Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War
Translated and condensed from an acclaimed Hebrew study, this is a major revisionist work by one of Israel's leading journalists and author of a multivolume biography of David Ben-Gurion. In the 42 years between 1921 and 1963--during which he served as labor leader, Zionist statesman, and Prime Minister of an independent Israel--Ben-Gurion's influence grew to have a decisive effect upon Jewish policy. Israel came to view the Arabs, to a great extent, through the eyes of David Ben-Gurion. From the outset, he was one of the few leaders of Labor Zionism who sought to anchor the Jewish right to Palestine in something other than historical argument and nationalist myth, Shabtai Teveth writes. But his views have been misinterpreted, derived almost exclusively from his public pronouncements. Teveth delves below the surface of Ben-Gurion's public and diplomatic stance, examining his diaries and letters and the minutes of closed meetings. On the basis of this new edvidence, Teveth gives us a fresh understanding of the man who has long been regarded as harsh and uncompromising, showing that Ben-Gurion was in fact the ultimate pragmatist, playing the roles of peacemaker and militant alternately and at times even simultaneously. About the Author Shabtai Teveth is a Research Fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and at the Weizmann Zionist Research Center at Tel-Aviv University. He is also the author of The Tanks of Tammuz, The Cursed Blessing, and Moshe Dayan: A Biography.