Palestine And The Arab Israeli Conflict A History With Documents

Who This Book Is Actually For

Palestine And The Arab Israeli Conflict A History With Documents by Charles D. Smith is a documentary reader that most university courses on the Middle East end up adopting because it does one thing well: it collects primary sources and lets you read them in context. It's not a narrative history. You won't find a continuous story told from beginning to end. What you get are translated documents, speeches, treaties, letters, diplomatic correspondence, and contemporary accounts arranged roughly chronologically with brief editorial introductions. The strength of the book is in the documents themselves. You can read a 1915 McMahon–Hussein letter alongside a 1936 Peel Commission report and a 1947 UN Partition Plan resolution without someone telling you what to think about them. The editor's introductions are short, usually two or three paragraphs, and they situate the document in the relevant timeline without rewriting history. That approach is genuinely useful for seminar discussions and paper writing. I used this text when I was advising undergraduates who were trying to write primary-source-based papers on the 1948 war and the refugee issue. The problem most students run into is not finding sources. It's figuring out which source actually matters for their argument. The book's chronological arrangement helps with that, but only if you know where to look. The pre-1948 section is dense with material from the Mandate period. The post-1967 section has solid coverage of the PLO documents and Camp David-era negotiations. Something I noticed repeatedly: students tend to skip the economic and social documents because they're looking for political moments. Those overlooked passages often contain the most useful evidence for arguing about displacement patterns or land ownership claims.

What The Book Does Better Than Most Alternatives

Most competing readers either lean too heavily toward one narrative frame or treat the documents as illustrations rather than as evidence. Smith's compilation is deliberately wider in its sourcing. It includes material from Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, Egyptian, and Syrian archives alongside Western diplomatic records. The translations are generally reliable, though no translation is perfect, and a few of the older ones show their age in phrasing. Another thing that works well is the editorial apparatus. Each document has a clear date and a brief note on origin. Cross-references between sections are sparse but functional. If you're doing serious research, you'll still need to consult the original archives or more specialized collections for verification, but for getting a grounded overview, this book covers a lot of ground efficiently.

Where It Falls Apart

The book has real limitations. The first edition came out in 1984 and has gone through multiple revisions, but even the latest editions cap out around the early 2000s. If your work extends into the 2008 Gaza war, the Second Intifada aftermath, or the more recent diplomatic breakdowns, you're going to need supplemental readings. The document selection also reflects the author's own judgment about what counts as historically significant, and that judgment is not neutral. Some scholars have criticized the book for underrepresenting certain Palestinian voices or for giving disproportionate weight to state-level diplomacy over grassroots movements. That's a fair critique. It's not unique to this volume. Nearly every documentary reader on this conflict makes selective choices that reflect the compiler's perspective. Another practical issue: the paperback edition is thick enough to crack the spine if you're writing notes in the margins. The hardcover holds up better. If you're on a budget, the ebook version exists on most academic platforms, but the pagination shifts between formats, which matters if your professor is asking for specific document references.

How I Actually Use It In Practice

When I'm pulling sources from this book for course materials or research, I don't read it cover to cover. I go to the chronological section relevant to my topic, scan the introductions, and flag any documents that speak directly to my argument. I then check the footnotes or bibliography to trace where the original source lives. Sometimes the document is available in an online archive. Sometimes it isn't, and you have to track it down through interlibrary loan or a university database. That step usually takes anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours depending on how obscure the source is. I also cross-reference documents from this book with more specialized readers like Ilan Pappé's document collections or the United Nations document databases when I need additional material on a specific episode. The book is not a standalone reference. It's a starting point, and a good one at that, but it works best when treated as part of a broader source strategy.

How To Get It

You can find Palestine And The Arab Israeli Conflict A History With Documents on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and through your university bookstore. Academic vendors like VitalSource and Kindle offer digital versions. If you're a student, check whether your campus library has a copy on reserve. The book is commonly used in graduate and undergraduate Middle Eastern studies courses, so it should be available through most academic libraries. The publisher is McGraw Hill, and the most recent edition carries an ISBN you can use to search for pricing and availability. Avoid third-party sellers listing used copies with missing pages or water damage. I've seen it happen more often than I'd like to admit, and it ruins the usefulness of the document references when half the text is gone.