Reading/Listening/Watching List on Israel-Palestine
Updated March 12, 2024
If you’re looking for a book to read about the conflict:
Yossi Klein Halevi, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor
Halevi is an Israeli journalist who early in life was part of the nationalist right-wing. He began to branch out by learning Islam through relationships in Israel-Palestine and has become an interesting religious voice advocating an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians that acknowledges both Jewish and Arab historic ties to every place in the land but divides territorial sovereignty in a pragmatic way. This book is an explanation of Israeli and Jewish self-understandings toward Palestinians, and the paperback edition includes responses back to him from Palestinians.
Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem!
This classic work tells the story of 1947-1948 through the experiences of people in and near Jerusalem -- residents and fighters, Jewish and Arab as well as British. There are some useful passages about diplomacy and politics elsewhere – between Jews and Arabs, within the Arab League, at the UN and among British and American officials. The focus is on the period from November 29, 1947, when the UN approved the partition plan, to the end of the major fighting in and around Jerusalem in the summer of 1948.
Chaim Herzog and Shlomo Gazit, The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East
This book is a straight-up description about the details of the military campaigns, in prose and maps, particularly the wars of 1947-49, 1956, 1967, and 1973.
Michael Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
This is a classic and comprehensive analysis of the war by an academic and diplomat. It begiins with its international context and the different backgrounds and motivations of each of the major actors.
If you’re looking for a book on the broader history:
Ari Shavit, My Promised Land
Shavit is an Israeli journalist on the center-left who tells the story of Zionism from an internal, critical perspective. For roughly each decade of Zionism and then Israel, he tells a key story thread in depth, and encapsulates the cascades of dilemmas and challenges, cultural and political, that Zionist and Israeli leaders have had to face in real time one after another in each era.
Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
This is a classic work by one of the most important Palestinian scholars of our time, a professor at Columbia University.
James Michener, The Source
This is a useful broad history of the Holy Land, from prehistoric times to the 1960s when it was written. This historical fiction cuts between a team of three archaeologists – Israeli, Palestinian, and American – and recreations of every era in a fictitious site in the north of the land.
Anita Shapira, Israel: A History and/or Howard Sachar, A History of Israel From Zionism to Our Time
These are both good surveys, including both internal and foreign affairs. Shapira is one of the most important contemporary Israeli historians, and has written many biographies worth reading particularly about leaders of the Zionist and Israeli labor and kibbutz movements. Her survey is both more up-to-date and more dry. Sachar was a Jewish-American historian and his survey is a bit more readable.
Herschel Shanks, Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography
This is an overview of about three thousand years of the history of the city and region of Jerusalem, with clear explanations, photographs, and some maps.
Adina Hoffman, Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City
A focused book on a few phases of the creation of the modern, post-1850 city of Jerusalem outside its ancient walls. Ms. Hoffman grew up in New Hampshire.
If you are looking for a book on peace processes and negotiations:
Itamar Rabinovich, The Lingering Conflict: Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East 1948-2011
The best summary of all the efforts at peacemaking as well as the role of the U.S. beginning with the period of the founding of Israel, by a veteran Israeli negotiator who played a key role in the 1990s.
Aaron David Miller, The Much Too Promised Land
A history of peace negotiations between Israel and Arab countries and groups, told by a veteran American diplomat involved in the peace process since the 1990s.
Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days That Changed the Middle East
An account of the Israel-Palestinian peace process from its origins in secret talks in Oslo through the phase in the 1990s when the public agreement looked like it would hold. Savir was part of the early talks as an Israeli and among other things describes his relationship with his main Palestinian partner, Ahmed Qur’ei (Abu Alaa).
If you are looking for a medium-length article on the conflict or past negotiations:
Michael Walzer, “The Four Wars of Israel-Palestine”
https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/sss/pdfs/Walzer/FourWarsIsrael.pdf
The analysis was written in 2002 and refers to specifics of that year, but Walzer’s overall argument is based on his classic and foundational book Just and Unjust Wars. He argues that within both the Israeli and Palestinian communities there are people pushing one just war (for Israeli self-defense and for Palestinian self-determination) and one unjust war (for Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for the elimination of Israel as a sovereign state).
Emily Bazelon (moderator), “Was Peace Ever Possible?”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html
This discussion among seven peace process veterans, published in the New York Times, probes the peace processes of the 1990s.
Benny Morris, “The Origins of the Palestinian Refugee Problem”
https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/Readings/Morris,%20Benny%20Origins.pdf
Morris has a larger book on the same topic. In this article he maps out the phases of Palestinian displacement during the 1947-1949 war, and the actions of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders and fighters that influenced the population at the time.
Yossi Klein Halevi, “The Quiet Rise of the Israeli Center”
https://www.hartman.org.il/the-quiet-rise-of-the-israeli-center/
This 2014 article is an expansion on this idea: “A centrist has two nightmares about Israel’s future. The first is that there won’t be a Palestinian state. The second is that there will be.”
If you’re looking for some medium-length or short videos:
Unpacked https://www.youtube.com/@UNPACKED/playlists has videos about all aspects of Israel and the conflict. They are Israeli educators with a Zionist perspective and capable of internal criticism. Here is one episode about the history of partition proposals since the 1930s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kYWII25cxM&t=9s
“Imperial History of the Middle East” – every group that ruled the Holy Land from beginning of history until now in just a couple minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4hwCz06Qlg
If you’re looking for podcasts:
“For Heaven’s Sake: Israel at War” comes from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank in Jerusalem on Judaism, policy, and public ethics. Hartman is generally supportive of co-existence efforts as a matter of Jewish principle. This podcast is a conversation between Rabbi Donniel Hartman and aforementioned journalist Yossi Klein Halevi. Since October 7 they have been picking up a moral theme related to the war that week and responding personally and through a Jewish lens. https://www.hartman.org.il/program/for-heavens-sake-podcast/ and all the podcast apps.
Unapologetic: The Third Narrative is a conversation since October 7 between Ibrahim and Amira, two young Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship. They both work in the “shared society” field in Israel-Palestine, and they believe in the need for two states in order to accommodate the rights and realities of two nations in the land. They believe their unique position as Palestinians with the privileges of Israeli citizenship and their particular experiences with Israeli Jews position them to teach and advocate in a unique way. They speak about the diverse identities and experiences of different groups among Palestinians under Israeli control – Israeli citizens and non-citizens; in pre-1967 Israel, in East Jerusalem, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip. https://open.spotify.com/show/5CT8QicPO31pe7AX0jA4Wp and all the podcast apps.
This episode of the Ezra Klein show (11/21/2023) features Aaron David Miller, mentioned above as an American veteran of peace negotiations. They talk about the history of negotiations and why the 2000 negotiations failed, and what conditions might be necessary for negotiations to succeed in the future.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-aaron-david-miller.html
What Happened on October 7, 2023
Website: https://oct7map.com/
Podcast: Identity/Crisis With Yehuda Kurtzer, President, Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem – this episode is an oral history of the day of October 7 from a number of Israelis https://www.hartman.org.il/a-nation-that-cant-sleep/ or on all the podcast apps
