The long war;: Israel and the Arabs since 1946,

For thousands of years, Palestine has been a land of conflict. Even before the first skirmishes between Arab and Jew, it was a battleground where empires clashed and nomadic tribes scuffled for local advantage. But with the strife-torn birth of Isreal and the concurrent flareup of Arab nationalism, an even more lethal quarrel erupted-a long war waged by men with different dreams whose only common ground was raw courage and the conviction of an ideal. Here, J. Bowyer Bell chronicles this extended conflict, from the disintergration of the British Mandate in 1946 to the Six Days' War of 1967 that splintered all hope of peace and once again placed the Middle East in the world's headlines. The bloody history of Arab-Israeli relations is seen as a single military operation that, in continuity, intensity, and complexity, is second only to the Thirty Years' War. Its fronts have ranged from the quiet halls of embassies to the sandy borders of the Suez Canal; its methods have included everything from acid journalism and distorted statistics to assissination and guided missiles. Through his vivid recreation of the political and social frictions, the border incidents, battles, and campaigns, J. Bowyer Bell illuminates this woefully mishandled conflict, placing sensational incidents in their proper context and exhuming still others that defy oversimplification. He brings to life the heroic and exciting personalities that the long war has produced-the Grand Mufti, Nasser, Ben-Guiron, Hussein of Jordan, Ernest Bevin, Dayan, the underground fighters, briliant military leaders, secret agents- and leaves nothing uncovered in the dark and convoluted ground of comtemporary Middle Eastern history.