A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, by Illan Pappe 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, £12.76 Review by Piers Mostyn THE STARTING point of A History of Modern Palestine is the people, the land they live on and their socio-economic relations. Author Illan Pappe, an Israeli historian at the university of Haifa, rejects nationalist perspectives(whether Zionist or Palestinian) as a basis for history.
The book highlights the historical roots of the weak points of Palestinian nationalism. The nation of "Palestine", Pappe explains, was carved out of the region by successive empires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -firstly Ottoman and then British. Its late arrival and the poor political formation of Palestinian national consciousness, organisation and leadership from the 1930s onwards has been an important and enduring legacy. And this despite the extraordinary resilience of resistance since the 1960s.
Because Pappe's approach is "bottom up" he is careful to distinguish between political leaderships and the communities they are based on. He analyses the social and political impact of class, gender and religion as well as numerous horizontal divisions -for instance between the Ashkenhazi (Western) and Mizrachi ("oriental") Jews.
The book underlines the role of imperialism in the formation of the Israeli state over the decades leading up to 1948. However its account of more contemporary events sometimes misses out on this international context.
The contradictions of Zionist policy are teased out. For instance, the first Intifada of the late 1980s was marked by an increase in the role of women in the resistance. This reflected deeper going changes within Palestinian society, but