In 1897, Theodor Herzl, a sometime journalist and playwright, organised the first Zionist congress in Basel, an event that would help engender the Zionist vision of an independent Jewish state. Soon afterwards, two rabbis, dispatched to Palestine by the Viennese Jewish community on a kind of Zionist reconnaissance mission, cabled back saying “the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man”. The “husband” was the Arab population, soon to be displaced by increasing numbers of Jewish settlers, culminating in the fulfilment of Herzl’s Zionist dream — the creation of Israel in 1948. Arab-Jewish relations have been full of bloody conflicts, punctuated by short periods of uneasy peace, and it is a story that has already been well covered elsewhere. But rather than write a conventional history of Palestine/Israel, LeBor has chosen to illuminate it through the personal accounts of the region’s inhabitants, or, more specifically, those living in the hybrid city of Jaffa-Tel Aviv. He uses the decline of the old Arab city of Jaffa and the rise of neighbouring, mainly Jewish Tel Aviv as a symbol of the growing domination of the Jewish state over its Arab population, but he is scrupulously fair to both sides. Based on interviews with several generations of Muslim, Jewish and Christian families, his book is a moving testament to the resilience of human beings in the face of violence. Despite the continuing bloodshed, he even manages to finish on a positive note, finding hope in the rare but increasing instances of mixed marriages and the enlightened children they produce.

CITY OF ORANGES: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa by Adam LeBor

(Bloomsbury £8.99)

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