"Dictionary Of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Culture, History And Politics" by Claude Faure

Some articles contain only two sentences of commentary; others are two pages long.
It details not only dozens of political parties throughout the Middle East, but it also provides short biographies of even obscure politicians involved in the Palestine controversy throughout the world - past and present. It provides the names and dates of various Israeli military operations throughout Palestine. It lists the relevant UN resolutions. It details the main issues at the annual Arab League summits between 1964-2004. Obscure Islamic terrorist (err, "liberation") groups are noted in separate articles. It has that "European" writing style: each sentence is written tightly, void of wordiness and each most informative. It is written in an unbiased, neutral manner. Islamic militants will be disappointed that it doesn't editorialize in condemning everything regarding Israel (err, "the Occupied Zionist Territory"). If there is a shortcoming to this dictionary, it fails to allow the strident "intensity of belief" flavor of the militant Palestinian perspective to come through. But then this is a dictionary, not a passionate political tract.

This is a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. There are few photographs. Fortunately it does not provide much "ancient" Biblical history to the Palestinian conflict; concentrating instead on events developing since the start of the 1880s Zionist movement to settle Jews in Palestine, and primarily since the 1940s - but strong even in the 2000-2004 Intifada era.