A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel

Synopsis

it Is Impossible To Understand Palestine Today Without A Careful Reading Of Its Distant And Recent Past. But Until Now There Has Been No Single Volume In English That Tells The History Of The Events--from The Ottoman Empire To The Mid-twentieth Century--that Shaped Modern Palestine. The First Book Of Its Kind, A History Of Palestine Offers A Richly Detailed Interpretation Of This Critical Region's Evolution. Starting With The Prebiblical And Biblical Roots Of Palestine, Noted Historian Gudrun Krämer Examines The Meanings Ascribed To The Land In The Jewish, Christian, And Muslim Traditions. Paying Special Attention To Social And Economic Factors, She Examines The Gradual Transformation Of Palestine, Following The History Of The Region Through The Egyptian Occupation Of The Mid-nineteenth Century, The Ottoman Reform Era, And The British Mandate Up To The Founding Of Israel In 1948. Focusing On The Interactions Of Arabs And Jews, A History Of Palestine Tells How These Connections Affected The Cultural And Political Evolution Of Each Community And Palestine As A Whole.

publishers Weekly

the 400 Years Before The Founding Of The Jewish State Is A Historiographical Minefield, But Krämer (the Jews In Modern Egypt), A Professor Of Islamic Studies At Free University Berlin, Manages To Produce An Illuminating Survey Of The Terrain. She Insists That Modern Palestine Had A History Before Large-scale Jewish Immigration Began In The Late 19th Century, Along With A Substantial, Rooted Arab Population And Society, And A Growing Economy. The Author Pays Full Due To The Dynamism Of The Zionist Nation-building Project And The Development It Brought To Palestine, Often To The Benefit Of Arabs, But Also Accords Weight And Legitimacy To The Arab Nationalist Reaction-while Observing That, Even As The Two Communities Remained Socially Segregated, They Were Economically Interdependent And Spatially Intertwined. The Author's Restrained Account Of Israel's War Of Independence Notes Atrocities On All Sides As It Depicts A Sometimes Incidental, Sometimes Deliberate Campaign Of Ethnic Cleansing Of Arabs By The Israeli Military. Krämer's Fluent Narrative Pairs A Much-needed Focus On Facts-including Useful Data On Contentious Issues Of Population Growth And Land Ownership-with An Evenhanded Avoidance Of Partisanship. 14 B&w Photos, Maps. (mar.)

copyright 2007 Reed Business Information