What This Book Is About
Alex Markman (Author)The major Middle Eastern conflict has never been, and neither is it now, an isolated Arab-Zionist conflict. it has been marked with the involvement of the world empires and superpowers, as well as of their political intentions and mistakes, miscalculations, and unrealistic expectations.
Along with a short history of Zionism and its conflict with the Arabs described in the book, the reader will find a comprehensive analysis of situations that arose as a result of actions undertaken by the players of the complicated Middle Eastern political game. The book describes all major factors that were taken into account in the decision-making process, icluding but not limited to demography, economy, geopolitical reality, social and political trends, et cetera. Such an approach may help to explain the complexity of political actions and their outcomes and how each one kept shaping up the future of the Israeli-Arab relations.
Contemporary issues related to the conflict are also the subject of this book, such as the involvement of international media, excessive attention of the UN, the Palestinian refugee situation and territorial dispute. One of the most important problems, the status of East Jerusalem, is analyzed at length taking into account its religious and spiritual significance which is increasing in time, not to mention that claims for the right to its ownership only exacerbate the conflict.
A separate chapter is devoted to American Jews. It turns out that although different in many aspects, their life has something in common with that of the European Jews in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.
Although we humans haven't been blessed with the ability of forseeing the future, it is also in our nature to repeat out attempts to predict it basing on the knowledge of history. Alas, it has never been accurate, but the author nonetheless tried to analyze the contemporary trends and consider their role in shaping up the future of Israel, in particular, and the whole of the Middle East, in general.