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The War for Palestine
Rewriting the History of 1948
Eugene
L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.)
(with an afterword by Edward Said)
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001
xv+234pp.
ISBN (paperback) 0-521-79476-5
Reviewed by: Dr
Matthew Hughes
University of Salford Introduction
In an earlier review in the IHR 'Reviews in History' series (number 154)
of Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London:
Allen Lane, 2000), I pointed to the intense historiographical conflict
raging over the formation of Israel in 1948, the cause(s) of the Palestinian
refugee crisis and the nature of Israel's subsequent relations with its
Arab neighbours. For those readers unfamiliar with the debate, the essential
fault line is between those who say that Israel was in some measure responsible
for the Palestinian diaspora in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli conflict,
and those who argue that the Palestinian refugee crisis was not, fundamentally,
Israel's fault and that chances for peace were scuppered not by Israel
but by obstinacy on the part of the Arabs. The debate has shifted over
time. Until the 1970s it was dominated by an 'old' or 'mobilised' Israeli
history that portrayed a Jewish state under serious threat from the Arabs
and so reluctantly forced into a series of wars of survival. This changed
in the 1980s with the arrival of what became known as the 'new' or 'revisionist'
historians - sometimes also called the 'critical sociologists' - who offered
radically contrary perspectives on the formation of Israel, the causes
of the Palestinian refugee crisis and the origins of the Arab-Israeli
wars. These 'Young Turks', led by the likes of Simha Flapan, Benny Morris,
Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim, set out to overturn received history.1
They argued that the historiography on Israel had for too long been dominated
by an approach that has sought to exculpate Israel from the charge that
it stole Palestinian land and forcibly evicted the inhabitants.2
While the conclusions of the 'new' historians were not necessarily pro-Palestinian,
they stressed that Israel needed to take some of the blame for the Palestinian
refugee crisis, the Arab-Israeli wars and the failed peace of 1949, and
that the image of Israel put forward by the 'old' historians was both
misleading and determined by the political need to be pro-Zionist.
The debunking by the 'new' historians of long-held
shibboleths provoked a furore among the 'old' historians (who now became
the 'new old' historians) and the debate soon spilled over into the public
domain. In articles and books, the 'new old' historians such as Shabtai
Teveth and Anita Shapira counter-attacked. Aharon Megged charged the 'new'
historians with writing history in the spirit of Israel's enemies; Efraim
Karsh accused Morris and Shlaim of falsifying and recycling history.3
Attack and counter-attack ensued as both sides slugged it out.4
At the same time, some pro-Palestinian academics attacked the 'new' historians
for not going far enough in their analysis; other Palestinian authors
acknowledged the honest debate of the 'new' historians.5
While the debate on both sides has become more nuanced, nonetheless it
continues apace in scholarly and popular books, journals and films. The
revision of Israeli school text-books to take into account the 'new' history
suggests that the counter-attack on the 'new' historians is failing; it
also raises the question of whether the epithets 'new' or 'revisionist'
history themselves need revising as this approach to Israeli history becomes
more mainstream and less of an iconoclastic historical fringe.6
Where does this edited volume fit in these history
wars? With Avi Shlaim as one of the co-editors, an afterword by the Palestinian
academic Edward W. Said, and essays by the likes of Benny Morris and Rashid
Khalidi, the initiated reader will sense the 'new' history flavour even
before opening the book. And s/he will not be disappointed as the contributions
to this volume, wrapped around the seminal event of the formation of Israel
in the 1948-9 'War of Independence', what for the Palestinians was the
'Catastrophe' � al-Nakba - of 1948, are very much in the 'new'
history vein. The problem with edited collections is that essays can be
disparate and varying in quality. Editors know this to be the case and
so, typically, claim to have found some elusive, special cohesive glue
for their volume. This adhesive frequently comes unstuck under closer
scrutiny. For Shlaim and his fellow editor, Eugene L. Rogan, both scholars
at the University of Oxford, the ongoing 'new' history versus 'old' history
debate gives genuine linkage and binds the chapters, providing the reader
with a central unifying strand and overcoming any charge that the collection
lacks common purpose. The volume concludes with a pithy - perhaps polemical
- afterword by Said.
To make sense of what is in this collection, this
review will pose four questions. Firstly, what claims do the editors make
in the introduction where they set out their stall? Secondly, what do
each of the chapters contain, and what do they add to the debate on Israel
and the Palestinians? Thirdly, how does Said's afterword tie these different
essays together? Finally, are there any weaknesses to the collection?
(1)
In the introduction, the editors make three
key points. Firstly, the war of 1948 was an immensely significant event
for Israel and the Arab Middle East, worthy of continued study. As Rogan
and Shlaim proclaim (p.1): 'No event has marked Arab politics in the second
half of the twentieth century more profoundly. The Arab-Israeli wars,
the Cold War in the Middle East, the rise of the Palestinian armed struggle
and the politics of peace making in all of their complexity are a direct
consequence of the Palestine War.' For the editors, the 1948 war was also
formative in that it was the first serious challenge for the newly independent
Arab states. How they reacted would determine the course of their subsequent
histories. Secondly, the editors raise the question of how the 1948 war
has been factored into the histories of Israel and the Arab states as
part of the process of national identity building. It is argued that by
rewriting history both sides have used the 1948 war as the seed to nurture
particular national myths and narratives. The editors are keen to pursue
the idea that historical 'facts' have been manipulated by elites through
media such as history books. Thirdly, the editors emphasise the critical
reappraisal of these national myths by the 'new' historians of the 1980s
and locate their volume firmly in the revisionist trend in the Arab-Israeli
conflict. These three themes resonate through The War for Palestine:
Rewriting the History of 1948.
The core 'new' historian thesis of the volume under
review is not groundbreaking. Rather, it builds upon and acknowledges
a debt to earlier scholars, some of whom have contributed to this collection.
To give these essays a new spin to the 'old' versus 'new' history debate,
the editors make two claims. Firstly, they have drawn together in one
show case volume essays from historians on all the major participants
in the 1948 war: Israel (Shlaim), Syria (Joshua Landis), Jordan (Rogan),
Iraq (Charles Tripp), Egypt (Fawaz A. Gerges) and the Palestinians (Rashid
Khalidi). There are also two chapters on the vexed question of the origins
of the Palestinian refugee crisis which form another node of analysis
(Benny Morris and Laila Parsons). In collecting together these Israeli,
Arab and Western academics, the editors provide the reader with the latest
'new' history debates from a variety of perspectives in one handy volume.
Secondly, the chapters open up new avenues of enquiry that will be pathways
for more historical exploration. This is, if you like, revision within
the revisionism as most of the chapters contain new ideas that will prompt
further research to confirm or disprove what these authors have to say.
(2)
What do these chapters contain and what to
they add to our understanding of the debate around the formation of Israel?
In the two chapters on the origins of the Palestinian refugee crisis,
Parsons disagrees with Morris's findings that the refugee crisis 'was
born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab.'7
Rather, in a stimulating case study, Parsons looks at the interchange
between the Israeli army (the IDF) and the Druze community in Galilee
during the IDF's conquest of the region. For Parsons, Israeli policy towards
the Druze helps us to understand the wider picture of Israeli policy towards
the Palestinians. She attacks the argument that Israel's expulsions of
Palestinians were essentially random and based on local factors and the
actions of subordinate IDF commanders by showing how the IDF (which contained
some Druze troops) left Druze villages unmolested, even when they had
been fired on from these villages. For Parsons, the actions of the IDF
in sparing the Druze show the grand design in an Israeli policy that would
target one community perceived as a threat (the Palestinians) and leave
alone another seen as a potential ally (the Druze) even when the former
were pacific and the latter bellicose towards the IDF. Parsons also claims
(p.67) that Morris made two errors in his earlier The birth of the
Palestinian refugee problem 1947-49 (1987): firstly, some Druze did
fire on IDF - and lived to tell the tale; secondly, villagers from 'Amqa,
expelled by the IDF, were not, as Morris claimed, Druze, but, in fact,
Muslims, thus confirming Parsons' thesis that the IDF acted within a carefully
structured plan in the 1948 war to drive out only the Palestinians so
as to make a viable Zionist state (p.68): 'If you have a policy not to
do something it implies that you also have a position on what you are
doing.' The second part of Parsons' chapter moves the emphasis from the
history itself to the writing of the history. In line with the 'rewriting
history' theme detailed by the editors in the introduction, she claims
that Israeli historiography and perceptions of the Druze were consciously
skewed to create a common past to prove a Jewish-Druze friendship. This
'invention of tradition' has, of course, its own logic as if people are
told they have a bond with another group this can well become a reality
regardless of historical truth.8
Morris complements Parsons' analysis of Israeli relations
with the Druze by concentrating on two discrete but interconnected areas
of enquiry: pre-war Zionist transfer thinking on the Palestinians, and
supposed atrocities by IDF troops during the 1948 war that were designed
to drive out the Palestinian population of Galilee. While Morris provides
some revision in his chapter, broadly speaking, the evidence he presents,
as he himself admits, is in line with his earlier works such as The
birth of the Palestinian refugee problem 1947-49 (1987) and 1948
and After: Israel and the Palestinians (1990). Morris concludes that
there was a crystallisation of consensus among Zionist leaders on expulsion
before the war. Having trawled through the Israeli archives, he then presents
a nuanced if inchoate study of the claim that the IDF committed massacres
of Palestinians. These findings, based on new archival research in Israel,
will be presented in a fuller form in a planned revised version of 1948
and After.
What of the other chapters? The co-editor, Rogan,
concentrates on Jordan, the subject of his recent monograph.9
As with Parsons, Rogan differentiates between historical 'facts' and the
purposeful writing up of these 'facts' as history. Therefore, Rogan, unpacks
how the Jordanian state created a particular narrative on Jordan's involvement
in the 1948 war, what he terms the 'Jordanian loyalist' history, that
emphasised Jordan's difficulties and valour in 1948 against tough odds.
In contrast, an 'Arab nationalist' history based around Gamal Abd al-Nasir
charged Jordan with deceit and greed as it colluded with Israel to divide
Palestine. Using what primary sources are available, Rogan weaves the
events of 1948 within this historiographical narrative to unpack fact
and fiction. He does a good job of this and in doing so paints a more
sympathetic portrait of the actions of the Jordanian army - the Arab Legion
- in the war of 1948. While in no sense being an apologist for the Jordanians,
Rogan shows, amidst King Abdullah of Jordan's abundant treachery, just
how difficult was the fight for the Arab Legion. While well trained and
equipped by the standards of the other Arab protagonists, the Arab Legion
was terribly overstretched and often outnumbered. In contrast to arguments
elsewhere in this volume, Rogan argues that it is not clear that the Arab
Legion had the military clout to save the Palestinian towns of Lydda and
Ramla; neither was the rescue of the Egyptian forces trapped in the Faluja
pocket a clear-cut operation. Nonetheless, Rogan is careful to detail
the infighting between the Jordanians and Egyptians that torpedoed any
chances of joint, effective military action. He also recounts the evident
collusion between Israelis and Jordanians first described in Shlaim's
Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and
the Partition of Palestine (1988). As Rogan shows, these were not
politically correct times: the Jordanians were never fully reconciled
to negotiating with Israel's Golda Meir (Meyerson), feeling that (p.117)
'optimal results would be had through direct meetings between reasonable
men.' The Arab Legion's defence of the Jerusalem-Latrun line, where
it battered the IDF in a series of tough actions, represents one of the
few military high points for the Arabs in the 1948 war and shows what
might have been possible had the disparate Arab armies united and acted
in unison, something that this volume amply shows the Arabs failed to
do.
The chapter by Tripp on Iraq, as with Rogan the subject
of a recent book, seems, at first sight, odd as the spotlight is turned
away from Palestine and put on domestic politics within Iraq.10
However, as the reader delves deeper into the text interesting and relevant
themes emerge that link up with the chapters on Syria and Egypt. Tripp
outlines the impact of the war in Palestine on Iraq, one of the Arab states
that sent troops to fight in the 1948 war. In doing so, he highlights
the lack of synergy between the home front and the trenches that was so
fatal for the Arab armies fighting the IDF. Tripp also throws the reader's
attention forward to show how the Palestine war had a longer-term impact
within the Arab world (p.128): '...the cause of Palestine created the
basis of a language of legitimation within Iraqi politics that politicians
ignored at their peril...It thus provided an opportunity for those in
command of the state...to displace more radical languages of social revolution.'
As with Jordan, Iraq manipulated events in Palestine for its own ends.
Israel was, in some sense, an irrelevance but for what it could provide
the ruling elite in Baghdad in terms of continued power. This, of course,
was disastrous for the 'united' Arab attack on Israel as the Iraqi leaders
used the preparations for a war in Palestine as a means to check rivals
such as Abdullah of Jordan and the Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin al-Husayni
- the 'Mufti of Jerusalem'. There were essentially two narratives at work
(p.130): firstly, a symbolic, radical view on Palestine for public consumption;
secondly, the reality of a pragmatic policy by Iraqi elites on Palestine
that was designed to do nothing to rock the boat within Iraq. As
with Jordan, Iraq was complicit in the avaricious partition of Palestine.
In December 1947, Iraqi leaders visited Amman to tell Abdullah that Great
Britain favoured the partition of Palestine (p.134). Iraq pledged support
for this Jordanian take-over of parts of Palestine in the hope of some
mutual gain.
The politicking within Iraq fed down the line to
make the Iraqi army an ineffective tool for military operations. After
making a derisory, failed attack near Beisan, the Iraqi army relieved
the Arab Legion and settled into holding the line in the northern sector
of the front in a phoney war that resulted in few casualties for either
side. As Tripp proves, Iraqi military intervention summed up the uncoordinated
nature of the attack on Israel: 18,000 men doing nothing sitting on the
defensive in positions some 12 miles from the Mediterranean Sea from where
they could cut Israel in half. With allies like these, did the Palestinians
need enemies?
Shlaim takes up the baton of challenging the myth
of an Israeli David versus an Arab Goliath in the 1948 war in his chapter
on Israel and the Arab coalition in 1948. Developing themes from his recent
Iron Wall, Shlaim gels with the arguments in the other chapters
in the volume and slams into the David versus Goliath thesis so popular
in the 'old' history. Shlaim does not pull his punches, arguing that the
Arab coalition (p.82) 'was one of the most divided, disorganised and ramshackle
coalitions in the entire history of warfare.' The fissiparous Arab bloc
set Hashemites against anti-Hashemites in the Arab League; Abdullah of
Jordan, keen to create a 'greater Syria' under his rule, schemed against
the Syrians and others; King Faruq of Egypt looked on aghast at Abdullah's
evident ambitions; all the while, the Palestinian leadership, such as
it was, worked against itself as different nodes of power jockeyed for
position. As Shlaim concluded, as the Arabs attacked Israel (p.89) 'the
politicians of the Arab League continued their backstage manoeuvres, labyrinthine
intrigues and sordid attempts to stab each other in the back - all in
the name of the highest pan-Arab ideals.'
Shlaim's chapter paints a broad brush across the
canvas and his conclusions are sure to annoy the 'new old' historians
(p.100): '...when one probes the politics of the war and not merely the
military operations, the picture that emerges is not the familiar one
of Israel standing alone against the combined military might of the entire
Arab world but rather one of a remarkable convergence between the interests
of Israel and those of Transjordan against the other members of the Arab
coalition and especially against the Palestinians. My purpose in writing
this survey was not to pass moral judgement on Israel's conduct in 1948
or to delegitimize Zionism but to suggest that the traditional Zionist
narrative of the birth of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war is deeply
flawed.'
Gerges and Landis do for Egypt and Syria what Rogan
and Tripp did for Jordan and Iraq. As Gerges argues, Egypt went to war
for pretty much the same reasons as Jordan and Iraq: national self-interest.
As with the other Arab states, the Egyptians had inadequate military means
with which to realise their goals. The Egyptians misunderstood the power
of the nascent Israeli army, foolishly referring to the IDF as nothing
more than 'armed gangs' (p.155). Thus, Egypt went to war woefully unprepared,
eager to fight Abdullah's pretensions to power as much, if not more, than
the IDF. The military co-ordination of the Egyptians and Jordanians was
dismal: while a rapidly expanding and effective IDF deployed for battle,
Jordanian and Egyptian forces in southern Palestine/Israel squabbled over
the size of the flags flying over their respective positions (p.164).
As Rome burnt, the Egyptian army even mistreated local Palestinians.
Soon the Egyptians were encircled, leaving courageous
Egyptian soldiers with inadequate leadership and equipment trapped at
the mercy of the IDF. The Egyptian leadership was too proud to ask for
help; Abdullah was delighted that the Israelis were humbling his main
rival for power. The Egyptian high command was unaware of the seriousness
of the plight of its army and so, as with the other Arab states, wrote
their own shortcomings out of the histories of the war, preferring to
blame everyone and everything bar themselves for the defeat. The Free
Officers' Egyptian revolution of 1952 and the militarisation of Egyptian
politics (p.100), themselves a product of the 1948 defeat, facilitated
the rewriting of history as defeat could be blamed on the old monarchical
regime. Quite how Nasir's post-1952 regime would explain defeats in 1956
and 1967 is another story. The defeat of 1948 sent a shock wave through
the Arab world: there were coups in Syria, Faruk of Egypt was toppled
and Abdullah was assassinated.
Landis's essay on Syria reiterates the infighting
in the Arab camp with the real fight over whether Abdullah was going to
create a 'greater' Hashemite empire at the expense of other Arab powers.
As with Egypt, Syria was sure that the biggest threat came from an expanded,
powerful Jordan, rather than a small Jewish state along a small strip
of the Mediterranean. This fear of Abdullah led the Syrians, as with the
Egyptians, to reject the Bernadotte peace plan of 1948 that would have
prevented a total Arab defeat and limited the Palestinian refugee crisis.
The reason for this rejection was that the peace plan would have legitimated
Jordan's annexation of the west bank of the river Jordan. In military
terms, Syria had little to offer as it had to rebuild its disloyal French-trained
army before it could attack. This reduced military effectiveness. Worried
by a coup from within the army, the Syrian leadership, according to Landis,
emasculated the army. In the end, Syria attacked Galilee with a weak Arab
Liberation Army of about 2500 men that advanced no great distance and
was soon checked by the Israelis.
The last chapter to be discussed is Khalidi's which
articulates the case for the Palestinians being fatally weakened by the
British prior to the 1948 war, so much so that they were unable to make
any meaningful contribution in 1948. Khalidi puts forward a strong argument
that the British had paved the way for the Zionist triumph of 1948 with
pro-Zionist policies and military repression of the Palestinians in the
1930s. This meant that when the war came in 1948, the Palestinians were
reliant on other Arab powers. As has been seen, this was fatal for the
Palestinians and led to years in the wilderness.
(3)
What of Said's afterword? Afterwords can be
in the way of finishing a lovely meal and then being presented with another
starter rather than the dessert that the diner is after. This is especially
the case if the afterword is essentially there to sell the book by taking
on some eminent scholar willing to put his or her name to a volume. Rogan
and Shlaim have avoided this pitfall and, in fact, the afterword works
extremely well in tying the historically based arguments in The War
for Palestine with the current situation in the region. Said provides
a lucid, passionate and policy relevant essay of some length (almost as
long as some of the chapters) that shows how the history that Rogan and
Shlaim have brought together has contemporary relevance. More than this,
Said locates much of the current Israeli-Palestinian impasse to misunderstandings
over the events of 1948. For Said, 1948 is a distinctively significant
historical event. In the afterword, he takes the two histories discussed
in this volume - one 'Israeli', one 'Arab' - and tries to bring them together
and show not just the common ground but how they can be reconciled and
made to work for future generations. This is all done with Said's typical
penmanship and flourish, with a touch of the polemical. What is most striking
about Said's afterword is the mismatch between his hopeful words born
of a lifetime of study and reading in the academy, and the reality of
the current violent impasse in the region. It is to be hoped that the
plea of the academic is not drowned out by the reality of cannon fire
as the sword triumphs over the pen, as too often happens in history.
(4)
There are criticisms that can be levelled against
this volume and these might be issues that the editors will want to raise
in their authors' response. One of the most noticeable weaknesses comes
when the reader skims through the endnotes looking at sources used. It
quickly becomes apparent that when it comes to primary sources - memoirs
aside - only Britain, Israel and the USA provide archival material. This
is not the fault of the editors or contributors to this collection - indeed
it is acknowledged in the introduction (p.8) - but the gap left by the
absence of Arab archives is sorely felt in any scholarship on a debate
which has a reasonably full picture of one side - Israel - but less to
say on the Arabs based on the original official documentation. (Indeed,
'new old' historians have attacked the 'new' historians for their lack
of Arab sources, saying that more Arab sources are available.) The contributors
to The War for Palestine do a good job of overcoming this deficiency
by using Arab-language books, memoirs diaries and, in the case of Jordan,
some printed primary material, but if and when the Arab governments do
open their archives it will be interesting to see how much of the current
debate will need to be revised in light of new findings from Arab documents.
On the theme of archival access, Morris raises the
question of whether the Israeli archives have been 'weeded' (pp.49-50)
to stonewall researchers searching for references to abuses by the IDF
during the 1948 war. Morris might be right but it leaves a slightly conspiratorial
feel to the scholarship that can be neither proved nor disproved - which
is of course why conspiracy theories are so popular. This is most noticeable
in the chapters by Morris and Parsons where both are forced to present
the best case that they can based on, at times, circumstantial evidence.
As Parsons confesses in her case study relying on only two villages (p.68):
'I have not found the smoking gun.' It is the connection between what
the IDF were doing at the local level and what the central Zionist leadership
were deciding that needs to be unravelled. If IDF abuses occurred were
they centrally or locally directed? As Morris is well aware, the former
suggest a policy of expulsion; the latter suggest undirected actions taken
in the heat of battle or soon after by local commanders acting on their
own initiative. Assuming that more information will emerge from the Israeli
archives, further revisions of the 1948 war will be necessary. At the
moment there is still a disjuncture between local IDF actions and central
Zionist direction.
Two key players in the war of 1948 are absent from
The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948: Lebanon and
Great Britain. The absence of a chapter on Lebanon is acknowledged by
the editors (pp.8-9) who lament that a chapter on Lebanon was impossible
because of insufficient scholarship. The omission of a chapter on Great
Britain is more puzzling. It might be that that Rogan and Shlaim wanted
to focus on the immediate middle eastern states involved in the 1948 war
but, as they well know, Britain, as the ex-colonial power, had a big part
to play in what happened in 1948. A chapter on London's views and policies
would have helped flesh out the insights and conclusions of the contributors
to this collection.
In terms of the chapters, Khalidi's stands out, to
use the current jargon, as the weakest link. It is a pity that Khalidi's
chapter on the Palestinians opens the volume as its central thesis, that
the Palestinians were not presented with a level playing field before
1948 and so suffered when it came to a fight with the Zionists, while
relevant, interesting and strongly argued, is simply not substantiated.
Indeed, Khalidi's chapter raises more questions than it answers and is
an example of the sort of apologia that the other authors in this volume
are careful to avoid. To blame the Palestinians' lack of leadership in
1948 on events such as the Balfour Declaration seems misplaced and misleading.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was, in a vague way, pro-Zionist. But
Britain acted primarily out of national self-interest, supporting Jew
and Arab in equal and unequal measure when it suited. Thus, in the 1939
White Paper, notwithstanding Khalidi's contrary argument, the British
performed a volte-face, supporting the Arabs because they wanted their
support against Germany and Italy in the Second World War. The fact is
that what Britain did to the Arabs it did to the Zionists. It is more
that the Zionists were far better at exploiting what was offered. Therefore,
from 1936-9 the British successfully suppressed the Arab revolt in Palestine;
from 1945-7, the British unsuccessfully suppressed Zionist terrorism in
Palestine. Obviously, the context of the Arab revolt and the Jewish insurgency
after the Second World War and the Holocaust was different but Khalidi
never really presents a convincing case to prove that the real fault lay
outside rather than inside the Palestinian community. Khalidi presents
an interesting argument but the reader is left wondering whether the Palestinians
still need to face up to their own shortcomings which left them reliant
on an avaricious group of Arab states for support when it came to war
in 1948 rather than blame external factors in the form of Britain and/or
the Zionists.
Conclusion
These minor criticisms should not detract from
the topicality, scholarship and interest provided by The War for Palestine:
Rewriting the History of 1948. Anti-revisionists will doubtless attack
the veracity of the finer details embedded in this volume. Was an expulsion
policy around 'Plan Dalet' ever agreed before 1948? Are the IDF to blame
for the Palestinian refugee crisis when Arab leaders acted so stupidly?
Why attack Israel when the Arabs were just as bad, if not worse, in their
behaviour to the Palestinians? While the 'new' historians certainly present
Israel in a more hostile light, Rogan and Shlaim show how, at the end
of the day, no-one emerges from the machinations of 1948 with much credit.
Indeed, the reader of The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History
of 1948 is left rather shocked at the greed and complicity of the
neighbouring Arab states who pretended they were acting for pan-Arab ideals.
At least the Zionists, busy trying to forge a Jewish state out of the
ruins of the Holocaust, had the excuse that the Arabs were the enemy and
that without a substantial Jewish majority Israel was simply not viable.
The editors have attempted to address the issue of
what really happened in 1948 but they have also tried to show how the
subsequent writing of the history of 1948 needs to be challenged. They
are to be commended for a scholarly, readable volume that will provoke
more debate and, perhaps, a more honest examination of the histories of
all the protagonists more than half a century after Israel's 'War of Independence'.
October 2001
1. Benny
Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49 (Cambridge:
CUP, 1987); Morris, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of
the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (London: John Murray, 2000);
Ilan Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951
(London & New York: IB Taurus, 1992); Pappé (ed.), The Israel/Palestine
Question (London & New York: Routledge, 1999); Simha Flapan, The
Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon, 1987); Avi
Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement
and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988); Shlaim,
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London, Allen Lane, 2000).
2. For
a cogent summary of the 'new' historians' perspective see Avi Shlaim,
'The Debate about 1948', International Journal of Middle East Studies,
27, 1995, 287-304; also Bernard Wasserstein, 'Old historians and new',
Jerusalem Post, 27 December 1999.
3. Aharon
Megged, 'The Israeli Suicide Drive', Ha-aretz Weekly Magazine,
10 June 1994 quoted in Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The
'New Historians' (London: Frank Cass, 1997). See also Karsh's, Fabricating
Israeli History, Preface to the Second Revised Edition, pp.xv-xxxix
(London: Frank Cass, 2000).
4. For
instance Morris's review of Karsh's Fabricating Israeli History
entitled 'Refabricating 1948' in Journal of Palestinian Studies, 27/2,
Winter 1998, 81-95.
5. For
instance Nur Masalha's essay 'A Critique on Benny Morris' in Ilan Pappé
(ed.), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York: Routledge,
1999 (originally an article in Journal of Palestine Studies, 21/1,
Autumn 1991, 90-7); Norman Finklestein, 'Myths, Old and New', Journal
of Palestine Studies, 21/1, Autumn 1991; and Morris 'Response to Finklestein
and Masalha', in the same issue of Journal of Palestine Studies.
Prominent Palestinian scholars such as Edward Said have acknowledged the
work done by the 'new' historians: see http://ihr.sa.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/shlaimavi.html.
6. For
a revision of schoolbooks, see Neil Caplan, review article, 'Zionism and
the Arabs: Another Look at the "New" Historiography', Journal of Contemporary
History, 36/2, April 2001, 348-9.
7. Morris,
Birth, p.286.
8. From
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition
(Cambridge: CUP, 1984).
9. Rogan,
The Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan,
1850-1921 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999).
10.
Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: CUP, 2000)
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