From Vision to Reality: Perspectives on Israel Studies

From Vision to Reality traces how Zionist leaders imagined the place of Palestinian Arabs in a future Jewish state and how those ideas were tested in the turbulent years before and during 1948.

Drawing on a plethora of archival sources, author Itamar Radai follows the work of the Emergency Committee that planned Israel's governing apparatus in 1947-48, showing that its members assumed a large Arab minority would remain and debated how to secure equal rights, political participation, and social services for Arab citizens. Moving back in time, Radai reconstructs David Ben-Gurion's views on the Palestinian Arabs from his arrival in Palestine in 1906 through the 1930s, using his speeches, writings, and meetings with Palestinian Arab leaders to illuminate his evolution from relatively moderate to more hardline positions. He then examines wider Zionist thinking in the eras of the Peel Commission (1937), the UN partition plan (1947), and the eruption of civil war in Palestine (1947-1948).

An accessible intervention in major scholarly disputes, From Vision to Reality makes cutting-edge archival research a compelling read for journalists, policymakers, and any readers interested in Israel and Palestine.