Israel's Forever War: Israel, Palestine and the Last Hopes for Peace

(Hardback)

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The surprise 2023 Hamas-Israel war has completely changed the central conflict in the Middle East. As the conflict has expanded to take in other regional players, the future of Israel as a regional superpower is now in doubt, as is the international system.

This important book looks at the immediate background to the 2023 war and asks whether the international system can contain two simultaneous wars in Europe and the Levant.

It covers the wars won and partly lost by Israel, in 1948 and 1973; the rise of Hamas and fall of the PLO; how Hamas took the Israelis by surprise; Hezbollah, the West Bank and Syria joined the fight; the role of the regional powers; the war's impact on Israel's society, economy and the IDF; and how the conflict impacts the whole region's relationships with the west.

Reviews

"The 'forever war' that Paul Moorcraft talks about has the power of stopping thought, a roundabout of sheer despair. But in this remarkable book he shows how we have come to this and provides a succinct and punchy analysis, which those of us who have long just despaired instead of thinking should really read. The choices since the 7 October Hamas attack of 2023 are stark, not just for Arabs and Israelis but for the rest of us too. And Moorcraft makes a powerful case that unless we embrace the impasse with clarity and courage there will be no escape from a forever war. It's the best book to come out of the Israel-Gaza war so far." Professor Mike Clarke, director general of the Royal United Services Institute 2007-15, fellow of King's College London and associate director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter

Author Bio

Paul Moorcraft first started working in Israel in 1970. He has lived and worked in Sderot on the Gaza border and in Baram on the Lebanese border. He is one of the few westerners who has lived and worked alongside jihadists, often in daily combat, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Bosnia in the 1990s and in Sudan in the twenty-first century. He is the author of over fifty books, as well as being a former Sandhurst senior instructor and a founder DS at the UK Joint Services and Command Staff College.