Book Review Essay: Avi Shlaim’s Israel and Palestine

Avi Shlaim introduces himself as belonging to group labeled the revisionist Israeli historians or the new historians, initially including scholars like Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe. The group emerged as holding views challenging official version of state of Israel, concerning almost every detail of that history, since Balfour promise with which starts book (Chapter one).In light of recent scholarship, Palestinian-Israeli conflict appears as succession of deceitful games and irrational paradoxes. The Balfour declaration, to begin with, was a white Negro (A. Koestler): one nation promising another nation land of third nation. (4) Britain supported aspirations of Jews, but refused to recognize Arab independence in Palestine, although its envoy to King Hussein (1918), D.G.Hogarth, assured him that no people will be subjected to another.