Avraham Sela

Avraham Sela is an Israeli historian and scholar on the Middle East and international relations.

Education and career

Sela studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gaining a BA in 1971, an MA in 1974 and a PhD in 1986. He currently serves as the A. Ephraim and Shirley Diamond Professor of International Relations and a senior research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute, both at the Hebrew University.

He is the author of The Decline of the Arab Israeli Conflict: Middle East Politics and the Quest for Regional Order (1998) and co-author of The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Adjustment (2000).

Views

Sela is fairly critical of the writings of the New Historians, particularly of Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim.^[1]

Publications

• Unity Within Conflict in the Inter-Arab System: The Arab Summit Conferences, 1964–1982 (Magnes Press, 1983) (Hebrew)
• The Palestinian Ba'ath: The Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party in the West Bank under Jordan (1948–1967) (Magnes Press, 1984) (Hebrew)
• The PLO and Israel: From Armed Struggle to Political Settlement (St. Martin's Press, 1997, editor)
• The Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Middle East Politics and the Quest for Regional Order (SUNY Press, 1998)
• The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 2nd Edition (Columbia University Press, 2006),
• The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East (Continuum, 2002).

References

1. Avi Shlaim, "The Debate about 1948" in Benny Morris (ed.), Making Israel, 2007, ISBN 0-472-03216-X, pp. 135-138

• Biography at the of Hebrew University of Jerusalem International Relations department