Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977

Amos Elon, author of The Pity of It All and The Israelis: Founders and Sons
"A thoroughly documented, pathbreaking analysis of Israel's disastrous settlement project in the occupied territories; it reads like a chapter in Barbara Tuchman's well-known book, The March of Folly."

Dennis Ross, former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, and author of The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace
"The Accidental Empire is an extraordinary book. It offers insight and understanding into a period that has never been well understood. After the 1967 war, few in Israel recognized the inherent problems of building Jewish settlements beyond the Green Line, for they were torn between reason and spiritual attachment to the land. As Gershom Gorenberg shows in this wonderfully written history, the building of settlements took on a life of its own-too easy to do, too hard to stop, and too easy to simply let happen."

Michael B. Oren, author of Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
"A groundbreaking investigation into the origins of one of the most contentious issues in Arab-Israeli relations-and in the Middle East-and a valuable reference for journalists, students, and scholars interested in the region."

Jackson Diehl, columnist, The Washington Post
"Gershom Gorenberg has given us a meticulously researched, dispassionate and highly readable history of how Israel slipped into the settlement of occupied lands. The Accidental Empire is an invaluable guide to one of the Middle East's most complex issues and will puncture illusions on all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

David Greenberg, Rutgers University, author of Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image
"The Accidental Empire casts a stark light on Israel's settlement of the lands it gained in the Six-Day War. Gershom Gorenberg contends that the Israeli left, as well as the Orthodox right, backed a policy that, though born of a felt need for security, encumbered the quest for peace-and that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger also failed to foresee the long-term costs. This tragic tale suggests how a fearful nation helped foster the very threats it sought to escape."

Haim Watzman, Company C: An American's Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel

Tom Segev, author of Elvis in Jerusalem and One Palestine, Complete
"This compelling account of one soldier in Israel's army of occupation, offers beautifully written insights into the Israel experience. Haim Watzman's fears, doubts and moral dilemmas, but above all his passionate love for the country of his choice, place Company C among the most important books on Israel today."

Book Description
A vivid dispatch from the front lines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
When American-born Haim Watzman immigrated to Israel, he was drafted into the army and, after eighteen months of compulsory service, assigned to Company C, the reserve infantry unit that would define the next twenty years of his life. From 1984 until 2002, for at least a month a year, Watzman, who had never aspired to military adventure, was a soldier.

Watzman was a soldier as he adjusted to a new country, married, raised his children, and pursued a career as a writer and translator. At times he defended his adopted country's borders; at other times he patrolled beyond them, or in that gray area, the occupied territories. A religiously observant Jew who opposed Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he served in uniform in conflicts that he demonstrated against in civilian clothes. Throughout, he developed a deep and abiding bond with the diverse men of Company C--a fellowship that cemented his commitment to reserve service even as he questioned the occupation he was enforcing.

In this engrossing account of the first Intifada, the period of the Oslo Accords, and Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank as lived by citizen-soldiers in the field, Watzman examines our obligations to country, friends, family, and God-and our duty to protect our institutions even as we fight to reform them.

About the Author
Haim Watzman is a translator and journalist who lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children. This is his first book.

From Publishers Weekly
Watzman, a writer and translator, served in the reserve infantry of the Israeli army, one month a year, from 1984 to 2002. On one level this thoughtful and absorbing book is a frank (and often funny) barracks-room memoir, capturing the tedium, terror and grinding discomfort of military life, with a sharp eye (and gifted memory) for details of character and place. The periodic nature of Watzman's service gives the book a serial viewpoint into the tumultuous events of the years from before the rise of the first intifada to the re-occupation of the West Bank, always from a unique front-line perspective. We also come to know the other men in Watzman's unit, representative of Israeli society only in their disparateness. As an observant Jew and patriot who is also vocally opposed to the West Bank and Gaza settlements, Watzman himself defies easy stereotyping, and his depiction of the motivations and opinions of his comrades and countrymen, especially as they shift over time, is likewise unclichéd, affectionate but critical. Agent, Simon Lipskar at Writers House.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy

From the Publisher
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.

Amos Oz, How to Cure a Fanatic

Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize-winning author
"Amos Oz is the voice of sanity coming out of confusion."

Ira Katznelson, Columbia University
"The special nature of these two lucid, thoughtful essays lies in their compelling argumentation backed by the singular authority of the writer."

Elizabeth R. Hayford, Library Journal
"This small book embodies so much realism and optimism."

Book Description
Internationally acclaimed novelist Amos Oz grew up in war-torn Jerusalem, where as a boy he witnessed firsthand the poisonous consequences of fanaticism. In two concise, powerful essays, the award-winning author offers unique insight into the true nature of fanaticism and proposes a reasoned and respectful approach to resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict. As an added feature, he comments on contemporary issues--the Gaza pullout, Yasser Arafat's death, and the war in Iraq--in an extended interview at the end of the book.

Oz argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute--one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise. As he writes, "The seeds of fanaticism always lie in uncompromising righteousness, the plague of many centuries."

The brilliant clarity of these essays, coupled with Oz's ironic sense of humor in illuminating the serious, breathes new life into this centuries-old debate. He emphasizes the importance of imagination in learning to define and respect other's space, and analyzes the twisted historical roots that have led to Middle East violence. In his interview, Oz sends a message to Americans. Why not, he proposes, advocate for a twenty-first-century equivalent of the Marshall Plan aimed at preventing poverty and despair in the region? "What is necessary is to work on the ground, for example, building homes for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have been rotting in camps for almost sixty years now."

Fresh, insightful, and inspiring, How to Cure a Fanatic brings a new voice of sanity to the cacophony on Israeli-Palestinian relations--a voice no one can afford to ignore.

Clayton E. Swisher, The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about Arafat, Barak, Clinton, and the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process

Charles Enderlin, author of Shattered Dreams and Jerusalem Bureau chief of France 2 television
"Any future mediator will have to read this account before the start of any final-status negotiations."

William B. Quandt, Professor of Politics, University of Virginia, author of Peace Process "A carefully researched account that challenges conventional interpretations of the Camp David summit of 2000."

Book Description
Based on two years of travel and investigative research, Clayton E. Swisher tells in riveting detail the untold story behind the diplomatic efforts to broker an Arab-Israeli peace under former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Swisher, who worked as a Special Agent and was present at the negotiations, overturns commonly accepted history that places blame for the failure to achieve peace solely with the Arabs. Swisher exposes the real "how and why," revealing Barak's embarrassing intransigence and the U.S.'s innumerable shortcomings as a so-called "honest broker." A former federal investigator for the U.S. Department of State, Swisher has talked with many of the direct participants, including former CIA and Israeli intelligence officials, who are furious that blame has been shelved solely on the Syrian and Palestinian parties. And the reverberations of this diplomatic disaster are still being felt today: The alleged "intransigence" of the Arabs and Palestinians is often invoked by Sharon, Bush and his neo-conservative allies who use the "myth of the generous offer" at Camp David to promote their own brand of "regime change" in the Palestinian Authority. Destroying this myth is essential to rebuilding the Middle East peace process.

This volume is the single best account of why the Oslo peace process, and the Camp David summit, collapsed. It explodes the still-prevalent myths about what happened at Camp David and Taba like no other account yet published in book form, drawing on first-hand accounts from various of the negotiators and principals themselves, Palestinian, Israeli and American. A must-read for anyone who wants to gain a clear-sighted understanding of what went wrong between Palestinians and Israelis--and what it will take for it to go right in future.

We continue to hear the familiar canard that the Palestinians made no counter-offer at Camp David in response to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's unprecedented concessions. This myth arose from the self-serving story put out by Barak and President Clinton in an attempt to place the entire blame for the summit's failure on Arafat. It was accepted uncritically by much of the American and Israeli media at the time. Since then, fuller, more accurate accounts of the negotiations have emerged. According to Israel's own chief negotiator Gilad Sher, on July 21, 2000 at Camp David the Palestinians presented a map of the West Bank as they envisioned it in a peace accord. A similar Palestinian counter-proposal was also presented at the final round of peace talks in Taba on Jan. 23, 2001, showing Palestinian acceptance of Israel's annexation of 3.5% of the West Bank (compared to Israel's Taba proposal of 6%). The Camp David map also showed that the Palestinians accepted the idea of a land swap, under which Israel would incorporate three West Bank settlement blocs in exchange for land of equal size and value. Barak had proposed larger settlement blocs, and an unequal exchange of territory.

The Palestinians made counterproposals on other issues as well. At Camp David, Arafat proposed an arrangement for Jerusalem whereby the Palestinians would have sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and the Palestinian neighborhoods, while Israel would hold sovereignty over the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, along with the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, as part of a land swap—a position Israel accepted only later at the Taba talks. All this is confirmed by Sher in Just Beyond Reach: The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations 1999-2001, and in Charles Enderlin's Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002, which was the basis for a PBS documentary shown nationwide during 2002.   Gidon D. Remba

New York Times Book Review, May 4, 2003
Deeply reported and scrupulous...the most complete and balanced picture yet of the failure of the Middle East peace process.

Library Journal, March 13, 2003
More evenhanded than many press accounts…a great sense of immediacy and urgency…[creating a] valuable summery of a turbulent period.

Book Description
For the Clinton administration, it was a goal of historic magnitude: resolving the long, bitter conflict in the Middle East. After years of searching for ways to end the bloodshed, at last there came a moment when it seemed peace was near… And yet, today, Palestinians and Israelis are still killing each other. What went wrong? As Middle-East Bureau Chief of the French public television network France 2, 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 table as it follows the emotional shifts in the conflict from the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin to the years when Benjamin Netanyahu was in power. Along the way, the author reveals details of the secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Sweden, offers new insight into the failure of Israeli-Syrian peace talks, and explains how head injuries sustained by the Jerusalem Chief of Police led to the Al Aqsa intifada.

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 and Ehud Barak. With scrupulous concern for accuracy, he presents the talks from his unique vantage point, showing how intransigence, mistakes, and misjudgments on all sides have led to a growing climate of suspicion and to shattered dreams of peace. This is a book that makes history.

About the Author
Charles Enderlin has been the Bureau Chief for France 2 since 1990. Among his many journalistic publication credits, he is the author of a biography of Yitzhak Shamir (Oban, Paris, 1991) and Paix ou Guerres, a history of Israeli-Arab secret negotiations (Stock, Paris, 1997). When Shattered Dreams was first published in France (Le reve brise, Fayard, Paris, 2002), was an immediate bestseller. It became the basis for a television documentary series, which was aired in its American version by Frontline on PBS and in its international versions by TV stations all over the world. The Frontline version, "Shattered Dreams of Peace," won a Peabody award in 2003. He has lived in Jerusalem since 1968.

Yossi Beilin, The Path To Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Agreement, 1996-2004

From the Publisher:
From the early days of the secret Oslo talks through the recent crises and new developments in Israel and Palestine, Yossi Beilin has been at the center of it all. This book highlights his intensive and historic meetings with President Clinton, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, Hosni Mubarak, King Hussein of Jordan, and Madeleine Albright, as well as Beilin's crucial connections with such seminal Arab leaders as Yasser Arafat, Saeb Erikat, Faisal Husseini, and the first Prime Minister of "Palestine," Abu Mazen. The Beilin-Mazen agreements are the basis of the current "road map" to Middle East peace.

The reader is carried with Beilin to Bill Clinton's Oval Office, Mubarek's Cairo, Hussein's Amman, and many other centers of global power -- becoming privy to historic encounters and the surprising details of those negotiations, both public and secret. In The Path to Geneva, we learn how Beilin came to be this world leader in search of peace, how he overcame all the inherent difficulties, how he interfaced with world leaders, and how he sees a solution to this ancient problem that creates a fair resolution for all sides.

This book is an extremely important and inspiring document, giving hope via pragmatism and the personal will of a dedicated, brilliant diplomat and visionary participant in this most challenging of arenas.

About the Author:
Dr. Yossi Beilin is currently the leader of the Social Democratic Israel (or "Yahad") Party, which is the former Meretz Party, and served as Israel's Minister of Justice from 1999 to 2001. A member of the Knesset for eleven years, Beilin has held ministerial positions in the governments of Rabin, Peres, and Barak. He is a leading proponent of the peace process and initiated the secret talks resulting in the '93 Oslo Accords. He is the author of several books, including Israel: A Concise Political History, Touching Peace, and The Manual For Leaving Lebanon. He lives in Israel.

From The Critics:
Thomas L. Friedman - New York Times, November 2003:   What I have always admired about Mr. Beilin is that he is a fanatical moderate--as committed to his moderation as the extremists are to their extremism. In a Middle East where extremists tend to go all the way and moderates tend just to go away, the example that he and his Palestinian partners are setting is critical. It shows that civil society in Israel and the West Bank is still alive and refuses to give in to pessimism. But they need, and deserve, courage and help from America now too. We owe them that. We owe ourselves that.

What People Are Saying
Beilin's recollections of the years 1996–2004 should be required reading for anyone interested in the search for peace in the Middle East. — JIMMY CARTER

Mark Tessler, A History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

One of the two best and most comprehensive histories of the Palestinian-Israeli and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, along with Benny Morris' volume (see below). (Doni Remba)

Mark Tessler's timely, comprehensive, and balanced history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from earliest times to the present provides a constructive framework for thinking realistically about the prospects for peace. Drawing upon a wide array of documents and on research by Palestinians, Israelis, and others, Tessler assesses the conflict on both the Israelis' and the Palestinians' terms. (Publisher)

Along with Tessler's volume (above), one of the two best and most comprehensive histories of the Arab-Israel conflict. One caveat to the otherwise high praise this volume has received from mainstream Israeli Zionist scholars: Morris' claim, in a chapter about the 1948 war and the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem, that the Zionist leadership sought to transfer the Palestinian Arabs remains controversial, and is rejected by other reputable historians. (Doni Remba)

This ambitious book seeks to cover more than a century of Zionist-Arab conflict in a single volume. Morris (history, Ben-Gurion Univ.), the author of several books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, relies on a vast array of sources in Hebrew, Arabic, and English to write a meticulously researched, admirably balanced, and highly readable tome. All major events in the tortuous history of the Arab-Israeli conflict are covered. The author displays a remarkable grasp of the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict and an analytical style that is devoid of the polemics that have characterized so many books on this subject. Essential reading for anyone interested in the Arab-Israeli conflict and in the future of the peace process in the region.--Nader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL (Library Journal)

From Ethan Bronner –New York Times Book Review: "A significant history of Zionism.... A first-class work of history, bringing together the latest scholarship. It is likely to stand for some time as the most sophisticated and nuanced account of the Zionist-Arab conflict from its beginnings in the 1880's."

Mark A. Heller, Sari Nusseibeh, No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

In an unusual collaboration, two writers from either side of the conflict share their own hard-won conviction that in the end reason will prevail in the Middle East. "An absorbing analytical narrative on how to dissolve petrified national differences...No Trumpets, No Drums could not have arrived at a better moment" –J.C. Hurewitz, NY Times (The Reader's Catalog)

Heller, an Israeli academician and author of A Palestinian State: The Implications for Israel (Harvard Univ. Pr., 1983), collaborates here with Nusseibeh, a Palestinian scholar, in a meaningful manner to establish a potential format for an Arab-Israeli peace. In discussing the possibility of a two-state solution, the authors examine the basic problems and the means to solve them: security for both peoples, the borders for either state, the refugees, the Jewish settlements on the West Bank, water rights, and the status of Jerusalem. Placing the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the context of a regional peace system, the authors show how this ideal plan could be arranged and implemented in a real and practical manner. A substantive work that should be enjoyed by a wide audience. – Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C. (Library Journal)

In calling for an independent Palestinian nation encompassing much of the West Bank and Gaza, the authors outline a detailed ``compromise solution'' that goes far beyond the proposals presented in most other books. Heller, a strategic studies researcher at Tel Aviv University, and Nusseibeh, who teaches philosophy at a West Bank university, argue that their blueprint, or something like it, is ``the only chance for a stable peace.'' Under their plan, Israel would maintain a military presence in the new Palestinian state and Israelis could continue to live and work there. The authors set forth provisions for a ``sufficiently bi-political'' Jerusalem, resettlement of Palestinian refugees with compensation, security agreements between Israel and an independent Palestine. The book also details potential areas for economic cooperation. Given the authors' sharp disagreements (spelled out in introductory "personal statements''), it is noteworthy that they have found so much common ground. (Publisher's Weekly)

Shibley Telhami, The Stakes: America and the Middle East

Could the United States defeat Al-Qaeda but still lose the broader war on terrorism? In The Stakes: America and the Middle East, Shibley Telhami, one of America's most in-demand commentators on the Middle East, provides a concise and penetrating analysis that explains Arab and Muslim attitudes toward the United States and shows why there is much reason for concern. In an insightful, passionate, yet balanced analysis, Telhami provides new perspectives on the collapse of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and the attending escalation of violence. He shows why the Arab-Israeli conflict remains central to the war on terrorism and to international stability, and considers American policy toward Iraq and the Persian Gulf. He demonstrates the need for political change in the region's oil states and he suggests how best to achieve it. The Stakes provides a well-reasoned, calm analysis that will be essential reading for anyone who wonders where America should go from here, amid the dangers and opportunities in the ever-volatile Middle East.

Shibley Telhami is Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. A frequent contributor to the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times, he has a weekly radio commentary that broadcasts throughout the Middle East. Formerly appointed by the White House to the Board of the United States Institute of Peace, he is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch.

Jimmy Carter
"Shibley Telhami has become a voice of reason on American policy toward the Middle East."

General Brent Scowcroft
"A significant contribution to our national discussion and eventual understanding of a vital part of the world."

William Quandt
"Americans now have a guide through the complex issues that confront our country in the Middle East."

Samuel Lewis, Ambassador to Israel (1977-85)
"Shibley Telhami is the wisest commentator on Middle East affairs I know."

View the entire list of Recommended Books
on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and the History of Israel and Zionism