This is quite simply one of the most important books to be published on the Arab-Israeli conflict in a long time. It focuses on a relatively narrow, but fascinating subject, the Arabs who worked alongside Jews in Mandatory Palestine, sometimes because they were favorable to Zionism but more often for pragmatic reasons. Cohen's contribution is not merely the scholarship but also the tales he tells of individuals caught up in momentous events.

Unlike so much of the scholarship on the Middle East this book is surprisingly un-perverted by the politics that so often weaves its way like a snake into books about the history of Israel or the Palestinians. Cohen notes that one should allow people to judge themselves, thus rather than taking the side of the modern Palestinian nationalist narrative, as man researchers do, and calling the `collaborators' "traitors" one should allow them to speak for themselves. They saw themselves as nationalists. They have found themselves, supposedly, on the wrong side of history. But they did not know that and this book allows the reader to hear these people come forward from history and speak for themselves.

The story covers the period 1920 to 1948 and examines the story Palestinian Arabs who worked with local Jews and Zionists in Mandatory Palestine. What is most fascinating is that Cohen shows that more often then not the Arabs who `collaborated' with Zionists were Muslims. This Muslim-Jewish connection took place because the most anti-Zionist Arabs were Christian Arabs, more often than not, Greek-Orthodox. Some leading Muslim families, such as the infamous Hajj Amin Al Husayni, were also leaders of Palestinian Anti-Jewish nationalism. But when king Faisal met Chaim Wiezman it was a Muslim notable talking to a Jewish one. Religious Muslims tended, ironically, to be less anti-Zionist then secularized urban Muslims and Christians.

Everywhere in Palestine there were Arabs who supported the Zionists in one way or another, usually because they resented persecution at the hands of Palestinian nationalists who called them traitors. Sometimes the reasons were economic as in the land purchases. Sometimes they were pragmatic as with the family feud of Nashashibi versus Husayni. Sometimes they were by other marginal groups, such as Bedouin near Beit Shean, or Druzim who were marginalized by the Nationalist Palestinian elite.

This book tells a unique story and reminds the reader that nothing is as black and white as most of those who write on the Middle East want to make. The Zionist movement made tremendous efforts to work with local Muslims, sometimes through bribes, but more often than not through persuasion and using Jews fluent in Arabic to work with locals. The outbreak of war in 1948 ended all those dreams of coexistence. But this coexistence was not the pipe-dream of Buber and Brit Shalom, but very real hands on coexistence between two nationalisms. Modern historiography prefers the more extremist version of Palestinian nationalism, this book dares to tell a different story.

Seth J. Frantzman