The Failure Of The Middle East Peace Process

This volume examines the gap between agreements and actual peace by focusing on the different aspects of implementation and of the causes of the success or failure of peace processes. While in the early 1990s the conflicts/peace processes in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine shared commonalities, a decade later it is all but obvious that they have followed different trajectories and reached different outcomes. This edited volume offers different explanations for the successes and failures of the three processes and provides historical and comparative perspectives regarding their contemporary realities.

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.

This volume examines the gap between agreements and actual peace. It offers different explanations for the successes and failures of the three processes - in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine - and provides historical and comparative perspectives on the failure of the Middle East peace process.

As Middle-East Bureau Chief of the French Public television network and a resident of Jerusalem since 1968, Charles Enderlin has had unequaled access to leaders and negotiators on all sides. Here he takes the reader step-by-step along the path that began with the hope of agreement but led only to the ultimate collapse of the peace process. The dramatic account moves between the occupied territories and the negotiation tables as it follows the emotional shifts in the conflict from the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin to the years when Benjamin Netenyahu was in power. In a definitive account of the meetings at Camp David in July 2000, Enderlin details what was said between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators brought together by Bill Clinton in the presence of Yasir Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Presenting the Middle East peace process as an extension of US foreign policy, this book argues that ongoing interventions justified in the name of ‘peace’ sustain and reproduce hegemonic power. With an interdisciplinary approach, this book questions the conceptualisation and general understanding of the peace process. The author reinterprets regional conflict as an opportunity for the US through which it seeks to achieve regional dominance and control. Engaging with the different stages and components of the peace process, he considers economic, military and political factors which both changed over time and remained constant. This book covers the US role of mediation in the region during the Cold War, the history and present state of US-Israel relations, Syria’s reputation as an opponent of ‘peace’ compared with its participation in peace negotiations, and the Palestinian-Israel conflict with attention to US involvement. The End of the Middle East Peace Process will primarily be of interest to those hoping to gain an improved understanding of key issues, concepts and themes relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict and US intervention in the Middle East. It will also be of value to those with an interest in the practicalities of peacebuilding.

In Syria and the Middle East Peace Process, Alasdair Drysdale and Raymond A. Hinnebusch, two noted Middle East scholars, present the first detailed examination of Syria's role in the long struggle for an Arab-Israeli peace. They paint a surprising portrait of a county whose power is out of proportion to its size, economy, and resources. They explore the reasons behind this phenomeno most importantly, the Machiavellian brilliance of its leader, Hafez al-Asad. The authors address the origins of the Asad regime, Syrias strategy toward its Arab neighbors, its conflict with Israel, and the history of its relationships with the Soviet Union and the United States. The authors argue forcefully that Syrian involvement is vital in an effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Every new American President has a plan to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and every one fails. Every “peace process” has failed in its primary objective: to establish a stable and lasting accord between the two parties, such that they can live together side-by-side in friendship rather than enmity. But why? And what can be done instead? While this failure is a consistent pattern stretching back decades, there is virtually no public discussion or even basic understanding of the primary reason for this failure. The Palestinian Delusion is unique in situating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict within the context of the global jihad that has found renewed impetus in the latter portion of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Briskly recounting the tumultuous history of the “peace process,” Robert Spencer demonstrates that the determination of diplomats, policymakers, and negotiators to ignore this aspect of the conflict has led the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world down numerous blind alleys. This has often only exacerbated, rather than healed, this conflict. The Palestinian Delusion offers a general overview of the Zionist settlement of Palestine, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the Arab Muslim reaction to these events. It explores the dramatic and little-known history of the various peace efforts—showing how and why they invariably broke down or failed to be implemented fully. The Palestinian Delusion also provides shocking evidence from the Palestinian media, as well as statements from the Palestinian leadership, showing that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will never work. But there is still cause for hope. Spencer delineates a realistic, viable alternative to the endless and futile “peace process,” that shows how the Jewish State and the Palestinian Arabs can truly coexist in peace—without illusions or unrealistic expectations.

In this fast-paced, well-researched work, author Dennis "D.J." Deeb objectively traces the rise and fall of the Oslo Peace Accords between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What went wrong with peace?This work analyzes Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's statements and past record as a military and government leader with regards to the Peace Process. Deeb also discusses the corruption within the Palestinian Authority that has hindered the peace process, including the mismanagement of Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat. The author examines and supports what has become known as "The Mitchell Report," released in the spring 2001, in offering a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He also considers and evaluates the recent Road Map To Peace proposal offered by President George W. Bush in the spring of 2003. Since 1993, both Israeli and Palestinian leaders have failed to implement and have violated provisions of the Oslo Accords. As the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who gave his life in the name of peace, and to whom this writing is dedicated, articulated so clearly during the signing of the Oslo Accords, "enough blood and tears."Finally, Deeb argues that the intent behind the Oslo Accords encompass the link between the end of war and the era of peace, that the Israelis and Palestinians should both return to the table for negotiations based upon the recommendations of "The Mitchell Report" and the Quartet Road Map To Peace to negotiate a final and lasting settlement rooted in the Oslo Peace Accords.