The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism

The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism is a 1986 book of political history written by Irish statesman and intellectual Conor Cruise O’Brien.[1][2]

Comparing Israel and Ireland, two states created in the 20th century by national liberation movements, O'Brien writes that "Ireland is not a problem but a conflict. Conflicts don't have solutions. They have outcomes. That is also true of Israel's situation." In later interview he cautioned that while there are parallels between the political situation of Ireland and Israel, "you shouldn't push parallels too far."[3]

O'Brien's is a clear-eyed, often witty, outsider's view of a seemingly intractable conflict. For example, 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine led to the 1937 Peel Commission report recommending partition, which the Arab side summarily rejected. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain decided not to implement partition, but he also decided not to announce his decision because it would look as though Britain had backed down because of the effective Arab use of force.[4] O'Brien wrote:

"So for nearly a year thereafter, the Arabs fought on, in order to kill a policy that was already dead, and the British fought them down, so as to be able to replace the dead policy, in a dignified way, with one they hoped would please those who were still trying to kill the dead one."[4]

In his review of O'Brien's book, Israeli diplomat Abba Eban points out that although "the siege" metaphor applies accurately to the early chapters covering the Zionist movement and early years of Israeli statehood, when Israel was a small, poor country surrounded by hostile enemies that had larger populations and much larger armies, but the situation of the fledgling Jewish State improved so dramatically following the 1967 Six-Day War that O'Brian finds it "astounding."[5]