David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949-1956 - Hardcover

Shalom, Zaki

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1902210212 ISBN 13: 9781902210216

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2002

Synopsis

No other Middle Eastern leader has written as much or been written about more extensively than David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel and its first prime minister. Yet he remains a deeply controversial figure. Traditional Israeli historians have written about the man and his achievements in the most glowing terms. His Israeli biographers, Michael Bar-Zohar and Shabtai Teveth, have produced multi-volume hagiographies. In recent years, however, revisionist Israeli historians have subjected Ben-Gurion, and especially his policy towards the Arab world, to a critical re-examination. The author's aim in writing this book is not so much to defend or criticize Ben-Gurion as to give a detailed and accurate account of his attitude towards the Arab world in the period between the 1948 War and the Suez War. Shalom recognizes at the outset the distinction between policy and statements, between the operational and declaratory levels of policy. He is concerned not with Ben Gurion's practical policy toward the Arabs but with his views, his attitudes, and his statements. - From a pre-publication review of the book by Avi Shlaim, St. Antony's College, Oxford

About this title

About the Author:

Zaki Shalom is a senior researcher at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute at Ben-Gurion University. He is also member of the research staff at the Institute for National Security Studies. He has published extensively on various facets of Israel's defense policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the role of the superpowers in the Middle East, and Israel's struggle against Islamic terror. He is the author of Israel's Nuclear Option.

Review:

“Shalom devotes much attention to the relations betwen Ben-Gurion and his foreign minister (and temporary successor) Moshe Sharett, finding that the two differed on matters of defense policy but saw eye-to-eye on Israel’s requirements from a political settlement.”  —Middle East Quarterly

About this edition

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1902210212
• ISBN 13: 9781902210216
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216