Palestine and Israel from the British Mandate to the 2008 Gaza War
This collection of original articles from Asian Affairs (and its predecessor, the Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society) traces the emergence of the ‘Israel-Palestine’ conflict from the period of the British Mandate (1917-1948) until the aftermath of the 2008 Gaza War between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement, ‘Hamas’. It contains articles by British observers of the growing strife between the Arab and Jewish populations, positional speeches from 1930 by Chaim Weizmann (later the first president of Israel) and Jemal Bey Al Husseini (Chairman of the Palestine Arab Party), discussions of peace proposals including one from Sir Archer Cust, the former Private Secretary to the High Commissioner of Palestine. Archdeacon Angus Macinnes provides a rare first-hand account of the communal violence that accompanied the end of the British Mandate and the independence of Israel. Lieutenant‐General Sir John Glubb (Glubb Pasha) addresses ‘Britain and the Middle East’ in the months after the 1956 Suez War and there are period articles on US policy in the Middle East after the ‘Six-Day War’ of 1967 and the role of the Arab Ba’ath Party after the 1973 ‘Yom Kippur War’. Two articles from the early 1980s bracket the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The collection also includes thoughts on the future of Palestinian refugees from 1995 and a look back on a century of conflict from the historian Avi Shlaim in 2011.