Seth Anziska’s Preventing Palestine: A Political History From Camp David to Oslo is a deeply insightful and profoundly disturbing book that traces the tortuous path of Middle East peacemaking during the past four decades. It was quite painful to read.
Having been a close observer and sometimes participant in many of the developments that have unfolded since the end of the 1973 War, Anziska opened old wounds while shedding new light on the painful events and acts of betrayal that have shaped recent Palestinian history.
Through all of the twists and turns of this period, the brutal wars and the diplomatic initiatives, the one constant that emerges is the Israeli determined refusal to recognise the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood and the self-serving acquiesce to their intransigence by successive American administrations and key Arab leaders.
The culprits are many. In Anziska’s telling of this history, we can find fault with most of the parties to the conflict – all of the US Administrations that were involved during this period: Israeli prime ministers, whether from Labour or Likud; Egyptian Presidents Sadat and Mubarak; Lebanon’s Phalange Party; and, in the end, even the PLO’s Yasser Arafat.
Digging deep into the official records of the Israelis, Egyptians, Americans, Palestinians, and others who took part in the region’s wars and various diplomatic endeavours, Anziska mines government and research centre archives unearthing revealing contemporaneous accounts, minutes of meetings, and official communiques – providing the story behind the story of events as they unfolded.
Especially fascinating were: the internal debates that took place in Israeli cabinet meetings and how, at times, they would don a diplomatic mask of accommodation, while clinging to their firm refusal to surrender sovereignty of Palestinian lands or recognise the existence of a Palestinian nation; the discussions that occurred between President Carter and his aides; the frustrations expressed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s various foreign ministers over his betrayal of the Palestinian cause; the way Israel’s Ariel Sharon rudely manhandled US emissaries and their cowering in the face of his belligerence; the way Israel’s Menachem Begin initially sought to pose as the saviour of the Christians of Lebanon only to “turn on a dime” after they refused to sign a peace agreement on Israel’s terms; the insidious plotting of a Phalange leader with the Israelis to end the Palestinian presence in Lebanon; and the short-lived, but still worth noting, instances of frustration of US Presidents Carter and Reagan and Secretaries of State George Schultz and James Baker with the Israelis.
Carter, for example, began his term with a pledge to realise a “homeland” for the Palestinians. In line with his administration’s commitment to human rights, Carter was moved to end their suffering in exile and under occupation. In the end, he acceded to the pressure and shepherded the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The result, as Anziska notes was that at Camp David Sadat got the Sinai and Begin got the West Bank.
Throughout the next four decades the region witnessed the horrific Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, two Palestinian uprisings, and repeated failed American efforts at peace-making. As a result of this Israeli intransigence and the weak-kneed American response, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands only deepened. In 1977 there were about Israeli 5,000-8,000 settlers in the West Bank, by 1992 there were 100,000 settlers, and today the number exceeds 600,000.
Well, here we are in 2018, 40 years after Camp David. The Palestinian dream of an independent state is not only unrealised but is most likely unrealisable. With many Palestinians now favouring a one state solution, they may throw Begin’s words back at him and say, “There’s nothing wrong with that!” The problem for the Israelis, of course, is that the once “Arab minority” is now a majority and Israelis have only themselves to thank for digging this hole. By “Preventing Palestine”, they have given birth a new reality.