Israel Palestine And Peace

“Powerful” essays from a founder of the Peace Now movement and advocate for a two-state solution (Library Journal). The haunting poetry of [Oz's] prose and the stunning logic of his testimony make a potent mixture." —Washington Post Book World Amos Oz was one of the first voices of conscience to advocate for a two-state solution. As a founding member of the Peace Now movement, Oz has spent over thirty-five years speaking out on this issue, and these powerful essays and speeches span an important and formative period for understanding today's tension and crises. Whether he is discoursing on the role of writers in society or recalling his grandmother's death in the context of the language's veracity; examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a tragicomedy or questioning the Zionist dream, Oz remains trenchant and unflinching in this moving portrait of a divided land. "[Oz is] the modern prophet of Israel." —Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Leaders in disagreement -- How it began -- Moving in opposite directions -- Madrid to Annapolis -- A missed opportunity -- Contested territory -- Overcoming the trust deficit -- Much process, no progress -- Isratine -- A path to peace.

Gershon Baskin's memoir of thirty-eight years of intensive pursuit of peace begins with a childhood on Long Island and a bar mitzvah trip to Israel with his family. Baskin joined Young Judaea back in the States, then later lived on a kibbutz in Israel, where he announced to his parents that he had decided to make aliya, emigrate to Israel. They persuaded him to return to study at NYU, after which he finally emigrated under the auspices of Interns for Peace. In Israel he spent a pivotal two years living with Arabs in the village of Kufr Qara. Despite the atmosphere of fear, Baskin found he could talk with both Jews and Palestinians, and that very few others were engaged in efforts at mutual understanding. At his initiative, the Ministry of Education and the office of right-wing prime minister Menachem Begin created the Institute for Education for Jewish-Arab Coexistence with Baskin himself as director. Eight years later he founded and codirected the only joint Israeli-Palestinian public policy think-and-do tank in the world, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. For decades he continued to cross borders, often with a kaffiyeh (Arab headdress) on his dashboard to protect his car in Palestinian neighborhoods. Airport passport control became Kafkaesque as Israeli agents routinely identified him as a security threat. During the many cycles of peace negotiations, Baskin has served both as an outside agitator for peace and as an advisor on the inside of secret talks—for example, during the prime ministership of Yitzhak Rabin and during the initiative led by Secretary of State John Kerry. Baskin ends the book with his own proposal, which includes establishing a peace education program and cabinet-level Ministries of Peace in both countries, in order to foster a culture of peace.

For seventy years Israel has existed as a state, and for forty years it has honored a peace treaty with Egypt that is widely viewed as a triumph of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. Yet the Palestinians - the would-be beneficiaries of a vision for a comprehensive regional settlement that led to the Camp David Accords in 1978 - remain stateless to this day. How and why Palestinian statelessness persists are the central questions of Seth Anziska's groundbreaking book, which explores the complex legacy of the agreement brokered by President Jimmy Carter. Based on newly declassified international sources, Preventing Palestine charts the emergence of the Middle East peace process, including the establishment of a separate track to deal with the issue of Palestine. At the very start of this process, Anziska argues, Egyptian-Israeli peace came at the expense of the sovereignty of the Palestinians, whose aspirations for a homeland alongside Israel faced crippling challenges. With the introduction of the idea of restrictive autonomy, Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the chances for Palestinian statehood narrowed even further. The first Intifada in 1987 and the end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for a Palestinian state, but many players, refusing to see Palestinians as a nation or a people, continued to steer international diplomacy away from their cause.

The story of this movement reveals the horror of the occupation and the new hope for growing international solidarity.

In 2003, after two years of negotiations, a group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians signed a model peace treaty. The document, popularly called the Geneva Initiative, contained detailed provisions resolving all outstanding issues between Israel and the Palestinian people, including drawing a border between Israel and Palestine, dividing Jerusalem, and determining the status of the Palestinian refugees. The negotiators presented this citizens' initiative to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples and urged them to accept it. One of the Israeli negotiators was Menachem Klein, a political scientist who has written extensively about the Jerusalem issue in the context of peace negotiations. Although the Geneva Initiative was not endorsed by the governments of either side, it became a fundamental term of reference for solving the Middle East conflict. In this firsthand account, Klein explains how and why these groups were able to achieve agreement. He directly addresses the formation of the Israeli and Palestinian teams, how they managed their negotiations, and their communications with both governments. He also discusses the role of third-party facilitators and the strategy behind marketing the Geneva Initiative to the public. A scholar and participant in the Geneva negotiations, Klein is able to provide both an inside perspective and an impartial analysis of the diplomatic efforts behind this historic compromise. He compares the negotiations to previous Israeli-Palestinian talks both formal and informal and the resolution of conflicts in South Africa and Algeria. Klein hopes that by treating the event as a case study we can learn a tremendous amount about the needs and approaches of both parties and the necessary shape peace must take between them.

A chronicle of 20 years of conflict

In 2000, a group of Israeli and Palestinian teachers gathered to address what to many people seemed an unbridgeable gulf between the two societies. Struck by how different the standard Israeli and Palestinian textbook histories of the same events were from one another, they began to explore how to "disarm" the teaching of the history of the Middle East in Israeli and Palestinian classrooms. The result is a riveting "dual narrative" of Israeli and Palestinian history. Side by Side comprises the history of two peoples, in separate narratives set literally side-by-side, so that readers can track each against the other, noting both where they differ as well as where they correspond. The unique and fascinating presentation has been translated into English and is now available to American audiences for the first time. An eye-opening--and inspiring--new approach to thinking about one of the world's most deeply entrenched conflicts, Side by Side is a breakthrough book that will spark a new public discussion about the bridge to peace in the Middle East.