Like its predecessor, this study is an attempt to treat in a concise and objective manner the dominant social, political, economic, and military aspects of contemporary Israeli society. Sources of information included scholarly journals and monographs, official reports of governments and international organizations, foreign and domestic newspapers, and numerous periodicals. Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book; brief comments on some of the more valuable sources suggested as possible further reading appear at the end of each chapter. Measurements are given in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist those readers who are unfamiliar with metric measurements (see table 1, Appendix A).
An effort has been made to limit the use of foreign--mostly Hebrew and Arabic--words and phrases, but a fairly large number were deemed necessary to an understanding of the society. These terms have been defined the first time they appear in a chapter or defined in a Glossary entry. To help readers identify the numerous political groups, Appendix B, Political Parties and Organizations, is provided.
The transliteration of Hebrew words and phrases follows a modified version of the system adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system. The names of people and places of ancient Israel are generally presented as they appear in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
A modified version of the BGN/PCGN system for transliterating Arabic was employed. The modification is a significant one, however, entailing as it does the omission of diacritical marks and most hyphens.
Data as of December 1988