The Iron Wall

When I first started reading this book, I could not put it aside. I read it again recently, in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas attack, and found it as relevant as when it was first published.

Scholarly and accessible at the same time, it showed me why Israel’s overwhelming military power has failed to bring peace to the Holy Land. While much of the literature on this controversial subject looks like militant propaganda, I like the tone of Shlaim’s book: serene, compassionate, and not at all polemical. 

The first edition of the book was a detailed and well-reviewed study of Israeli policy toward its Arab neighbors in the country’s first fifty years of statehood, from 1948 to 1998.

Particular attention is given to negotiations and diplomacy before and after the major Arab-Israeli military confrontations. The second edition expands and updates the original text to take the story through January 2006, a period that saw dramatic changes in longstanding patterns of political leadership and institutional dominance. These included the death of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat; the demise of Ariel Sharon, who fell into a coma and never… show more.