Prof. Avraham Sela

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Bio

Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published extensively on inter-Arab and Arab-Israeli relations, and Palestinian politics and society. His most recent edited books are: Popular Contention, Regime, and Transition: The Arab Revolts in Comparative Global Perspective, co-edited with Eitan Alimi and Mario Sznadjer (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Representations of Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Narratives of the 1948 War (Indiana University Press, 2016), co-edited with Alon Kadish.

The Arab States and the Palestine Question: The Case of Early Arab League Non-Military Programs of Support for the Arabs of Palestine 1945-1948

Abstract

The paper illustrates how mixed motives and inter-Arab rivalries shaped the theory and practice of the collective Arab projects aimed to support the Arab-Palestinians in their conflict with the Zionist enterprise during the three crucial years prior to the 1948 war. It demonstrates how the deliberations on three main projects and their practical failure represent a precursor of the intertwined regional inter-Arab politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict in the following decades.