The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East
David Hirst
The Guardian correspondent's classic account of the roots of violence in the Middle East — among the first Western books to put the Palestinian experience at the center of the story.
When The Gun and the Olive Branch first appeared in 1977, it was among the earliest books by a Western journalist to recount the Arab–Israeli conflict with the Palestinian experience at its center. David Hirst, then the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, traces the roots of the violence from the first Zionist settlements of the 1880s through the Mandate, the wars of 1948 and 1967, and the rise of the PLO, drawing on Israeli as well as Arab sources to challenge the founding myths on both sides. Twice expanded — most recently in a 2003 third edition with a new foreword reaching the second intifada — it has remained in print for decades.
Long before Israel’s “New Historians” reached a general audience, Hirst was telling readers of the English-speaking world that there were two narratives of this conflict, and that only one of them had been heard.
About the author
David Hirst is a British journalist who reported on the Middle East for the Guardian for decades, much of that time based in Beirut, where he covered the Lebanese civil war and Israel’s 1982 invasion. His other books include Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East.
Details
- First published by Faber & Faber, London, 1977
- Third edition, with new foreword, Nation Books, 2003
- ISBN 9781560254836 (Nation Books edition)
The edition
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Connected in the archive
16 connected records16 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 1 record
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- Intifada
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Twice expanded — most recently in a 2003 third edition with a new foreword reaching the second intifada — it has remained in print for decades.
on a related subject — 15 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- +972 Magazine
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "journalism".
- A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "history".
- Adel Mannaعادل مناع
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "history".
- Bisan Owda
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "journalism".
- Ghassan Kanafaniغسان كنفاني
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "journalism".
- Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "history".
- and 9 more
Cite this page
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- Chicago
“The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/library/the-gun-and-the-olive-branch/.- MLA
“The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/library/the-gun-and-the-olive-branch/. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-the-gun-and-the-olive-branch, title = {The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/library/the-gun-and-the-olive-branch/}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }