Blind Spot

Blind Spot PDF Author: Khaled Elgindy
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815731566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A critical examination of the history of US-Palestinian relations The United States has invested billions of dollars and countless diplomatic hours in the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution. Yet American attempts to broker an end to the conflict have repeatedly come up short. At the center of these failures lay two critical factors: Israeli power and Palestinian politics. While both Israelis and Palestinians undoubtedly share much of the blame, one also cannot escape the role of the United States, as the sole mediator in the process, in these repeated failures. American peacemaking efforts ultimately ran aground as a result of Washington’s unwillingness to confront Israel’s ever-deepening occupation or to come to grips with the realities of internal Palestinian politics. In particular, the book looks at the interplay between the U.S.-led peace process and internal Palestinian politics—namely, how a badly flawed peace process helped to weaken Palestinian leaders and institutions and how an increasingly dysfunctional Palestinian leadership, in turn, hindered prospects for a diplomatic resolution. Thus, while the peace process was not necessarily doomed to fail, Washington’s management of the process, with its built-in blind spot to Israeli power and Palestinian politics, made failure far more likely than a negotiated breakthrough. Shaped by the pressures of American domestic politics and the special relationship with Israel, Washington’s distinctive “blind spot” to Israeli power and Palestinian politics has deep historical roots, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate. The size of the blind spot has varied over the years and from one administration to another, but it is always present.

Blind Spot

Blind Spot PDF Author: Khaled Elgindy
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815731566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
A critical examination of the history of US-Palestinian relations The United States has invested billions of dollars and countless diplomatic hours in the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution. Yet American attempts to broker an end to the conflict have repeatedly come up short. At the center of these failures lay two critical factors: Israeli power and Palestinian politics. While both Israelis and Palestinians undoubtedly share much of the blame, one also cannot escape the role of the United States, as the sole mediator in the process, in these repeated failures. American peacemaking efforts ultimately ran aground as a result of Washington’s unwillingness to confront Israel’s ever-deepening occupation or to come to grips with the realities of internal Palestinian politics. In particular, the book looks at the interplay between the U.S.-led peace process and internal Palestinian politics—namely, how a badly flawed peace process helped to weaken Palestinian leaders and institutions and how an increasingly dysfunctional Palestinian leadership, in turn, hindered prospects for a diplomatic resolution. Thus, while the peace process was not necessarily doomed to fail, Washington’s management of the process, with its built-in blind spot to Israeli power and Palestinian politics, made failure far more likely than a negotiated breakthrough. Shaped by the pressures of American domestic politics and the special relationship with Israel, Washington’s distinctive “blind spot” to Israeli power and Palestinian politics has deep historical roots, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate. The size of the blind spot has varied over the years and from one administration to another, but it is always present.

Death as a Way of Life

Death as a Way of Life PDF Author: David Grossman
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250116198
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In Death as a Way of Life, David Grossman, one of Israel's great fiction writers, addresses urgent questions regarding the middle east in a series of passionate essays and insightful articles. Writing not only as one of his country's most respected novelists and commentators, but as a husband and father and peace activist bitterly disappointed in the leaders of both sides, Grossman asks: What went wrong after Oslo? How can Israelis and Palestinians make peace? How has the violence changed their lives, and their souls?

Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel

Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel PDF Author: Dan Ephron
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393242102
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and one of the New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of the Year. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin remains the single most consequential event in Israel’s recent history, and one that fundamentally altered the trajectory for both Israel and the Palestinians. In Killing a King, Dan Ephron relates the parallel stories of Rabin and his stalker, Yigal Amir, over the two years leading up to the assassination, as one of them planned political deals he hoped would lead to peace, and the other plotted murder. "Carefully reported, clearly presented, concise and gripping," It stands as "a reminder that what happened on a Tel Aviv sidewalk 20 years ago is as important to understanding Israel as any of its wars" (Matti Friedman, The Washington Post).

Making Peace With The Plo

Making Peace With The Plo PDF Author: David Makovsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429967640
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book explores the personal, domestic, regional, and international factors that led Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other top aides to negotiate the peace accords. It describes in fascinating detail the intricacies of the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bargaining.

The Truth About Camp David

The Truth About Camp David PDF Author: Clayton E Swisher
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 0786740213
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The collapse of both sets of Arab-Israeli negotiations in 2000 led not only to recrimination and bloodshed, with the outbreak of the second intifada, but to the creation of a new myth. Syrian and Palestinian intransigence was blamed for the current disastrous state of affairs, as both parties rejected a "generous" peace offering from the Israelis that would have brought peace to the region. The Truth About Camp David shatters that myth. Based on the riveting, eyewitness accounts of more than forty direct participants involved in the latest rounds of Arab-Israeli negotiations, including the Camp David 2000 summit, former federal investigator-turned-investigative journalist Clayton E. Swisher provides a compelling counter-narrative to the commonly accepted history. The Truth About Camp David details the tragic inner workings of the Clinton Administration's negotiating mayhem, their eleventh hour blunders and miscalculations, and their concluding decision to end the Oslo process with blame and disengagement. It is not only a fascinating historical look at Middle East politics on the brink of disaster, but a revelatory portrait of how all-too-human American political considerations helped facilitate the present crisis.

The Missing Peace

The Missing Peace PDF Author: Dennis Ross
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374529802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 900

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Book Description
The Missing Peace, published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written.

Touching Peace

Touching Peace PDF Author: Yossi Beilin
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson Limited
ISBN: 9780297643166
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The initiator of the Oslo peace process reveals the events that led to the agreement, and presents his vision for the future peace of the Middle East.

The End of the Peace Process

The End of the Peace Process PDF Author: Edward W. Said
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307428524
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Soon after the Oslo accords were signed in September 1993 by Israel and Palestinian Liberation Organization, Edward Said predicted that they could not lead to real peace. In these essays, most written for Arab and European newspapers, Said uncovers the political mechanism that advertises reconciliation in the Middle East while keeping peace out of the picture. Said argues that the imbalance in power that forces Palestinians and Arab states to accept the concessions of the United States and Israel prohibits real negotiations and promotes the second-class treatment of Palestinians. He documents what has really gone on in the occupied territories since the signing. He reports worsening conditions for the Palestinians critiques Yasir Arafat's self-interested and oppressive leadership, denounces Israel's refusal to recognize Palestine's past, and—in essays new to this edition—addresses the resulting unrest. In this unflinching cry for civic justice and self-determination, Said promotes not a political agenda but a transcendent alternative: the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews enjoying equal rights and shared citizenship.

From the River to the Sea

From the River to the Sea PDF Author: Mandy Turner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498582885
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of ‘Peace’ provides original analyses of how different coping strategies were developed as well as new forms of political expression, interaction, and mobilization since the 1993 peace deal between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. Its premise is that an historical realism is essential in order to develop a route out of the post-Oslo impasse that extended and solidified the power imbalance under the auspices of ‘peace’. The book includes chapters from experts across the disciplines of anthropology, economics, law, political science and sociology to map out and critically assess the impacts and responses to this ‘peace’ in different geographical and political settings. These innovative analyses also investigate processes that might enable a future to be built based on greater equality and an end to the oppression and violence that currently exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (and beyond).

The Oslo Accords 1993–2013

The Oslo Accords 1993–2013 PDF Author: Petter Bauck
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
ISBN: 161797336X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Twenty years have passed since Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization concluded the Oslo Accords, or Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements for Palestine. It was declared “a political breakthrough of immense importance.” Israel officially accepted the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the PLO recognized the right of Israel to exist. Critical views were voiced at the time about how the self-government established under the leadership of Yasser Arafat created a Palestinian-administered Israeli occupation, rather than paving the way towards an independent Palestinian state with substantial economic funding from the international community. Through a number of essays written by renowned scholars and practitioners, the two decades since the Oslo Accords are scrutinized from a wide range of perspectives. Did the agreement have a reasonable chance of success? What went wrong, causing the treaty to derail and delay a real, workable solution? What are the recommendations today to show a way forward for the Israelis and the Palestinians?