Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 [Paperback]

Gershon Shafir challenges the heroic myths about the foundation of the State of Israel by investigating the struggle to control land and labor during the early Zionist enterprise. He argues that it was not the imported Zionist ideas that were responsible for the character of the Israeli state, but the particular conditions of the local conflict between the European settlers and the Palestinian Arab population.

Gershon Shafiris Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is author ofImmigrants and Nationalistsand editor ofThe Citizenship Debates.

A groundbreaking analysis of the dynamics of Jewish-Arab relations. Roger Owen, author ofThe Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914

Very rarely does a scholar set out to do, or accomplish as much, as has Gershon Shafir in this splendid book about the origins of the Yishuv. Ian Lustick, President of the Israel Studies Association