Historical Schools and Political Science: An Arab-Israeli History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

In “Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict” (Perspectives on Politics 3:1), Jonathan B. Isacoff does a great service by bringing together the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the study of international relations (IR). All too often, political scientists shy away from the ongoing conflict and the heat such work could generate on campus. At the same time, Isacoff's application of his multiple-schools model reveals some limitations with respect to political scientists' use of history generally and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. In this essay, I note four areas where his argument merits further scrutiny.