Since the late nineteenth century and especially in times of great tension in the Middle East, observers have asked whether the longstanding Arab-Jewish conflict could have been avoided. The early Zionists did not feel that Arab nationalism would evolve as a reaction to Jewish settlement and the pursuit of Jewish statehood; to the Zionists it seeme

Because of recent changes in the explicitly declared goals of Arabs in the Palestinian conflict, this book is of singular importance, and no scholar or expert on Middle East affairs can afford to ignore it. This work, by a scholar described as "the doyen of Israeli Arabists," is the result of vast research into the attitude of the Arabs toward Israel, manifested both in their declared, explicit aims and in ideological exegeses on the roots of the Palestinian problem. Approximately one hundred twenty books written by Arabs and the Arab press and radio are herein analyzed. Harkabi's searching examination is objective. His detection of consistent patterns in what at first seems amorphous is convincing. If there is such a thing as a science of political psychology, Harkabi is its master.

This book, first published in 1978, examines the confrontation of the Jewish community of Palestine – the Yishuv – with its Arab question in the period immediately following World War 1, a period of excitement and uncertainty. Its main focus is on the different ways in which the men and women of the Yishuv perceived and defined the question of relations with the Arabs, and how they proposed to deal with the problems that arose.

Yosef Gorny examines the attitudes of Jewish settlers and Zionist intellectual and political leaders towards the Arab population in the period when Jewish settlement began in Palestine, and shows that the ideological principles of Zionism were a decisive influence throughout the world.

He discusses the consequences of Israel's ideology, policy, and practices toward the Arab minority; the effect of major developments in the Arab world, particularly in the Palestinian communities in exile and in the West Bank and Gaza; and the impact of changes within the Palestinian community in Israel such as demography, level of education, socio-economic structure, and political culture.

The Arab-Israeli conflict constituted a serious problem for the American Left in the 1960s: pro-Palestinian activists hailed the Palestinian struggle against Israel as part of a fundamental restructuring of the global imperialist order, while pro-Israeli leftists held a less revolutionary worldview that understood Israel as a paragon of democratic socialist virtue. This intra-left debate was in part doctrinal, in part generational. But further woven into this split were sometimes agonizing questions of identity. Jews were disproportionately well-represented in the Movement, and their personal and communal lives could deeply affect their stances vis-à-vis the Middle East. The Movement and the Middle East offers the first assessment of the controversial and ultimately debilitating role of the Arab-Israeli conflict among left-wing activists during a turbulent period of American history. Michael R. Fischbach draws on a deep well of original sources--from personal interviews to declassified FBI and CIA documents--to present a story of the left-wing responses to the question of Palestine and Israel. He shows how, as the 1970s wore on, the cleavages emerging within the American Left widened, weakening the Movement and leaving a lasting impact that still affects progressive American politics today.