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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

What Everyone Needs to Know

by Dov Waxman


No conflict in the world has lasted as long, generated as many news headlines, or incited as much controversy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, despite, or perhaps because of, the degree of international attention it receives, the conflict is still widely misunderstood. While Israelis and Palestinians and their respective supporters trade accusations, many outside observers remain confused by the conflict’s complexity and perplexed by the passion it arouses.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know® offers an even-handed and judicious guide to the world’s most intractable dispute. Writing in an engaging, jargon-free Q&A format, Dov Waxman provides clear and concise answers to common questions, from the most basic to the most contentious. Covering the conflict from its nineteenth-century origins to the latest developments of the twenty-first century, this book explains the key events, examines the core issues, and presents the competing claims and narratives of both sides. Readers will learn what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about, how it has evolved over time, and why it continues to defy diplomatic efforts at a resolution.

  • Presents the conflicting views and narratives of both Israelis and Palestinians, and evaluates them fairly and judiciously
  • Provides succinct and straightforward explanations and analyses of the most important historical events and developments that are often mired in controversy
  • Highly accessible overview of an enormously complex subject that provides readers with the tools necessary to understand the conflict

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Trouble in the Tribe

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Trouble in the Tribe

The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel
by Dov Waxman


Trouble in the Tribe explores the increasingly contentious place of Israel in the American Jewish community. In a fundamental shift, growing numbers of American Jews have become less willing to unquestioningly support Israel and more willing to publicly criticize its government. More than ever before, American Jews are arguing about Israeli policies, and many, especially younger ones, are becoming uncomfortable with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Dov Waxman argues that Israel is fast becoming a source of disunity for American Jewry, and that a new era of American Jewish conflict over Israel is replacing the old era of solidarity.

Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with American Jewish leaders and activists, Waxman shows why Israel has become such a divisive issue among American Jews. He delves into the American Jewish debate about Israel, examining the impact that the conflict over Israel is having on Jewish communities, national Jewish organizations, and on the pro-Israel lobby. Waxman sets this conflict in the context of broader cultural, political, institutional, and demographic changes happening in the American Jewish community. He offers a nuanced and balanced account of how this conflict over Israel has developed and what it means for the future of American Jewish politics.

Israel used to bring American Jews together. Now it is driving them apart. Trouble in the Tribe explains why.


Reviews

Some Israelis say their country has the choice of being a Jewish state or a state of its citizens. Peleg and Waxman’s comprehensive, earnest book shows this is not true, that Israel must be the latter and can be, with intelligent reforms, the former. This is not a challenge for after a peace process succeeds. For what, the book shows, is democracy but a peace process without end?

– BERNARD AVISHAI
AUTHOR OF THE HEBREW REPUBLIC

Trouble in the Tribe is an outstanding book. Waxman’s judgments are fair, judicious, and balanced

– THEODORE SASSON
AUTHOR OF THE NEW AMERICAN ZIONISM

This is an extremely important book that will have profound consequences. When puzzled friends ask me why the American Jewish community is now so divided over Israel, this is the book I will recommend.

– KENNETH D. WALD
COAUTHOR OF RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES

Good books, Orwell once wrote, set your scattered thoughts in order–in a way, tell you what you already know. Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe lays it out: the attitudes, the clashes, the numbers, the future. For a generation, American Jewish solidarity regarding Israel was indistinguishable from the élan of community life. Waxman shows how, and why, this can change, even how Israel has become polarizing for congregational life. A grim, real, necessary book.

– BERNARD AVISHAI
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE AND THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

Dov Waxman could hardly have picked a more contentious topic for investigation than the troubled relationship between (and among) American Jews and Israel. But with Trouble in the Tribe, he brings to bear a rare combination of calm, reasoned analysis with scrupulous scholarly research. American Jewish arguments about Israel will certainly continue, but if Waxman’s contribution to it gets the attention it deserves, they should be based far more on complex reality than simplistic fantasy. And we will all be better for it.

– ERIC ALTERMAN
COLUMNIST FOR THE NATION

An accessible, readable introduction to the topic.

– CHOICE

[A] detailed and meticulously balanced account… Both Waxman’s complex picture of American Jewry and the plea for–critical engagement–emerging from it deserve our serious consideration.

– WILLIAM KOLBRENER
TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION

As a primer on the American Jewish machloket (argument) over Israel, Trouble in the Tribe is extremely useful. Its data is copious… its charts are handy; its perspective mostly balanced… It is an excellent guide for the perplexed.

– JAY MICHAELSON
MOMENT MAGAZINE

A valuable road map to an ongoing and very important conflict.

– MURRAY POLNER
HISTORY NEWS NETWORK

A meticulous, precise, well-organized survey that takes into account the many different views and will certainly facilitate the heated conversation.

– KIRKUS
STARRED REVIEW

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Israel’s Palestinians — The Conflict Within

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Israel’s Palestinians

The Conflict Within
by Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman


Arguing that a comprehensive and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depends on a resolution of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict within Israel as much as it does on resolving the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, this timely book explores the causes and consequences of the growing conflict between Israel’s Jewish majority and its Palestinian-Arab minority. It warns that if Jewish-Arab relations in Israel continue to deteriorate, this will pose a serious threat to the stability of Israel, to the quality of Israeli democracy, and to the potential for peace in the Middle East. The book examines the views and attitudes of both the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority, as well as the Israeli state’s historic approach to its Arab citizens. Drawing upon the experience of other states with national minorities, the authors put forward specific proposals for safeguarding and enhancing the rights of the Palestinian minority while maintaining the country’s Jewish identity.

  • Most up-to-date study of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel
  • Presents Arab-Jewish relations in Israel within the context of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • Provides in-depth analysis of the views and attitudes of both communities – the Arab minority and the Jewish majority.

Reviews

This book is the most authoritative study to date on the increasingly crucial question of Israel’s Arab minority. The work represents a focused analysis of recent political and socio-economic changes, supported by a wealth of documentary evidence. It will undoubtedly serve all scholars and students seeking deeper insight into this timely topic.

– PROFESSOR ELIE REKHESS
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

This is a superb overview of an understudied dilemma. Even those familiar with the issues will learn much that is new from this thorough and dispassionate analysis. Peleg and Waxman look at both the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish sides of the question fairly and impartially. The comparative dimension is also a great strength, adding needed depth and perspective. For both scholars and general readers looking for an up-to-date, reliable guide to the current situation of Palestinians in Israel, this is the book of choice.

– ALAN DOWTY
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR ISRAEL STUDIES

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The Pursuit of Peace

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The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israel Identity

Defending/Defining the Nation
by Dov Waxman


The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israel Identity — Defending/Defining the Nation offers a theoretically-informed analysis of the way in which Israeli national identity has shaped Israel’s foreign policy. By linking domestic identity politics to Israeli foreign policy, it reveals how a crisis of Israeli identity inflamed the debate in Israel over the Oslo peace process.


Reviews

This is a masterful study; seldom if ever have the internal and external dimensions of Israeli politics been tied together so persuasively. Waxman goes to the roots of the Jewish dilemma – which is also the Zionist dilemma – between the pull of universalism and the claims of particularity. But this is not a work mired in abstractions; rather, it traces this dilemma in Zionist and Israeli history with an extraordinary precision and command of events. The analysis of the Oslo peace process, in particular, explains its ultimate collapse with a depth of understanding that few other analyses have approached. This is a book that will be of value to readers on all levels, from the uninitiated to the expert. It should be on everyone’s short list of books on Israel.

– EMANUEL ADLER
ANDREA and CHARLES BRONFMAN PROFESSOR OF ISRAELI STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Israel’s Palestinian problem stretches beyond the Occupied Territories, Peleg and Waxman argue in this outstanding work. It includes Palestinians in Israel – citizens who have drifted ever farther away from active citizenship in recent years, as they have faced unending discrimination and been absorbed into the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The authors maintain that the only way to reverse the downward spiral in the relations between Jewish and Arab citizens is to accede to Arab demands for Israel to be reorganized as a state of all its citizens. But, the authors convincingly claim, a state with ‘equality now’ can still continue to serve as the Jewish homeland.

– JOEL MIGDAL
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON