In the first of a series of occasional ORG briefing papers from key international commentators and experts, Professor Avi Shlaim gives us an important new contribution to thinking about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Avi Shlaim is a British Academy Research Professor at St Antony's College, University of Oxford, and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Penguin Books, 2000). This paper was first published by ORG in November 2004, and updated in February 2005.