by Idith Zertal, Akiva Eldar
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Product Description
Lords of the Land tells the tragic story of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of the 1967 war and Israel's devastating victory over its Arab neighbors, catastrophe struck both the soul and psyche of the state of Israel. Based on years of research, and written by one of Israel's leading historians and journalists, this involving narrative focuses on the settlers themselves — often fueled by messianic zeal but also inspired by the original Zionist settlers — and shows the role the state of Israel has played in nurturing them through massive economic aid and legal sanctions. The occupation, the authors argue, has transformed the very foundations of Israel's society, economy, army, history, language, moral profile, and international standing. "The vast majority of the 6.5 million Israelis who live in their country do not know any other reality," the authors write. "The vast majority of the 3.5 million Palestinians who live in the regions of their occupied land do not know any other reality. The prolonged military occupation and the Jewish settlements that are perpetuating it have toppled Israeli governments and have brought Israel's democracy and its political culture to the brink of an abyss."
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Average Customer Review:
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 Long overdue, 2008-01-27
(This review is of the Hebrew edition of the book). This is a very well written and extremely well investigated book looking into one of the great tragedies of modern times. Rather than try and use the territories captured in 1967 to help solve the Palestinian refugee problem created with its establishment in 1948, Israel decided to colonize them in a way that would make it very hard ever to disengage from them. This book looks at the process through which this occurred, as well as the effects subjugating another people for the last 40 years has had on Israeli society.
5 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
 Lords of the Lie , 2008-01-16
It does not take the reader too long to understand where the writers of this book are coming from, and what their general approach is. One only has to read the introduction and one understands that the whole project is informed by a basic bias and distortion. The authors seem to feel that the history of the Arab- Israeli conflict began in 1967. They give the impression that before this the Arabs accepted the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. They also give the impression that in 1967 the West Bank and Gaza had clear international status and sovereignty. This is not the case at all. For there was no Palestinian Arab sovereignty then and the Jordans had de facto control of the West Bank ( Judea and Samaria) and the Egyptians had control of Gaza. When the the Jordanians attacked Israel in 1967 this was from territories which were in no way part of any Palestinian Arab state or sovereignty.
The authors write as if Israel came and occupied a clearly Palestinian instead of a disputed territory. This sparsely populated territory before being handed to the Arabs in 1917 was part of of the British Mandate. It is in fact the heartland of Biblical Israel. And the whole Israel settlement enterprise can only be understood in terms of the overall general project of returning the Jewish people to their homeland and restoring their place there. If one does not believe in the legitimacy of this project then one should also not believe in Israel in its 1947-8 borders not only in Israel in the 1967 borders.
What irritated me in this book however most of all was the clearly imbalanced and unfair presentation of the violence which has taken place in and from these territories in the past forty years. The authors do their best to minimize the leading role Palestinian terror played in forcing Israel to take defensive measures against it. All their sympathy is for one side, the allegedly 'occupied.'
But the same Palestinian and Arab rejectionism that has fueled the violent conflict from the beginning is what has prevented a real peace agreement in these years.
Unfortunately this book is from A to Z informed by an outlook which has no sympathy for the Jews of Judea and Samaria , or in fact for the state of Israel.
5 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
 propaganda, 2007-12-24
Propaganda masquerading as scholarship, the authors' "facts" are not verified and tendentious. This book has no pretense of objectivity. Trash!
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
Important Book, 2007-11-05
'Lords of the Land' is unquestionably the definitive account of the settler movement written so far. It sets out in rich detail how successive Israeli governments, including Labour ones supported this disastrous enterprise. It chronicles how Sharon and others on the Israeli right were instrumental in the enterprise. Further then that - it details how intertwined the IDF and government ministries have been with the settlers.
Particularly interesting are the sections regarding the legal mechanisms that have been used over the years for the purpose of settlers aquiring land such as the earlier attempt in the Beth El case to cloke settlements as a "security" consideration to the more sophistacted attempts to turn land in the West Bank into "state land" and ultimately then land for the settlers.
Anyone who cares about peace between Israelis and Palestinian and a two-state solution ought to read this book. Anyone who may naively have thought the settlers were brave Zionist pioneers are likely to be disappointed - if anything, the settlers represent the very opposite - a distortion of Zionism.
47 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
The settlements are illegal under both international and Israeli domestic law. , 2007-10-13
A previous reviewer made the shocking (but incorrect) assertion that the legality of the settlements is somehow in question. She is absolutely incorrect. See Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly stipulates: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Perhaps she should have read the footnotes of this excellent book, or just searched for the terms "prohibition on settlement of occupied territory" to see a comprehensive discussion of this question from a legal perspective.
Obviously many other people (not only the previous reviewer) may somehow fail to understand that the prohibition on settlement on occupied territory was designed specifically to prevent projects like the Nazi plans for Poland, in which large numbers of civilians were transferred to establish agricultural colonies in various areas. The prohibition is absolute and non-derogable (which means that a country can't opt out of it under certain conditions).
As such, the (il)legality of the settlements under international law is almost universally accepted, with the exception of a VERY small number of scholars seeking to justify this blatant breach of international humanitarian law (the law of war). This excellent book shows how the settlement movement has not only violated international humanitarian law, but also Israeli domestic law (see, for example, the Israeli Supreme Court decision ruling that settlements built on the land of the Palestinian village of Belin were illegal since they were built on land stolen from private owners, yet still allowing the Israeli settlers who broke into the unfinished buildings to remain in the homes).
An excellent, well-researched, and highly relevant book.
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