The Endless Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace


Book Description

In this book a former United Nations Envoy offers an insider perspective on conflict management and peace efforts during the three most recent failed peace initiatives and three wars in Gaza. Robert Serry shares his reflections on walking the tight rope of diplomacy between Israel and Palestine and his analysis of what has gone wrong and why a “one-state reality” may be around the corner. Offering fresh thinking on how to preserve prospects for a two-state solution, this book examines the UN’s uneasy history in the Arab-Israeli conflict since partition was proposed in resolution 181 (1948) and provides a rare insight into the life of a United Nations Envoy in today’s Middle East.




De Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements


Book Description

This book presents an analytical framework which assesses how 'land-for-peace' agreements can be achieved in the context of territorial conflicts between de facto states and their respective parent states. The volume examines geographic solutions to resolving ongoing conflicts that stand between the principle of self-determination (prompted by de facto states) and the principle of territorial integrity (prompted by parent states). The authors investigate the conditions under which territorial adjustments can bring about a possibility for peace between de facto states and their parent states. It does so by interrogating the possibility of land-for-peace agreements in four de facto state–parent state pairs, namely Kosovo–Serbia, Nagorno–Karabakh–Azerbaijan, Northern Cyprus–Republic of Cyprus, and Abkhazia–Georgia. The book suggests that the value that parties put on land to be exchanged and peace to be achieved stand at odds for land-for-peace agreements to materialise. The book brings theoretical and empirical insights that open several avenues for discussions on the conservative stance that the international community has held on territorial changes in the post-1945 international order. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, state formation, secessionism, political geography, and international relations.




The Missing Peace


Book Description

The Missing Peace, published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written.




Prophets without Honor


Book Description

A high-level insider's history of the efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from 2000 Camp David Talks to the present, that explains why successive attempts have all failed. The clash between Israel and Palestine has been one of the most emotionally engaging causes of modern times. Prophets without Honor tells the story of the grueling attempts to solve the conflict and examines the reasons for its resilience. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who participated at a high level in the July 2000 Camp David peace talks that almost led to a historic deal, uses his insider experience to illuminate the specific factors that impede a solution to the conflict. He finds that the occupation's traits of permanence, Israel's insatiable quest for Lebensraum, and a hopelessly fragmented and disoriented Palestinian national movement are to blame. Ben-Ami challenges the funereal historiography that emerged in the wake of the Camp David process, when--for the first time ever--Israelis and Palestinians engaged in the Sisyphean task of breaking the taboos surrounding the conflict. The Clinton Peace Parameters that emerged out of this process eventually became the litmus test of every serious peace proposal in the future. But ill-conceived perceptions of the other party, all-or-nothing theological fanaticism, and a lack of bold and enlightened leadership have made these attempts at peace-making a defining failure of the two-state concept. Ben-Ami scrutinizes the ominous alternatives to the two-state solution, such as the binational state, a unilateral pullout from much of the West Bank, and Donald Trump's Deal of the Century. He also examines the merits of a Jordanian-Palestinian solution. In discussing Palestine from a comparative perspective, he underlines its singularity while also shedding light on the dilemmas that stand at the center of any peace enterprise. Ultimately, his account is the most non-partisan, comprehensive, and balanced written by an insider representing one of the parties.




Enemies and Neighbors


Book Description

“Comprehensive and compelling...a landmark study” of the Arab-Zionist conflict, told from both sides, by the author of Israel’s Secret Wars (Sunday Times, UK). Setting the scene at the end of the nineteenth century, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources—from declassified documents to oral testimonies to his own vivid-on-the-ground reporting—to illuminate the most polarizing conflict of modern times. Beginning with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government promised to favor the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, Black proceeds through the Arab Rebellion of the late 1930s, the Nazi Holocaust, Israel’s independence and the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe), the watershed of 1967 followed by the Palestinian re-awakening, Israel’s settlement project, two Intifadas, the Oslo Accords, and continued negotiations and violence up to today. Combining engaging narrative with political analysis and social and cultural insights, Enemies and Neighbors is both an accessible overview and a fascinating investigation into the deeper truths of a furiously contested history.




The Walls of Jerusalem


Book Description

A complete examination of the men and forces that created and shaped the modern state of Israel over the last hundred years Walls of Jerusalem is a study of the creation and evolution of the modern state of Israel. This unique work begins with the actions of four extraordinary men — Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion — and follows with their influence on subsequent leaders and on the political and military decisions that have shaped and changed Jerusalem and the nation. The resulting physical realty has made concrete the shift in vison from the broad utopian ideals of the beginning, to the separation barrier and settlement enclaves that increasingly divide both Jewish and Palestinian cultures. The author traveled across the West Bank, into the Israeli settlements and along the Israeli security barrier dividing Israel from Palestine. He entered the tombs, mosques and synagogues, experienced the distortion of Jerusalem since the building of the separation barrier - the watchtowers, the welded gates, the shuttered shops, divided highways and back-ways, tunnels, bridges, checkpoints, to better understand evolving reality that defines the stage for the future relationship between Israel and Palestine. Walls of Jerusalem is a timely book, its vivid narrative journeys through a century and a half of dreams and conflicts that lead to a divided Jerusalem: It presents each stage of Israel’s evolution, from the 1896 publication of Herzl’s Der Judenstaat and the Balfour Declaration, to the opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem in 2018 Relates the visions of Israel’s creators to the destructive and constructive forces utilized to create a new nation Reviews the century long attempts by international organizations to resolve the conflict between Jews and Palestinians Makes every effort to present a balanced exploration of challenges facing the state of Israel and its place on the world stage, but in conclusion gives emphasis to the plight of the Palestinians Integrates illustrations with text to provide a detailed portrait of central figures in modern Israel’s history




Politics and Government in Israel, Fourth Edition


Book Description

This balanced and comprehensive text explores Israeli government and politics from both institutional and behavioral perspectives. After briefly discussing Israel's history, authors Gregory S. Mahler and Reuven Y. Hazan examine the social, religious, economic, cultural, and military contexts within which Israeli politics takes place. They explain the operation of political institutions and behavior in domestic politics, such as the constitutional system; parliamentary government; and the executive, legislative, and judicial machinery of government, including discussion of elections and voting, political parties and civil society, and democracy in Israel. Finally, Israel's foreign policy setting and apparatus are considered, as well as the challenges faced by the Palestinians in Israel and the peace process between Israel and its neighbors. Clear and concise, Politics and Government in Israel provides an invaluable starting point for all readers needing a cogent introduction to Israel today.




A Land Twice Promised


Book Description

An Israeli woman writes about growing up amid war and ancestral trauma and later building a friendship with a Palestinian woman in America. Israeli storyteller Noa Baum grew up in Jerusalem in the shadow of the ancestral traumas of the holocaust and ongoing wars. Stories of the past and fear of annihilation in the wars of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s shaped her perceptions and identity. In America, she met a Palestinian woman who had grown up under Israeli Occupation, and as they shared memories of war years in Jerusalem, an unlikely friendship blossomed. A Land Twice Promised delves into the heart of one of the world’s most enduring and complex conflicts. Baum’s deeply personal memoir recounts her journey from girlhood in post-Holocaust Israel to her adult encounter with “the other.” With honesty, compassion, and humor, she captures the drama of a nation at war and her discovery of humanity in the enemy. Winner of the 2017 Anne Izard Storytellers’ Choice Award, among others, this compelling memoir demonstrates the transformative power of art and challenges each reader to take the first step toward peace. Praise for A Land Twice Promised “A penetrating, introspective memoir that mines the depths of the chasm between the Israeli and Palestinian experiences, the torment of family loss and conflict, and the therapy of storytelling as a cleansing art. You will not think in the same way at the end of this captivating book as you did at the beginning.” —David K. Shipler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land




How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less


Book Description

Gregory Levey’s modest goal is to solve the Middle East conflict—all by himself. After returning to North America following a stint in his midtwenties writing speeches for the Israeli government—first at the United Nations and then for the prime minister in Jerusalem—he thinks he is leaving the madness of the Middle East conflict behind. But nothing could be further from the truth. Levey soon discovers that everyone on this side of the Atlantic seems to think that they have the solution to the intractable conflict—and they all feel the need to tell him about it. Fatigued by the endless debate, the constant hostility, and the cacophony of shrill voices, he decides that the only way he is going to escape it all is if he solves the conflict himself, once and for all. So Levey sets out on a hilarious, quixotic, and surprisingly illuminating quest to broker a peace deal where a long line of world leaders have failed. Interacting with White House officials, DC lobbyists, congressmen, advisors to presidential candidates, high-profile journalists, secretive fundraisers, former Israeli spies now living in North America, and hundreds and hundreds of Jewish grandmothers, Levey tries to understand why the Middle East situation refuses to be resolved, and why so many people who live a world away are so obsessed with it. He combs through theories ranging from the eminently reasonable to the completely insane, engages in virtual peacemaking simulations, investigates an “online suicide bombing,” spends time with a former advisor to Yasser Arafat, undergoes training with a half-baked Jewish paramilitary group, goes undercover as an Evangelical Christian, and somehow ends up at a real-life castle owned by an eccentric, cape-wearing crusader for peace. In How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less Without Leaving Your Apartment, Levey brings his trademark brand of street-smart levity to a situation that many see as hopeless— and thereby reveals the very human and sometimes very silly side of a brutal, decades-old geopolitical conflict. Along the way, he meets a cast of characters that would be outright funny if the situation weren’t so dire. The result is a fast-paced, humorous, and insightful romp through U.S. policymaking in the Middle East.




I Shall Not Hate


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Search for Common Ground Award Middle East Institute Award Finalist, Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Stavros Niarchos Prize for Survivorship Nobel Peace Prize nominee "A necessary lesson against hatred and revenge" -Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate "In this book, Doctor Abuelaish has expressed a remarkable commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation that describes the foundation for a permanent peace in the Holy Land." -President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize laureate By turns inspiring and heart-breaking, hopeful and horrifying, I Shall Not Hate is Izzeldin Abuelaish's account of an extraordinary life. A Harvard-trained Palestinian doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and "who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians" (New York Times), Abuelaish has been crossing the lines in the sand that divide Israelis and Palestinians for most of his life - as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the line, as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East. And, most recently, as the father whose daughters were killed by Israeli soldiers on January 16, 2009, during Israel's incursion into the Gaza Strip. His response to this tragedy made news and won him humanitarian awards around the world. Instead of seeking revenge or sinking into hatred, Abuelaish called for the people in the region to start talking to each other. His deepest hope is that his daughters will be "the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis."