Peace in Tatters: Israel, Palestine and the Middle East (review)

Meital has written a detailed and nuanced political history of how the hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace embodied in the Oslo agreements (1993) deteriorated into the Al-Aksa Intafada (2000) and the recognition that the "peace process" had failed by 2004, replaced by a policy of unilateral Israeli disengagement. The book focuses mainly on the period 2000–2004, beginning with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's attempt to push forward a comprehensive "all-at-once" blueprint for a peace. The account moves through the failed Camp David summit (Arafat, Barak, Clinton) in fall 2000 and its aftermath (the al-Aqsa Intifada, renewed terrorism, Israeli resignation to having "no partner" with whom to pursue peace), the impact on the region of the 9/11/01 al-Qaeda attacks on American targets and subsequent U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab League peace proposal that was immediately quashed by an escalation of attacks on Israeli civilians, expanded U.S. and "quartet" involvement in pushing for steps toward peace (late 2002), culminating in U.S. President Bush's "roadmap" unveiled in 2003, along with expanded "track two" (unofficial) talks between groups of Palestinians and Israelis, the most prominent of which was the Geneva Initiative headed by Sari Nusseibeh and Ami Ayalon (2003). The book ends with consideration of two major unilateral steps by Israel, the building of the separation barrier (wall, fence) which was taking shape during 2004, and the plan for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a small area of the West Bank which also became policy during 2004. The year (and the book's analysis) ended with the death of Yasser Arafat, Palestine Authority Chairman and PLO leader, in November. The last entry in Meital's chronology of key events (Appendix 1) is the election of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to replace Arafat in January 2005.

The book's greatest virtue is its attempt to describe political developments from both Palestinian and Israeli points of view. He addresses each side's "dominant narratives" on many of the major political developments in the ten-year period, devoting parallel discussions to the views inside Israel and inside Palestine. While a word count would reveal that more attention is paid to the Israeli situation than to the Palestinian, the book is unique in that an Israeli scholar, trained in Middle East studies, tries to understand and explain the actions of both parties to the conflict. Moreover, he strives to overcome a problem of analysis identified right at the beginning of the book: "Israeli and Palestinian leaders both attributed great weight to domestic political constraints yet found it very difficult to appreciate the constraints on the other side" (p. 2).

Meital is particularly attuned to the diversity of opinion and the conflicts of interests within Palestine, as well as within Israel. While he succeeds in achieving the scholarly ideal of understanding both sides of the conflict, the resulting narrative will likely be viewed as unsatisfactory by partisan interests on either side. His analysis is a view from the left, from the "peace camp," which makes it a minority viewpoint within Israel, and, it turns out, also a minority viewpoint in Palestine, as we have learned from polls during the period, and from the Hamas victory in the 2006 elections (a year after the study was completed).

While the book focuses primarily on Israel and Palestine, its subtitle points to the broader Middle East because of one chapter (among twelve) on September 11 and its aftermath. This chapter is perhaps a distraction from the main focus of the book. It draws the reader's attention to the U.S., Afghanistan, and Iraq rather than just Israel-Palestine. Meital justifies including the material by asserting a "spreading recognition that there was a direct link between the global campaign to stamp out terror and the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation" (p. 143). While this assertion serves both Israelis' and Palestinians' interests by claiming that their struggle warrants global attention...