Avi Shlaim's Books

Three Worlds

Memoirs of an Arab-Jew

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing from their beloved Iraq into the new state of Israel. Now the rump of a once flourishing community of over 150,000, dating back 2,600 years, has dwindled to single figures. For many, this tells the story of the timeless clash of the Arab and Jewish civilisations, the heroic mission of Zionism to rescue Eastern Jews from their backwards nations, and unceasing persecution as the fate and history of Jewish people. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His mother had many Muslim friends in Baghdad, but no Zionist ones. The Iraqi Jewish community, once celebrated for its ancient heritage and rich culture, was sprayed with DDT upon arrival in Israel. As anti-Semitism gathered pace in Iraq, the Zionist underground may have inflamed it – deliberately. This memoir celebrates the disappearing heritage of Arab-Jews – caught in the crossfire of secular ideologies.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

324

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

0861544641

ISBN 13

9780861544646

The Iron Wall

Israel and the Arab World

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Iron Wall

Israel and the Arab World

By: Avi Shlaim

Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is the outstanding book on Israeli foreign policy, now thoroughly updated with a new preface and chapters on Israel's most recent leaders In the 1920s, hard-line Zionists developed the doctrine of the 'Iron Wall': negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength, and only when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours. This doctrine, argues Avi Shlaim, became central to Israeli policy; dissenters were marginalized and many opportunities to reconcile with Palestinian Arabs were lost. Drawing on a great deal of new material and interviews with many key participants, Shlaim places Israel's political and military actions under and uncompromising lens. His analysis will bring scant comfort to partisans on both sides, but it will be required reading for anyone interested in this fascinating and troubled region of the world. 'The Iron Wall is strikingly fair-minded, scholarly, cogently reasoned and makes enthralling ... reading' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'Anyone wanting to understand the modern Middle East should start by reading this elegantly written and scrupulously researched book' Trevor Royle, Sunday Herald 'A milestone in modern scholarship of the Middle East' Edward Said 'Fascinating ... Shlaim presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history' Ethan Bronner, The New York Times Book Review Avi Shlaim is Professor of International Relations at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) and War and Peace in the Middle East (1995).

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

944

Publisher

Penguin UK

Published Date

ISBN 10

0141976780

ISBN 13

9780141976785

War and Peace in the Middle East

A Concise History, Revised and Updated

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

War and Peace in the Middle East

A Concise History, Revised and Updated

By: Avi Shlaim

Remarkable...breathtaking in its scope and historical precision, this is highly recommended volume for both publivc and academic libraries.—Library Journal.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

161

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0140245642

ISBN 13

9780140245646

Lion of Jordan

The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Lion of Jordan

The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace

By: Avi Shlaim

The first major account of the life of an extraordinary soldier and statesman, King Hussein of Jordan. Throughout his long reign (1953—1999), Hussein remained a dominant figure in Middle Eastern politics and a consistent proponent of peace with Israel. For over forty years he walked a tightrope between Palestinians and Arab radicals on the one hand and Israel on the other. Avi Shlaim reveals that Hussein initiated a secret dialogue with Israel in 1963 and spent hundreds of hours in talks with countless Israeli officials. Shlaim expertly reconstructs this dialogue from previously untapped records and first-hand accounts, significantly rewriting the history of the Middle East over the past fifty years and shedding light on the far-reaching impact of Hussein’s leadership.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

763

Publisher

Vintage

Published Date

ISBN 10

1400078288

ISBN 13

9781400078288

The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Updated and Expanded)

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Updated and Expanded)

By: Avi Shlaim

“Fascinating. . . . Shlaim presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history.”—New York Times Book Review For this newly expanded edition, Avi Shlaim has added four chapters and an epilogue that address the prime ministerships from Barak to Netanyahu in the “one book everyone should read for a concise history of Israel’s relations with Arabs” (Independent). What was promulgated as an “iron-wall” strategy—building a position of unassailable strength— was meant to yield to a further stage where Israel would be strong enough to negotiate a satisfactory peace with its neighbors. The goal still remains elusive, if not even further away. This penetrating study brilliantly illuminates past progress and future prospects for peace in the Middle East.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

874

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393351017

ISBN 13

9780393351019

Israel and Palestine

Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Israel and Palestine

Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations

By: Avi Shlaim

With characteristic rigor and readability, Avi Shlaim reflects on a range of key issues, transformations and personalities in the Israel-Palestine conflict. From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel and Palestine places current events in their proper historical perspective, and assesses the impact of key political and intellectual figures, including Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon, Edward Said and Benny Morris. It also re-examines the United States' influential role in the conflict, and explores the many missed opportunities for peace and progress. Clear-eyed and meticulous, Israel and Palestine is an essential tool for understanding the fractured history and future prospects of the region.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

489

Publisher

Verso Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1789601657

ISBN 13

9781789601657

The Iron Wall

Israel and the Arab World

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Iron Wall

Israel and the Arab World

By: Avi Shlaim

This book helps to understand the debate within Israel about the possibility of peace with the Palestinians.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

708

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393321126

ISBN 13

9780393321128

Three Worlds

Memoirs of an Arab-Jew

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Three Worlds

Memoirs of an Arab-Jew

By: Avi Shlaim

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

324

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

0861544641

ISBN 13

9780861544646

The United States and the Berlin Blockade 1948-1949

A Study in Crisis Decision-Making

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The United States and the Berlin Blockade 1948-1949

A Study in Crisis Decision-Making

By: Avi Shlaim

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

478

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520337344

ISBN 13

9780520337343

Menachem Begin

By: Avi Shilon

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Menachem Begin

By: Avi Shilon

Menachem Begin, father of Israel's right wing and sixth prime minister of the nation, was known for his unflinchingly hawkish ideology. And yet, in 1979 he signed a groundbreaking peace treaty with Egypt for which he and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat received the Nobel Prize for Peace. Such a contradiction was typical in Begin's life: no other Israeli played as many different, sometimes conflicting, roles as Begin, and no other figure inspired such sharply opposing responses. Begin was belittled and beloved, revered and despised, and his career was punctuated by exhilarating highs on the one hand, despair and ostracism on the other./divDIV DIVThis riveting biography is the first to provide a satisfactory answer to the question, Who was Begin? Based on wide-ranging research among archival documents and on testimonials and interviews with Begin's closest advisers, the book presents a detailed new portrait of the founding leader. Among the many topics the book holds up to new light are Begin's antagonistic relationship with David Ben-Gurion, his controversial role in the 1982 Lebanon War, his unique leadership style, the changes in his ideology over the years, and the mystery behind the total silence he maintained at the end of his career. Through Begin's remarkable life, the book also recounts the history of the right-wing segment of Israeli society, a story essential to understanding the Israel of today./div

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

587

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300189036

ISBN 13

9780300189032

Coalition Defection

The Dissolution of Arab Anti-Israeli Coalitions in War and Peace

By: Avi Kober

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Coalition Defection

The Dissolution of Arab Anti-Israeli Coalitions in War and Peace

By: Avi Kober

Since the creation of Israel, during both wartime and peacetime, many Arab coalitions have formed. Every one of these anti-Israel coalitions has failed to achieve its goals due to the defection of one or more major parties. Kober explores the forces behind the dissemination of these alliances to determine why Arab states chose defection; whether or not a distinction can be made between defection patterns in times of war and patterns related to peace processes; and possible explanations for different behavior patterns. The multi-polar structure of the Arab subsystem, the decisions of pivotal members, and the negative reputations earned by such coalitions have always made defection an easy alternative. The choice to defect was, Kober contends, nurtured by a sense of military weakness and by the priority that coalition members attached to their particular interests over general Arab concerns. Kober finds that defection in time of war has arisen mainly through evasion-passive avoidance of coalition obligations with the hope of escaping or minimizing expected losses. Defection from military coalitions often deprived the defector of maximizing gains, all the while weakening the remaining coalition members. However, defection during the peace process served not only to optimize the defector's utilities, but eventually proved beneficial for the parties left behind. Kober determines that the peace process, mainly due to superpower involvement, transformed the scenario from a zero-sum to a non-zero-sum game, by rewarding the parties for signing treaties with Israel. Also, the first defectors, such as Egypt, established pay-off precedents, creating the foundation for future negotiations between the Arab players and Israel.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

236

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0313012539

ISBN 13

9780313012532

The Bride and the Dowry

Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War

By: Avi Raz

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Bride and the Dowry

Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War

By: Avi Raz

Israel’s victory in the June 1967 Six Day War provided a unique opportunity for resolving the decades-old Arab-Zionist conflict. Having seized the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, Israel for the first time in its history had something concrete to offer its Arab neighbors: it could trade land for peace. Yet the political deadlock persisted after the guns fell silent. This book sets outto find out why.Avi Raz places Israel’s conduct under an uncompromising lens. He meticulously examines the critical two years following the June war and substantially revises our understanding of how and why Israeli-Arab secret contacts came to naught. Mining newly declassified records in Israeli, American, British, and UN archives, as well as private papers of individual participants, Raz dispels the myth of overall Arab intransigence and arrives at new and unexpected conclusions. In short, he concludes that Israel’s postwar diplomacy was deliberately ineffective because its leaders preferred land over peace with its neighbors. The book throws a great deal of light not only on the post-1967 period but also on the problems and pitfalls of peacemaking in the Middle East today.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

437

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300183534

ISBN 13

9780300183535

The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Updated and Expanded)

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Updated and Expanded)

By: Avi Shlaim

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

874

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393351017

ISBN 13

9780393351019

The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel

Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process

By: Avi Shilon

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel

Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process

By: Avi Shilon

Yossi Beilin was a seminal figure during the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. As deputy foreign minister in the second Rabin government, he was responsible for leading the Oslo process, which was the most important attempt to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This book is the first to tell the story of the left wing and the peace process based on the private archive of Beilin himself. The thousands of documents – shared exclusively with the author - reveal a far more complete picture of Israel's political-diplomatic history in the late 20th century, and provide new information on key events. Avi Shilon offers a critiques of the 'liberal peace-building' project and analyses the connections between the Labour party's economic policy and foreign policy since the 1970s. This book is both a political biography of Beilin and a new history which recounts the diplomatic processes and social-political changes that occurred in Israel in the past four decades.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

351

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1838601155

ISBN 13

9781838601157

Ben-Gurion

His Later Years in the Political Wilderness

By: Avi Shilon

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Ben-Gurion

His Later Years in the Political Wilderness

By: Avi Shilon

This is the first in-depth account of the later years of David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), Israel’s first Prime Minister and founding father. One of the first to sign Israel’s declaration of independence and a leading figure in Zionism, Ben-Gurion stepped down from office in 1963 and retired from political life in 1970, deeply disappointed about the path on which the state had embarked and the process that brought about the end of his political career. He moved to a kibbutz in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death. Robbed of the public aura that had wrapped him for decades, his revolutionary passion, which was not weakened in his 80s, pushed him to continue seeking social and moral change in Israel, a political solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, and to conduct a personal and national soul-searching about the development of the State he himself had declared. Based on his personal archives and new interviews with his intimate friends and family, the book reveals how the founding father explored the Israeli establishment he created and from which he later disengaged. It provides a thorough examination of the decisive moments in the annals of Zionism as revealed through the lens of Ben-Gurion’s worldview, which are still relevant to present-day Israel.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

283

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1442249471

ISBN 13

9781442249479

Shimon Peres

An Insider’s Account of the Man and the Struggle for a New Middle East

By: Avi Gil

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Shimon Peres

An Insider’s Account of the Man and the Struggle for a New Middle East

By: Avi Gil

The late Israeli Foreign Minister, Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres was a towering figure in Israeli and Middle Eastern politics. But what drove the hawkish statesman behind Israel's nuclear deterrence and early settlement policy to stake his political reputation on peace negotiations with the Arab world and the PLO, Israel's sworn enemy? In this insider's account, written by Avi Gil, Peres's close confidant over almost 30 years, we witness firsthand the tense moments during the historic Oslo talks, kept under the strictest secrecy, when the explosive revelation that Peres was directing direct communications with Yasser Arafat's representatives for the first time threatened to leak to the press. We also see the fervent discussions and arguments between the personalities involved in the peace process, including Peres's rivalries with the Prime Ministers he served under, including Rabin, Sharon and Netanyahu. Although one of Peres's most trusted colleagues, Gil offers a frank assessment of his mentor, recounting his foibles and failures as consistently as he does his victories. We are shown Peres's unique energy and optimism for Israel and its Arab neighbors in his vision of a 'New Middle East'. But most valuable of all, we gain unique insight into the actual thought processes, conversations and decisions of Peres and his colleagues and adversaries as they initiated, processed and reacted to events in real time, shedding new light on a historic period in Israeli and Middle Eastern History. Of unique value to all those interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the book is also an insightful meditation on the inner-workings of all high-level government and diplomatic negotiations.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

265

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0755617045

ISBN 13

9780755617043

The United States and the Berlin Blockade 1948-1949

A Study in Crisis Decision-Making

By: Avi Shlaim

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The United States and the Berlin Blockade 1948-1949

A Study in Crisis Decision-Making

By: Avi Shlaim

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

478

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520337344

ISBN 13

9780520337343

Book's by Avi Shlaim

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email