"A New Look at the 1948 Arab-Israeli War"

The lecture will look at the findings of the latest research on the war, covering the nature of the war itself (a political-territorial war or a religious-cultural conflict); the war aims of the participants (the Zionists, the Palestinians and the various Arab states); the creation by the war of three refugee problems, those of the Palestinian Arabs, the Jews from Arab lands and the Israelis; and the balance of forces between the various sides (Palestinians versus the Yishuv - the Jewish community in Palestine -  and the Arab states versus the State of Israel).

Benny Morris, a historian, was formerly a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the author of the following:

• The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947—1949 (1988)
• 1948 and After (1994)
• Righteous Victims (1999)
• The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004)
• Making Israel (2008)
• 1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War (2008)
• One State, Two States (2009)
• The Thirty-Year Genocide, Turkey's Destruction of its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924 (2019) (Co-authored with Dror Ze'evi)