Obstacle To Peace

"This volume analyzes the impediments that local conditions pose to successful outcomes of nation-building interventions in conflict-affected areas. Previous RAND studies of nation-building focused on external interveners' activities. This volume shifts the focus to internal circumstances, first identifying the conditions that gave rise to conflicts or threatened to perpetuate them, and then determining how external and local actors were able to modify or work around them to promote enduring peace. It examines in depth six varied societies: Cambodia, El Salvador, Bosnia and Herzegovina, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It then analyzes a larger set of 20 major post-Cold War nation-building interventions. The authors assess the risk of renewed conflict at the onset of the interventions and subsequent progress along five dimensions: security, democratization, government effectiveness, economic growth, and human development. They find that transformation of many of the specific conditions that gave rise to or fueled conflict often is not feasible in the time frame of nation-building operations but that such transformation has not proven essential to achieving the primary goal of nation-building -- establishing peace. Most interventions in the past 25 years have led to enduring peace, as well as some degree of improvement in the other dimensions assessed. The findings suggest the importance of setting realistic expectations -- neither expecting nation-building operations to quickly lift countries out of poverty and create liberal democracies, nor being swayed by a negative stereotype of nation-building that does not recognize its signal achievements in the great majority of cases."--Page 4 of cover.

Why has peace in the Middle East remained so elusive? Obstacle to Peace provides the answer while also explaining why you won't hear it from U.S. government officials or the mainstream media. With incisive and provocative analysis, Jeremy R. Hammond provides a meticulously documented account that explodes popular myths and deconstructs standard narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For anyone seeking a better understanding of the conflict's root causes, the true reasons for its persistence, and the way forward, Obstacle to Peace delivers the knowledge and insights to effect the paradigm shift that is necessary for a just peace to be achieved. "A very impressive piece of work"--Noam Chomsky.

Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is a meticulously documented account that explodes popular myths and deconstructs standard propaganda narratives about the conflict. With provocative and incisive analysis, it provides the knowledge and insights necessary to effect the paradigm shift required to achieve peace.

Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group—unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts—has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf—both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution—reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.

Excerpt from Obstacles to Peace The Obstacles to Peace are of two kinds: first, the questions involved in this war, which are territory, access to the sea, and national security; secondly, the states of mind of the peoples at war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This is an attempt to catalogue the reasons why some wars are so difficult to stop - even when both sides want the fighting to end. Through detailed case studies, the book assesses the obstacles and points toward solutions for ending wars more quickly. Each chapter is devoted to a specific obstacle which the author analyzes and then illustrates with case studies, drawing on such conflicts as the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War and the Yugoslav wars. He assesses the role of third parties in trying to persuade people to stop fighting and examines what happens when obstacles to a cease-fire cannot be overcome.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.