Cohen is especially familiar with east Jerusalem, the topic of his book, Kikar Hashuk Reka (The Marketplace is Empty or: The Rise and Fall of Arab Jeruslaem), because of the years he spent as a correspondent for east Jerusalem affairs for the Israeli weekly Kol Ha'ir. He published extensively on the Palestinian internal refugees and on the 1948 war. Two of his books deal with Palestinian collaborators and the Israeli security agencies, using methodology that can be described as history-from-below.