Where to start

  • Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York: Basic Books, 1981)
  • Gilbert, Martin. Israel: A History (London: Doubleday, 1998)
  • Schulze, Kirsten. The Arab-Israeli Conflict (London: Pearson Education, 2008

More suggested reading

  • Arian, Asher. Politics in Israel: The Second Republic  (Michigan: CQ Press, 2005)
  • Bregman, Ahron and El-Tahri, Jihan. Israel and the Arabs: An Eyewitness Account of War and Peace in the Middle East (New York: TV Books, 2000)
  • Eldar, Akiva and Zertal, Idith. Lords of the Land: The War over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, translated by Vivian Eden (New York: Nation Books, 2009)
  • Friedman, Thomas. From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Harper Collins, 1995)
  • Gilbert, Martin. The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 9th Edition (Oxford: Routledge, 2008)
  • Laqueur, Walter and Rubin, Barry. The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin Books, 2008)
  • Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008)
  • Nusseibeh, Sari and David, Anthony. Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life (London: Picador, 2008)
  • Oren, Michael. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
  • Ross, Dennis and Makovsky, David.  Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East (New York: Viking, 2009)
  • Sachar, Howard. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Knopf, 2007)
  • Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
  • Shindler, Colin. What Do Zionists Believe? (London: Granta Books, 2007)
  • Tessler, Mark. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994)