Recommended Books

*notes in italics are by FMEP personnel

Peace Process
How the Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process
Edited by: Tamara Cofman Wittes
Publisher: United States Institute of Peace Press
ISBN: 1929223641
This is an excellent collection of essays by participants in the Oslo peace process which demonstrates the different perspectives and approaches to negotiations of Israelis and Palestinians. Professor Kleinman’s analysis of the IDF’s view of negotiations as a win/lose battlefield is fascinating.

Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002
By Charles Enderlin and Susan Fairfield
Publisher: Other Press, New York (2003)
ISBN: 1590510607
Enderlin, the Israeli head of the Israeli bureau of a French TV network, interviewed key participants in the Oslo process in real time.   His revealing blow-by-blow account takes issue with the narrative promoted by Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and Dennis Ross, among others, that it was the Palestinians and Yassir Arafat who undermined the Oslo peace process.


Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967
By William B. Quandt
Publishers: Brookings Institution Press and University of California Press; Third Edition
ISBN: 0520225155
Professor Quandt of the University of Virginia served as Director for Middle East Affairs under President Jimmy Carter and was a central player in the first Camp David negotiations.  His book is a work of careful scholarship and has become the classic work of American diplomacy in this conflict.


The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace
By Dennis Ross
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374199736
This is a detailed, personal account from a key player in the middle east peace process.Ross was chief American negotiator during the Oslo years and peace process advisor to earlier presidents.  Ross' thesis, that it was Yassir Arafat who destroyed the peace process because he could not ultimately bring himself to accept forthcoming U.S. and Israeli offers and instead chose to continue the struggle, matches the official U.S. and Israeli position. His work has been effectively countered by other more nuanced arguments which attribute the collapse of the process to Israeli and American, as well as Palestinian, failures.


The Process: 1,100 Days that Changed the Middle East
By Uri Savir
Publisher: Random House; (May 1998)
ASIN: 067942296X

The Truth about Camp David:  The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process
By Clayton E. Swisher
Publisher: Nation Books (2004)
ISBN: 1560256230
Swisher, a former Diplomatic Security Officer who was present at Camp David and interviewed almost all of the participants, persuasively rebuts the Israeli narrative, widely supported in the U.S., that Arafat and the Palestinians were primarily to blame for the collapse of the Oslo Peace process.

Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy
By Shlomo Ben-Ami
Publisher: Oxford University Press (2006)
ISBN: 0195181581
This elegantly written history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is by professor Ben Ami, former Israeli Foreign Minister and a member of Ehud Barak’s negotiating team. Although he is frank and incisive, in analyzing the failure at Camp David, Ben-Ami adopts the nationalistic Israeli narrative.Hei believes that Israelis and Palestinians cannot make peace by themselves and that major international diplomatic intervention is needed.

Elusive Peace
By Ahron Bregman
Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc. (September 2005)
ISBN:  0141020849
Bregman, an Israeli born BBC writer, produced a film by the same title, on the failure of the Oslo process and the breakdown at Camp David.He spares no party, and avoids a partisan approach in this objective and authoritative summary of the peace process.It’s interesting insights include a conversation with Ehud Barak in which the former Prime Minister discusses the American “parameters” of December, 2000, and its relationship to the forthcoming Israeli elections.

IsraelCreating Facts; Israel, Palestinians, & the West Bank
By Geoffrey Aronson
Publisher: Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington DC, (1987)
ISBN:0887281605
Aronson, who edits FMEP's Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, is America's leading expert on the Israeli settlement phenomenon.  This is an early standard work.


How Israel Lost: The Four Questions
By Richard Ben Cramer
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, New York
ISBN 0-7432-5028-1
Kramer, an American journalist who spent some years in Israel, argues that Israel has been deeply corrupted by the experience of conquest and occupation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and that this has changed the character of the state and the society. 


In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement
By Mordechai Bar On
Publisher: United States Institute for Peace; (October 1997)
ISBN: 1878379542
Bar On, a former IDF Chief of Education and earlier a private secretary to David Ben Gurion, later served in the Knesset and has been deeply involved in the Israeli peace movement.He has written many books on Israeli history in which he draws on his active personal involvement in the peace movement.  This is a unique book.


Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948
By Meron Benvenisti
Publisher: University of California Press; (January 2002)
ISBN: 0520234227

Sharon: A Warrior Autobiography with David Chanoff
By David Chanoff and Ariel Sharon
Publisher: Touchstone Books; (August 2001)
ASIN: 074322566X

The Middle East
By Congressional Quarterly
Publisher: CQ Press; Ninth Edition
ISBN: 1568021011

The Jewish State: A Century Later, Updated With a New Preface
By Alan Dowty
Publisher: University of California Press; (January 1998)
ISBN: 0520209419

Herzl
By Amos Elon
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., Inc.; (January 1975)
ASIN: 003013126X

The Israelis: Founders and Sons
By Amos Elon
Publisher: Penguin USA; (January 1992)
ISBN: 0140169695
In this book, Elon, a leading Israeli public intellectual, historian and journalist, illustrates the historic forces that shaped Israel’s unique character.


Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement
By Robert I.  Friedman
Publisher: Random House; (1992)
ISBN: 0394580532
The late Rob Friedman, an investigative journalist and reporter for The Village Voice, wrote this vivid account of the messianic Jews who are the spear carriers of the settlement movement.

Israel in the Mind of America
Peter Grose
Publisher: Knopf; (November 1983)
ISBN: 0394516583
This is a fascinating, sympathetic and well documented account of the intimate U.S.-Israeli relationship, which Grose attributes to shared values, culture, and history.  It contrasts with the work of other authors who see the U.S.-Israel relationship as exclusively a product of lobbying pressure.

The Yellow Wind
By David Grossman
Publisher: Picador; (September 2002)
ISBN: 0312420986

The Bar Kochba Syndrome; Risk and Realism in International Politics
By Yehosafat Harkabi
Publisher: Rossel Books, Chappaqua, NY (1983)
ISBN: 09406 46013
Harkabi, a former hawk and director of Israeli military intelligence, became a dove and peace advocate after years close study of the Arabs and Arabic language sources.  He compares Israel’s ambitious occupation and settlement of the Palestinian territories to the audacious, but ultimately disastrous Bar Kochba uprising against the Romans which lead to the dispersion of the Jewish people from their homeland.

Israel's Fateful Hour
By Yehosafat Harkabi
Publisher: I.B. Taurus, London, (1988)
ISBN 1850430942
This is another powerful and prophetic treatise by Harkabi on the dangers and lack of realism inherent in Israel’s efforts to dominate and control their Palestinian neighbors.Ultimately, he argues, occupation risks both Israel’s character and its survival.

The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader
By Arthur Hertzberg (Editor)
Publisher: Jewish Publication Society; (October 1997)
ISBN: 0827606222
The late Rabbi Hertzberg was America’s leading expert on Zionism and an outspoken liberal Zionist.  Besides this authoritative work, he wrote many books and articles, many of them highly critical of American and Israeli policy toward the Arabs and Palestinians.  During his long and distinguished career, Hertzberg was active in American-Jewish politics and also taught at Columbia, Dartmouth and NYU.

The Gun and the Olive Branch
By David Hirst
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Javonavich
ISBN: 0151382999

War Without End; Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for the Promised Land
By Anton La Guardia
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; (May 2003)
ASIN: 03123633X
This is a smoothly written and lively survey of the conflict, full of interesting observations and anecdotes.

Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War
By Benny Morris
Publisher: Oxford University Press; (October 1993)
ASIN: 0198278500

Righteous Victims; A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001
By Benny Morris
Publisher: Knopf; (August 2001)
ISBN: 0679744754
Morris, one of Israel’s new historians, has rewritten the history of Israel using careful research in newly available archives.  He largely shatters the propaganda and mythology that form Israel’s highly nationalistic and patriotic narrative about its history and relations with the Arabs.

In the Land of Israel
By Amos Oz
Publisher: Harvest Books; Reprint edition (November 1993)
ISBN: 0156481146

The October War
By Richard Parker
Publisher: University of Florida Press (1996)
ISBN: 0813014778

A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time
By Howard M. Sachar
Publisher: Knopf; 2nd edition (February 1996)
ISBN: 0679765638

The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestinians, 1921-1951
By Ari Shlaim
Publisher: Oxford University Press; (January 1999)
ASIN: 019829459X
This important, carefully researched book is the authoritative study of early relations between the Zionists and the Hashemites and their covert strategic relationship against the Palestinian national movement, whom they regarded as a mutual threat.

One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate
By Tom Segev
Publisher: Metropolitan Books; (November 2000)
ISBN: 0805048480
This very readable history of the British Mandate by historian and Ha’aretz columnist Tom Segev is enlivened by stories of famous and not so famous Jews, Arabs and Englishmen during the mandate period.

The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust
By Tom Segev
Publisher: Owl Books; (November 2000)
ISBN: 080506608

The Iron Wall
By Avi Shlaim
Publisher: WW Norton and Company; (January 2001)
ISBN: 0393321126
Shlaim, an Iraqi born Israeli who teaches history at Oxford, rejects the thesis that Israel has always sought peace and has endeavored to create a defensive “iron wall” against its adversaries.Instead of seeking mutual accommodation, Shlaim argues, Israel sought to intimidate its Arab neighbors by demonstrating superior force and unbreakable will.This is a fine one volume history of the conflict.

Prescription for Conflict; Israel's West Bank Settlement Policy
By Merle Thorpe, Jr.
Foundation for Middle East Peace (1984)
Merle Thorpe, the founder of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, was the first American to grasp the central importance of Israel’s settlement policy as an obstacle to Middle East peace.  This is an early and clairvoyant description of Israel’s settlement policy, which today is the central obstacle to a two-state peace between Israel and Palestine.

What Shall I do With these People: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism
By Milton Viorst
Publisher: Free Press; (October 2002)
ISBN: 0684862891
This is a readable account of Jewish history by Viorst, a veteran and reporter and analyst of middle east affairs.

The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977
By Gershom Gorenberg
Publisher: Times Books
ISBN: 080507564X
Gorenberg describes how the settlement movement “happened,” not as a result of planned and rationalized government policy, but because of the stealth and drive of the settler minority and patronage of key Israeli politicians. Full of anecdotal material and a good read.

Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse
By Sylvain Cypel
Publisher: Other Press (June 2007)
ISBN: 1590512103

Son of the Cypresses: Memories, Reflections and Regrets from a Political Life
By Meron Benvenisti
Publisher: University of California Press (April 2007)
ISBN: 0520238257
Benvenisti traces his own political evolution from a loyal, native born Zionist to skeptic, sick of the excesses of Israeli and Palestinian nationalism and Israel’s disastrous policies of de facto annexation and settlement.  Benvenisti confirms his long held thesis that it is too late to create two states, and that Palestinians and Jews must find a way to live together in a single state.This is a powerful and challenging book, but Benvenisti gives short shrift to how a bi-national state could actually work.

1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East
By Tom Segev
Publisher: Metropolitan Books (May 2007)
ISBN: 0805070576

JerusalemJerusalem: One City, Three Faiths
By Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Ballantine Books; (May 1997)
ISBN: 0345391683
Armstrong, a former Catholic priest, and a popular writer on Islam, Christianity and Judaism has written a superb one volume history of Jerusalem which is scholarly but also very accessible.

City of Stone; The Hidden History of Jerusalem
By Meron Benvenisti
Publisher: University of California Press; (October 1998)
ISBN: 0520207688

Jerusalem: City of Mirrors
By Amos Elon
Publisher: Little Brown and Company; (September 1989)
ASIN: 0316233889
A sophisticated analysis of Jerusalem which separates the myths from the realities of this troubled city of Israelis and Palestinians.

Negotiating Jerusalem
By Jerome Segal
Publisher: State University of New York Press; (June 2000)
ISBN: 0791445372
Segal, along with Israel and Palestinian pollsters, carried out extensive research on Israeli and Palestinian attitudes toward Jerusalem in the 1990s.  Their work pierced the myth that Jerusalem is indivisible by showing a willingness of both sides to make compromises based on different and not always incompatible views on what is important, respectively, to Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem.




PalestineThis Side of Peace: A Personal Account
By Hanan Ashrawi
Publisher: Touchstone Books; (June 1996)
ASIN: 068482342X
Ashrawi, the articulate spokesmen for the Palestinians during the early Oslo process and a frequent analyst and commentator has written a unique personal account of her key role during that era. She is a brilliant and outspoken advocate, with an unusually eloquent command of the English language.

Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S.  Middle East Policy
By Kathleen Christison
University of California Press; (October 2001)
ISBN: 0520217187
This is a valuable history, by a former CIA analyst, of American influence over the Israeli-Arab conflict. Christison is often critical of the Palestinians and supportive of Israel, but its orderly chronological approach to describing the policies of all American presidents is very useful.

Drinking in the Sea of Gaza
By Amira Hass
Publisher: Owl Books; (June 2000)
ISBN: 0805057404
Hass, a correspondent for the leading Israeli daily Ha’artez, lived in Gaza for several years and deeply sympathizes with the plight of the Gazans.  Her book describes Gaza in human terms that often contrast with media reporting.

No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By Mark Heller and Sari Nusseibeh
Publisher: Hill and Wang Publishing; (October 1999)
ISBN: 08090145625
Heller, an Israeli political scientist and Nusseibeh, a former Palestinian political activist during the first Intifada and current Rector of Al-Quds University, wrote this excellent guidebook to how a two-state solution could work.  Their prescriptions are still valid.

Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground: The Case for Palestine
Edited by Michael Keating, Anne Le More and Robert Lowe (a chapter written by Geoffrey Aronson)
Publisher: Chatham House
ISBN: 1862031649
This collection of essays demonstrates the severe limitations of development assistance in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories in the absence of a political framework designed to bring freedom and sovereignty to Palestinians.

From Haven To Conquest
By Walid Khalidi
Publisher: Institute for Palestinian Studies; (October 1997)
ISBN: 0887281559

Palestinian Identity
By Rashid Khalidi
Publisher: Columbia University Press; (October 1998)
ISBN: 0231105150
A work of exacting scholarship which establishes that the Palestinians’ cultural and national identity was not simply a product of the clash with Zionism but had much deeper historic roots.

The Palestinian People: A History
By Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal
Publisher: Harvard University Press; (March 2003)
ISBN: 0674011295
This big and powerful book by Kimmerling, an Israeli, and Migdal, an American, also traces Palestinian nationalism back to the 19^th century and describes its evolution and Israel’s efforts to suppress it.  The book is sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, while recognizing their leaders shortcomings, and is rigorously documented.

Encyclopedia of the Palestinians (Facts on File Library Of World History)
By Philip Mattar
Publisher: Facts on File, Inc.; (March 2000)
ASIN: 081603043X

Building a Successful Palestinian State
By the RAND Palestinian State Study Team
Publisher: RAND Corporation
ISBN:0833035320
RAND scholars describe the potential for successful state building in this visionary study, based on the assumption that Israel and Palestine will ultimately agree upon a viable two-state peace plan and evacuate most settlements.  RAND proposes, as a key element in a successful Palestinian state, a railway / electronics / utilities corridor called “The Arc” running from the port of Gaza to Hebron and up the central ridge of the West Bank to Jenin and Nablus.

The Question of Palestine
By Edward W. Said
Publisher: Vintage Books; Reissue edition (April 1992)
ISBN: 0679739882
The late Said, the most famous and prolific Palestinian-American commentator on the conflict, deplores the tendency of Israeli and western writers to “blame the victim,” and the hypocrisy and double standards of American and Israeli policy.

Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993
By Yezid Sayigh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN:0198292651
This detailed and scholarly work is unmatched for its analysis of the Palestinian national movement and the quality of its analysis. However, it is not an easy read.

Occupier's Law: Israel and the West Bank
By Raja Shehadeh and Anthony Lewis
Publisher: Institute for Palestinian Studies
ISBN: 0887281508

Strangers in the House
By Raja Shehadeh
Publisher: Penguin USA; (April 2003)
ISBN: 0142002933
Shehadeh, a prominent West Bank lawyer whose late father, Aziz, was also active in Palestinian public life, writes eloquently about his life growing up in occupied Palestine.

Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine, 1917-1948
By Naomi Shepherd
Publisher: Rutgers University Press; (March 2000)
ISBN: 0813527651

Arafat in the Eyes of the Beholder
John and Janet Wallach
Publisher: Prima Publishing; (December 1991)
ISBN: 1559581204

Still Small Voices
By John and Janet Wallach
Publisher: Harcourt; (April 1989)
ISBN: 051849706

The New Palestinians: The Emerging Generation of Leaders
By John and Janet Wallach
Publisher: Prima Publishing; (October 1992)
ISBN: 1559582154

Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life
By Sari Nusseibeh
Publisher: Farrar, Staus, and Giroux (March 2007)
ISBN: 0374299507
Sari Nusseibeh, scion of an ancestral Jerusalem family whose life has combined a leading role in the first (1988-91) Palestinian intifada, scholarship as a teacher of philosophy, and courageous commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, seeks peace for both people and deplores all violence.He is now Rector of Al Quds University. This is a touching – and sometimes exciting memoir – one of the best by a Palestinian.

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
By Rashid Khalidi
Publisher: Beacon Press (October 2006)
ISBN:807003085  
Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi is America’s leading historian of Palestine.He explores missed opportunities that Palestinians might have taken to avoid their continuing defeat at the hands of Israel.He reaches no hard conclusions, but speculates that the historical deck as been loaded against the Palestinians.He wonders whether the Palestinians will be able to create new and more effective forms of resistance that will persuade Israel and its friends to accept the kind of genuine two-state peace that seems an increasingly distant prospect.



Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Documents on the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Emergence of Conflict in Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Wars and Peace Process, Vol. 1
Edited by M. Cherif Bassiouni
Publisher: Transnational Publishers, Inc. (1995)
ISBN: 1559582154