The Gun and the Olive Branch

David Hirst
August 2003     ISBN: 1560254831

This long-overdue reissue (used copies used to sell on the Internet for over $400) has been fully updated with an additional 50,000 words that examine the consequences of the second Intifada and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Hirst also reveals for the first time how senior editors at America's most powerful and influential newspaper quashed a favorable review of the book's original first edition. His groundbreaking new introduction takes an unsparing look at the power of the pro-Israel lobby in America and contains a devastating critique of America's media coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

More than a decade before Israel's New Historians revolutionized the study of Israeli history, English journalist David Hirst wrote The Gun and the Olive Branch, a myth-breaking general history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that traces the origins of the terrible conflict back to the 1880s.

Hirst has been described by the New Statesman as one of "the great Anglophone foreign correspondents of our times" and his peerless reporting has earned him curses, expulsion and respect in virtually every country in the region. Kidnapped twice, banned from six Arab countries, he is the ideal chronicler of this terrible and seemingly insoluble conflict. The new edition of this "definitive" (Irish Times) work has a new, lengthy introduction that brings the story up to date. Among the many topics that are subjected to Hirst's piercing analysis: the Oslo peace process, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the destabilizing effect of Jewish settlement in the territories, the second Intifada and the terrifying rise of the suicide bombers, the growing power of the Israel lobby in the United States, the growth of dissent in Israel and among sections of America's Jewish population, the showdown between Sharon and Arafat and the specter of nuclear catastrophe that hangs over the region.

"Classic." --Edward Said

"He leaves few of the known skeletons in Israel's cupboard untouched.... Massively documented, this book will make uncomfortable reading for many who will no doubt do what they can to discredit him. But they will find it difficult to challenge the integrity of this quizzical and caustic reporter who has an unrivalled record of offending Arab governments and being banned by them."

--Financial Times

"A first-rate, beautifully written book."

--Roane Carey, The Nation

"A brilliant analytical mind."

--Robert Fisk, author of Pity the Nation

"An epic tale told relentlessly well.... a serious account of Zionism and a sobering review of Israel's new role as conqueror and occupier."

--Christopher Hitchens

"Hirst's trenchant history of the Arab-Israeli conflict was conceived as a corrective to what he sees as myths kept alive by Israel and its political, academic and media backers. Zionism, for the Guardian's former Middle East correspondent, is simply the west's last colonial enterprise, establishing the Jewish state in 1948 through the 'ethnic cleansing' of the Palestinians and since then defiantly avoiding the normal imperial pattern of relinquishing control to the indigenous population. First published in 1977, it now has a 130-page polemical foreword reflecting subsequent developments--Likud's rise, one invasion, two intifadas, countless diplomatic initiatives. If anything, the tone is even darker than in the original text, as Hirst assesses the prospects for peace with Sharon and Bush ('the most pro-Israel president ever') in power, mordantly chronicles Arafat's blunders and strategic zigzags, and lambasts the US press's coverage of the region."

--The Guardian

David Hirst contributes to the Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, the Irish Times, the St. Petersburg Times, Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Beirut Daily Star. He is the author of Sadat, a study of the late Egyptian president who once denounced him over the airwaves. Hirst has been banned at various times from visiting Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He lives in Beirut.