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Israel's Wars, 1947-1993 is a fascinating overview of Israel's wars with the Palestinians and the Arabs. From the 1947-8 Jewish-Palestinian struggle for the possession and mastery of the land of Palestine to the Intifada between 1987-1993, this book also examines Israel's conflicts with its Arab neighbours, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the PLO in Lebanon. Israel's Wars analyzes the effect of the wars on the people of Israel. In 1947 with the Holocaust very fresh in their memories, the Israelis demon...

This work offers a serious unfolding of what Jerusalem, the holiest of holy cities, has meant to Muslims from their first settlement there, down to the beginning of modern times.

This is the fantastical, yet real, story of the merchants of Bethlehem, the young men who traveled to every corner of the globe in the 19th century. These men set off on the backs of donkeys with suitcases full of crosses and rosaries, to return via steamship with suitcases stuffed with French francs, Philippine pesos, or Salvadoran colones. They returned with news of mysterious lands and strange inventions—clocks, trains, and other devises that both befuddled and bewitched the Bethlehemites. Wi...

This book tells how Israel became a secret nuclear power, recounting Israel's clandestine nuclear mission: from the building of the Dimona reactor site in the remote Negev desert during the late 1950s, to the establishment by the late 1970s of a nuclear capability that targeted and threatened the USSR. The author tells of Israel's many secret agreements with America over the years, including the KH-11 satellite agreement which aided the bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, and the recruitme...

After World War I, the British in Palestine were handed an ambiguous brief: to encourage the formation of a national home for the Jews and to protect the civil and religious rights of the local Arabs. This text documents the British administration in Palestine from 1917, tracing policies of conciliation and persuasion, through to the use of force and the eventual collapse of British rule in 1948.

The Holy Land has been an enduring magnet for visitors seeking to retrace the footsteps of biblical prophets, kings and saints and to glimpse the setting of events recorded in the Scriptures. This book offers a selection of over 350 early photographs, paintings, and drawings of the length and breadth of the Holy Land from the rich repository of images in the archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund. As these images were produced before modern development impacted on these landscapes they are a...

Territorial borders, identity borders, and many other kinds of social and cultural borders are constantly questioned in Israel-Palestine. Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine explores the concept of borders, how they are imagined and actualized in this deeply contested land. The book focuses on the "implicate relations" between Palestinian Arabs and Jews, providing new insights into the origins and dynamics of the conflicts between them. Emphasizing the histor...

Histories of ancient Israel have usually focused attention on major figures in powerful positions: kings, prophets, and patriarchs. Kessler asks about the larger social patterns that shaped the everyday life of ordinary people, from the emergence of Israel in the hills of Canaan, to the Jewish populations of Greek city-states in the Hellenistic age. The introductory section includes discussion of social history as discipline and as method, event history and the "long haul," the representation of...

Most historians of Zionism - from the 'Jerusalem School' and its followers, as well as those who call themselves 'new historians' - understand the story of Israel's establishment as a part of a broader historic story that encompasses hundreds and even thousands of years. They consider the Zionist leadership to be a unified entity and thus relate the decision to establish the state of Israel during May 1948 to international, rather than internal, restraints and challenges.The author of this book...