The Arab-Israeli Wars

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This lecture course will cover Israeli-Arab relations during the four decades between Israel's establishment in 1948 and the start of the First Intifada--the Palestinian uprising against Israel--and Israeli rule in the occupied territories in December 1987. The course will look at the consequences of the 1948 War; the build-up to, and course of, the Sinai/Suez War of 1956, in which Israel, Britain, and France attacked Egypt; the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel fought and defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (particular attention will be paid to the causes and consequences of the war); the 1973 War, in which Egypt and Syria caught Israel napping and attacked in Sinai and the Golan Heights; and the 1982 War, in which Israel invaded southern Lebanon in order to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization. The course will deal in depth with the Israeli-Egyptian peace process, which resulted in the peace treaty of 1979, and with Israeli-Palestinian relations and the development of the PLO, culminating in the First Intifada.