Challenging the claim that Palestine's peasant economy progressed during the 1920s and 1930s, Amos Nadan skillfully integrates a wide variety of sources to demonstrate that the period was actually one of deterioration on both the macro (per capita) and micro levels. The economy would have most likely continued its downward spiral during the 1940s had it not been for the temporary prosperity that resulted from World War II. Nadan argues that this deterioration continued despite the British authorities' channeling of funds from the Jewish sector and the wealthier Arab sectors into projects for the Arab rural economy. The British were hoping that Palestine's peasants would not rebel if their economic conditions improved. These programs were, on the whole, defective because the British chose programs based on an assumption that the peasants were too ignorant to manage their farms wisely, instead of working with the peasants and their own institutions.

Adopting a systematic yet non-technical approach. Jacob Metzer's book is the first to analyse the divided economy of Mandatory Palestine from the viewpoints of modern economic history and development economics. While the existing literature has tended to focus on the Jewish economy, this book explores the socio-economic attributes of both the Arab and Jewish communities within the complex political economy of the period. A concluding chapter reviews the uneasy record of Arab-Jewish economic coexistence in the area of Mandatory Palestine, composed of present-day Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The book makes a significant contribution to the economic history of the modern Middle East and to an understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It will appeal to economic historians, development economists and to scholars in the related fields of social and political history.

The control of land remains the crucial issue in the Arab-Israel conflict. Kenneth Stein investigates in detail and without polemics how and why Jews acquired land from Arabs in Palestine during the British Mandate, and he reaches conclusions that are challenging and suprising. Stein contends that Zionists were able to purchase the core of a national territory in Palestine during this period for three reasons: they had the single-mindedness of purpose, as well as the capital, to buy the land; the Arabs, economically impoverished, politically fragmented, and socially atomized, were willing to sell the land; and the British were largely ineffective in regulating land sales and protecting Arab tenants. Neither Arab opposition to land sales nor British attempts to regulate them actually limited land acquisition. There were always more Arab offers to sell land than there were Zionist funds. In fact, many sales were made by Arab politicians who publicly opposed Zionism and even led agitation against land acquisition by Jews. Zionists furthered their own ambitions by skillfully using their understanding of the bureaucracy to write laws and to influence key administrative appointments. Further, they knew how to take advantage of social and economic cleavages within Arab society. Based primarily on archival research, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939 offers an unusually balanced analysis of the social and political history of land sales in Palestine during this critical period. It provides exceptional and essential insight into one of the most troubling conflicts in today's world.

Winner of the 2013 New York Book Show Award in Scholarly/Professional Cover Design Jewish Radicals explores the intertwined histories of Jews and the American Left through a rich variety of primary documents. Written in English and Yiddish, these documents reflect the entire spectrum of radical opinion, from anarchism to social democracy, Communism to socialist-Zionism. Rank-and-file activists, organizational leaders, intellectuals, and commentators, from within the Jewish community and beyond, all have their say. Their stories crisscross the Atlantic, spanning from the United States to Europe and British-ruled Palestine. The documents illuminate in fascinating detail the efforts of large numbers of Jews to refashion themselves as they confronted major problems of the twentieth century: poverty, anti-semitism, the meaning of American national identity, war, and totalitarianism. In this comprehensive sourcebook, the story of Jewish radicals over seven decades is told for the first time in their own words.

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

The book that is providing a storm of controversy, from ‘Israel’s bravest historian’ (John Pilger) Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel. 'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East. *** 'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' JOHN PILGER 'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue. There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT

A panoramic and provocative history of life in Palestine during the three strife-torn but romantic decades when Britain ruled and the seeds of today's conflicts were sown Tom Segev's acclaimed works, 1949 and The Seventh Million, overturned accepted views of the history of Israel. Now Segev explores the dramatic period before the creation of the state, when Britain ruled over "one Palestine, complete" (as noted in the receipt signed by the High Commissioner) and when its promise to both Jews and Arabs that they would inherit the land set in motion the conflict that haunts the region to this day. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials, Segev reconstructs a tumultuous era (1917 to 1948) of limitless possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces the legendary figures--General Allenby, Lawrence of Arabia, David Ben-Gurion--as well as an array of pioneers, secret agents, diplomats, and fanatics. He tracks the steady advance of Jews and Arabs toward confrontation and with his hallmark originality puts forward a radical new argument: that the British, far from being pro-Arab, as commonly thought, consistently favored the Zionist position, and did so out of the mistaken--and anti-Semitic belief that Jews turned the wheels of history. Rich in unforgettable characters, sensitive to all perspectives, One Palestine, Complete brilliantly depicts the decline of an empire, the birth of one nation, and the tragedy of another.