Israel's Border Wars, 1949–1956
| Author | Benny Morris |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 1993 |
| ISBN | 978-0198292623 |
Israel's Border Wars 1949–1956 is a 1993 book written by Benny Morris about the Arab infiltration from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria into Israel after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and before the 1956 Suez Crisis.
Morris contends that the "Arab infiltration" into Israel and the Israeli retaliatory response, including the 1952 raid on Beit Jala, that left four civilians dead, and the Qibya Massacre, that left at least 65 civilians dead, set patterns of behavior that were to characterize the Arab–Israeli conflict for decades to come.
See also
References
- Israel's Border Wars 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
External links
- Benny Morris, Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, 1997 edition published by Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829262-7. No preview as of July 2022.
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Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War
by Benny Morris (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars (9) 4.1 on Goodreads 29 ratings
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This book looks at the development of Israeli-Arab relations during the formative years 1949 to 1956, focusing on Arab infiltration into Israel and Israeli retaliation. Palestinian refugee raiding and cross-border attacks by Egyptian-controlled irregulars and commandos were a core phenomenon during this period and one of the chief causes of Israel's invasion of Sinai and the Gaza strip in 1956.
Benny Morris probes the types of Arab infiltration and the attitude of Arab governments towards the phenomenon, and traces the evolution of Israel's defensive and offensive responses. He analyzes Israeli decision-making processes, including the emergence and ultimate failure of Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett's dissident policy of moderation, and describes in detail the history of the Arab infiltration, including the terrorist-guerrilla raids by state-organized Fedayeen in 1955-6, and of the IDF raids of Qibya, Nahhalin, Kinneret, and the Sabha.
This was a precedent-setting period in the making of Israeli defense policy, and this pattern of raiding and counter-raiding served to define Israeli-Arab relations during the subsequent four decades. In this pioneering study Morris deepens our understanding of the current tuation in the Middle East and of the prospects for a lasting peace there.
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Top reviews from the United States
xander de rijk
5 out of 5 starsWell documented review on an important period of Israel's history ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2014
Format: Paperback
Verified Purchase
Well documented review on an important period of Israel's history. If you what to understand the present situation in this country its necessary to take note of this work.
2 people found this helpful
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Lauran H.
5 out of 5 starsGreat Book!
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2015
Format: Paperback
Verified Purchase
Arrived early, Great Book!
2 people found this helpful
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Elderbear
1 out of 5 starsDon't Buy Kindle Edition
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2021
Format: Paperback
The content of the book is excellent, but the publisher of the Kindle Edition did an absolutely horrible job. The book is extensively footnoted, but doesn't use the standard Kindle system. Instead the word before the footnote is underlined and jumps you to pages in the last part of the book. So now your "last read" counter is set beyond the normal text AND there is no way to return to the text you are reading.
I am furious, because I occasionally bump a link and then have to search for where I was manually. I'm about to stop reading the book.
And ... for this much money, I expect real page numbers! This edition has no page numbers! The Kindle Edition is basically unciteable--since this is an academic book, this is an unpardonable sin.
Benny Morris, demand that your publisher stop treating readers with contempt!
One person found this helpful
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Mary Ann
5 out of 5 starsWhat is with the PRICE???
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2024
Format: Paperback
I'm only giving this 5 stars because no matter how much Benny Morris raises his price to keep people from reading his beliefs before October 7th, 2023..he can't run from them! Thank God there are still a few Jewish writers not afraid to tell the truth about the deplorable conditions the Palestinians have lived in for decades. I'm a born again, conservative Christian who once believed that my ministry would be screaming in the streets should America ever turn her back on Israel. Today, and years wiser, I'm ashamed of Israel, I'm ashamed at America for not taking a stronger stand against them. I'm absolutely appalled. By what I've been reading lately, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Netanyahu absolutely knew October 7th was going to happen, gave border control the day off, and used this attack as an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians once and for all. Since 1917 the Zionist plan was to commit genocide against the Palestinians..Jews of all people, should know what that feels like, how can you do that to someone else??? Especially, how do you do that in the name of God? I keep hearing settlers claiming that God gave them this land and they have a right to take it back..it's in the Bible. Then maybe they should actually read it, yes God gave you the land..then He took it away from you for your sins! According to my Bible, He doesn't give it back until the day of or after, the Day of the Lord! Not before!!! I have seen the courage and character though, of some Israelis that have continued to stand with both the Palestinians and the continued hope for peace. God bless them! I will probably get censored by Amazon..
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5 people found this helpful
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Christopher M. Whitman Jr.
4 out of 5 starsBenny Morris before he read Samuel Huntington
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2011
Format: Paperback
Benny Morris is a rather decent historian, even if he has rather poor analysis skills later in his life. This book was written about the issue of "infiltration" into Israel from 1949-56. Morris systematically deals with Israeli-Jordanian modes to resolve the issue. He details Israeli policy and how it was seized to use excessive force unnecessarily, further worsening the situation. He discusses Jordanian clamp downs and proposals to stop because the Jordanians (and Egyptians) had no interest in war with Israel, not getting invaded by them on "retaliatory" raids. It is not a tough read, but a necessary one in the field of Middle Eastern studies. And the best part is, this is still before Morris read Huntington and actually did decent research, comparatively speaking.
3 people found this helpful
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Chris Carr
5 out of 5 starsVery good book. Little discussed period of the long war ...
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2016
Format: Paperback
Very good book. Little discussed period of the long war ongoing between Israel and the Arabs.
2 people found this helpful
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Kerry Levenberg
5 out of 5 starsEssential history
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2001
Format: Paperback
Wow, one review here is from the "expert" Daniel Pipes who, after the Oaklahoma City Bombing, suggested in USA Today that the blame belongs to Muslim extremists. What a fascinating and disturbing ideologue.
I can only suggest that the information here largely comes from from primary Israeli sources.
Judge for yourself. I found it important.
22 people found this helpful
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Barry Sierer
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March 14, 2015
When I obtained Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, I was expecting a description of specific cross border military operations.
I got much more than I bargained for.
This is not a blow by blow description of military operations but an epic survey of the border situation for Israel and its Arab neighbors in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s war of independence. Morris relied heavily on data from the archives of: Israel, the UN, and Britain (which covers a lot of the Jordanian side). He does not pull any punches in regards to tactics used by Israeli’s military or Arab terrorists.
Morris delves into the precarious state of Israel’s borders following the war as it struggles to secure a new country from infiltrators. The Israelis enacted a “shoot to kill” policy against all infiltrators and often placed brand new immigrants who were unfamiliar with region, in border villages on the front lines. The new Israeli government worked to keep these people in place (and thus has to insure their security) in a situation where the former residents were sneaking back to the lands in order to work the fields, “steal” things left behind, and sometimes commit crimes including murder.
The Arab nations made frequent efforts to control the infiltrators with some notable successes and failures. Syria and Lebanon were fairly successful at controlling their borders, the Egyptians usually managed to insure that only “authorized” infiltrations got through, but the Jordanian frontier was far too vast to manage to despite the Jordanians best efforts (which were inconsistent).
Morris goes to lengths to explain that approximately 90% of the infiltrations were “economic” which included Arabs returning to lost land, recovering (or stealing) lost property, and even trying to till fields in their old properties. As the situation degenerated, infiltrators began carrying weapons with them to counter Israeli’s “shoot to kill” policy, resulting in scores of deaths. Eventually, certain groups (primarily Egyptian military intelligence) hired smugglers and former residents to carry out raids on Israeli targets, usually civilians. Israel responded with raids of its own, usually against against Arab civilians who could not be tied to the original transgressions, and systematically claimed that these acts were the work of “settler vigilantes” rather than IDF troops. This policy changed after the 1953 raid on Qibya in which over 50 homes in Jordan were demolished. Following Qibya, the IDF generally targeted Police and military targets. However this actually escalated the tension between Israel and its neighbors which ultimately lead to the Suez War in 1956.
This book is one of best attempts I have read to get “the whole story” so I highly recommend it.
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Adam
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August 24, 2025
Once again, one wonders whether Benny Morris the author who sets out the evidence in his book, ever spoke with Benny Morris the author who wrote the conclusions in his book.
To read the commentary, you would think that Israel was besieged by bloodthirsty savages hell bent on nothing but murder and violence. But then he keeps repeating, again and again, that the overwhelming majority (at least 90%) of Arab “infiltrations” (or, as he sometimes calls them, “marauders”) entered Israel for economic or social reasons. People tilling fields or harvesting crops that had been stolen from them, returning to the villages from which they’d been expelled for a visit or to try and rebuild their lives there. Going to see relatives from whom they were cut off. And also “stealing“ from the people who stole everything from them. He describes in detail how all of the Arab states around Israel tried to stop infiltration for the most part, yes because they feared reprisals but the point is that they did it.
And the Israelis? As he documents himself, they killed 10 times more Arabs than Arabs killed Israelis. In a single sentence towards the end of the book, he mentions that the Israelis killed about 500 civilians in Gaza after occupying it in 1956. That’s twice as many as the total number of Israeli civilians he says were killed in the seven years covered by the book. One of the subheadings in his chapter titled “Israeli Defensive Responses“ is “Atrocities!” The subsection is a full seven pages, and it does not cover anywhere near all of the horrors that Israel committed and Morris documents.
The more of his work I read, the more convinced I am Benny Morris has always held the grotesque racist views that he has openly exposed for over two decades now. The only difference is that when he wrote his books in the 80s and 90s, he had enough intellectual integrity that he simply couldn’t bring himself to falsify the evidence itself. Instead, he would write conclusions that were only tangentially connected to the evidence that he himself had just laid out.
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Benji Anderson
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December 15, 2025
Israeli historian Benny Morris’s book Border Wars is far and away the leading study of the period. It is uniquely detailed and archival, and although it was published more than thirty years ago, in 1993, it still hasn’t been superseded as a singular work of history.
And yet, because of its framing and choice of terminology, it manages to function, if unwittingly, as a subtle but effective tool of Israeli propaganda (hasbara, as the Israelis call it). Let’s begin with the book’s full title, which I regard as a masterpiece of the misnomer: Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War.
Firstly, Israel’s “borders” at this fledgling stage of statehood were actually demarcation lines, not permanent legal boundaries. This may seem like a pedantic point, but it’s not. In the language of the agreements, these lines were “not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary.”
Secondly, there were no “wars” in the standard sense: almost all of the Arab “infiltrators” during this period were actually destitute refugees who had been expelled or displaced in the course of the 1948 war; they were crossing into Israel not to kill Jews or seek revenge but to scavenge some food or visit their former villages.
Thirdly, to the extent that violent infiltrations did occur, Israel didn’t “retaliate” against them — it knowingly provoked them by attacking Arab villages, building settlements on disputed lands, and deporting thousands of Palestinians in a mass expulsion campaign, a campaign that “came dangerously close to fitting the definition of ‘ethnic cleansing,’” according to the late Israeli political scientist Meron Benvenisti. (Sacred Landscape, 145)
The irony is that each of these truths is set out in exacting detail over the course of Morris’s 470-page monograph. He has done more than any other historian to lift the veil from our eyes and yet still manages to leave us with a distorted view of the period.
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