The Arab Betrayal of the Palestinians

In four decades of reading about international affairs and Middle Eastern geopolitics, I do not think I have come across a work of history that more fully illuminated the true sources of Palestinian terrorism and irresolvable conflict with the realities of Israel than does Efraim Karsh’s Palestine Betrayed. If ever a book merited the description tour de force, this is it. The pity of it is that only those who are already favourably disposed to the state of Israel are likely to so much as read it—and most of those will probably skim it, not really absorbing the subtle power of its detailed argument.

Karsh is Professor and Head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Programme at King’s College, London. He is the author of Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (1991); Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789–1923 (1999); The Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Palestine War 1948 (2002) and Islamic Imperialism: A History (2006). In this latest book, he is…