Synopses & Reviews
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines the genesis of one of the greatest political struggles of our time Searching for the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, historians for years focused on the British Mandate period (19201948). Amy Dockser Marcus, however, demonstrates that the bloody struggle for power actually started much earlier, when Jerusalem was still part of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism laid the groundwork for the battles that would continue to rage nearly a century later.
Nineteen thirteen was the crucial year for these conflictsthe year that the Palestinians held the First Arab Congress and the first time that secret peace talks were held between Zionists and Palestinians. World War I, however, interrupted these peace efforts.
Dockser Marcus traces these dramatic times through the lives of a handful of the citys leading citizens as they struggle to survive. A current events must read in our ongoing efforts to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Review
"A richly insightful, highly readable, and acutely felt offering, one that is also critical and even handed . . . a page-turning, heartbreaking narrative."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"Marcus masterfully brings a Jerusalem of almost a century ago to pungent life, and her political dissection of the era is lucid."
-Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter examines the true history of the discord between Israel and Palestine with surprising results Though the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict have traditionally been traced to the British Mandate (1920-1948) that ended with the creation of the Israeli state, a new generation of scholars has taken the investigation further back, to the Ottoman period. The first popular account of this key era, Jerusalem 1913 shows us a cosmopolitan city whose religious tolerance crumbled before the onset of Z ionism and its corresponding nationalism on both sides-a conflict that could have been resolved were it not for the onset of World War I. With extraordinary skill, Amy Dockser Marcus rewrites the story of one of the world's most indelible divides.
About the Author
Amy Dockser Marcus is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who from 1991 to 1998 was based in Israel as the papers Middle East correspondent. She was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.