The inspiration for this book may have been derived, perhaps subconsciously, from the ebb and flow of my family history. At the end of the nineteenth century, my maternal grandfather's family were victims of the Russian pogroms. They left Vilna, now Vilnius in Lithuania, and arrived in London. My great-grandfather did not accompany the family to London, but went to find work in South Africa. There he was given a British passport, since these were the years of the British Empire, and, two years later, arrived in Britain a naturalised citizen. He opened a shop in London's Soho, where my grandfather was born in 1920. At a similar time, my maternal grandmother's family was leaving Poland. A little later, in 1955, my paternal grandfather moved the family from Tunisia to the young Israel. Jews were coming under increasing hostility from Arab neighbours as part of the violent resistance to French colonial rule that erupted in 1954. With the rise of Arab nationalism, the young Israel was the new enemy and with it the Jews. As Jews arrived to settle in Israel, the plight of Palestinian refugees was only just beginning. People frequently ask me where my interest in the refugee question comes from. Daniel Warner's phrase, ‘we are all refugees’, couldn't be a more appropriate answer.

This book builds on Ph.D research completed at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2004.