The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East

by David Hirst (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $28.91

  More than a decade before Israel's New Historians revolutionized the study of Israeli history, English journalist David Hirst wrote The Gun and the Olive Branch, a classic, myth-breaking general history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hirst, former Middle East correspondent of the Guardian, traces the origins of the terrible conflict back to the 1880s to show how Arab violence, although often cruel and fanatical, is a response to the challenge of repeated aggression. The Gun and the Olive Branch is an absorbing, potentially controversial, history of the Middle Eastern conflict that is indispensable to anyone with an interest in world politics and by partisans of both sides. This classic and controversial account of the origins of the Middle East conflict returns to print updated with a lengthy introduction that reflects on the course of recent Middle Eastern historyespecially the abortive Israeli-Palestinian peace process and 9/11.

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $18.96

  Narrates the history of the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine since the 1880s, from the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers. This updated edition of Hirst's classic work explains why the history of Palestine is still relevant to what is happening in the region now.