The latest volume in Anthony Tucker-Jones’s series of books on armoured warfare in the Images of War series is a graphic account of the development of armoured forces in the Arab and Israeli armies from 1948 to the present day. In a sequence of over 200 archive photographs he tells the story of the role armour played in Arab-Israeli conflicts over the last sixty years, from the initial battles of 1948, through the Suez Crisis, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Israeli attack on Hamas in Gaza in 2008.

In all these clashes armoured vehicles played a prominent, sometimes decisive part. As the photographs show, an extraordinary range of Second World War and post-war tanks, armoured cars and armoured personnel carriers was deployed by all sides. Russian T-34s, SU-100s, T-54/55s, T-62s and T-72s were imported from the Eastern Bloc by the Egyptians and Syrians. Shermans, Pattons, Centurions and AMX-13s were imported from the West by the Israelis. In addition, the Israelis developed modified hybrids such as the Sherman/Isherman, the Sho’t, Magach and Sabra, and they produced to their own design their main battle tank, the Merkava. 

Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic survey is an excellent introduction to late-twentieth-century armoured warfare, and it gives a fascinating insight into the military history of Israel and its Arab neighbours.