Palestine and World War I ― Grand Strategy, Military Tactics and Culture in War

The Palestine Campaign undertaken by the British during the Great War has become one of the most glorified military offensives of the 20th Century. Shattering the reach of Ottoman imperial power for the final time, the conflict both pushed Germany back into Europe and laid the groundwork for splitting up the Middle East into the nations that we recognize today. Meanwhile, the secretive Sykes-Picot Agreement ensured the British and French would continue to exert colonial influence in the Middle East for the next sixty years. Palestine and World War I is a new exploration of the social and cultural history of the campaign, which seeks to unravel the combination of myths and memory from which we inherit the romantic desert persona of Lawrence of Arabia and the image of General Allenby symbolically entering the Holy City on foot. With a compelling Foreword by Jay Winter, Palestine and World War I augments our existing understanding of the origins of contemporary conflict in the Middle East and provides a valuable new perspective into the ongoing tensions within the Arab World.

Eran Dolev is Associate Professor of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and former Surgeon-General of the Israeli Defence Forces.

Sheffy Yigal is Lecturer at Tel Aviv University, Israel, (the Program for Security Studies) and Haifa University (Department of Political Science, Program of National security and Department of History of the Middle East)


Haim Goren is Associate Professor of History and Geography at Tel Hai University, Israel.