Synopses & Reviews
This book looks at the development of Israeli-Arab relations during the formative years 1949 to 1956, focusing on Arab infiltration into Israel and Israeli retaliation. Palestinian refugee raiding and cross-border attacks by Egyptian-controlled irregulars and commandos were a core phenomenon during this period and one of the chief causes of Israel's invasion of Sinai and the Gaza strip in 1956.
Benny Morris probes the types of Arab infiltration and the attitude of Arab governments towards the phenomenon, and traces the evolution of Israel's defensive and offensive responses. He analyzes Israeli decision-making processes, including the emergence and ultimate failure of Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett's dissident policy of moderation, and describes in detail the history of the Arab infiltration, including the terrorist-guerrilla raids by state-organized Fedayeen in 1955-6, and of the IDF raids of Qibya, Nahhalin, Kinneret, and the Sabha.
This was a precedent-setting period in the making of Israeli defense policy, and this pattern of raiding and counter-raiding served to define Israeli-Arab relations during the subsequent four decades. In this pioneering study Morris deepens our understanding of the current situation in the Middle East and of the prospects for a lasting peace there.
Review
"No one henceforth will be able to write on this period without reference to this basic study....Told with high regard for sources, in a smoothly written narrative that leaves the reader with a sense for how deep the antagonism between Arabs and Israelis really is."--Foreign Affairs
"Morris has thoroughly combed newly opened archival material...and newly published studies, to produce an exhaustive, often revealing...account of those seven years of Arab-Israeli hostilities."--The Jerusalem Report
Table of Contents
1. Israel, the Arab States, and the Palestinians after the 1948 War
2. Infiltration
3. Arab Attitudes and Policies Towards Infiltration, 1949-55
4. The Costs of Infiltration
5. The Israeli Defensive Responses to Infiltration
6. The Beginning of the Retaliatory Policy
7. Raiding and Counter-Raiding, 1951-1953
8. Qibya
9. Israel, the Arab States, and the Great Powers, 1952-1956
10. Sharett's Year, 1954
11. The Gaza Raid and After
12. Countdown to a War
Afterword: The Sinai/Suez War and the End of the Gaza Fedayeen
Conclusion
Biographical Notes