The Middle East Road Map

In his final book, completed just before his death, Edward W. Said offers impassioned pleas for the beleaguered Palestinian cause from one of its most eloquent spokesmen. These essays, which originally appeared in Cairo’s Al-Ahram Weekly, London’s Al-Hayat, and the London Review of Books, take us from the Oslo Accords through the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, and present information and perspectives too rarely visible in America.Said is unyielding in his call for truth and justice. He insists on truth about Israel's role as occupier and its treatment of the Palestinians. He pleads for new avenues of communication between progressive elements in Israel and Palestine. And he is equally forceful in his condemnation of Arab failures and the need for real leadership in the Arab world.

The Israeli-Palestinian Road Map For Peace: A Critical Analysis examines the failure of the international community's most ambitious effort to date to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing an independent Palestinian state and securing a final, comprehensive, and lasting Middle East peace. While reflecting an emerging consensus among the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations that the Israeli-Palestinian impasse demanded immediate attention, the Road Map nonetheless was unable to overcome the "Quartet" members' significant and longstanding differences. The inability of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the U.S. to exploit opportunities afforded by terrorism's "pendular dynamic" further compromised prospects for success. The Road Map's failure highlights the need for policymakers to develop those conceptual skills and perceptual sensitivities requisite for resolving the growing number of ostensibly intractable transnational conflicts confronting the international community in the 21st century.

The challenge to the Middle East road map: hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Ninth Congress, first session, June 30, 2005.