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The Jordanian-Israeli War, 1948-1951: A History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. By Maan Abu Nowar. Reading, U.K.: Garnet Publishing, 2002. Tables. Notes. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xi, 515. $49.50. Distributed by ISBS in Portland, Oreg. (503-287-3093).
At the outset Maan Abu Nowar excises any doubt from the reader's mind: the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict go back to 1200 BG, when about 15,000 ferocious warriors known as "Bani Israel" occupied the central region of what is now Palestine. Over subsequent centuries this tribe devastated the towns and cities of the indigenous population, until expelled by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and eventually the Romans. Without so much as a single footnote the author brushes aside a highly contentious topic of debate within contemporary Western scholarship. One' of the debaters, Hershel Shanks, warns us: "Certainty eludes us when we are talking about the history of ancient Israel. We must talk about possibilities, likelihoods, plausibility and, at most, probability." Certainty, however, does not elude Nowar and as a result his book fails to meet any reasonable scholarly standard. Its sourcing is uneven and extremely narrow; footnotes clarify some obscure points while lengthy passages and sweeping assertions go undocumented. With...