The 1948 war led to the creation of the state of Israel, the fragmentation of Palestine, and to a conflict which has raged across the intervening sixty years. The historical debate likewise continues and these debates are encapsulated in the second edition of The War for Palestine, updated to include chapters on Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. In a preface to this edition, the editors survey the state of scholarship in this contested field. The impact of these debates goes well beyond academia. There is an important link between the state of Arab-Israeli relations and popular attitudes towards the past. A more complex and fair-minded understanding of that past is essential for preserving at least the prospect of reconciliation between Arabs and Israel in the future. The rewriting of the history of 1948 thus remains a practical as well as an academic imperative.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, Transjordan was a frontier region of the Ottoman province of Syria. In a time of European challenges to Ottoman integrity, the region's strategic location, linking Syria to Palestine and Arabia, motivated the Ottoman state to extend direct rule over this region. Using new archival material from Ottoman, Arabic and European sources, Eugene Rogan documents the case of Transjordan to provide a theoretically informed and articulate account of how the Ottoman state restructured and redefined itself during the last decades of its empire. In so doing, he explores the idea of frontier as a geographical and cultural boundary, and sheds light on the processes of state formation which ultimately led to the creation of the Middle East as it is defined today. The book concludes with an examination of the Ottoman legacy in the modern state of Jordan. Awarded both the Albert Hourani Book Award and the Turkish Studies Association Koprulu Prize at the Middle East
The 1948 war led to the creation of the state of Israel, the fragmentation of Palestine, and to a conflict which has raged across the intervening sixty years. The historical debate likewise continues
