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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