Arapsko-izraelski sukob: Religija, politika i povijest Svete zemlje

Havel, born in 1966 in Sarajevo to a family of Croatian intellectuals (son of Ana Havel, founder of the Association of Croatian Women Writers), graduated from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb and received his doctorate in 2002 from Durham University with a thesis on the Arab-Israeli conflict. As a lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb, a translator from English and German, and an expert on the Middle East, he is the author of several works on the region (e.g. “Croatia and Israel”).

The book presents the conflict for the first time in Croatian through the eyes of the actors – Jews, Christians, and Muslims – where history and theology play a crucial role. Structured chronologically, it begins with Jewish history from Abraham, through the prophets, kings, and the Second Temple, the rise of Christianity, uprisings against the Romans and the diaspora, to Zionism and the founding of Israel in 1948. It then describes the origins of Islam, the spread and canonized view of Jews and Christians, and Muslim-Jewish relations through the centuries, including the Ottoman period and the British mandate. Havel connects theological perceptions (eg the biblical Zion vs. the Islamic Al-Aqsa) with political agendas, not avoiding controversies such as the Holocaust, the Nakba and the Intifada.