسائر، فلا بد أن يؤدي هذا لصعود طبقة معتدلة مستعدة للتفاوض، فحينها يجب على اليهود -وهم في موضع القوة- أن يسعوا للسلام الذي يكفل لهم دولتهم.
على مدار العقود الطويلة التي يغطيها الكتاب، اتبعت الحكومات الإسرائيلية المتعاقبة، سواء من اليمين أو اليسار هذه الاستراتيجية، وتحديدًا الشق الأول منها، حتى باتت القوة العسكرية هدفًا في حد ذاتها لدى البعض. ربما يكون إسحاق رابين هو السياسي الإسرائيلي الوحيد الذي كان مستعدًا للانتقال للمرحلة الثانية.
تاريخ الصراع مرير وأليم وأكاد أجزم أن غالبية أبناء جيلي لا يعرفون عنه إلا القليل، ليس لندرة المصادر، بل لعدم الاكتراث بالدرجة الأولى. في عبارة منسوبة إلى موشي ديان، رئيس الدفاع الإسرائيلي حينها، قال فيها أنه لا يخشى العرب لأنهم لا يقرؤون، وإذا قرأوا فإنهم لا يفهمون، وإذا فهموا فأنهم لا يطبقون. فهل نستطيع تكذيب مقولته هذه بشكل عملي؟
يختم أڤي شليم كتابه باقتباس حزين للعالم المعروف ألبيرت آينشتاين يقول فيه:
"التعاون المباشر بين اليهود والعرب هو السبيل الوحيد لصنع حياة كريمة وآمنة.. ما يحزنني ليس هو نقص فطنة اليهود عن إدراك هذه الحقيقة، بل نقص عدالتهم."
October 8, 2008
Avi Shlaim is in the school of what are called "The New Historians" on the Arab-Israeli conflict, along with Benny Morris who broke new ground in historical analysis with the Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. This text by Shlaim is a great single volume overview of the history of the conflict, from 1948 and the war of independence leading all the way up to 1999. The thesis of his book is that the Zionist movement eventually adopted the political philosophy of Ze'ev Jabotinksy with his ideas on revisionist Zionism, his argument being that the Zionists must build up and Iron Wall in the Middle East to create the State of Israel, with the intention of allowing the Arabs in after they give up the fight. Essentially it's an ideology that breaks down as: the best defense is a good offense. And Shlaim makes a compelling case in his book, doing so as objectively as he can. He traces the origins of the first Arab war, the Suez War, the June 1967 war, the Yom Kippur war, and so on, leading up to the collision with the Palestinians and the still going occupation. The flaw in this text is that while Shlaim is able to draw on a wealth of primary Israeli sources (providing an excellent bibliography), he is unable to reveal Arab planning as he cites very few Arab sources. I don't pretend to know the truth about this conflict; there probably will not be an objective account on this for another 100 years for all I know. However, I think Shlaim is done an excellent job reviewing Israel's history and political policies in the Arab world, and anyone who is new to this topic should start here.
April 13, 2024
The father of Zionism Theodor Herzl viewed the Palestinians as primitive and backward and “his attitude towards them was rather patronizing.” Zionism went terrorist after a British white paper in May 1939 reversed British support for Zionism, and a Jewish state – this led to the creation of the paramilitary Haganah to get settler-colonial on the non-Jewish residents of Palestine. The Irgun then starts and soon from it splits the Lehi, a.k.a. the Stern Gang which never has more than 300 members. Then comes the settler-colonial Nakba where 750,000 Palestinians are forced to leave through acts of terror against them (Plan D – see Ilan Pappe). Chaim Weizmann was Israel’s first president until he died in 1952. After Israel begins, the Haganah’s name changes to the IDF and the real mythmaking takes off. For example, Israel pretends the War for Independence was against a much larger Arab army – not true – The IDF had 65,000 men under arms in July and 96,441 by December, whereas the Palestinians had less than 25,000 fighters (p. 37). Avi says the IDF now “has transformed into the police force of a brutal colonial power.”
The military victory of 1948 leads Israel to adopt Hitler’s strategy – use violence and its threat to solve everything – negotiation and diplomacy is for losers - even Zionist moderate Nahum Goldmann felt this way in his autobiography. In April 1950, Jordan formally annexes the West Bank. Ariel Sharon does the Qibya Massacre, reducing the village to a “pile of rubble” killing 69 civilians of which 2/3 are women and children. And you thought civilian slaughters started post October 7th in 2023 – no, taking out Palestinian women and children has a long history. Israel pushed the myth that the IDF didn’t do Qibya, but it did (see p.96-97) and Ben-Gurion blatantly lied. The UN condemned the Qibya Massacre, but Israel ignored the condemnation because the massacre gave Israel the “possibility of living there.” Wipe out a village + ignore world opinion, = you can proudly live there. Isn’t unchecked settler-colonialism fun?
Moshe Sharett: When premier Sharett steps down to make way for for Ben-Gurion, all remaining accommodation policies with the Arabs flys out the window. It’s Hammer Time! And, according to Israel’s clock, in 2024 in Gaza it’s still Hammer Time. Sharett today is considered uncool in Israel because he “thought that the IDF should be true to its name and serve only genuine defense purposes.” The US changed its War Department to the Department of Defense also as a PR move – the crystal meth paranoia of ‘kill the enemy abroad before he even thinks of becoming your enemy’. “Sharett was a balanced man in unbalanced times, a man of peace an era of violence, a negotiator on behalf of a society that spurned negotiations, a man of compromise in a political culture that equated compromise with cowardice.” Golda Meir then succeeds Sharett, leading to the “final collapse of the moderate school of thought on Israel’s relations with the Arabs and the final triumph of Ben-Gurionism.” The Hurryin’ of Gurion.
France: Leading to the 1967 war, Egypt was the common enemy of Israel and France – but let’s face it France still hated Algeria more – how dare the Algerian people not continue to welcome a brutal French occupation? Ben-Gurion’s “ultimate aim” was to “produce nuclear weapons.” “Shimon Peres was the moving force behind the Israeli attempt to get French help in building a nuclear reactor.” “France continued to serve as Israel’s chief arms supplier.” “Ordinary Israelis had a sense that in France they had found a genuine and loyal friend.” That makes a lot of sense; both countries at the time were obsessed with controlling Arabs unlawfully by force (France in Algeria, and Israel on its own native population). Such noble goals.
Suez War: Ben-Gurion invades the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in the 1957 Suez War. The Eisenhower Administration demanded a withdrawal. But Israel saw it had achieved a victory and the Suez War made Israel feel it was the “strongest military force in the Middle East.” Never mind that none of Israel’s objectives had been reached: Nassar wasn’t overthrown, Israel didn’t expand, and there wasn’t a new sheriff in town. And “Israel’s reputation was seriously tarnished.” The Suez War however did “overthrow” Sharett; but it also saw Nassar rise as the leader of the Arab world. Think of Golda Meir as Ben-Gurion’s disciple. The US still didn’t ally with Israel then because it still wanted Arab help in opposing the Soviets. To put it more bluntly, the US greedily wanted Arab oil more than the stigma of aiding the Israeli settler-colonial project. Eshkol then becomes Israel’s prime minister – he followed Ben-Gurion’s ideas for defense but elsewhere felt more sympathetic to Sharett’s sympathy for the Palestinians.
In 1955, Moshe Dayan’s plan was Bully 101: provoke weaker playground opponents to action against you, then with a straight face call yourself the victim: Dayan’s plan was to “use military reprisals on a massive scale in order to provoke Egypt to go to war before the country was ready.” Israel adores this provoking strategy throughout its history. Coexisting is for sissies. In 1955, this led to Operation Kinneret which “was an unprovoked act of aggression by Israel.”
The ’67 War: Moshe Dayan said in a 1976 interview that he regrated going to war with Syria in 1967. He said there was no compelling reason to go to war with Syria and taking Golan heights was less about security and more about getting farmland for Israeli settlers (p.265). He added, “You don’t strike at every enemy because he is a bastard but because he threatens you. And the Syrians on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.” UN Security Council resolution 242 pointed fingers at Israel for the ’67 War emphasizing “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force and the need to work for a just and lasting peace.” And Article One of it demanded “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” – 75 years later Israel is still ignoring that demand. The joys of being a rogue state.
The Yom Kipper War of 1973: Egypt and Syria attack Israel and it is a complete surprise (like October 7th 2023) to the normally alert and paranoid Israel. The war restores Arab pride, honor, and self-confidence. Even so, the Arabs only win the first round – Israel wins the second round. Yitzhak Rabin told Shlomo Avineri that “Areas with dense Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could not remain under our control forever, and, in order to assure maximum negotiating flexibility, we should refrain from establishing Jewish settlements on them.” No wonder Rabin was assassinated; you can’t have a voice of reason left alive in a position of power in Israel – what an insult to Netanyahu and his bedroom buddies. Rabin actually supported “a homeland for the Palestinians” – such attempts at vague fairness will get you killed – and so in 1977 the Labor Party crashed and burned so that the Craz-o Likud party could take over under Menachem Begin. Thus, for the Labor Party, Begin was the end. Zionist trolls love to tell you how Hamas had a charter that demanded from the river to the sea – what’s funny is the Likud Party’s 1977 charter which comically has the same demands – from the river to the sea. Those Zionist trolls won’t tell you how Hamas River-2-Sea means to get Palestinian land back to its legal owners, while the Likud wants it permanently taken FROM its legal owners. Begin was so delusional he saw basic Arab hostility to having their land and lifestyles stolen “as an extension of the antisemitism that had resulted in the annihilation of European Jewry.” Apparently, Jewish alarm when Nazis took Jewish land and autonomy away was just fine, but the same Palestinian alarm when Israel instead takes their land and autonomy away can only be antisemitism? With that kind of logic any Zionist could rob you at gunpoint, and when you get hostile they simply shout, “Anti-Semite!”. If you objected to the Vietnam War to Nixon’s face, he could have shouted back, “Quaker hater!” If anyone in the Holy Lands being slaughtered centuries ago by the invading Crusaders got hostile, the Crusaders would shout back “Jesus hater!” Yeah, that’s the ticket. Too bad ALL religions can’t play THEIR own religion hating card; I see the members of ABBA receiving hostility for their lame ass music and shouting back, “Odin hater!”.
Jimmy Carter saw Israeli settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace. He was the first and last US president to support a Palestinian homeland. In 1981, tired of not attacking another country for so long, Israel takes out the Iraqi Tammuz nuclear reactor. It took 2 minutes for eight F-16’s (supplied by US taxpayer dollars) flying low and in tight formation to unload two 2,000-pound bombs each on the reactor. How exciting! Israel fights Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq – the joys of psychopathically inverting Tikkun Olam. This introduced the Begin Doctrine – “We all know we Israelis have weapons of mass destruction, but no one else can have them”. If Israel was a sibling, its parent would pull Israel’s nuclear weapons out of its hands saying, “If you won’t also let your brothers play with this toy, then you can’t either – be fair, Izzy!” Name a group where historically its members put up with one member repeatedly telling them he is “chosen by God” and so deserves a monopoly on force. Avi says, the Israeli public saw the campaign bombing of Iraq, another sovereign nation, to illegally take out their reactor and create more perceived anti-Semitism worldwide, as “vastly popular”. Operation Shortsightedness is right on target!
Sadat is assassinated by “an Islamic fundamentalist officer in a military parade.” One more reason to never go to military parades. Reagan comes to power in 1981; his least friendly to Israel cabinet member is Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger realistically thought aid to Israel was a liability in dealing properly with the Arab oil producers.
Lebanon: Sharon and Israel invade Lebanon. During the siege of Beirut, “the IDF cut off the water and power supplies to the city but restored them a few days later, following a protest from President Reagan.” Reagan did what Biden today would NEVER do and demanded an end to Israel’s shelling and bombing and hard lined Begin. This led to the withdrawal of the PLO to Tunisia. Then comes the Israel-approved carnage at Shatila and Sabra camps where 700-2,000 were slaughtered. “while Sharon was the main driving force behind the war in Lebanon, Begin bore the ultimate political responsibility for it.” Begin actually admitted it was “a war of choice.” In 1984, Peres takes over as prime minister.
The Shame of Shamir: When charged with dishonesty, Shamir proudly replied that “for the sake of the Land of Israel, it is permissible to lie.” The deluded Shamir told people in classic Freudian projection that the ultimate aim of Arabs was to throw the Jews into the sea. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt and one decade later, here was Shamir calling Egypt an “enemy.” Shamir was an arrogant douchebag prime minister who was once a member of the terrorist Irgun and later the Mossad. He said war mongering crap like “Peace will be unattainable if Israel is weak or perceived to be so” – a reminder that war doesn’t determine who is right, but who is left. Shameless Shamir also said, “Gaza is part of the Land of Israel.” No, it isn’t, you thieving twit. Note that most rabid Israeli leaders were foreigners: Peres, Shamir, and Netanyahu all came from Poland, Golda Meir from Kiev, and Rabin was the first Israeli-born prime minister.
The Likud’s long-term goal then was the annexation of the West Bank. At the time, the West Bank and Gaza had 1.5 million Arabs with a higher birth rate than Israelis, so both areas were seen as a threat to the racist Zionist hegemony faux democracy. Eight Israeli F-16 flew 2,400 kilometers to Tunis to illegally bomb the PLO headquarters there, killing 71 including Tunisian civilians. That required those flying murderers to refuel in mid-air. The UN Security Council condemned the action. Both the US and Israel have the same sadistic desire for Iraq and Iran to destroy each other, as evidenced in the Iran-Iraq War that started in 1980. Note that Israel was the biggest beneficiary of the Gulf War w/o lifting a finger – nice return on lobby investments. At the time, Netanyahu was Israel’s UN ambassador to the UN.
The First Intifada: It begins on December 9th, 1987. “It had its roots in poverty, in the miserable living conditions in the refugee camps, in hatred of the occupation.” “The ultimate (Palestinian) aim was self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.” Israel’s aim was “creeping annexation”. Rabin gets in trouble for telling troops to “break their bones.” Imagine a US president saying that to troops. Israel was finding out, “An army can beat an army, but an army cannot beat a people” – especially one “fighting for its basic human rights and for the right to political self-determination.” David Mellor, a minister of state at the foreign office said, “It is appalling that a few miles up the coast there is prosperity, and here is a misery on a scale that rivals anywhere else on earth.” George Bush Sr with a straight face, compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler. Funny how it seems every US politician while in office has to comically compare someone to Hitler; for those of us who read, the US funded Saddam during his worst crimes, and you’re gonna call him Hitler? In fact, In 1987, Vice President Bush successfully pressed the federal Export-Import Bank to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Iraq – so much for the sincerity of Bush’s Hitler comment.
“As soon as Bill Clinton entered the White House, the pro-Israeli bias in American policy became more pronounced.” Rabin is assassinated by three bullets in 1995; he died “a martyr in the struggle for peace.” At his funeral, his wife refused to shake hands with Netanyahu who, at the time, was leader of the Likud. She said she saw Arafat as a hope for peace, but Netanyahu as no hope. Rabin’s murderer Yigal Amir also did a standard Freudian projection but saying, “When I shot Rabin, I felt as if I was shooting a terrorist.” No doubt for the crime of ignoring the annoying whines of entitled settlers and extremist rabbis. Barak then becomes foreign-minister, Peres takes over, and Netanyahu temporally goes the way of Terence Trent D’Arby’s career.
Netanyahu: In 1993, Netanyahu returns to lead the Likud party with a new comedic premise – the fantasy that the Jews didn’t take the Arabs’ land, but the Arabs took it from the Jews (thousands of years ago if you get Israelis to think Neo-Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians were Arabs). In a secretly videotaped gem you can still see on the web, Netanyahu says this on camera about the Palestinians: “Beat them up, not once but repeatedly; beat them up so it hurts badly, until it’s unbearable” - the perfect Netanyahu quote for what is doing in Gaza in 2024. For a futility exercise, look online for a single positive reference to Arabs by Netanyahu. He said, “Jewish sovereignty and Jewish power are the only deterrents and the only guarantees against the slaughter of the Jews.” His whole thing is to NEVER allow going back to the ’67 borders – morally akin to never returning Nazi art treasures to their documented rightful owners.
In contrast to Netanyahu, Ehud Barak was fully aware that Syria was a military power, while the Palestinians were not. He said, “they are the weakest of our adversaries. As a military threat they are ludicrous. They pose no military threat of any kind to Israel.”
“In Israeli eyes the right of return (for Palestinians) was always a code word for the destruction of the Jewish state” – what? Real democracy instead of a racist ethnocracy? Then you would have four million Palestinian refugees wanting to return and screwing up Israel’s Jim Crow fantasy demographics of racial purity, and white dominated democracy and the end of the odious outdated settler-colonial project. Israel’s war on the Palestinian people “breaches the 1949 Geneva Convention.” The job of the Israel Lobby is to make US leaders “treat Israel as though it were the 51st state of the union” – just think of it as a hot and ugly Hawaii, pathologically fixated on ethnically cleansing all the indigenous. How noble.
Sharon’s Follies: The Second Intifada is triggered 2000 by Sharon, “flanked by a thousand security men” (such courage!) walking into the al-Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem. In the first five days 47 Palestinians are killed and 1,885 injured. Israeli peace activist called Sharon’s antics “Gun Zionism”. Sharon, in another classic Freudian projection, called the Palestinians he kept under military occupation, a “murderous and treacherous people.” Previously Sharon, the territorial expansionist, in 1953 had commanded the raid on Qibya where 69 civilians were killed and forty-five houses were blown up. In 1982 Sharon was the “driving force” in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon that killed 17,825 dead, 30,000 wounded and he bogged down Israel in a 18-year occupation. We are Israel – our occupation is occupation. Sharon at this time gets the nickname “the bulldozer” (as well as many unprintable epithets). Sharon actually opposed the Wall but only because he feared “it would create a barrier between Israel and the territories he might decide to annex one day.” Sharon FINALLY offers his peace contribution to Israel when after his stroke in 2006, he remained in a vegetative state until his death in 2014.
To throw the world off its scent, Likud party leaders want everyone to focus on Islamic terrorism while they foment more obvious Zionist terrorism. Do not look behind the curtain, folks. The Likud Cookbook has recipes for ghettoes – just add Palestinians and violently stir. The policy for Gaza intentionally was for “de-development” because “Israeli officials realized that a viable economy would strengthen the case for political independence” and they needed Gaza dependent. The Gazan high birthrate alarms Israelis who call it “a demographic timebomb” – “how kin you have a utopian racist Jim Crow all-white democracy, if them non-whites out-breed you? “
this review ends in comment section - cheers.
The military victory of 1948 leads Israel to adopt Hitler’s strategy – use violence and its threat to solve everything – negotiation and diplomacy is for losers - even Zionist moderate Nahum Goldmann felt this way in his autobiography. In April 1950, Jordan formally annexes the West Bank. Ariel Sharon does the Qibya Massacre, reducing the village to a “pile of rubble” killing 69 civilians of which 2/3 are women and children. And you thought civilian slaughters started post October 7th in 2023 – no, taking out Palestinian women and children has a long history. Israel pushed the myth that the IDF didn’t do Qibya, but it did (see p.96-97) and Ben-Gurion blatantly lied. The UN condemned the Qibya Massacre, but Israel ignored the condemnation because the massacre gave Israel the “possibility of living there.” Wipe out a village + ignore world opinion, = you can proudly live there. Isn’t unchecked settler-colonialism fun?
Moshe Sharett: When premier Sharett steps down to make way for for Ben-Gurion, all remaining accommodation policies with the Arabs flys out the window. It’s Hammer Time! And, according to Israel’s clock, in 2024 in Gaza it’s still Hammer Time. Sharett today is considered uncool in Israel because he “thought that the IDF should be true to its name and serve only genuine defense purposes.” The US changed its War Department to the Department of Defense also as a PR move – the crystal meth paranoia of ‘kill the enemy abroad before he even thinks of becoming your enemy’. “Sharett was a balanced man in unbalanced times, a man of peace an era of violence, a negotiator on behalf of a society that spurned negotiations, a man of compromise in a political culture that equated compromise with cowardice.” Golda Meir then succeeds Sharett, leading to the “final collapse of the moderate school of thought on Israel’s relations with the Arabs and the final triumph of Ben-Gurionism.” The Hurryin’ of Gurion.
France: Leading to the 1967 war, Egypt was the common enemy of Israel and France – but let’s face it France still hated Algeria more – how dare the Algerian people not continue to welcome a brutal French occupation? Ben-Gurion’s “ultimate aim” was to “produce nuclear weapons.” “Shimon Peres was the moving force behind the Israeli attempt to get French help in building a nuclear reactor.” “France continued to serve as Israel’s chief arms supplier.” “Ordinary Israelis had a sense that in France they had found a genuine and loyal friend.” That makes a lot of sense; both countries at the time were obsessed with controlling Arabs unlawfully by force (France in Algeria, and Israel on its own native population). Such noble goals.
Suez War: Ben-Gurion invades the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in the 1957 Suez War. The Eisenhower Administration demanded a withdrawal. But Israel saw it had achieved a victory and the Suez War made Israel feel it was the “strongest military force in the Middle East.” Never mind that none of Israel’s objectives had been reached: Nassar wasn’t overthrown, Israel didn’t expand, and there wasn’t a new sheriff in town. And “Israel’s reputation was seriously tarnished.” The Suez War however did “overthrow” Sharett; but it also saw Nassar rise as the leader of the Arab world. Think of Golda Meir as Ben-Gurion’s disciple. The US still didn’t ally with Israel then because it still wanted Arab help in opposing the Soviets. To put it more bluntly, the US greedily wanted Arab oil more than the stigma of aiding the Israeli settler-colonial project. Eshkol then becomes Israel’s prime minister – he followed Ben-Gurion’s ideas for defense but elsewhere felt more sympathetic to Sharett’s sympathy for the Palestinians.
In 1955, Moshe Dayan’s plan was Bully 101: provoke weaker playground opponents to action against you, then with a straight face call yourself the victim: Dayan’s plan was to “use military reprisals on a massive scale in order to provoke Egypt to go to war before the country was ready.” Israel adores this provoking strategy throughout its history. Coexisting is for sissies. In 1955, this led to Operation Kinneret which “was an unprovoked act of aggression by Israel.”
The ’67 War: Moshe Dayan said in a 1976 interview that he regrated going to war with Syria in 1967. He said there was no compelling reason to go to war with Syria and taking Golan heights was less about security and more about getting farmland for Israeli settlers (p.265). He added, “You don’t strike at every enemy because he is a bastard but because he threatens you. And the Syrians on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.” UN Security Council resolution 242 pointed fingers at Israel for the ’67 War emphasizing “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force and the need to work for a just and lasting peace.” And Article One of it demanded “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” – 75 years later Israel is still ignoring that demand. The joys of being a rogue state.
The Yom Kipper War of 1973: Egypt and Syria attack Israel and it is a complete surprise (like October 7th 2023) to the normally alert and paranoid Israel. The war restores Arab pride, honor, and self-confidence. Even so, the Arabs only win the first round – Israel wins the second round. Yitzhak Rabin told Shlomo Avineri that “Areas with dense Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could not remain under our control forever, and, in order to assure maximum negotiating flexibility, we should refrain from establishing Jewish settlements on them.” No wonder Rabin was assassinated; you can’t have a voice of reason left alive in a position of power in Israel – what an insult to Netanyahu and his bedroom buddies. Rabin actually supported “a homeland for the Palestinians” – such attempts at vague fairness will get you killed – and so in 1977 the Labor Party crashed and burned so that the Craz-o Likud party could take over under Menachem Begin. Thus, for the Labor Party, Begin was the end. Zionist trolls love to tell you how Hamas had a charter that demanded from the river to the sea – what’s funny is the Likud Party’s 1977 charter which comically has the same demands – from the river to the sea. Those Zionist trolls won’t tell you how Hamas River-2-Sea means to get Palestinian land back to its legal owners, while the Likud wants it permanently taken FROM its legal owners. Begin was so delusional he saw basic Arab hostility to having their land and lifestyles stolen “as an extension of the antisemitism that had resulted in the annihilation of European Jewry.” Apparently, Jewish alarm when Nazis took Jewish land and autonomy away was just fine, but the same Palestinian alarm when Israel instead takes their land and autonomy away can only be antisemitism? With that kind of logic any Zionist could rob you at gunpoint, and when you get hostile they simply shout, “Anti-Semite!”. If you objected to the Vietnam War to Nixon’s face, he could have shouted back, “Quaker hater!” If anyone in the Holy Lands being slaughtered centuries ago by the invading Crusaders got hostile, the Crusaders would shout back “Jesus hater!” Yeah, that’s the ticket. Too bad ALL religions can’t play THEIR own religion hating card; I see the members of ABBA receiving hostility for their lame ass music and shouting back, “Odin hater!”.
Jimmy Carter saw Israeli settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace. He was the first and last US president to support a Palestinian homeland. In 1981, tired of not attacking another country for so long, Israel takes out the Iraqi Tammuz nuclear reactor. It took 2 minutes for eight F-16’s (supplied by US taxpayer dollars) flying low and in tight formation to unload two 2,000-pound bombs each on the reactor. How exciting! Israel fights Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq – the joys of psychopathically inverting Tikkun Olam. This introduced the Begin Doctrine – “We all know we Israelis have weapons of mass destruction, but no one else can have them”. If Israel was a sibling, its parent would pull Israel’s nuclear weapons out of its hands saying, “If you won’t also let your brothers play with this toy, then you can’t either – be fair, Izzy!” Name a group where historically its members put up with one member repeatedly telling them he is “chosen by God” and so deserves a monopoly on force. Avi says, the Israeli public saw the campaign bombing of Iraq, another sovereign nation, to illegally take out their reactor and create more perceived anti-Semitism worldwide, as “vastly popular”. Operation Shortsightedness is right on target!
Sadat is assassinated by “an Islamic fundamentalist officer in a military parade.” One more reason to never go to military parades. Reagan comes to power in 1981; his least friendly to Israel cabinet member is Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger realistically thought aid to Israel was a liability in dealing properly with the Arab oil producers.
Lebanon: Sharon and Israel invade Lebanon. During the siege of Beirut, “the IDF cut off the water and power supplies to the city but restored them a few days later, following a protest from President Reagan.” Reagan did what Biden today would NEVER do and demanded an end to Israel’s shelling and bombing and hard lined Begin. This led to the withdrawal of the PLO to Tunisia. Then comes the Israel-approved carnage at Shatila and Sabra camps where 700-2,000 were slaughtered. “while Sharon was the main driving force behind the war in Lebanon, Begin bore the ultimate political responsibility for it.” Begin actually admitted it was “a war of choice.” In 1984, Peres takes over as prime minister.
The Shame of Shamir: When charged with dishonesty, Shamir proudly replied that “for the sake of the Land of Israel, it is permissible to lie.” The deluded Shamir told people in classic Freudian projection that the ultimate aim of Arabs was to throw the Jews into the sea. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt and one decade later, here was Shamir calling Egypt an “enemy.” Shamir was an arrogant douchebag prime minister who was once a member of the terrorist Irgun and later the Mossad. He said war mongering crap like “Peace will be unattainable if Israel is weak or perceived to be so” – a reminder that war doesn’t determine who is right, but who is left. Shameless Shamir also said, “Gaza is part of the Land of Israel.” No, it isn’t, you thieving twit. Note that most rabid Israeli leaders were foreigners: Peres, Shamir, and Netanyahu all came from Poland, Golda Meir from Kiev, and Rabin was the first Israeli-born prime minister.
The Likud’s long-term goal then was the annexation of the West Bank. At the time, the West Bank and Gaza had 1.5 million Arabs with a higher birth rate than Israelis, so both areas were seen as a threat to the racist Zionist hegemony faux democracy. Eight Israeli F-16 flew 2,400 kilometers to Tunis to illegally bomb the PLO headquarters there, killing 71 including Tunisian civilians. That required those flying murderers to refuel in mid-air. The UN Security Council condemned the action. Both the US and Israel have the same sadistic desire for Iraq and Iran to destroy each other, as evidenced in the Iran-Iraq War that started in 1980. Note that Israel was the biggest beneficiary of the Gulf War w/o lifting a finger – nice return on lobby investments. At the time, Netanyahu was Israel’s UN ambassador to the UN.
The First Intifada: It begins on December 9th, 1987. “It had its roots in poverty, in the miserable living conditions in the refugee camps, in hatred of the occupation.” “The ultimate (Palestinian) aim was self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.” Israel’s aim was “creeping annexation”. Rabin gets in trouble for telling troops to “break their bones.” Imagine a US president saying that to troops. Israel was finding out, “An army can beat an army, but an army cannot beat a people” – especially one “fighting for its basic human rights and for the right to political self-determination.” David Mellor, a minister of state at the foreign office said, “It is appalling that a few miles up the coast there is prosperity, and here is a misery on a scale that rivals anywhere else on earth.” George Bush Sr with a straight face, compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler. Funny how it seems every US politician while in office has to comically compare someone to Hitler; for those of us who read, the US funded Saddam during his worst crimes, and you’re gonna call him Hitler? In fact, In 1987, Vice President Bush successfully pressed the federal Export-Import Bank to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Iraq – so much for the sincerity of Bush’s Hitler comment.
“As soon as Bill Clinton entered the White House, the pro-Israeli bias in American policy became more pronounced.” Rabin is assassinated by three bullets in 1995; he died “a martyr in the struggle for peace.” At his funeral, his wife refused to shake hands with Netanyahu who, at the time, was leader of the Likud. She said she saw Arafat as a hope for peace, but Netanyahu as no hope. Rabin’s murderer Yigal Amir also did a standard Freudian projection but saying, “When I shot Rabin, I felt as if I was shooting a terrorist.” No doubt for the crime of ignoring the annoying whines of entitled settlers and extremist rabbis. Barak then becomes foreign-minister, Peres takes over, and Netanyahu temporally goes the way of Terence Trent D’Arby’s career.
Netanyahu: In 1993, Netanyahu returns to lead the Likud party with a new comedic premise – the fantasy that the Jews didn’t take the Arabs’ land, but the Arabs took it from the Jews (thousands of years ago if you get Israelis to think Neo-Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians were Arabs). In a secretly videotaped gem you can still see on the web, Netanyahu says this on camera about the Palestinians: “Beat them up, not once but repeatedly; beat them up so it hurts badly, until it’s unbearable” - the perfect Netanyahu quote for what is doing in Gaza in 2024. For a futility exercise, look online for a single positive reference to Arabs by Netanyahu. He said, “Jewish sovereignty and Jewish power are the only deterrents and the only guarantees against the slaughter of the Jews.” His whole thing is to NEVER allow going back to the ’67 borders – morally akin to never returning Nazi art treasures to their documented rightful owners.
In contrast to Netanyahu, Ehud Barak was fully aware that Syria was a military power, while the Palestinians were not. He said, “they are the weakest of our adversaries. As a military threat they are ludicrous. They pose no military threat of any kind to Israel.”
“In Israeli eyes the right of return (for Palestinians) was always a code word for the destruction of the Jewish state” – what? Real democracy instead of a racist ethnocracy? Then you would have four million Palestinian refugees wanting to return and screwing up Israel’s Jim Crow fantasy demographics of racial purity, and white dominated democracy and the end of the odious outdated settler-colonial project. Israel’s war on the Palestinian people “breaches the 1949 Geneva Convention.” The job of the Israel Lobby is to make US leaders “treat Israel as though it were the 51st state of the union” – just think of it as a hot and ugly Hawaii, pathologically fixated on ethnically cleansing all the indigenous. How noble.
Sharon’s Follies: The Second Intifada is triggered 2000 by Sharon, “flanked by a thousand security men” (such courage!) walking into the al-Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem. In the first five days 47 Palestinians are killed and 1,885 injured. Israeli peace activist called Sharon’s antics “Gun Zionism”. Sharon, in another classic Freudian projection, called the Palestinians he kept under military occupation, a “murderous and treacherous people.” Previously Sharon, the territorial expansionist, in 1953 had commanded the raid on Qibya where 69 civilians were killed and forty-five houses were blown up. In 1982 Sharon was the “driving force” in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon that killed 17,825 dead, 30,000 wounded and he bogged down Israel in a 18-year occupation. We are Israel – our occupation is occupation. Sharon at this time gets the nickname “the bulldozer” (as well as many unprintable epithets). Sharon actually opposed the Wall but only because he feared “it would create a barrier between Israel and the territories he might decide to annex one day.” Sharon FINALLY offers his peace contribution to Israel when after his stroke in 2006, he remained in a vegetative state until his death in 2014.
To throw the world off its scent, Likud party leaders want everyone to focus on Islamic terrorism while they foment more obvious Zionist terrorism. Do not look behind the curtain, folks. The Likud Cookbook has recipes for ghettoes – just add Palestinians and violently stir. The policy for Gaza intentionally was for “de-development” because “Israeli officials realized that a viable economy would strengthen the case for political independence” and they needed Gaza dependent. The Gazan high birthrate alarms Israelis who call it “a demographic timebomb” – “how kin you have a utopian racist Jim Crow all-white democracy, if them non-whites out-breed you? “
this review ends in comment section - cheers.
June 24, 2025
Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is one of the most influential works from the “New Historians” school, offering a revisionist account of Israel’s foreign policy and its relationship with the Arab world from the state’s founding through the late 1990s. Originally published in 2000, with the second edition adding chapters for the prime ministership of Barak through Bibi, Shlaim’s central thesis is that Israel adopted and maintained a policy rooted in the concept of an “Iron Wall” — building overwhelming military strength to force Arab states to eventually accept Israel’s existence. Shlaim credits this idea to Zev Jabotinsky, a right-wing Revisionist Zionist leader, but argues that successive Israeli governments often distorted or selectively applied Jabotinsky’s doctrine in ways that undermined peace prospects.
The book’s title comes directly from Jabotinsky’s 1923 essay “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)”, in which he argued that only through undeniable military superiority would the Arabs come to terms with the Zionist project. Shlaim traces how early Israeli leaders, particularly David Ben-Gurion, adopted this doctrine in practice. He shows, for instance, how Ben-Gurion viewed military strength and deterrence as essential to Israel’s survival, especially after the 1948 war, even as public rhetoric emphasized peace.
A major strength of The Iron Wall is its deconstruction of the mainstream Israeli narrative that portrays the country as perpetually seeking peace but being rebuffed by intransigent Arab neighbors. Shlaim argues that this narrative often ignores missed opportunities and Israel’s own strategic calculations. For example, he highlights how in 1949, following the armistice agreements, Israel was reluctant to pursue a comprehensive peace settlement, focusing instead on solidifying territorial gains.
Shlaim provides detailed analysis of Israel’s relations with Jordan, particularly under King Abdullah I and later King Hussein, to illustrate how back-channel diplomacy and unofficial cooperation between Israel and Arab regimes coexisted with public hostility. One vivid example is the “London Agreement” of 1987, in which Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein secretly negotiated a framework for peace — only to have it torpedoed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, reflecting deep internal divisions in Israeli policy.
Another recurring theme is how the Iron Wall doctrine, originally meant to pave the way for political compromise, evolved into a justification for permanent occupation and expansionism. Shlaim scrutinizes key moments such as Israel’s role in the Suez Crisis of 1956, where collusion with Britain and France to attack Egypt revealed how Israel prioritized military action over diplomatic engagement. Shlaim contends that this reinforced Arab fears and further entrenched hostility.
The book devotes significant attention to the 1967 Six-Day War, a turning point that left Israel in control of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Sinai, and the Golan Heights. Shlaim argues that while the war’s outcome initially boosted Israel’s security, which I don’t agree with, its leadership squandered opportunities to trade land for peace, particularly with Jordan and Egypt. He provides archival evidence and diplomatic correspondence to support the view that Israeli leaders often prioritized territorial retention over genuine negotiations.
Menachim Begin said it himself
““In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him…But let us not forget the truth: we were the ones who provoked them. Eighty percent of the incidents with Syria were initiated by us.”
Shlaim also dissects the Yom Kippur War of 1973, suggesting that Israel’s overconfidence, derived from the Iron Wall doctrine, led to intelligence failures and strategic complacency. He credits Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with breaking the cycle by launching the war to shock Israel into recognizing the need for political dialogue. According to Shlaim, this culminated in the Camp David Accords of 1978, a rare example where military deterrence successfully transitioned into diplomacy — but he critiques Israel’s failure to extend similar efforts toward the Palestinians.
Avi Shlaim portrays Ariel Sharon as one of the most controversial and aggressive figures in Israeli military and political history, closely associated with brutal military campaigns and episodes of violence against civilians. Shlaim highlights Sharon’s central role in the 1982 Lebanon War, particularly the Sabra and Shatila massacres, where Lebanese Christian Phalangist militias, operating under Israeli oversight, killed hundreds—possibly thousands—of Palestinian refugees in Beirut. While Israeli forces did not carry out the killings directly, Shlaim emphasizes that Sharon, then Defense Minister, bore significant responsibility by facilitating the Phalangists’ entry into the camps and failing to prevent the atrocity. An Israeli commission of inquiry (the Kahan Commission) later found Sharon “indirectly responsible” and recommended his dismissal as Defense Minister, though he remained a polarizing figure in Israeli politics. Shlaim argues that this episode epitomizes Sharon’s broader pattern of using overwhelming force with disregard for civilian casualties, as seen in earlier operations like the Qibya raid of 1953, where Israeli forces, under Sharon’s command, destroyed dozens of homes in a Jordanian village, killing civilians in retaliation for Palestinian attacks.
A recurring theme in Shlaim’s The Iron Wall is his indictment of Israeli leadership for repeatedly squandering genuine opportunities for peace with its Arab neighbors. Shlaim meticulously documents instances where Arab states, particularly Egypt, Jordan, and at times even Palestinian leaders, extended offers or signals of willingness to engage diplomatically, only to be met with Israeli rejection, delay, or maximalist demands. He cites Egyptian President Nasser’s post-1967 proposals, which included implicit recognition of Israel in exchange for a withdrawal from occupied territories, as one such missed opportunity. Similarly, King Hussein of Jordan sought secret dialogue and floated peace overtures in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, yet Israeli leaders, particularly from the Likud Party, were unwilling to trade land for peace, especially regarding the West Bank. Shlaim also highlights the 1987 London Agreement, secretly negotiated between Shimon Peres and King Hussein, which aimed to lay groundwork for a peace process—only to be derailed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, reflecting deep divisions within Israeli politics. These missed opportunities, Shlaim argues, prolonged the conflict, hardened Arab skepticism toward Israel’s intentions, and entrenched cycles of violence that might have been avoided through political compromise.
The book’s later chapters analyze Israel’s shift to the right under Menachem Begin and the Likud Party, marking what Shlaim sees as a betrayal of Jabotinsky’s original vision. He asserts that Begin and subsequent Likud leaders misused the Iron Wall concept to justify settlements, territorial annexation, and permanent hostility rather than fostering the conditions for coexistence. The 1982 Lebanon War, particularly the invasion justified under false pretenses, exemplifies this distortion, in Shlaim’s view.
Throughout The Iron Wall, Shlaim meticulously documents instances where Arab leaders — including Jordan’s King Hussein, Egypt’s Sadat, and even elements within the PLO — made pragmatic overtures, only to encounter Israeli rigidity or internal sabotage of peace efforts. He does not exonerate Arab actors from responsibility but challenges the one-sided portrayal of Israel as always the party seeking peace. His use of declassified materials, diplomatic cables, and insider accounts lends academic rigor to his claims.
In sum, The Iron Wall offers a sobering, critical perspective on Israeli-Arab relations, urging readers to reconsider simplistic narratives of victimhood and aggression. Shlaim’s work remains controversial, particularly among Israeli nationalists, but it is essential reading for understanding the deeper historical forces, missed opportunities, and evolving doctrines that continue to shape the Middle East conflict today. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, Shlaim provides a thought-provoking, well-sourced challenge to conventional wisdom.
The book’s title comes directly from Jabotinsky’s 1923 essay “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)”, in which he argued that only through undeniable military superiority would the Arabs come to terms with the Zionist project. Shlaim traces how early Israeli leaders, particularly David Ben-Gurion, adopted this doctrine in practice. He shows, for instance, how Ben-Gurion viewed military strength and deterrence as essential to Israel’s survival, especially after the 1948 war, even as public rhetoric emphasized peace.
A major strength of The Iron Wall is its deconstruction of the mainstream Israeli narrative that portrays the country as perpetually seeking peace but being rebuffed by intransigent Arab neighbors. Shlaim argues that this narrative often ignores missed opportunities and Israel’s own strategic calculations. For example, he highlights how in 1949, following the armistice agreements, Israel was reluctant to pursue a comprehensive peace settlement, focusing instead on solidifying territorial gains.
Shlaim provides detailed analysis of Israel’s relations with Jordan, particularly under King Abdullah I and later King Hussein, to illustrate how back-channel diplomacy and unofficial cooperation between Israel and Arab regimes coexisted with public hostility. One vivid example is the “London Agreement” of 1987, in which Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein secretly negotiated a framework for peace — only to have it torpedoed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, reflecting deep internal divisions in Israeli policy.
Another recurring theme is how the Iron Wall doctrine, originally meant to pave the way for political compromise, evolved into a justification for permanent occupation and expansionism. Shlaim scrutinizes key moments such as Israel’s role in the Suez Crisis of 1956, where collusion with Britain and France to attack Egypt revealed how Israel prioritized military action over diplomatic engagement. Shlaim contends that this reinforced Arab fears and further entrenched hostility.
The book devotes significant attention to the 1967 Six-Day War, a turning point that left Israel in control of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Sinai, and the Golan Heights. Shlaim argues that while the war’s outcome initially boosted Israel’s security, which I don’t agree with, its leadership squandered opportunities to trade land for peace, particularly with Jordan and Egypt. He provides archival evidence and diplomatic correspondence to support the view that Israeli leaders often prioritized territorial retention over genuine negotiations.
Menachim Begin said it himself
““In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him…But let us not forget the truth: we were the ones who provoked them. Eighty percent of the incidents with Syria were initiated by us.”
Shlaim also dissects the Yom Kippur War of 1973, suggesting that Israel’s overconfidence, derived from the Iron Wall doctrine, led to intelligence failures and strategic complacency. He credits Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with breaking the cycle by launching the war to shock Israel into recognizing the need for political dialogue. According to Shlaim, this culminated in the Camp David Accords of 1978, a rare example where military deterrence successfully transitioned into diplomacy — but he critiques Israel’s failure to extend similar efforts toward the Palestinians.
Avi Shlaim portrays Ariel Sharon as one of the most controversial and aggressive figures in Israeli military and political history, closely associated with brutal military campaigns and episodes of violence against civilians. Shlaim highlights Sharon’s central role in the 1982 Lebanon War, particularly the Sabra and Shatila massacres, where Lebanese Christian Phalangist militias, operating under Israeli oversight, killed hundreds—possibly thousands—of Palestinian refugees in Beirut. While Israeli forces did not carry out the killings directly, Shlaim emphasizes that Sharon, then Defense Minister, bore significant responsibility by facilitating the Phalangists’ entry into the camps and failing to prevent the atrocity. An Israeli commission of inquiry (the Kahan Commission) later found Sharon “indirectly responsible” and recommended his dismissal as Defense Minister, though he remained a polarizing figure in Israeli politics. Shlaim argues that this episode epitomizes Sharon’s broader pattern of using overwhelming force with disregard for civilian casualties, as seen in earlier operations like the Qibya raid of 1953, where Israeli forces, under Sharon’s command, destroyed dozens of homes in a Jordanian village, killing civilians in retaliation for Palestinian attacks.
A recurring theme in Shlaim’s The Iron Wall is his indictment of Israeli leadership for repeatedly squandering genuine opportunities for peace with its Arab neighbors. Shlaim meticulously documents instances where Arab states, particularly Egypt, Jordan, and at times even Palestinian leaders, extended offers or signals of willingness to engage diplomatically, only to be met with Israeli rejection, delay, or maximalist demands. He cites Egyptian President Nasser’s post-1967 proposals, which included implicit recognition of Israel in exchange for a withdrawal from occupied territories, as one such missed opportunity. Similarly, King Hussein of Jordan sought secret dialogue and floated peace overtures in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, yet Israeli leaders, particularly from the Likud Party, were unwilling to trade land for peace, especially regarding the West Bank. Shlaim also highlights the 1987 London Agreement, secretly negotiated between Shimon Peres and King Hussein, which aimed to lay groundwork for a peace process—only to be derailed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, reflecting deep divisions within Israeli politics. These missed opportunities, Shlaim argues, prolonged the conflict, hardened Arab skepticism toward Israel’s intentions, and entrenched cycles of violence that might have been avoided through political compromise.
The book’s later chapters analyze Israel’s shift to the right under Menachem Begin and the Likud Party, marking what Shlaim sees as a betrayal of Jabotinsky’s original vision. He asserts that Begin and subsequent Likud leaders misused the Iron Wall concept to justify settlements, territorial annexation, and permanent hostility rather than fostering the conditions for coexistence. The 1982 Lebanon War, particularly the invasion justified under false pretenses, exemplifies this distortion, in Shlaim’s view.
Throughout The Iron Wall, Shlaim meticulously documents instances where Arab leaders — including Jordan’s King Hussein, Egypt’s Sadat, and even elements within the PLO — made pragmatic overtures, only to encounter Israeli rigidity or internal sabotage of peace efforts. He does not exonerate Arab actors from responsibility but challenges the one-sided portrayal of Israel as always the party seeking peace. His use of declassified materials, diplomatic cables, and insider accounts lends academic rigor to his claims.
In sum, The Iron Wall offers a sobering, critical perspective on Israeli-Arab relations, urging readers to reconsider simplistic narratives of victimhood and aggression. Shlaim’s work remains controversial, particularly among Israeli nationalists, but it is essential reading for understanding the deeper historical forces, missed opportunities, and evolving doctrines that continue to shape the Middle East conflict today. Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, Shlaim provides a thought-provoking, well-sourced challenge to conventional wisdom.
March 24, 2017
A great read. Very well documented and detailed. Not only a guide through the convoluted history of Arab-Israeli relations, but also a good source for insight into the relation between domestic politics and ideology on the one hand and international affairs on the other, with quite a few detours into personalities of leaders and diplomats who shaped this history.
It is also the history of an idea - the doctrine of the Iron Wall, developed by the founders of Zionism, by which Israel had to assert itself as an indisputable military and political power against its Arab neighbours before embarking on a settlement with them from a position of superiority and security. The book shows how this doctrine shaped the history of the Middle East and was itself shaped, and ultimately perverted, by the developments of Israel's foreign and domestic policy (the author is pessimistic about the prospects of the current situation).
I recommend it as an introduction to the history of the region and to international relations, in general. The author's style is very engaging and the text is full of behind-the-scenes historical anecdotes.
It is also the history of an idea - the doctrine of the Iron Wall, developed by the founders of Zionism, by which Israel had to assert itself as an indisputable military and political power against its Arab neighbours before embarking on a settlement with them from a position of superiority and security. The book shows how this doctrine shaped the history of the Middle East and was itself shaped, and ultimately perverted, by the developments of Israel's foreign and domestic policy (the author is pessimistic about the prospects of the current situation).
I recommend it as an introduction to the history of the region and to international relations, in general. The author's style is very engaging and the text is full of behind-the-scenes historical anecdotes.
December 17, 2022
Avi Shlaim, emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, provides a detailed, largely balanced account of the Arab-Israeli conflict in this excellent book, which benefits from the author’s access to official documents from Israel’s archives and interviews with key policymakers on all sides. Above all, Shlaim punctures simplistic views of the conflict, so prevalent in the popular press, which claim that either Israel or the Arab countries have always been hell-bent on war. Indeed, given the splits in the Arab world and the arguments that took place within Israel’s various governing coalitions, it scarcely makes sense to refer to the ‘Arabs’ as a collective entity or to claim that there was a grand, expansionist strategy on Israel’s part from its inception.
Nevertheless, despite periodic good-faith efforts at diplomacy on all sides, it cannot be denied that there have always been lingering tensions between Israel and its neighbours, and that even if piecemeal diplomatic initiatives had been pursued with more vigour (which Shlaim argues could have prevented some of the wars from taking place), the root problems would have remained unaddressed. With many in the Arab world eager to bring about Israel’s destruction, and many in Israel convinced that territorial expansion and settlement were historically or religiously justified, conflict at some point was almost inevitable.
The Camp David Accords signed by the leaders of Israel and Egypt in 1978 helped to break this cycle of violence and opened up the possibility of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. A long and rocky road to peace – interspersed with an Israeli incursion into Lebanon and missed opportunities for serious negotiation – culminated in the Oslo Accords between Israel (ruled by a coalition between Labor and Meretz) and the Palestine Liberation Organization between 1993 and 1995. Support for peace was widespread in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, and a tentative agreement between Yossi Beilin and Mahmoud Abbas later in 1995 could have led to a permanent settlement and the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was, however, tragically assassinated by a far-right extremist a week later amidst a barrage of vitriolic criticism from Binyamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party, as well as those even further to their right.
From there, the peace process never really recovered. Shimon Peres, who took over as Labor Prime Minister and had an admirable vision for the Middle East, lost the 1996 election to Netanyahu after a series of missteps. Likud has never accepted the right of Palestinians to self-determination (and even the Labor Party only officially expressed support for a Palestinian state after that election), instead adhering to a vision of a Greater Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the sea. Even after Netanyahu was unceremoniously dumped by the electorate less than three years later and Ehud Barak of the Labor Party became Prime Minister, settlement expansion actually accelerated, complicating efforts to reach an agreement.
Shlaim recounts those efforts (the Camp David Summit in 2000 and the meeting at Taba in 2001) in some detail. My personal view is that Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, should have taken the deal on offer, though it is understandable that he wanted a deal strictly based on international law. It is questionable whether the deal – which would have involved a Palestinian state on around 95 percent of the West Bank with some control over East Jerusalem and some compensation for Palestinian refugees expelled or displaced in 1948 – would have been sustainable, given that it was opposed by a majority of the Israeli public and would likely have placed Arafat in the crosshairs of extremists on his own side.
Nevertheless, leaders have to be bold and courageous, and the political damage that the rejection of the offer did to the long-term prospects of the Palestinian people was considerable. Violence ensued in the Second Intifada, feeding the narrative that the Palestinians were the ones who had rejected peace (ignoring the good-faith efforts at negotiation, the refusal of Barak to even talk to Arafat at Camp David, and the fact that the Knesset was still well-populated by parties which opposed the peace deal and would have potentially scuppered it in the future).
After this cycle of terror and violence had abated, Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert did put some effort into finding a permanent settlement, but Olmert was by then a lame-duck Prime Minister. The second coming of Netanyahu, with Likud retaining in its manifesto its staunch opposition to a Palestinian state, killed off the peace process for good, and Shlaim rightly concludes that it shows no sign of being resurrected without external pressure.
The author, like almost everyone interested in the conflict, has his own opinions and biases, and they do creep in as the book gets closer to the present day (this book was originally published in 2000, but the updated edition takes us to 2014), but he does lay them out at the very beginning of the book. Though he does acknowledge that the Palestinians need to get their own house in order and crack down on terrorist organisations, he does not dwell on this as much as he could have done. A more critical analysis of Arafat’s decision to reject the Camp David offer in 2000 would also have been welcome. This does not detract from the key strength of the book, which is that it lays out the facts in great detail, allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions.
Nevertheless, despite periodic good-faith efforts at diplomacy on all sides, it cannot be denied that there have always been lingering tensions between Israel and its neighbours, and that even if piecemeal diplomatic initiatives had been pursued with more vigour (which Shlaim argues could have prevented some of the wars from taking place), the root problems would have remained unaddressed. With many in the Arab world eager to bring about Israel’s destruction, and many in Israel convinced that territorial expansion and settlement were historically or religiously justified, conflict at some point was almost inevitable.
The Camp David Accords signed by the leaders of Israel and Egypt in 1978 helped to break this cycle of violence and opened up the possibility of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. A long and rocky road to peace – interspersed with an Israeli incursion into Lebanon and missed opportunities for serious negotiation – culminated in the Oslo Accords between Israel (ruled by a coalition between Labor and Meretz) and the Palestine Liberation Organization between 1993 and 1995. Support for peace was widespread in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, and a tentative agreement between Yossi Beilin and Mahmoud Abbas later in 1995 could have led to a permanent settlement and the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was, however, tragically assassinated by a far-right extremist a week later amidst a barrage of vitriolic criticism from Binyamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party, as well as those even further to their right.
From there, the peace process never really recovered. Shimon Peres, who took over as Labor Prime Minister and had an admirable vision for the Middle East, lost the 1996 election to Netanyahu after a series of missteps. Likud has never accepted the right of Palestinians to self-determination (and even the Labor Party only officially expressed support for a Palestinian state after that election), instead adhering to a vision of a Greater Israel stretching from the Jordan River to the sea. Even after Netanyahu was unceremoniously dumped by the electorate less than three years later and Ehud Barak of the Labor Party became Prime Minister, settlement expansion actually accelerated, complicating efforts to reach an agreement.
Shlaim recounts those efforts (the Camp David Summit in 2000 and the meeting at Taba in 2001) in some detail. My personal view is that Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, should have taken the deal on offer, though it is understandable that he wanted a deal strictly based on international law. It is questionable whether the deal – which would have involved a Palestinian state on around 95 percent of the West Bank with some control over East Jerusalem and some compensation for Palestinian refugees expelled or displaced in 1948 – would have been sustainable, given that it was opposed by a majority of the Israeli public and would likely have placed Arafat in the crosshairs of extremists on his own side.
Nevertheless, leaders have to be bold and courageous, and the political damage that the rejection of the offer did to the long-term prospects of the Palestinian people was considerable. Violence ensued in the Second Intifada, feeding the narrative that the Palestinians were the ones who had rejected peace (ignoring the good-faith efforts at negotiation, the refusal of Barak to even talk to Arafat at Camp David, and the fact that the Knesset was still well-populated by parties which opposed the peace deal and would have potentially scuppered it in the future).
After this cycle of terror and violence had abated, Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert did put some effort into finding a permanent settlement, but Olmert was by then a lame-duck Prime Minister. The second coming of Netanyahu, with Likud retaining in its manifesto its staunch opposition to a Palestinian state, killed off the peace process for good, and Shlaim rightly concludes that it shows no sign of being resurrected without external pressure.
The author, like almost everyone interested in the conflict, has his own opinions and biases, and they do creep in as the book gets closer to the present day (this book was originally published in 2000, but the updated edition takes us to 2014), but he does lay them out at the very beginning of the book. Though he does acknowledge that the Palestinians need to get their own house in order and crack down on terrorist organisations, he does not dwell on this as much as he could have done. A more critical analysis of Arafat’s decision to reject the Camp David offer in 2000 would also have been welcome. This does not detract from the key strength of the book, which is that it lays out the facts in great detail, allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions.
August 2, 2020
The whole world stands polarised on the seemingly intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine/Arab world. While one section of the population attribute this raging disquiet to Israeli obduracy, the remaining section remains firmly entrenched in placing the blame squarely on Palestinian/Arab obstinacy. This tome by Avi Shlaim endeavours to clear the cobwebs and strike at the very heart of the matter.
Subsequent to the de-classification of many documents and archives by the Israeli Government, a select group of authors, popularly termed the "new historians" strove to set the record straight. Foremost among them being Benny Morris, who also is credited with coining the term "new historiography". The other constituents of this group were Ilan Pappe, Simha Flapan and Avi Shlaim. In this impartial, intuitive and intricate work, Avi Shlaim works hard to provide an insightful view of the complex muddle racking two sets of people. A muddle that has at its roots the sophisticated philosophy of one of Zionism's founding fathers Je'ev Zabotinsky. Zabotisky advocated the construction of an "Iron Wall" that would firmly secure Israel's place on the Planet, behind the refuge of which he proposed a mechanism of negotiation for conflict resolutions. But as the author brilliantly portrays in his book, every single political administration of Israel while resolutely pulling its might behind the construction of the Wall, fecklessly failed to address the second half of Zabotinsky's concept.
Scuppering every available overture extended by the Palestinians for peace, scuttling all available mechanisms to succeed at the negotiating table and slaying umpteen windows of opportunity for lasting peace, Israel has singularly succeeded in its obstinacy in not only thwarting genuine hopes, but also in spawning a new breed of violent opposition in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah. The callous and indifferent attitude of a recalcitrant United States is also glaringly exposed in the open. The world's oldest democracy has employed its Veto Power in the United Nations on a whopping 42 occasions in support of seemingly irrational Israeli strategies.
Whether it be the intransigent Golda Meir's "kitchen cabinet", or the hawkish Ariel Sharon's "farm forums", all policies fostered and pursued by Israel towards its neighbours have led to restlessness and relentless tension. The Arab world also has to shoulder a considerable amount of blame in their approach to tackling the Palestinian issue. Covert supply of arms, open instigation of "intifadas" or terrorist attacks and firing of the Russian made Katyusha rockets into Israel, has exacerbated rather than alleviating the grief of over 3 million hapless Palestinians clustered in and around West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Targeted assassinations, mushrooming of illegal settlements, demolition of homes and public welfare institutions have become an all too common, albeit unfortunate feature of Middle East politics. The historic and landmark Oslo accord signed by the visionary Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat lent a fleeting glimmer of hope for long lasting peace and cordiality between two warring factions. However a clinical and calculated butchery of the accord by Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon has ensured that the situation has reverted to the dreaded status quo.
This book demonstrates with reeking clarity the ways and means by which deliberate intransigence can prevail over honest intentions. So long as such intransigence constitutes the very DNA of the political establishment of all the parties to the controversy embroiling the Middle East, peace will only be an ephemeral wish and a non existent dream. An issue which seemed irreconcilable will transform into one that is intractable. Meanwhile thousands of innocent civilians continue to be slaughtered while their inexcusable loss of life is defended under the garb of patriotism, nationalism and collateral damage.
Subsequent to the de-classification of many documents and archives by the Israeli Government, a select group of authors, popularly termed the "new historians" strove to set the record straight. Foremost among them being Benny Morris, who also is credited with coining the term "new historiography". The other constituents of this group were Ilan Pappe, Simha Flapan and Avi Shlaim. In this impartial, intuitive and intricate work, Avi Shlaim works hard to provide an insightful view of the complex muddle racking two sets of people. A muddle that has at its roots the sophisticated philosophy of one of Zionism's founding fathers Je'ev Zabotinsky. Zabotisky advocated the construction of an "Iron Wall" that would firmly secure Israel's place on the Planet, behind the refuge of which he proposed a mechanism of negotiation for conflict resolutions. But as the author brilliantly portrays in his book, every single political administration of Israel while resolutely pulling its might behind the construction of the Wall, fecklessly failed to address the second half of Zabotinsky's concept.
Scuppering every available overture extended by the Palestinians for peace, scuttling all available mechanisms to succeed at the negotiating table and slaying umpteen windows of opportunity for lasting peace, Israel has singularly succeeded in its obstinacy in not only thwarting genuine hopes, but also in spawning a new breed of violent opposition in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah. The callous and indifferent attitude of a recalcitrant United States is also glaringly exposed in the open. The world's oldest democracy has employed its Veto Power in the United Nations on a whopping 42 occasions in support of seemingly irrational Israeli strategies.
Whether it be the intransigent Golda Meir's "kitchen cabinet", or the hawkish Ariel Sharon's "farm forums", all policies fostered and pursued by Israel towards its neighbours have led to restlessness and relentless tension. The Arab world also has to shoulder a considerable amount of blame in their approach to tackling the Palestinian issue. Covert supply of arms, open instigation of "intifadas" or terrorist attacks and firing of the Russian made Katyusha rockets into Israel, has exacerbated rather than alleviating the grief of over 3 million hapless Palestinians clustered in and around West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Targeted assassinations, mushrooming of illegal settlements, demolition of homes and public welfare institutions have become an all too common, albeit unfortunate feature of Middle East politics. The historic and landmark Oslo accord signed by the visionary Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat lent a fleeting glimmer of hope for long lasting peace and cordiality between two warring factions. However a clinical and calculated butchery of the accord by Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon has ensured that the situation has reverted to the dreaded status quo.
This book demonstrates with reeking clarity the ways and means by which deliberate intransigence can prevail over honest intentions. So long as such intransigence constitutes the very DNA of the political establishment of all the parties to the controversy embroiling the Middle East, peace will only be an ephemeral wish and a non existent dream. An issue which seemed irreconcilable will transform into one that is intractable. Meanwhile thousands of innocent civilians continue to be slaughtered while their inexcusable loss of life is defended under the garb of patriotism, nationalism and collateral damage.
November 27, 2015
It took me a long time to slog through this book, but I'm so glad I did. Detailed primary source accounts of policy debates in the Israeli government was fascinating. It convinced me that Israel has blown it continuously in its policy towards Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere. At every turn, where there was an opportunity to make a positive decision, the Israel government went the wrong way.
These days, when people point to Hamas and their professed commitment to the destruction of Israel as an obstacle to peace, this book is a helpful reminder that was in fact the plan. Going back to the idea of the Iron Wall in the 20s, zionists expected that the Palestinian population would resist being occupied and displaced, and Israel would have to deal with it. They knew it before the PLO was even an idea, let alone Hamas.
And here we are. As Israel continues to lurch to the right, we have to wonder how many more people have to die before Israel comes to its senses.
These days, when people point to Hamas and their professed commitment to the destruction of Israel as an obstacle to peace, this book is a helpful reminder that was in fact the plan. Going back to the idea of the Iron Wall in the 20s, zionists expected that the Palestinian population would resist being occupied and displaced, and Israel would have to deal with it. They knew it before the PLO was even an idea, let alone Hamas.
And here we are. As Israel continues to lurch to the right, we have to wonder how many more people have to die before Israel comes to its senses.
September 1, 2018
An extremely clear and comprehensive study of Israel-Arab relations from 1948-2013, with a chapter devoted to the intellectual and practical bases of Zionism pre-1948. Since the scope is so broad, the narrative tends to be rather general and thus unsuited to those who are well-acquainted with this history (of which I was not).
August 17, 2014
An interesting fairly impartial analysis of Israel's 'Iron Wall' approach towards it's Arab neighbours. While it deserves credit for not falling into the trap of repeating endless state-sponsored political rhetoric, it lets itself down by running through the entire history of the conflict from a distinctly Israeli viewpoint. There is little to no effort made to show any kind of viewpoint or opinion of those on the Arab side of the conflict beyond dabbling in the hubris and self-servient interests of a number of historical figures.
It's this overwhelming, possibly unintentional yet unsurprising, approach to only showing one viewpoint of historical events that leads you questioning practically every statement or fact contained within.
It is almost as if there is a deliberate attempt to avoid humanising the Arabs at any cost - which ironically fits rather snugly and neatly with Israeli state indoctrination of the population to view any/all Arabs as 'The Enemy'.
That's not to say that the book hasn't attempted impartiality just that it tried so hard to be impartial that it ended up only showing the side of the story most familiar with the Israeli author.
It's this overwhelming, possibly unintentional yet unsurprising, approach to only showing one viewpoint of historical events that leads you questioning practically every statement or fact contained within.
It is almost as if there is a deliberate attempt to avoid humanising the Arabs at any cost - which ironically fits rather snugly and neatly with Israeli state indoctrination of the population to view any/all Arabs as 'The Enemy'.
That's not to say that the book hasn't attempted impartiality just that it tried so hard to be impartial that it ended up only showing the side of the story most familiar with the Israeli author.
Read
October 21, 2024Although it took me most of the year to work my way through this (it's a chonker), it was super readable. The archival data that the author got access to validated much of what Palestinians have been saying for a century. At the end of the day, Israel has never genuinely wanted "peace" as much as they've wanted Palestinians to leave Palestine so Israel can take all of the land of historic Palestine. The entire state building project was unjust (as the premise of the state was to supplant the native population with a new population in order to create an ethnostate) and the injustice continues to this day. Even though Shlaim writes sympathetically towards Israeli leaders at times, the wrongness of everything they were doing was so glaring to me throughout the entire book. There hasn't been a single leader in the history of the state that honestly gave two shits about what they were doing to the Palestinians. Their righteousness of their state building project usurps all, always.
November 27, 2024
Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is een diepgaande en kritische analyse van de Israëlisch-Arabische relaties, waarin de “ijzeren muur”-strategie van militaire dominantie centraal staat. Shlaim biedt een genuanceerd beeld van hoe Israëlische leiders diplomatie vaak ondergeschikt maakten aan strategische en militaire overwegingen. Hoewel het boek uitstekend de Israëlische zijde analyseert, roept het ook vragen op over de bredere context, zoals de invloed van westers imperialisme, de mislukking van vredesinitiatieven, en de complexiteit van hedendaagse geopolitieke verhoudingen.
Sterke punten van het boek
Shlaim geeft een scherp inzicht in de strategie die voortkomt uit Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall”-concept. Hij illustreert hoe dit idee Israël heeft geleid in de relaties met de Arabische wereld, en hoe militaire superioriteit vaak de voorkeur kreeg boven diplomatie. Door zich te richten op sleutelmomenten, zoals de vredesakkoorden met Egypte (1978) en Jordanië (1994), en op het leiderschap van figuren zoals Ariel Sharon en Yitzhak Rabin, biedt Shlaim een rijk en gedetailleerd overzicht van de geschiedenis.
Kritische analyse: wat ontbreekt?
1. Het westers imperialisme en de Balfour-verklaring
Shlaim behandelt de Balfour-verklaring slechts summier, terwijl dit document een cruciale rol speelde in het ontstaan van het Israëlisch-Palestijnse conflict. De verklaring van 1917, waarin Groot-Brittannië steun uitsprak voor een “nationaal tehuis voor het Joodse volk” in Palestina, wordt vaak gezien als een product van westers imperialisme.
De verklaring negeerde systematisch de rechten van de Palestijnse Arabieren, wat leidde tot decennia van onrust. Groot-Brittannië handelde uit eigenbelang: het wilde steun van de Joodse gemeenschap tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog en een strategische invloedssfeer in het Midden-Oosten.
• Kritische vraag: Hoe zou het conflict er vandaag hebben uitgezien zonder deze imperialistische interventie, en welke verantwoordelijkheid draagt Groot-Brittannië nog steeds?
2. Gamel Abdel Nasser en het pan-Arabisme
Shlaim bespreekt Nasser’s pan-Arabische ideologie, maar niet in de volle omvang die nodig is om zijn impact op het conflict te begrijpen. Nasser symboliseerde de Arabische weerstand tegen westerse inmenging en Israëlische expansie. Zijn rol in de Suez-crisis van 1956 en de Zesdaagse Oorlog van 1967 had verstrekkende gevolgen voor de Arabisch-Israëlische betrekkingen.
Hoewel Shlaim Nasser als een belangrijke tegenstander van Israël portretteert, mist hij een diepere reflectie op hoe Nassers nationalistische beweging de Arabische wereld verenigde, maar ook polariseerde.
• Kritische vraag: Hoe heeft het falen van Nasser’s pan-Arabische project bijgedragen aan de gefragmenteerde Arabische reactie op het Israëlisch-Palestijnse conflict?
3. De mislukking van de Camp David-akkoorden (1978) en de Oslo-akkoorden (1993)
Hoewel Shlaim de Camp David-akkoorden en de Oslo-akkoorden benoemt, is zijn analyse beperkt. Camp David wordt geprezen als een doorbraak, omdat het leidde tot vrede tussen Egypte en Israël, maar de Palestijnse kwestie werd grotendeels genegeerd. Dit voedde een gevoel van verraad in de Arabische wereld en versterkte de Palestijnse frustraties.
De Oslo-akkoorden uit 1993, die een tweestatenoplossing beoogden, worden door Shlaim kritisch bekeken als een gemiste kans. Hij wijst op de asymmetrische macht tussen Israël en de Palestijnen, wat leidde tot falende implementatie en toenemende nederzettingenbouw onder Benjamin Netanyahu. Toch mist hij een uitgebreide bespreking van de interne Palestijnse verdeeldheid en de rol van externe actoren zoals de VS in het falen van deze akkoorden.
• Kritische vraag: Was de tweestatenoplossing ooit haalbaar, gezien de machtsongelijkheid en de voortdurende Israëlische nederzettingenpolitiek?
4. Hedendaagse geopolitieke factoren: Rusland, Iran en China
Het boek mist een bespreking van de rol van hedendaagse grootmachten. Rusland heeft zich in Syrië en via steun aan Iran geprofileerd als een belangrijke speler. Iran blijft een centrale tegenstander van Israël door zijn steun aan Hezbollah en Hamas. Tegelijkertijd speelt China een groeiende economische rol in de regio, met investeringen in Israëlische technologie en infrastructuur, terwijl het ook relaties onderhoudt met Arabische staten.
• Kritische vraag: Hoe beïnvloeden de machtsstrijd tussen Rusland, Iran, en China de dynamiek van het conflict en de bredere geopolitiek in het Midden-Oosten?
5. De Abraham-akkoorden en Europa’s passieve houding
De Abraham-akkoorden uit 2020, waarbij Israël vredesverdragen sloot met landen zoals de VAE en Bahrein, laten een nieuwe dynamiek zien waarin Arabische staten economische voordelen boven solidariteit met de Palestijnen stellen. Europa blijft ondertussen vastzitten in een passieve rol, waarin het kritiek uit op Israëlische nederzettingenpolitiek, maar weinig concreet beleid voert om een tweestatenoplossing te bevorderen.
• Kritische vraag: Kan Europa een actieve rol herwinnen in het conflict, of is het gedoemd een machteloze toeschouwer te blijven?
Conclusie: een indrukwekkend maar beperkt werk
The Iron Wall is een essentieel boek voor wie de fundamenten van het Israëlisch-Arabische conflict wil begrijpen. Shlaim biedt een waardevolle historische analyse, maar laat belangrijke aspecten onbesproken, zoals de invloed van westers imperialisme, de hedendaagse rol van grootmachten, en de langetermijngevolgen van mislukte vredesinitiatieven.
Het boek is sterk in zijn focus op Israëlische strategie, maar een vollediger beeld van het conflict vereist ook een diepere blik op de bredere regionale en mondiale context. The Iron Wall is daarmee een indrukwekkend werk, maar niet zonder beperkingen.
August 6, 2021
في عام ١٩٩٢، عندما خسر حزب الليكود بقيادة إسحاق شامير الإنتخابات، وتولى العمال بقيادة إسحاق رابين رئاسة الحكومة، سأل مراسل ال BBC عامل نظافة فلسطيني في القدس عن رأيه في هذا التغير "الجذري" في السلطة وإذا كان يجعله يتطلع لأيام أفضل، فأجابه:
"شايف صرمايتي اليمين؟ هذه إسحاق شامير. شايف صرمايتي الشمال؟ هذه إسحاق رابين. إسحاقين وصرمايتين، فش فرق."
"شايف صرمايتي اليمين؟ هذه إسحاق شامير. شايف صرمايتي الشمال؟ هذه إسحاق رابين. إسحاقين وصرمايتين، فش فرق."
February 28, 2025
Compelling, well-written diplomatic history of Israel in its seemingly intractable conflict with its Arab neighbours and genocide of the Palestinians that goes a long way to situate the catastrophe as inherent in the logic articulated by Jabitowsky in his essay "The Iron Wall" in 1923 that has heavily influenced the Israeli state from its inception. Shlaim does an admirable job showing how the personalities of senior Israeli politicians have made the conflict much worse at times, as well as puncturing the myths of Israeli competence or that 1967 or 1977 mark any sort of pivot at which the Israeli state passed into its current incarnation as an apartheid state.
What's missing, and stops this just short of being comprehensive for the period covered (1948 to 2006) is a proper sense of how changes in Israeli society, and politics particularly from the 1990s onwards with the increasing prominence of the Ultra-Orthodox, Mizrachi, Kahanist movements and the Russian and American migrants who would comprise the most aggressive element of the settler movement, helped make the likes of Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon palatable to the Israeli public. Nevertheless, this is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in the conflict and the background to the butchery that's been ongoing since October 7th.
What's missing, and stops this just short of being comprehensive for the period covered (1948 to 2006) is a proper sense of how changes in Israeli society, and politics particularly from the 1990s onwards with the increasing prominence of the Ultra-Orthodox, Mizrachi, Kahanist movements and the Russian and American migrants who would comprise the most aggressive element of the settler movement, helped make the likes of Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon palatable to the Israeli public. Nevertheless, this is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in the conflict and the background to the butchery that's been ongoing since October 7th.
May 15, 2024
A ‘NEW HISTORIAN’ LOOKS AT THE HISTORY OF ISRAELI/ARAB RELATIONS
Avraham "Avi" Shlaim is an Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy. He is one of the so-called ‘New Historians’ of Israeli historiography.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2000 book, “The establishment of the State of Israel… was one of the more momentous events in the history of the twentieth century. This book is a study of the first fifty years of Israeli foreign policy, with a particular focus on Israel’s relations with the Arab world… For many years the standard Zionist account of the causes, character and course of the Arab-Israeli conflict remained largely unchallenged outside the Arab world… [But 1988] was accompanied by four books by Israeli historians who challenged the traditional historiography of the birth of the State of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli wars… Collectively the authors came to be called the Israeli revisionist, or new, historians. Revisionist historiography has focused on the events surrounding the firth of Israel and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. My aim in the present book is to offer a revisionist interpretation of Israel’s policy toward the Arab world during the fifty years following the achievement of statehood… The real problem for me has not been the imbalance between the documents available from the Israeli side and those from the Arab side but rather the fact that, under the thirty-year rule, I was able to consult Israeli documents only up to the mid-1960s…”
He recounts, “[Ze’ev Jabotinsky] laid down two principles that formed the core of the Revisionist Zionist ideology and its political program. The first was the territorial integrity of … the Land of Israel, over both banks of the river Jordan… The second was the immediate declaration of the Jewish right to political sovereignty over the whole of this area. This… raised a question: Did the Arabs of Palestine constitute a distinct national entity and, if so, what should be the Zionist attitude toward them and what should be their status within the projected Jewish state? Jabotinsky’s answer is contained in two highly important articles he published in 1923 … ‘On the Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)’… But he went on to reject, as totally unacceptable, any thought of removing the Arabs from Palestine. The real question, he said… was whether one could always achieve peaceful aims by peaceful means. The answer to this question, he insisted, depended… on the attitude of the Arabs toward Zionism, not on Zionism’s attitude toward them.” (Pg. 12-13)
He explains, “The conventional Zionist version [of the War of Independence] portrays the 1948 war as a simple, bipolar no-holds barred struggle between a monolithic Arab adversary and a tiny Israel. According to this version, seven Arab armies invaded Palestine upon expiration of the British mandate with a single aim in mind: to strangle the Jewish state as soon as it came into the world… this version is largely based on historical facts, but it is a selective and subjective interpretation of these facts… Following the release of the official documents, however, this version was subjected to critical scrutiny… It is true that the military experts of the Arab League had worked out a unified plan for the invasion, but King Abdullah, who was given nominal command over all the Arab forces in Palestine, wrecked this plan by making last-minute changes. His objective in sending his army into Palestine was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state but to make himself the master of the Arab part of Palestine… the other Arab rulers … resented his expansionism… Each of the other Arab states was also moved by dynastic or national interests, which were hidden behind the fig leaf of securing Palestine for Palestinians.” (Pg. 35-36)
He states, “Why was there no political settlement between Israel and its neighbors after … 1948[?]. The traditional Zionist answer to this question can be summed up in two words: Arab intransigence… Revisionist Israeli historians, on the other hand, believe that postwar Israel was more intransigent than the Arab states and that it therefore bears a larger share of the responsibility for the political deadlock that followed the formal ending of hostilities… The real question facing Israel … was not whether peace with its Arab neighbors was possible but at what price.” (Pg. 467-49)
He notes that in the 1950s, “The development of nuclear power was a subject dear to [David] Ben-Gurion’s heart. He saw in it a technological challenge that would help transform Israel into an advanced industrial state. The negotiations with the French were about a small nuclear reactor for civilian purposes. Nothing was said at this stage about possible military applications of this technology. But that was Ben-Gurion’s ultimate aim: to produce nuclear weapons. He believed that nuclear weapons would strengthen Israel immeasurably, secure its survival, and eliminate any danger of another Holocaust.” (Pg. 175-176) He continues, “The plan… revealed a craving for an alliance with the imperialist powers against the forces of Arab nationalism. It exposed an appetite for territorial expansion at the expense of the Arabs … And it exhibited a cavalier attitude toward the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the neighboring Arab states.” (Pg. 178)
He asserts, “Golda Meir’s premiership was marked by a stubborn refusal to reevaluate Irael’s relations with the Arab world. She personally had no understanding of the Arabs, no empathy with them, and no faith in the possibility of peaceful coexistence with them… she exhibited the siege mentality, the notion that Israel had to barricade itself behind an iron wall, the fatalistic believe that Israel was doomed forever to live by the sword… In her five years as prime minister she made two monumental mistakes. First, she turned down [the] suggestion that Israel should trade Sinai for peace with Egypt, the very terms on which the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was to be based eight years later. Second, she turned down Sadat’s proposal for an interim settlement, thus leaving him no option except to go to war… Few leaders talked more about peace and did less to give it a chance to develop.” (Pg. 323-324)
He recounts, “Egypt was expelled from the Arab League following the conclusion of the peace treaty with Israel. The main charge against Egypt was that it had broken ranks and struck a separate deal with the enemy.” (Pg. 381)
He says, “the war in Lebanon had a very negative effect on Arab perceptions of Israel. By honoring its commitment to withdraw from Sinai, Israel had gained much credit in Egypt and some credit in the rest of the Arab world. Egypt could hold its head high and show the skeptics that the peace with Israel yielded tangible benefits... By invading Lebanon, Israel dissipated all the credit and placed Egypt in a highly uncomfortable position.” (Pg. 418)
He notes, “the outbreak of the intifada was completely spontaneous. There was no preparation or planning by the local Palestinian elite or the PLO, but the PLO was quick to jump on the bandwagon…. The aims of the intifada were not stated at the outset; they emerged in the course of the struggle. The ultimate aim was self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state… In this respect the intifada may be seen as the Palestinian war of independence. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict had come full circle.” (Pg. 451)
He observes, “By far the most serious fallout from the intifada was its effect on U.S.-Israeli relations… the Reagan administration … was privately critical of the Israeli handling of the uprising. The uprising brought about a fundamental change in U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, culminating by the end of 1988 in recognition of the PLO as a legitimate party in the negotiations. There was a marked shift in American public opinion away from its traditional support for Israel. The uprising sparked sympathy for the Palestinians at all levels of American society.” (Pg. 455)
He adds, “This common U.S.-Israeli front … was severely shaken … by a bloody incident on Temple Mountain in the heart of Jerusalem… Israeli security forces used live ammunition to deal with a Muslim protest that turned into a riot… The massacre on Temple Mount unleashed a universal wave of condemnation… American was driven to vote in favor of two UN resolutions condemning Israel…” (Pg. 475-476)
Of the Oslo Accords, he says, “Clearly, an important taboo had been broken PLO recognition of Israel was an important landmark along the road to Arab recognition of Israel and the normalization of relations with it… The change was no less marked in Israel’s approach to its Arab opponents than in their approach to Israel… PLO recognition of Israel was expected to pave the way for wider recognition by the Arab states from North Africa to the Persian Gulf…” (Pg. 520)
He states, “The Six Day War had a profound effect on the religious camp in Israel and gave rise to ‘religious Zionism.’ The conquest of the West Bank, which as Judea and Samaria had formed part of the biblical Jewish kingdom, convinced many orthodox rabbis and teachers that they were living in a messianic era and that salvation was at hand. The war represented the Divine Hand at work… They made the sanctity of the land a central tent of religious Zionism. From this it followed that anyone who was prepared to give away parts of this sacred land was perceived as a traitor and enemy of the Jewish people… Gush Emunim, the Bloc of the Faithful, and the settlements it set up in Judea and Samaria were the most palpable expression of the new wave of messianism that swept through considerable segments of Israeli society. Gush Emunim settlers effectively turned the Palestinians into aliens on their own soil… The religious parties moved steadily to the right, while the Likud became more religious; the result was an ever closer relationship between them.” (Pg. 549-550)
Though obviously controversial, this book will be of great interest to those studying Israel history/politics and the Palestinian issues.
Avraham "Avi" Shlaim is an Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy. He is one of the so-called ‘New Historians’ of Israeli historiography.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2000 book, “The establishment of the State of Israel… was one of the more momentous events in the history of the twentieth century. This book is a study of the first fifty years of Israeli foreign policy, with a particular focus on Israel’s relations with the Arab world… For many years the standard Zionist account of the causes, character and course of the Arab-Israeli conflict remained largely unchallenged outside the Arab world… [But 1988] was accompanied by four books by Israeli historians who challenged the traditional historiography of the birth of the State of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli wars… Collectively the authors came to be called the Israeli revisionist, or new, historians. Revisionist historiography has focused on the events surrounding the firth of Israel and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. My aim in the present book is to offer a revisionist interpretation of Israel’s policy toward the Arab world during the fifty years following the achievement of statehood… The real problem for me has not been the imbalance between the documents available from the Israeli side and those from the Arab side but rather the fact that, under the thirty-year rule, I was able to consult Israeli documents only up to the mid-1960s…”
He recounts, “[Ze’ev Jabotinsky] laid down two principles that formed the core of the Revisionist Zionist ideology and its political program. The first was the territorial integrity of … the Land of Israel, over both banks of the river Jordan… The second was the immediate declaration of the Jewish right to political sovereignty over the whole of this area. This… raised a question: Did the Arabs of Palestine constitute a distinct national entity and, if so, what should be the Zionist attitude toward them and what should be their status within the projected Jewish state? Jabotinsky’s answer is contained in two highly important articles he published in 1923 … ‘On the Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)’… But he went on to reject, as totally unacceptable, any thought of removing the Arabs from Palestine. The real question, he said… was whether one could always achieve peaceful aims by peaceful means. The answer to this question, he insisted, depended… on the attitude of the Arabs toward Zionism, not on Zionism’s attitude toward them.” (Pg. 12-13)
He explains, “The conventional Zionist version [of the War of Independence] portrays the 1948 war as a simple, bipolar no-holds barred struggle between a monolithic Arab adversary and a tiny Israel. According to this version, seven Arab armies invaded Palestine upon expiration of the British mandate with a single aim in mind: to strangle the Jewish state as soon as it came into the world… this version is largely based on historical facts, but it is a selective and subjective interpretation of these facts… Following the release of the official documents, however, this version was subjected to critical scrutiny… It is true that the military experts of the Arab League had worked out a unified plan for the invasion, but King Abdullah, who was given nominal command over all the Arab forces in Palestine, wrecked this plan by making last-minute changes. His objective in sending his army into Palestine was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state but to make himself the master of the Arab part of Palestine… the other Arab rulers … resented his expansionism… Each of the other Arab states was also moved by dynastic or national interests, which were hidden behind the fig leaf of securing Palestine for Palestinians.” (Pg. 35-36)
He states, “Why was there no political settlement between Israel and its neighbors after … 1948[?]. The traditional Zionist answer to this question can be summed up in two words: Arab intransigence… Revisionist Israeli historians, on the other hand, believe that postwar Israel was more intransigent than the Arab states and that it therefore bears a larger share of the responsibility for the political deadlock that followed the formal ending of hostilities… The real question facing Israel … was not whether peace with its Arab neighbors was possible but at what price.” (Pg. 467-49)
He notes that in the 1950s, “The development of nuclear power was a subject dear to [David] Ben-Gurion’s heart. He saw in it a technological challenge that would help transform Israel into an advanced industrial state. The negotiations with the French were about a small nuclear reactor for civilian purposes. Nothing was said at this stage about possible military applications of this technology. But that was Ben-Gurion’s ultimate aim: to produce nuclear weapons. He believed that nuclear weapons would strengthen Israel immeasurably, secure its survival, and eliminate any danger of another Holocaust.” (Pg. 175-176) He continues, “The plan… revealed a craving for an alliance with the imperialist powers against the forces of Arab nationalism. It exposed an appetite for territorial expansion at the expense of the Arabs … And it exhibited a cavalier attitude toward the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the neighboring Arab states.” (Pg. 178)
He asserts, “Golda Meir’s premiership was marked by a stubborn refusal to reevaluate Irael’s relations with the Arab world. She personally had no understanding of the Arabs, no empathy with them, and no faith in the possibility of peaceful coexistence with them… she exhibited the siege mentality, the notion that Israel had to barricade itself behind an iron wall, the fatalistic believe that Israel was doomed forever to live by the sword… In her five years as prime minister she made two monumental mistakes. First, she turned down [the] suggestion that Israel should trade Sinai for peace with Egypt, the very terms on which the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was to be based eight years later. Second, she turned down Sadat’s proposal for an interim settlement, thus leaving him no option except to go to war… Few leaders talked more about peace and did less to give it a chance to develop.” (Pg. 323-324)
He recounts, “Egypt was expelled from the Arab League following the conclusion of the peace treaty with Israel. The main charge against Egypt was that it had broken ranks and struck a separate deal with the enemy.” (Pg. 381)
He says, “the war in Lebanon had a very negative effect on Arab perceptions of Israel. By honoring its commitment to withdraw from Sinai, Israel had gained much credit in Egypt and some credit in the rest of the Arab world. Egypt could hold its head high and show the skeptics that the peace with Israel yielded tangible benefits... By invading Lebanon, Israel dissipated all the credit and placed Egypt in a highly uncomfortable position.” (Pg. 418)
He notes, “the outbreak of the intifada was completely spontaneous. There was no preparation or planning by the local Palestinian elite or the PLO, but the PLO was quick to jump on the bandwagon…. The aims of the intifada were not stated at the outset; they emerged in the course of the struggle. The ultimate aim was self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state… In this respect the intifada may be seen as the Palestinian war of independence. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict had come full circle.” (Pg. 451)
He observes, “By far the most serious fallout from the intifada was its effect on U.S.-Israeli relations… the Reagan administration … was privately critical of the Israeli handling of the uprising. The uprising brought about a fundamental change in U.S. policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, culminating by the end of 1988 in recognition of the PLO as a legitimate party in the negotiations. There was a marked shift in American public opinion away from its traditional support for Israel. The uprising sparked sympathy for the Palestinians at all levels of American society.” (Pg. 455)
He adds, “This common U.S.-Israeli front … was severely shaken … by a bloody incident on Temple Mountain in the heart of Jerusalem… Israeli security forces used live ammunition to deal with a Muslim protest that turned into a riot… The massacre on Temple Mount unleashed a universal wave of condemnation… American was driven to vote in favor of two UN resolutions condemning Israel…” (Pg. 475-476)
Of the Oslo Accords, he says, “Clearly, an important taboo had been broken PLO recognition of Israel was an important landmark along the road to Arab recognition of Israel and the normalization of relations with it… The change was no less marked in Israel’s approach to its Arab opponents than in their approach to Israel… PLO recognition of Israel was expected to pave the way for wider recognition by the Arab states from North Africa to the Persian Gulf…” (Pg. 520)
He states, “The Six Day War had a profound effect on the religious camp in Israel and gave rise to ‘religious Zionism.’ The conquest of the West Bank, which as Judea and Samaria had formed part of the biblical Jewish kingdom, convinced many orthodox rabbis and teachers that they were living in a messianic era and that salvation was at hand. The war represented the Divine Hand at work… They made the sanctity of the land a central tent of religious Zionism. From this it followed that anyone who was prepared to give away parts of this sacred land was perceived as a traitor and enemy of the Jewish people… Gush Emunim, the Bloc of the Faithful, and the settlements it set up in Judea and Samaria were the most palpable expression of the new wave of messianism that swept through considerable segments of Israeli society. Gush Emunim settlers effectively turned the Palestinians into aliens on their own soil… The religious parties moved steadily to the right, while the Likud became more religious; the result was an ever closer relationship between them.” (Pg. 549-550)
Though obviously controversial, this book will be of great interest to those studying Israel history/politics and the Palestinian issues.
Read
October 30, 2025This is my first time reading this book. I finished reading this book
May 19, 2024
Excellent evaluation of Israel's failures and the psychology of the leadership that led to the current mess. Suffers from a lack of Palestinian and Arab sources and perspective.
September 5, 2019
This book is full of ironies: the title refers to the concept in Revisionist Zionism that the Jews must build a metaphorical iron wall around their settlements in the holyland in order to prove permanence to their Arab neighbors. The author is himself part of a revisionist history movement that demystifies some of the moralistic claims of Israel. I lived through, directly learned, much of this fabled story, as I attended school there: I absorbed the notion that poor David Israel was so innocently surrounded by Arab Goliaths who made no effort toward peace while poor Israel was morally superior. Avi Shlaim presents evidence from de-classified documents that the Israeli side often connived and deceived in its zeal for establishing facts on the ground. Arab governments really did ask for peace, and Israeli governments really did ignore peaceful requests, often secretly provoking retaliatory strikes.
Let me try to summarize the author's view of Israel's leaders: he notes the distinction between the old guard (i.e. foreign-born) and the new. Evidently only Moshe Sharett, in the 50s, was primarily peace-oriented -- all other leaders focused first on security (and most had established militant credentials) and the IronWall concept. BenGurion was obsessed with security, even more crazily so as he aged. Although the author bemoans BenGurion's obsession, he excuses it somewhat due to BenGurion's own history. Other recalcitrant leaders however are less excused: Golda Meir and Bibi Netanyahu are inexcusably vile, to this author's view, completely ignoring and debasing their opponents. Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, and Menahem Begin were hardliners who became pragmatic, recognizing the need for some accomodation for the Palestinians. Shimon Peres and Levi Eshkol are middleground figures, goodhearted but not able to move their projects politically. Moshe Dayan was a dishonest militant schemer, but even he recognized the need to live with the Palestinians.
As the subtitle implies, this book focuses on the various governments' attitudes to the surrounding Arab world -- from the beginning, the Zionist movement had mixed approaches to their neighbors.
Unfortunately, contemporary Israel has devolved to the hardliner approach of the Stern gang: get out of our way. This book was written in 2000, and its epilogue contains an ironically hopeful sentiment as the reviled Netanyahu clique had recently been trounced in national elections. Ironic, as Netanyahu proceeded on a vile comeback that continues to this day, twenty years later! The author focused on Netanyahu's deceptive politics and dismantling prior peace initiatives; he did not know then of the cronyism and corruption, and the extent to which Netanyahu would further ignore Arab claims.
The author reverts again and again to remind us that Jabotinsky's IronWall concept supposed a subsequent conciliation with the neighbors on the other side of that wall. I felt that the author's continual circling back to that supposition marked a failing of vision: we instead realize that the focus on the iron wall blinds the builders to that supposed reconciliation. Once the IronWall is built, we literally cannot see the other side, and thus will ignore the other side.
The author points out several instances of Israeli reliance on force, that ends up having an effect opposite of that intended, particularly those instances where military generals were overruled by hawkish politicians. The most hopeful time, besides that right after the 6-day war, seems to have been in 1995 with Yossi Beilin's secret Stockholm discussions with the PLO's Abu Mazen, negotiations aborted by Rabin's assassination. Thus, Rabin's assassin was unfortunately successful in his aims.
Overall, this is a Very Detailed, opinionated but well-supported historical review of Israel's relationship to its Arab neighbors, written by a true Zionist who is ready to admit mistakes and wants to establish peaceful accomodation with Palestine.
Let me try to summarize the author's view of Israel's leaders: he notes the distinction between the old guard (i.e. foreign-born) and the new. Evidently only Moshe Sharett, in the 50s, was primarily peace-oriented -- all other leaders focused first on security (and most had established militant credentials) and the IronWall concept. BenGurion was obsessed with security, even more crazily so as he aged. Although the author bemoans BenGurion's obsession, he excuses it somewhat due to BenGurion's own history. Other recalcitrant leaders however are less excused: Golda Meir and Bibi Netanyahu are inexcusably vile, to this author's view, completely ignoring and debasing their opponents. Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, and Menahem Begin were hardliners who became pragmatic, recognizing the need for some accomodation for the Palestinians. Shimon Peres and Levi Eshkol are middleground figures, goodhearted but not able to move their projects politically. Moshe Dayan was a dishonest militant schemer, but even he recognized the need to live with the Palestinians.
As the subtitle implies, this book focuses on the various governments' attitudes to the surrounding Arab world -- from the beginning, the Zionist movement had mixed approaches to their neighbors.
Unfortunately, contemporary Israel has devolved to the hardliner approach of the Stern gang: get out of our way. This book was written in 2000, and its epilogue contains an ironically hopeful sentiment as the reviled Netanyahu clique had recently been trounced in national elections. Ironic, as Netanyahu proceeded on a vile comeback that continues to this day, twenty years later! The author focused on Netanyahu's deceptive politics and dismantling prior peace initiatives; he did not know then of the cronyism and corruption, and the extent to which Netanyahu would further ignore Arab claims.
The author reverts again and again to remind us that Jabotinsky's IronWall concept supposed a subsequent conciliation with the neighbors on the other side of that wall. I felt that the author's continual circling back to that supposition marked a failing of vision: we instead realize that the focus on the iron wall blinds the builders to that supposed reconciliation. Once the IronWall is built, we literally cannot see the other side, and thus will ignore the other side.
The author points out several instances of Israeli reliance on force, that ends up having an effect opposite of that intended, particularly those instances where military generals were overruled by hawkish politicians. The most hopeful time, besides that right after the 6-day war, seems to have been in 1995 with Yossi Beilin's secret Stockholm discussions with the PLO's Abu Mazen, negotiations aborted by Rabin's assassination. Thus, Rabin's assassin was unfortunately successful in his aims.
Overall, this is a Very Detailed, opinionated but well-supported historical review of Israel's relationship to its Arab neighbors, written by a true Zionist who is ready to admit mistakes and wants to establish peaceful accomodation with Palestine.
April 27, 2021
“The Iron Wall” in the title, refers to the strategy of Z’ev Jabotinsky, father of Revisionist Zionism, for establishing a State of Israel in Palestine amidst hostile surrounding neighbors: first and foremost establish superior military ability over those neighbors -- an Iron Wall if you will; then, after years of futility, the surrounding enemy will realize the Wall is impenetrable, struggle against it is futile and to continue to do so is both dangerous to their health, territory and well-being. Then your enemies are ready to talk and implement peace with you. *That is the time to negotiate peace.* That is the purpose of The Wall.
Shlaim maintains that Jabotinsky meant for The Wall to be a means to this end -- peace and prosperity for Israel and the region. Not pursue a policy of endless belligerence and war. Shlaim argues that this is exactly what Israel has done … has chosen endless belligerence and war. He argues that Israel’s leading politicians … often contrary to the popular will of Israelis … became enamored of Israel’s superior military power leading them to choose war and hostility even when leaders of Arab countries had proffered openings for peace.
Shlaim documents the minutiae of the diplomacy, back-channel efforts, ruling party (at first Labor under Ben Gurion and later right-wing governments through Netanyahu) squabbles and meetings, Knesset maneuverings and formal international conferences impressively. He uses primary source material from Israeli and other involved countries’ governmental archives, interviews with and writings of many of the main players: Ben Gurion, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Levi Eshkol, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and many, many more.
One thing that is evident from the detailed history, from the War of Independence to roughly 1992, that Shlaim recounts is that Israel’s political and military leadership are tightly intertwined. Often Former Defense ministers, IDF chiefs of staff and generals play musical chairs with high government posts rotating between Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, head of the IDF and other portfolios. In fact, at times the duties of Prime Minister and Minister of Defence are held by the same person as was the case with Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. It is not surprising then that most of Israel’s governments in this period have been aggressive militarily and hawkish. PM’s like Levi Eshkol and Moshe Sharret who sought peaceful coexistence with the Arab states were often thwarted by Israel’s strong military/political leadership.
Shlaim’s book is not a wild-eyed anti-Israel or anti-Zionist book. In my view it is a fair accounting .. his assertions are backed by meticulous foot-noting and a comprehensive bibliography of his sources. Which one can read and agree or disagree with his interpretation. Shlaim is an Israeli and a Jew and one gleans that he is proud to be both. I found his history to be a complex and nuanced piece of work doing justice to the monumental complexity of Israel, it’s leaders, the surrounding Arab states and their leaders and self-interested imperial policies of the U.S. and Soviet Union (at the time he writes Soviet).
Shlaim maintains that Jabotinsky meant for The Wall to be a means to this end -- peace and prosperity for Israel and the region. Not pursue a policy of endless belligerence and war. Shlaim argues that this is exactly what Israel has done … has chosen endless belligerence and war. He argues that Israel’s leading politicians … often contrary to the popular will of Israelis … became enamored of Israel’s superior military power leading them to choose war and hostility even when leaders of Arab countries had proffered openings for peace.
Shlaim documents the minutiae of the diplomacy, back-channel efforts, ruling party (at first Labor under Ben Gurion and later right-wing governments through Netanyahu) squabbles and meetings, Knesset maneuverings and formal international conferences impressively. He uses primary source material from Israeli and other involved countries’ governmental archives, interviews with and writings of many of the main players: Ben Gurion, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Levi Eshkol, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and many, many more.
One thing that is evident from the detailed history, from the War of Independence to roughly 1992, that Shlaim recounts is that Israel’s political and military leadership are tightly intertwined. Often Former Defense ministers, IDF chiefs of staff and generals play musical chairs with high government posts rotating between Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, head of the IDF and other portfolios. In fact, at times the duties of Prime Minister and Minister of Defence are held by the same person as was the case with Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. It is not surprising then that most of Israel’s governments in this period have been aggressive militarily and hawkish. PM’s like Levi Eshkol and Moshe Sharret who sought peaceful coexistence with the Arab states were often thwarted by Israel’s strong military/political leadership.
Shlaim’s book is not a wild-eyed anti-Israel or anti-Zionist book. In my view it is a fair accounting .. his assertions are backed by meticulous foot-noting and a comprehensive bibliography of his sources. Which one can read and agree or disagree with his interpretation. Shlaim is an Israeli and a Jew and one gleans that he is proud to be both. I found his history to be a complex and nuanced piece of work doing justice to the monumental complexity of Israel, it’s leaders, the surrounding Arab states and their leaders and self-interested imperial policies of the U.S. and Soviet Union (at the time he writes Soviet).
August 19, 2012
This detailed and objective history of Israel from the UN Resolution of 1947 onward completely dismantles any notion that Israel began as a peace-loving nation only seeking to find harmony between migrant Jews and indigenous Palestinians. I want to stress, once again, what I find to be a fairly "objective" assessment of this rather polemical topic. Shlaim deals with the facts the way you expect a historian to do so. Reviews that consider this book biased are basing that opinion on the conclusions he draws, but a historian does need to analyze and draw conclusions. What he needs to be judged on is how inclusive he is of all the facts (i.e. whether he only chooses facts that support his preconceived notions and fits the data to his argument or, on the other hand, shows all the relevant information) and how logically his conclusions follow from those facts. In this, Shlaim seems very fair and balanced. He has thoroughly researched the now released secret documents and communiqués that allow us to see quite clearly the motives, aims and knowledge of the parties involved. Shlaim's aims and conclusions are rather limited, too. This is not a pro-Palestinian, or even anti-Israeli, work (in fact it hardly deals with the Palestinians). The basic point of view is that of the the leaders and decision-makers in the Israeli government and military. What is assessed are the actions taken by these leaders, the reasons for the actions, their motives and, finally, they way they characterize these motives to the Israeli public, the Arab nations, the UN and the international community. Shlaim grew up in Israel, and states in the preface that his chief aim is to counter the official Israeli history taught to citizens and in schools. What I find interesting, as an American, is that this story is very similar to the one I was taught (and whole-heartedly believed). It goes something like this: peace-loving but tenacious little Israel only sought to have peaceful relations with the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab nations, but instead it found hostility at every turn and, unfortunately, was left with no other choice but to respond with force, and, miraculously, out-numbered and out-gunned, it triumphed, but still must continually stay on guard to face the threats that remain. The actions taken, however, and the motives behind them reveal an entirely different story.
November 2, 2018
A full five stars! I felt very fortunate to have picked this up as an impulse buy at Barnes and Noble, knowing basically nothing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict other than that I wanted to learn about it.
Super readable. Not dense reading, despite being about foreign policy, and friendly to the uninitiated. Shlaim writes in mostly everyday language, making the book read like a story and emotionally accessible. The writing is very well organized and the book's eponymous central theme is spelled out very clearly (and too repetitively, really): that Israel's policy from day one has been some variation on "the iron wall", to achieve a position of indomitable military strength from which Israel can force the Arabs to recognize and negotiate with them to attain peace and secure a Jewish homeland; and that Israeli leaders, having certainly achieved the necessary military strength, have had mixed success in getting to the peace part of things.
In terms of fairness and bias on this most contentious topic, it's written from the Israeli perspective but Shlaim goes to great lengths to explain what aspects of the traditional Israeli history are fair, manipulated, misrepresented, or flat out wrong. For example, he debunks the narrative that Israel was the puny, greatly-outnumbered David to the Arabic Goliath in the first Arab-Israeli War (they were actually fairly well matched in numbers).
I was surprised that Shlaim, himself an Arab Jew, is frequently pretty critical of Israeli politicians in his writing. Overall, he does a great job of balancing neutral accounting of the events with critical evaluations of the main actors' decisions. Take this with a grain of salt, as I don't do a lot of political reading and I'm no expert on the conflict.
Highly, highly recommend this book. I was so invested in reading it that I took notes, which I've never done before voluntarily before in my life. A good primer on the Israeli-Arab conflict, and just a good read for those who want to learn more.
Super readable. Not dense reading, despite being about foreign policy, and friendly to the uninitiated. Shlaim writes in mostly everyday language, making the book read like a story and emotionally accessible. The writing is very well organized and the book's eponymous central theme is spelled out very clearly (and too repetitively, really): that Israel's policy from day one has been some variation on "the iron wall", to achieve a position of indomitable military strength from which Israel can force the Arabs to recognize and negotiate with them to attain peace and secure a Jewish homeland; and that Israeli leaders, having certainly achieved the necessary military strength, have had mixed success in getting to the peace part of things.
In terms of fairness and bias on this most contentious topic, it's written from the Israeli perspective but Shlaim goes to great lengths to explain what aspects of the traditional Israeli history are fair, manipulated, misrepresented, or flat out wrong. For example, he debunks the narrative that Israel was the puny, greatly-outnumbered David to the Arabic Goliath in the first Arab-Israeli War (they were actually fairly well matched in numbers).
I was surprised that Shlaim, himself an Arab Jew, is frequently pretty critical of Israeli politicians in his writing. Overall, he does a great job of balancing neutral accounting of the events with critical evaluations of the main actors' decisions. Take this with a grain of salt, as I don't do a lot of political reading and I'm no expert on the conflict.
Highly, highly recommend this book. I was so invested in reading it that I took notes, which I've never done before voluntarily before in my life. A good primer on the Israeli-Arab conflict, and just a good read for those who want to learn more.
August 27, 2011
Excellent read by Jewish historian Avi Shlaim on the backdoor alley deals, circumstances, and political ploys that not only led to the creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian lands, but also all the events that sought to sustain it: mass deportations, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, inciting border wars with neighboring countries to expand territory, Irgun and Hagana Zionist militias,...etc. Avi concludes that the Jewry of the day had placed themselves on the wrong side of history, and that peace in Palestine will not be a reality without recognizing the rights of the Palestinians.
December 11, 2023
I got this book recommended to me by Noam Chomsky himself, and I was not disappointed.
I read it a couple years ago and from what I remember it went over the foundations of Zionism all the way to ~2008. It is a historical view of the events, ideological basis, and powers involved in the formation of Israel.
Great read that cuts through all the propaganda and tells the real story of Israel's formation within a preexisting country with a native population.
I read it a couple years ago and from what I remember it went over the foundations of Zionism all the way to ~2008. It is a historical view of the events, ideological basis, and powers involved in the formation of Israel.
Great read that cuts through all the propaganda and tells the real story of Israel's formation within a preexisting country with a native population.
October 15, 2012
Outstanding tome on the history of modern Israel and The Arab world. Packed with information - old and new. Author has done tireless research. Worth reading...hard to read quickly..best as a reference book.
July 18, 2013
It is a fair book on a subject that is plagued with misinformation and propaganda. The narrative is easy to understand and is well presented.
February 24, 2014
Wonderful book
August 16, 2025
This is legitimately as balanced a view of the Israel-Palestine conflict as I have found anywhere. It details Israel’s history of relations with the Arabs from the first Jewish aliyahs to Palestine all the way to its time of writing (2013), focusing on the diplomatic history and each PM’s disposition, engagement or lack thereof on the peace process, and the various power struggles undergirding Israeli politics. All of the various players are covered in exhaustive detail from the Israeli side, including the ideological fathers of the Zionist movement, with the philosophical throughline from early migration to 2013’s military policy being Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s titular ‘Iron Wall’: the two-step strategy by which Jewish Israel must 1) be incredibly strong and capable of immense violence, and 2) then, after overwhelming force convinces the Arabs that they can’t ever make gains through violence, the only viable path left is peace negotiation. In Shlaim’s estimation, only Rabin in his second term truly attempted to enact step two of that plan, and he was shot by an Israeli far-righter for his trouble. Successive PMs have decided that, once establishing overwhelming force, they don’t really ‘need’ peace, at least not badly enough to be willing to make meaningful concessions on settlers and territory (or disrupt fragile political coalitions) and would rather just tank unrest and violence while they gradually make progress on settlement annexation, normalization (Abraham Accords, free gift to Netanyahu in exchange for nothing), and retention of holy sites in Jerusalem / gradual acceptance of undivided Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. The consequences of this are predictable, demonstrated most starkly by the ‘73 Yom Kippur War, the 2nd Intifada, and several other recent events that this book is a decade too early to cover but can easily explain with this same heuristic.
One thing that nagged at me during the read was, given the other books and articles I’ve read and am familiar with on the region, Shlaim dedicates a surprisingly small amount of page space to the Arab perspective and Arab insurgent activity, really only noting instances of violence from the Arab side when they precipitate a historically important IDF reprisal or are themselves inescapable parts of the history (leadup to the ‘54 Gaza Raid, the 2nd Intifada, etc), while exhaustively detailing Israeli strikes, raids, and military campaigns against their enemies, both the retaliatory and the unprovoked. While his choice of focus paints a less visceral picture of the conflict, and one that I don’t know is fully representative, I suspect that this is because Shlaim is writing first and foremost a diplomatic history of the relations between the Arabs and Israelis, not to fully develop every aspect of the conflict. That effort may be impossible within a reasonable page limit. In addition, Israeli records are comprehensive, Arab state records for historians’ use are not at all as comprehensive, so the imbalance in verifiable perspective and historical voice is a bit inevitable. This leads to a bit of an odd situation where ‘The Iron Wall’ is simultaneously 1) the most impartial and good-faith examination of the conflict I’ve encountered, and my go-to if ever asked to recommend a single book on the subject, and 2) in dire need of context and color from outside the diplomatic boardroom and cabinet meetings from other sources. Things like Moshe Dayan's eulogy for Ro'i Rothberg both steelman the Israeli hawk camp and provide necessary detail for understanding the common psyche behind many of these figures. More books needed! I will endeavor to find them.
I should note that the last 6-7 years after Sharon’s term ends in 2006 gets very little time in the epilogue and is quite a bit more sharply political than the majority of the book — history vs contemporary political analysis and judgements. Still useful.
Excellent read, if a long one.
One thing that nagged at me during the read was, given the other books and articles I’ve read and am familiar with on the region, Shlaim dedicates a surprisingly small amount of page space to the Arab perspective and Arab insurgent activity, really only noting instances of violence from the Arab side when they precipitate a historically important IDF reprisal or are themselves inescapable parts of the history (leadup to the ‘54 Gaza Raid, the 2nd Intifada, etc), while exhaustively detailing Israeli strikes, raids, and military campaigns against their enemies, both the retaliatory and the unprovoked. While his choice of focus paints a less visceral picture of the conflict, and one that I don’t know is fully representative, I suspect that this is because Shlaim is writing first and foremost a diplomatic history of the relations between the Arabs and Israelis, not to fully develop every aspect of the conflict. That effort may be impossible within a reasonable page limit. In addition, Israeli records are comprehensive, Arab state records for historians’ use are not at all as comprehensive, so the imbalance in verifiable perspective and historical voice is a bit inevitable. This leads to a bit of an odd situation where ‘The Iron Wall’ is simultaneously 1) the most impartial and good-faith examination of the conflict I’ve encountered, and my go-to if ever asked to recommend a single book on the subject, and 2) in dire need of context and color from outside the diplomatic boardroom and cabinet meetings from other sources. Things like Moshe Dayan's eulogy for Ro'i Rothberg both steelman the Israeli hawk camp and provide necessary detail for understanding the common psyche behind many of these figures. More books needed! I will endeavor to find them.
I should note that the last 6-7 years after Sharon’s term ends in 2006 gets very little time in the epilogue and is quite a bit more sharply political than the majority of the book — history vs contemporary political analysis and judgements. Still useful.
Excellent read, if a long one.
March 31, 2020
From a historical scholarly perspective, this is a masterwork. Avi Shlaim is a methodological and holistic historian, and in the modern age he definitely stands among the few capable of documenting modern and near-past events with authenticity, coherence, and well-constructed narrative.
The book itself is dense, and the reader has to be familiar with the conflict prior to reading it, otherwise little would be discernible.
Prime among the arguments of the book is its establishment of the Iron Wall doctrine of Ze'ev Jabotinsky as the driving policy of Israel's founders, politicians, policy makers, and the general ideology of the Zionist movement. Shlaim goes about establishing the history of the Zionist movement's ideological intra-dialogue, the foundation of the "Revisionist Zionism" by Jabotinsky, and how his ideology guided the early Zionists as well as the current-day ones.
Yet he highlights and strives to prove, that with exception of Yitzhak Rabin, none of them followed the two sequential pillars of the ideology: the establishment of massive strength and force that would erect a virtual iron wall, which would then compel the world, especially the Palestinians and Arabs to form lasting and permanent peace with Israel. All of the Israeli leaders - powered by a democratic system - worked for the iron wall, but have never even intended to form a lasting peace. Instead of Jabotinsky's "means to an end" ideology, they saw military strength as an end in of itself.
The book documents clearly how at every juncture the Israeli's are transgressors, devious, untrustworthy, and act completely unilaterally with disregard to the whole world; setting facts on the ground, and have no moral boundaries. They want to establish the Greater Land of Israel on the whole of Palestine, to completely expel and/or subjugate the Palestinians, and to enforce a condescending relationship of military and economic superiority with all of their neighbors. This conclusion is supported by facts and documents in every chapter of the book.
Another conclusion can be drawn, the world with it's post-WWII international bodies and policing superpowers is a massive lie, and have failed miserably in enforcing its self-proclaimed charters, objectives, and principles, covering its failure with the fig-leaf of humanitarian assistance, whilst the Israelis (similar to the Serbs in Bosnia, the Americans in Vietnam and Iraq, the South-African Apartheid, etc.) rained death and destruction on civilians, the UN and all the international bodies would only "condemn", issue "resolutions", or form investigative committees to issue more useless reports. None are enforceable, none will ever be. Even if one can argue that international law is self-evident regardless of its implementation, implementation is all that matters, and no one is willing to do that.
Finally, a conclusion that Israel, and by contrast any aggressor, can only be kept at bay by force. Jabotinsky's iron wall is a formidable theory that every nation that aspires to succeed must adopt to a certain degree, as humanity will never rid itself of the tendency to transgress, dominate, and conquer.
Peace through strength, deterrence theory, and brave leadership is attainable and must be the only objective of attaining strength.
The book itself is dense, and the reader has to be familiar with the conflict prior to reading it, otherwise little would be discernible.
Prime among the arguments of the book is its establishment of the Iron Wall doctrine of Ze'ev Jabotinsky as the driving policy of Israel's founders, politicians, policy makers, and the general ideology of the Zionist movement. Shlaim goes about establishing the history of the Zionist movement's ideological intra-dialogue, the foundation of the "Revisionist Zionism" by Jabotinsky, and how his ideology guided the early Zionists as well as the current-day ones.
Yet he highlights and strives to prove, that with exception of Yitzhak Rabin, none of them followed the two sequential pillars of the ideology: the establishment of massive strength and force that would erect a virtual iron wall, which would then compel the world, especially the Palestinians and Arabs to form lasting and permanent peace with Israel. All of the Israeli leaders - powered by a democratic system - worked for the iron wall, but have never even intended to form a lasting peace. Instead of Jabotinsky's "means to an end" ideology, they saw military strength as an end in of itself.
The book documents clearly how at every juncture the Israeli's are transgressors, devious, untrustworthy, and act completely unilaterally with disregard to the whole world; setting facts on the ground, and have no moral boundaries. They want to establish the Greater Land of Israel on the whole of Palestine, to completely expel and/or subjugate the Palestinians, and to enforce a condescending relationship of military and economic superiority with all of their neighbors. This conclusion is supported by facts and documents in every chapter of the book.
Another conclusion can be drawn, the world with it's post-WWII international bodies and policing superpowers is a massive lie, and have failed miserably in enforcing its self-proclaimed charters, objectives, and principles, covering its failure with the fig-leaf of humanitarian assistance, whilst the Israelis (similar to the Serbs in Bosnia, the Americans in Vietnam and Iraq, the South-African Apartheid, etc.) rained death and destruction on civilians, the UN and all the international bodies would only "condemn", issue "resolutions", or form investigative committees to issue more useless reports. None are enforceable, none will ever be. Even if one can argue that international law is self-evident regardless of its implementation, implementation is all that matters, and no one is willing to do that.
Finally, a conclusion that Israel, and by contrast any aggressor, can only be kept at bay by force. Jabotinsky's iron wall is a formidable theory that every nation that aspires to succeed must adopt to a certain degree, as humanity will never rid itself of the tendency to transgress, dominate, and conquer.
Peace through strength, deterrence theory, and brave leadership is attainable and must be the only objective of attaining strength.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews