by Gershom Gorenberg
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Product Description
The untold story, based on groundbreaking original research, of the actions and inactions that created the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories
After Israeli troops defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967, the Jewish state seemed to have reached the pinnacle of success. But far from being a happy ending, the Six-Day War proved to be the opening act of a complex political drama, in which the central issue became: Should Jews build settlements in the territories taken in that war?
The Accidental Empire is Gershom Gorenberg’s masterful and gripping account of the strange birth of the settler movement, which was the child of both Labor Party socialism and religious extremism. It is a dramatic story featuring the giants of Israeli history—Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Levi Eshkol, Yigal Allon—as well as more contemporary figures like Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres. Gorenberg also shows how the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations turned a blind eye to what was happening in the territories, and reveals their strategic reasons for doing so.
Drawing on newly opened archives and extensive interviews, Gorenberg reconstructs what the top officials knew and when they knew it, while weaving in the dramatic first-person accounts of the settlers themselves. Fast-moving and penetrating, The Accidental Empire casts the entire enterprise in a new and controversial light, calling into question much of what we think we know about this issue that continues to haunt the Middle East.
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Average Customer Review:
13 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
 Romantic view of Israeli history from Israel's leftwing, 2007-04-26
Israel came into being as a result of a civil war during the last days of the British Mandate over Palestine. As the civil war gathered momentum the British abandoned the mandate with the approval of most of the rest of the world. The Israeli left knows this war as the war of Independence and the Arab Palestinians whether now Israeli citizens or stateless Palestinians as the 'Nakba' or 'disaster'.
In Gorenberg's book it is the war of Independence with its effective partition of mandatory Palestine without most of the Jewish religious sites and most of the Arabs with the exception of the Arab areas of the Galilee.
What frightens Gorenberg the most about the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria is that they contain most of the sites of Jewish religious significance and that they now also contain centers of Jewish religious population. He fears their existence more than he fears the Palestinian Arabs. The reason is quite simple: one is a distant neighbor and the other is too much like his own mother-in-law.
So the remaining areas of the stateless British Mandate for Palestine which Israel conquered in 1967 are referred to as being occupied territory. This serves both the interests of the Israeli left who don't want the Jewish religious sites nor the re-emergence of a strong religious sentiment among the Jewish people. It also serves the interests of the Palestinian Arabs who want to return to the days of 1948 when partition of the land on better terms for them was still available.
The Palestinian Arab viewpoint is that the entire area should be Islamic and Arab despite its large Jewish population. This is not well discussed. The idea that UN resolution 242 is effectively a return to the Peel commisions partition plan or the 1947 UN plan for partition plan is also not discussed. It is presented only as a preservation of the status quo of the 1949 armistice lines now disguised as being Israel and the rest as being occupied territory. This mis-reading of history maximizes the area of the partition for Palestinian Arabs without taking on additional Jewish religious sites. It also helps prevent the re-emergence of strong religious sentiment among the Jewish people in Israel.
As an Israeli it is a fun book to read, but understand that you are reading propaganda from a very interested party. A book on the same events from the standpoint of a Palestinian Arab or a religious Palestinian Jew would tell you an entirely different story.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
 Full, in depth, information, 2007-02-12
The Accidental Empire is a wide ranging book, but a wonderfully focused and well researched account aftermath of the Six Days War, the capture of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. TAE appears to be a wider treatment of Gorenberg's far less successful (though very interesting) first book, The End of Days, about the growing power of religious Zionists. Instead of focusing on the Temple Mount, TAE provides an account of the religious settlement movement, primarily Gush Emunim, and their attempts to create illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Perhaps the strongest point of the book is how muddled the thinking of the Labor leadership was about the new settlements. As aging revolutionaries, they were still wedded to the idea that settlements meant security; that creating facts on the land would lead to a more secure Israel. But they were equally drawn to the idea that land was a negotiating chip with surrounding Arab states. The pull between both impulses led to a sustained paralysis.
3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Any interested in Zionist history and issues must have this., 2006-09-23
THE ACCIDENTAL EMPIRE: ISRAEL AND THE BIRTH OF THE SETTLEMENTS, 1967-77 offers up the untold story based on new original research, of the actions and issues which created the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. It goes beyond detailing the well-known events of the Six Day War to probe the birth of the settler movement in Israel, the product of Labor Party socialism and religious extremism. Israel's major figures and how they interacted with U.S. administrative forces - distracted by Vietnam - are probed in chapters which tell of the first Israeli settler in occupied territory p to modern times. Any interested in Zionist history and issues must have this.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Adds much to a better understanding of the historical context of the current strife in the West Bank and Gaza, 2006-07-08
It is essential in reading this book, and perhaps more significantly in reading reviews of this book, to separate the views of religious expansionists from those of the secular government and of by far the highest portion of the population of Israel throughout its existence regarding the settlements. It is also important to compare the strong emotional, almost messianic, attachment to the land of Samaria and Judea felt and espoused by the settlers with the need of the government to "create facts" on the land that supposedly distinguished its own internal legal opinions, and those of most of the rest of the world, regarding the "legality" of the settlements. Whatever personal views you may have on these and other core issues raised by Gorenberg's thoroughly researched, well documented and extensively footnoted work, his dispassionate, well written report of the events is an invaluable reference work that helps define the significance of the settlements as contributing to Middle East unrest. Moreover, Gorenberg's fascinating report of the inner workings of the Eshkol, Meir and Rabin cabinets, and the arrogant disregard of official government policy by cabinet members who represented a small but powerful portion of the population, provide insight into the intrigues that seemingly drive many national decisions in Israel because of the need to form coalition governments that direct the policies of the country.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
A well written, well researched, thorough history of an import period of Israeli history, 2006-05-17
Although I consider myself very knowledgeable about the Arab-Israeli conflict, this book nevertheless provided me with much new information. I think that it is common for people to believe that following the six day war the labor government desperately desired to trade the newly conquered territories for peace and that settlements did not start until the Likud government took over in the late '70's. This book sets the record straight. Although, the Israeli government's official position was that it was ready to trade land for peace, their actions spoke otherwise. Largely due to an emotional attachment to the "Whole Land of Israel" as well as for security concerns, the labor government was actually conflicted about giving up the territories. Slowly but surely the labor government encouraged or condoned settlements including near major Arab population centers (eg Hebron). This was despite the government's knowledge that such settlement contravened international law. Israel's grasp on the territories was already quite firm before the likud governments of the 1980's.
Gorenberg's book is very well researched as he relies upon archived documents as well as interviews of the political players at the time. A unique aspect of the book is how Gorenberg follows certain "unknown" individuals, such as a regular army soldier who fought in the six day war, and intersperses their emotions and ideas within the relatively more dry telling of the history.
This is a very important book for anyone who wants to understand the current conflict.
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