WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
|
Homepages: |
||
The Mideast Agony Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of
Terrorism Shattered Dreams:
The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002 By Virginia Baron
As a recipient of daily e-mails recounting news and commentaries from Israel/Palestine, I find it difficult to maintain even a faint glimmer of hope for peace in the region in the foreseeable future. Reading these books validates that apprehension. In his introduction to Tinderbox, international law scholar Richard Falk says Stephen Zunes “surgically explains and clarifies what has truly gone wrong with American policy” in the Middle East. This is a good description. In an almost encyclopedic manner, Zunes takes the reader step by step through major American foreign policy decisions in recent history that relate directly to the vast region that has come to be known as the Middle East; he also refers to other areas and countries cited as examples. It can be considered a handbook, one to refer to when in need of clarification on people, places or policies. If you want to refresh your memory on the way the United States bought its way to war in the Persian Gulf, for instance, it’s there on page 82. Don’t try to take it in in one sitting, or even in several. It’s the kind of book you have to put down to lower your blood pressure. One might summarize the book as a cogent response to the question: “Why do they hate us?” Zunes focuses his chapters on: the suppression of human rights, the militarization of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rise of extremist Islamic movements and responses to the threat of terrorism. Finally, he offers his recommendations for the development of a new Middle East policy. One cannot help wishing that this careful researcher and impressive policy analyst were in a position to correct the rush toward destruction of the present course. Charles Enderlin is Middle East Bureau Chief of the French public television network. He has lived in Jerusalem since 1968 and obviously has developed a broad personal network of political contacts, in the region and internationally. Shattered Dreams was first published, to some notoriety, in France in 2002. Enderlin’s sources are conversations, personal interviews, videos, transcriptions, minutes of meetings, phone calls, news accounts and actual word-for-word records of negotiations. The book includes a chronology of major events and eight pages of maps and photos. Shattered Dreams begins on the night of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, November 4, 1995, and ends with the election of Ariel Sharon in February 2001. From the first page, giving Enderlin’s personal account of the fateful Tel Aviv rally that was to draw a sharp line between a period of hopeful Israeli-Palestinian relations and another much less hopeful one, the reader is caught up in the drama. Because of the author’s familiarity with all the players and the availability of actual conversations that took place, along with a journalist’s descriptions of characters and settings, Shattered Dreams seems at times like a novel. You see the leading actors—Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yasir Arafat, Saeb Erekat, Abu Mazen, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, to name only a few—as they appear in their negotiating stances, their passionate outbursts, their fury, their temper tantrums, their attempts at humor. You hear a pedantic President Clinton at Camp David in 2000, at a meeting that was meant to settle the Middle East conflict in a few weeks, threatening Arafat: “Give me an agreement on my proposal … Otherwise you’re risking the loss of my friendship and the friendship of the United States. Washington’s door will be closed to you.” (That prediction seems to have come true.) You are treated to accounts of unbelievably complicated, crazy solutions proposed by sleep-deprived negotiators. Days of crisis follow days of crisis. Amid the drama there is levity, a private joke among the Palestinians: One night Barak chokes on peanuts. Clinton’s doctor and some marines are called to the scene, but one of the Israelis has performed the Heimlich maneuver and saved the life of the prime minister—this after another futile day of negotiating. Palestinian Yaser Abed Rabbo comments, “The man who wants to give us peanuts will choke on peanuts.” Clinton laughs but swears the Palestinians to secrecy about the joke. But this is not a light or hopeful book. It is exhausting to read, painful and frustrating. Failure is the result of all the talk. Today it is popular to say that the problem between the Israelis and Palestinians is that there are two opposing narratives, and that a way must be found toward a shared narrative. Shattered Dreams exemplifies what happens when the narratives are so far apart that mutual understanding seems impossible and no outside encouragement is forthcoming. In the under-reported violence, counter-violence, and degradation taking place in the West Bank and Gaza these days, the historical understandings of each people continue to grow further apart. It is clear, in example after example offered in these two valuable books, that one of the major roadblocks to understanding and resolving the 50-year conflict has been the blatant collaboration between the United States and Israel. The evidence of this, as laid out by Zunes and Enderlin, is overwhelming. Longtime WRL activist Virginia Baron recently finished a term as President of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. She travels often to the Middle East and has written frequently about it in this and other publications. |
WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
