Review
This is an elegant and forceful narrative by a young Palestinian scholar. (Boutros Boutros Ghali, Former UN Secretary-General )
By placing international law within its proper political and historical context, Victor Kattan offers a fresh analysis of a conflict with far-reaching implications for the region and beyond. ... A welcome addition to the search for a peace in the Middle East with human dignity for all its peoples at its centre. (His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan )
Differing historical narratives and competing legal claims have characterized the Palestinian issue for over a hundred years. Victor Kattan gives them new meaning in his excellent study, which contains much new historical material and many new legal insights. (John Dugard, Professor of Public International Law Emeritus, Leiden University and UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories 2000-2008 )
A well-researched and extremely informative book... One of the best on the subject. (Dr Anis al-Qasem, former Chairman of the Legal Committee of the Palestinian National Council )
Lucid and Scholarly work. Kattan explains how Jews and Palestinians were tragically caught up in the net of Great Power politics. His critique of Zionism, while robust, fully acknowledges the oppression that the Jews of Europe suffered through antisemitism, a subject that he treats with sensitivity and insight. ... This book could contribute to its resolution. (Brian Klug, Senior Research Fellow and Tutor, St. Benet's Hall, University of Oxford. )
This is a book that students of the Israel / Palestine question will find impossible to ignore. It serves as a very readable introduction to the dispute from its origins up to 1949, but approaches the material from the angle of an international lawyer as well as a historian ... It is in Kattan’s fresh examination of the legal questions that the book’s chief originality lies. (John McHugo, Executive Member of The Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) )
By placing international law within its proper political and historical context, Victor Kattan offers a fresh analysis of a conflict with far-reaching implications for the region and beyond. ... A welcome addition to the search for a peace in the Middle East with human dignity for all its peoples at its centre. (His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan )
Differing historical narratives and competing legal claims have characterized the Palestinian issue for over a hundred years. Victor Kattan gives them new meaning in his excellent study, which contains much new historical material and many new legal insights. (John Dugard, Professor of Public International Law Emeritus, Leiden University and UN Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories 2000-2008 )
A well-researched and extremely informative book... One of the best on the subject. (Dr Anis al-Qasem, former Chairman of the Legal Committee of the Palestinian National Council )
Lucid and Scholarly work. Kattan explains how Jews and Palestinians were tragically caught up in the net of Great Power politics. His critique of Zionism, while robust, fully acknowledges the oppression that the Jews of Europe suffered through antisemitism, a subject that he treats with sensitivity and insight. ... This book could contribute to its resolution. (Brian Klug, Senior Research Fellow and Tutor, St. Benet's Hall, University of Oxford. )
This is a book that students of the Israel / Palestine question will find impossible to ignore. It serves as a very readable introduction to the dispute from its origins up to 1949, but approaches the material from the angle of an international lawyer as well as a historian ... It is in Kattan’s fresh examination of the legal questions that the book’s chief originality lies. (John McHugo, Executive Member of The Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU) )
Product Description
From Coexistence to Conquest seeks to explain how the Arab-Israeli conflict developed by looking beyond strict legalism to the men behind the policies adopted by the Great Powers at the dawn of the twentieth century. It controversially argues that Zionism was adopted by the British Government in its 1917 Balfour Declaration primarily as an immigration device and that it can be traced back to the 1903 Royal Commission on Alien Immigration and the Alien’s Act 1905.
The book contains the most detailed legal analysis of the 1915-6 Hussein-McMahon correspondence, as well as the Balfour Declaration, and takes a closer look at the travaux préparatoires that formed the British Mandate of Palestine. It places the violent reaction of the Palestine Arabs to mass Jewish immigration in the context of Zionism, highlighting the findings of several British commissions of inquiry which recommended that Britain abandon its policy. The book also revisits the controversies over the question of self-determination, and the partition of Palestine.
The Chapter on the 1948 conflict seeks to update international lawyers on the scholarship of Israel’s ‘new’ historians and reproduces some of the horrific accounts of the atrocities that took place from newspaper reports, UN documents, and personal accounts, which saw the expulsion and exodus of almost an entire people from their homeland. The penultimate chapter argues that Israel was created through an act of conquest or subjugation. The book concludes with a sobering analysis of the conflict arguing that neither Jews nor Arabs were to blame for starting it.
The book contains the most detailed legal analysis of the 1915-6 Hussein-McMahon correspondence, as well as the Balfour Declaration, and takes a closer look at the travaux préparatoires that formed the British Mandate of Palestine. It places the violent reaction of the Palestine Arabs to mass Jewish immigration in the context of Zionism, highlighting the findings of several British commissions of inquiry which recommended that Britain abandon its policy. The book also revisits the controversies over the question of self-determination, and the partition of Palestine.
The Chapter on the 1948 conflict seeks to update international lawyers on the scholarship of Israel’s ‘new’ historians and reproduces some of the horrific accounts of the atrocities that took place from newspaper reports, UN documents, and personal accounts, which saw the expulsion and exodus of almost an entire people from their homeland. The penultimate chapter argues that Israel was created through an act of conquest or subjugation. The book concludes with a sobering analysis of the conflict arguing that neither Jews nor Arabs were to blame for starting it.
About the Author
Victor Kattan is a Teaching Fellow at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is Assistant Editor of the Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law and compiled a collection of essays in Victor Kattan (ed.), The Palestine Question in International Law (2008). His articles have been published in law journals and newspapers in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. He was formerly a Director of Arab Media Watch and corresponded as a freelance journalist from the International Court of Justice during the West Bank Wall case. He was a UN Development Programme consultant to the Badil Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2003-4.
