In Zionism and the Palestinians, Simha Flapan – a former official of Israel’s Mapam party who became a critic of official narratives – examines the attitudes and policies of Zionist leaders towards the Palestinian Arabs from the early twentieth century to 1948.

Analysing the thinking of figures including Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion and Vladimir Jabotinsky, Flapan argues that the Zionist movement consistently disregarded the national rights of the Palestinian people and relied on great-power support rather than accommodation. The book anticipated his later work, The Birth of Israel.