Scars Of War Wounds Of Peace

An Oxford-trained historian who became Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami was a key figure in the Camp David negotiations and many other rounds of peace talks, public and secret, with Palestinian and Arab officials. He offers here an unflinching account of the Arab-Israeli conflict, informed by his firsthand knowledge of the major characters and events. Clear-eyed and unsparing, Ben-Ami traces the twists and turns of the Middle East conflict and the many missteps of the Israelis and Palestinians. The author paints particularly trenchant portraits of key figures from Ben-Gurion to Bill Clinton, and gives us behind-the-scenes accounts of the meetings in Oslo, Madrid, and Camp David. He is highly critical of Ariel Sharon and the late Yasser Arafat ("the sad embodiment of an archaic political orthodoxy devoid of a vision for the future"). He sees Arafat's rejection of Clinton's peace plan as a crime against the Palestinian people. The author is also critical of President Bush's Middle East policy ("a presumptuous grand strategy"). And along the way, Ben-Ami highlights the many blunders on both sides, describing for instance how the great victory of the Six Day War launched many Israelis on a misbegotten "messianic" dream of controlling all the Biblical Jewish lands, actually making the Palestinian problem much worse. In contrast, it has only been when Israel has suffered setbacks that it has made moves towards peace. The best hope for the region, he concludes, is to create an international mandate in the Palestinian territories that would lead to the implementation of Clinton's two-state peace parameters. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace is a major work of history--with by far the most fair and balanced critique of Israel ever to come from one of its key officials. It is an absolute must-read for everyone who wants to understand the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

An insightful and thorough account of the Arab-Israeli conflict ranges from the birth of Israel to the present day, told from firsthand knowledge of the major characters and events, written by a former high-ranking Israeli official.

This book looks at Israeli-Palestinian relations through three different conceptual lenses: the individual decision-maker, domestic politics, and the international system. It examines key choices made by Israelis and Palestinians regarding three central issues: the 1947 UN Partition Plan, the Lebanon invasion in 1982, and the 1993 Oslo Agreements.

The first all-encompassing book on Israel’s foreign policy and the diplomatic history of the Jewish people, The Star and the Scepter retraces and explains the interactions of Jews with other nations from the ancient kingdoms of Israel to modernity. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, Emmanuel Navon argues that one cannot grasp Israel’s interactions with the world without understanding how Judaism’s founding document has shaped the Jewish psyche. He sheds light on the people of Israel’s foreign policy through the ages: the ancient kingdoms of Israel, Jewish diasporas in Europe from the Middle Ages to the emancipation, the emerging nineteenth-century Zionist movement, and Zionist diplomacy following World War I and surrounding World War II. Navon elucidates Israel’s foreign policy from the birth of the state in 1948 to our days: the dilemmas and choices at the beginning of the Cold War; Israel’s attempts to establish periphery alliances; the Arab-Israeli conflict; Israel’s relations with Europe, the United States, Russia, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the United Nations, and the Jewish diasporas; and how twenty-first-century energy geopolitics is transforming Israel’s foreign relations today. Navon’s analysis is rooted in two central ideas, represented by the Star of David (faith) and the scepter (political power). First, he contends that the interactions of Jews with the world have always been best served by combining faith with pragmatism. Second, Navon shows how the state of Israel owes its diplomatic achievements to national assertiveness and hard power—not only military strength but economic prowess and technological innovation. Demonstrating that diplomacy is a balancing act between ideals and realpolitik, The Star and the Scepter draws aspirational and pragmatic lessons from Israel’s exceptional diplomatic history.

"The definitive and gripping account of the sometimes exhilarating, often tortured twists and turns in the Middle East peace process, viewed from the front row by one of its major players."--Bill Clinton The Missing Peace, published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written. Dennis Ross, the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is that rare figure who is respected by all parties: Democrats and Republicans, Palestinians and Israelis, presidents and people on the street in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Washington, D.C. Ross recounts the peace process in detail from 1988 to the breakdown of talks in early 2001 that prompted the so-called second Intifada-and takes account of recent developments in a new afterword written for this edition. It's all here: Camp David, Oslo, Geneva, Egypt, and other summits; the assassination of Yitzak Rabin; the rise and fall of Benjamin Netanyahu; the very different characters and strategies of Rabin, Yasir Arafat, and Bill Clinton; and the first steps of the Palestinian Authority. For the first time, the backroom negotiations, the dramatic and often secretive nature of the process, and the reasons for its faltering are on display for all to see. The Missing Peace explains, as no other book has, why Middle East peace remains so elusive.

The Yom Kippur War was a watershed moment in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the modern Middle East more broadly. It marked the beginning of a US-led peace process between Israel and her Arab neighbours; it introduced oil diplomacy as a new means of leverage in international politics; and it affected irreversibly the development of the European Community and the Palestinian struggle for independence. Moreover, the regional order which emerged at the end of the war remained largely unchallenged for nearly four decades, until the recent wave of democratic revolutions in the Arab world. The fortieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War provides a timely opportunity to reassess the major themes that emerged during the war and in its aftermath, and the contributors to this book provide the first comprehensive account of the domestic and international factors which informed the policies of Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, as well as external actors before, during and after the war. In addition to chapters on the superpowers, the EU and the Palestinians, the book also deals with the strategic themes of intelligence and political of the war on Israeli and Arab societies.

PART I - The Camp David Process -- First Steps, Harsh Truths -- "A Secluded Northern Castle" -- Back to Square One -- Longing for Hizballah -- Forcing the Leaders' Hand -- A Conceivable Endgame? -- The Promise of an American Steamroller -- Inauspicious Beginnings -- Clinton: "We Have Exhausted the Beauty of this Place" -- A Gamechanger (or so it looked..) -- O Jerusalem (and its lies...) -- Saeb Erakat: "Arafat is Interested in a Crisis" -- Albright's Intermezzo; Clinton's Last Push -- Our Faintest Hour -- Arafat: "Barak Has Gone Beyond my Partner Rabin" -- Making Most of Success -- Moments of Grace on Precipice Edge -- PART II - A Savage War for Peace -- "With Our Blood and Soul We'll redeem Palestine" -- Diplomacy Under Fire -- Trapped in No-Win Conditions -- Neither Inspiring nor Intimidating -- "Take it or Leave It" - The Clinton Peace Parameters -- "A Crime Against the Palestinian People" -- Barak in a Cage of Doves -- Taba: "The Boss Doesn't Want an Agreement" -- Post Mortem -- Part III. 2001-2020: A Story of Promise and Deceit -- The Conversion of the Hawks -- The Impossible Triangle: Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas -- The Geneva Understandings as a Parable -- The Failed Zionization of Palestine -- The International Community - A Broken Reed -- The Occupation's Traits of Permanence -- PART IV. Denouements -- Ominous Unravellings -- Exit Oslo, Enter Madrid -- PART V. Defying the Logic of Conflict Resolution -- Palestine - A Comparative Perspective.

The inspiring story of an immigrant's struggles to heal old wounds in the United States, this is the sequel to When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Le Ly Hayslip's extraordinary, award-winning memoir of life in wartime Vietnam.