Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

The author draws on his field work in the Occupied Territories to provide a chronicle on Middle East events from the Intifada, through the Gulf War, to the massacre in Hebron, and he assesses the prospects for peace and justice in the region in the wake of the accord between Israel and the PLO.

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This study critically surveys the dominant popular and scholarly images of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Finkelstein opens with a theoretical discussion of Zionism, locating it as a romantic form of nationalism that assumed the bankruptcy of liberal democracy. He goes on to look at the demographic origins of the Palestinians, with particular reference to the work of Joan Peters, and develops critiques of the influential studies of both Benny Morris and Anita Shapira. Reviewing the diplomatic history with Aban Eban's oeuvre as his foil, Finkelstein closes by demonstrating that the casting of Israel as the innocent victim of Arab aggression in the June 1967 and October 1973 wars is not supported by the documentary record.