Overview

What are the roots of the Jewish-Arab conflict? How has it developed, and why does it still exist? In this intriguing investigation, Yosef Gorney contends that the ideological principles of Zionism were a decisive influence throughout the period when Jewish settlement began in Palestine and the foundations were laid for the re-establishment of Israeli sovereignty. He begins by identifying four basic attitudes of the Jewish settlers and Zionist leaders toward the Arab population before the First World War, and then shows how these attitudes persisted or changed in the face of subsequent political events--the Balfour declaration, the tension of the thirties, the Second World War, and the holocaust. Tracing in each period the delicate synthesis between politics and ideology, the book reveals the consistency of ideological principles in Zionist attitudes towards the Arabs, despite rapid changes in their political and historical context.