The Accidental Empire Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 [Paperback]

Remarkably insightful . . . A groundbreaking revision that deserves to reframe the entire debate . . . It soars. The New York Times Book Review

InThe Accidental Empire, Gershom Gorenberg examines the strange birth of the settler movement in the ten years following the Six-Day War and finds that it was as much the child of Labor Party socialism as of religious extremism. The giants of Israeli historyDayan, Meir, Eshkol, Allonall played major roles in this drama, as did more contemporary figures like Sharon, Rabin, and Peres. Gorenberg also shows how three American presidents turned a blind eye to what was happening in the territories, and reveals their strategic reasons for doing so.

Drawing on newly opened archives and extensive interviews, Gorenberg calls into question much of what we think we know about this issue that continues to haunt the Middle East.

Gershom Gorenbergis the author ofThe End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mountand co-author ofShalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin. The Jerusalem correspondent for theForward, he has also written forThe Jerusalem Report,The New York Times Magazine,The Washington Post,The New Republic, andThe American Prospect. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children.

A thoroughly documented, pathbreaking analysis of Israel's disastrous settlement project in the occupied territories; it reads like a chapter in Barbara Tuchman's well-known book,The March of Folly. Amos Elon, author of The Pity of It All and The Israelis: Founders and Sons

The Accidental Empire is an extraordinary book. It offers insight and understanding into a period that has never been well understood. After the 1967 war, few in Israel recognized the inherent problems of building Jewish settlements beyond the Green Line, for they were torn between reason and spiritual attachment to the llóú