The Origins of Israel seeks to interpret the reasons behind the perpetuation of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which remains one of the major unresolved issues both in our region and globally.

First published in Hebrew in July 1995, its French translation, created with the assistance of the author himself and upon which the current edition is based, was released in early the following year (1996). Between the two editions, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin occurred on November 4, 1995, marking the climax of ideological and political conflicts in Israel that followed the agreements with the Palestinians, known as the Oslo Accords, in 1993 and 1995.

The writing of the book was thus completed amid these heightened confrontations, yet it should not be seen as solely a product of those circumstances. This is because it is not merely the result of long-term research and systematic documentation, but also a culmination of the author's lived experience: a kind of bitter reckoning that permeates the entirety of Zeev Sternhell's scholarly work.

Sternhell gained worldwide fame as a credible scholar of European fascism. His most important works deal with the ideology and practice of the French far-right in the late 19th and early 20th centuries while also focusing on the various families of theorists and political opponents of the Enlightenment in Europe.

Using the same analytical lens he applied in the French case, Sternhell examined the ideologies that prevailed in Israel. He claimed the title of a Zionist and declared until the end that he was a "leftist Zionist". "For me, Zionism was and remains the right of the Jews to control their destiny. I consider the right of people to be self-determined as a natural right, which the Jews were deprived of throughout history and which Zionism restored to them."

However, in his study, he concludes that Zionism failed to build a fairer society because from the outset, its nationalist component proved stronger than the socialist one. He attributes both the policy of Israeli governments toward the Palestinians in the West Bank and the failure of the peace efforts he supported to this failure.

This edition includes the Postscript that the author added to the reissue of his work in France in 2004, which shows why the subject of the book remains tragically relevant.