By Benny Morris
Comprehensive history of the Arab-Israeli conflict
Subject
Themes
The Zionist-Arab conflict traces its roots to the 1880s, when European Jewish settlers began arriving in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, driven by persecution and the dream of recreating a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel. This territory, home to roughly 400,000 Muslim Arabs, 13,000-20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christians in 1881, would become the centre of one of the twentieth century's most intractable conflicts.
The Zionist-Arab conflict traces its roots to the 1880s, when European Jewish settlers began arriving in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, driven by persecution and the dream of recreating a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel. This territory, home to roughly 400,000 Muslim Arabs,…
Benny Morris's "Righteous Victims" represents a landmark in Israeli historiography, positioning itself within the "New Historians" movement that emerged during the 1980s. This scholarly cohort gained access to newly declassified Israeli archives and challenged foundational narratives of Israeli…
Zionism occupied a paradoxical position in twentieth-century politics, functioning simultaneously as a colonial enterprise and a national liberation movement. Unlike traditional European colonialism, where imperial powers projected military force to conquer territories and exploit resources for the…
Perhaps no factor proved more consequential to the Arab-Israeli conflict than the profound mutual incomprehension between Jewish and Arab communities. Each side systematically failed to understand the other's historical experience, emotional motivations, or legitimate claims to the land. This…
The succession of Arab-Israeli wars from 1948 through 1982 revealed consistent patterns of military asymmetry rooted in fundamental differences between the societies at war. Israel won every major conventional conflict (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982), though Arab states occasionally transformed…
The 1947-49 war produced the Palestinian catastrophe (Nakba), fundamentally reshaping the conflict by creating approximately 700,000 Palestinian refugees. This mass displacement shattered Palestinian society, removed Palestinians as major players in the conflict for two decades, yet simultaneously…
The conflict traced a gradual evolution from absolute mutual rejection toward grudging acceptance of compromise. This progression unfolded asymmetrically, with mainstream Zionism accepting territorial partition decades before Palestinian leadership, whilst peace negotiations repeatedly foundered on…
Palestine in 1881 contained approximately 400,000 Muslim Arabs, 13,000-20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christians under Ottoman rule. The territory's naturally habitable northern regions supported agriculture in the hill country of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, whilst the coastal plain and Jezreel Valley…
The First World War transformed Palestine's political landscape. Ottoman defeat ended four centuries of Turkish rule, replaced by British military administration and eventual League of Nations Mandate. The 1917 Balfour Declaration announced British support for establishing a Jewish national home in…
The Second World War transformed the Zionist-Arab conflict fundamentally. The Holocaust validated Zionist warnings about European anti-Semitism, murdering six million Jews whilst demonstrating that only Jewish statehood could guarantee Jewish survival. The catastrophe mobilised previously non-or…
The years between 1949 and 1967 saw Israel transforming into a garrison state whilst Arab states maintained formal rejection of Israeli existence. The armistice lines created volatile borders with frequent fedayeen infiltration from Gaza, Jordan, and Syria. Palestinian refugees in camps, nursing…
The October 1973 War represented Arab states' most serious military challenge to Israel. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Syrian President Hafez Assad coordinated surprise attacks on Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day, when Israeli society shut down completely. Egyptian forces crossed the Suez…
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon served as bases for PLO operations against Israel throughout the 1970s. Palestinian guerrillas launched cross-border raids and rocket attacks whilst the PLO built a state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon, establishing military infrastructure, taxation systems,…
The First Intifada's impact enabled unprecedented breakthrough: secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway, produced mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO in 1993. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat exchanged letters recognising each other's legitimacy, abandoning…
By Benny Morris
Subject
Themes
The Zionist-Arab conflict traces its roots to the 1880s, when European Jewish settlers began arriving in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, driven by persecution and the dream of recreating a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel. This territory, home to roughly 400,000 Muslim Arabs, 13,000-20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christians in 1881, would become the centre of one of the twentieth century's most intractable conflicts.