"Most of Cordesman's books are thick both in pages and substance. This book, with its comprehensive coverage enhanced by copious tables, maps, and chronologies certainly is. Cordesman has written two earlier books on Israel and the Arabs, but this is his first venture to concentrate even more narrowly on Israel and the Palestinians. And concentrate this book does. This book is no overview of Israel and the Palestinians going back to 1948. The war of the title is that which began with the al Aqsa intifada in September 2000, but the book's coverage of events starts with the first intifada, which began in 1987. Narrative chapters are interspersed with thematic treatments of everything from the tactics of this asymmetrical war to the role of different actors (including the Israel Defense Forces, the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and Hamas)....This is a solid reference work." - Foreign Affairs