Eloszo (Preface)

Abstract

It is not so common to find a book such as this, which offers a different perspective from mainstream histories on the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. The voluminous historiography of this conflict – also known as the Palestine War to include the story of the occupation of Palestinian territories (the Nakba) – is now diverse and elaborate, though still mainly written from the divergent views of either one of the main contenders in the conflict – the Israelis, the Palestinians and their Arab neighbours. Often, emphasis has been put on the military and political aspects of the war, though a number of newly published histories accentuate the multiple economic, social and psychological, effects left on the communities involved, as well as on nearby countries due to the involvement of the old colonial and the emerging superpowers at the time. These more balanced research studies draw from postcolonial and other recent theoretical dimensions in international relations in order to redirect analysis onto the multifaceted economic, political, military and geopolitical long-term effects left by the Israeli-Palestine conflict on the neighbourhood – defining the Middle East as a ‘turbulent region’ – as a structural part of the transformations occurring within the wider global political system after the Second World War.