Gershon Shafir challenges the heroic myths about the foundation of the State of Israel by investigating the struggle to control land and labor during the early Zionist enterprise. He argues that it was not the imported Zionist ideas that were responsible for the character of the Israeli state, but the particular conditions of the local conflict between the European "settlers" and the Palestinian Arab population.

What is the occupation? -- Why has the occupation lasted this long? -- How has the occupation transformed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

In Comrades and Enemies Zachary Lockman explores the mutually formative interactions between the Arab and Jewish working classes, labor movements, and worker-oriented political parties in Palestine just before and during the period of British colonial rule. Unlike most of the historical and sociological literature on Palestine in this period, Comrades and Enemies avoids treating the Arab and Jewish communities as if they developed independently of each other. Instead of focusing on politics, diplomacy, or military history, Lockman draws on detailed archival research in both Arabic and Hebrew, and on interviews with activists, to delve into the country's social, economic, and cultural history, showing how Arab and Jewish societies in Palestine helped to shape each other in significant ways. Comrades and Enemies presents a narrative of Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine that extends and complicates the conventional story of primordial identities, total separation, and unremitting conflict while going beyond both Zionist and Palestinian nationalist mythologies and paradigms of interpretation.

This book traces the history of attitudes toward power and the use of armed force within the Zionist movement—from an early period in which most leaders espoused an ideal of peaceful settlement in Palestine, to the acceptance of force as a legitimate tool for achieving a sovereign Jewish state. Reviews "A rich and sophisticated work that nicely complements more conventional political-historical studies of the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . Shapira sifts through a vast body of material, ranging from essays, poems, and memoir literature to the unpublished minutes of political party and youth group meetings. Shapira interprets these sources with sensitivity and insight . . . and writes with power, compassion, and warmth. . . . A landmark book that is an outstanding contribution to the history of Zionist political thought and culture." —American Historical Review "This is a superb book . . . a well-researched, detailed, and scholarly account that provides new and valuable insights into the dilemma posed by the formation and elaboration of a more forceful Israeli military posture." —The Historian "Shapira's powerful, well-written, lucid intellectual history of a segment of the Zionist movement . . . is fascinating and easy to read." —Journal of Economic Literature

The main focus of The Palestinians in Israel (1979) is the position of the Arab minority in Israel, from being a majority to becoming a minority. By using the framework of internal colonialism, it provides evidence which highlights the social class transformations of the Palestinians in Israel from peasantry to proletariat, the patterns of land alienation, and the nature of inter-ethnic contacts which typify Israeli–Palestinian relations. It looks at Arab social structure in pre-1948 Palestine, discusses the Arabs as they appear in Israeli social science writings, describes the transformation of Arab class structure in Israel, and considers the politicization of Israeli Arabs.

When did the Arab-Israeli conflict begin? Some discussions focus on the 1967 war, some go back to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and others look to the beginning of the British Mandate in 1922. Alan Dowty, however, traces the earliest roots of the conflict to the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, arguing that this historical approach highlights constant clashes between religious and ethnic groups in Palestine. He demonstrates that existing Arab residents viewed new Jewish settlers as European and shares evidence of overwhelming hostility to foreigners from European lands. He shows that Jewish settlers had tremendous incentive to minimize all obstacles to settlement, including the inconvenient hostility of the existing population. Dowty's thorough research reveals how events that occurred over 125 years ago shaped the implacable conflict that dominates the Middle East today.