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| Volume VIII, September 2001, Number 3 |
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| Book Review Excerpts |
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Negotiating Jerusalem, by Jerome M. Segal, Shlomit Levy, Nadar Izzat Sa'id and Elihu Katz. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000. 341 pages. $31.95, paperback.
Philip C. Wilcox, Jr.
President, Foundation for Middle East Peace; U.S. consul general, Jerusalem, 1988-91
No issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict has been more colored by emotion, mythology and propaganda than Jerusalem. One myth, aggressively cultivated by Israel, has had a profound impact on the peace process: that whatever compromises might be reached for peace, there could be no change in Israel's control of the Holy City, including the enlarged areas of East Jerusalem annexed in 1967.
The myth of "unified, indivisible, eternal, Israeli Jerusalem" and the claim that Israel's sovereignty throughout today's Jerusalem is of "existential" importance to all Jews influenced a generation of Israelis to believe that "while everything else is negotiable, Jerusalem is not." For two decades, it led American officials, sensitive to near-unanimous acceptance by the American Jewish community of this myth, to treat Jerusalem as the third rail of the peace process; it had to be avoided until all other issues were resolved. This obliged the Palestinians to agree in the Oslo accords to defer negotiations over Jerusalem. It was used after 1967 to justify Israeli settlement on huge areas of confiscated Arab land in East Jerusalem, vastly complicating prospects for a solution that would serve both Jewish and Arab needs. These settlements have disfigured Jerusalem's unique landscape with massive apartment blocks and an intrusive road network. ...
Negotiating Jerusalem is a landmark effort to reexamine the conventional wisdom that Jerusalem is non-negotiable. The book, a collaboration among Segal and Israeli and Palestinian researchers, synthesizes the results of polls of Israeli and Palestinian opinion conducted in 1995-96. Their findings reveal that, at least at that time, there was considerable potential for, as well as obstacles to, a negotiated agreement on Jerusalem that could meet the essential needs of both Israelis and Palestinians.
The Ownership of the U.S. Embassy Site in Jerusalem, by Walid Khalidi. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies and the American Committee on Jerusalem, 2001. 63 pages. $5.00, paperback.
John V. Whitbeck
Law offices of Dr. Mujahid M. Al-Sawwaf, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
In its listing of its available publications, the Institute for Palestine Studies states that this monograph, of which only 17 pages are text by Walid Khalidi and the balance is appendices of documentation and maps, "conclusively proves that the plot of land leased by Israel to the United States in 1989 as the future site of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem is confiscated Palestinian refugee property." It does. And it wasn't easy.
To conclusively prove this proposition involved the efforts of numerous prominent supporters of Palestinian rights (including, in addition to Walid Khalidi, Gene Bird, Francis Boyle, Usama Halabi, Rashid Khalidi, Nadim Majaj, Nur Masalha, Philip Mattar, Issam Nashashibi, Michael Saba and George Salem) and research over a six-year period among the records of the United Nations Conciliation Committee on Palestine in New York, the Public Records Office in London, the U.S. State Department, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Israeli Land Registry, the Israeli Ministry of Justice and heirs of the original owners.
Surprisingly, the most difficult part of the effort was not tracing the original owners of the plot of land in West Jerusalem (31,250 square meters, or 7.7 acres). It was leased by Israel to the United States for 99 years at a rent of one dollar per year pursuant to a lease agreement signed on January 18, 1989, shortly after the passage of the so-called Helms Amendment, which contemplated the simultaneous building of two new but unspecified "diplomatic facilities" in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. (In any event, since the vast majority of land in West Jerusalem, as in Israel proper, is confiscated Palestinian property, the odds heavily favor this status for any plot of land there.) What was most difficult was locating clearly the plot of land in question; the annex to the lease agreement permitting (with some further sleuthing) the pinpointing of the site was not declassified until 1996, nine weeks after passage of the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act.
The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914, by Gertrude Bell. Rosemary O'Brien, ed. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. 257 pages with photographs, glossary and index. $29.00, hardcover.
Lawrence Davidson
Associate professor, West Chester University
The imperial age of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was made possible not only by the West's industrial revolution and orientalist outlook, but also by the alienation of some it its most adventurous champions. Among the Europeans there was a small group of people who sublimated their dissatisfaction with the Victorian culture of the time into an exploration of those territories and peoples that were the subject of the West's imperial expansion. Ironically, their activities as explorers, soldiers and administrators facilitated the spread of the very Western culture they sought to escape.
The number of these restless adventurers was small (among the British one immediately thinks of Richard Burton and T.E. Lawrence). The number of women among them was smaller still. Thus, the recollections of such women are rare and valuable. Rosemary O'Brien has given us the recollections of one of these women, Gertrude Bell, in the form of letters and notes from 1913 to 1914. At that time, Bell traveled from Damascus southward into Arabia as far as Bir Haizar, across to Hayyil, and then northward to Baghdad. She did so accompanied only by local Arab assistants and guides. In the process she documented local archaeological sites (Bell was an amateur archaeologist) and mapped the area for possible future use by British military and imperial authorities. For a historical interpretation of Bell's journey one can see either O'Brien's brief introduction or go to Janet Wallach's Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell (New York: Anchor Books, 1999).
Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran, by Daniel Brumberg. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 306 pages, with notes and index. $21.00, paperback.
David Nalle
Washington editor, Central Asia Monitor; U.S. Foreign Service officer (ret.)
This is in some ways a curious book. Seeing the title, an irreverent Iranian-American, of whom there are many, might well say, "Once was enough, who needs to reinvent him?" Of course, the intent of the title is something quite different -- and the book is in fact an impressive study of the unfolding drama of politics and government in Iran since the Islamic Revolution established itself in power in 1979.
What remains as curious is the determinedly "scholastic" approach the author has taken to tracking the selective interpretations, by clerics and reformers, of the legacy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Does his carefully schematized approach help or hinder understanding? Through assiduous research into the recorded versions of Khomeini's pronouncements -- in the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) archives, for example -- Brumberg clearly makes the point that Khomeini expressed, over time, a wide variety of beliefs and opinions, and that some of them were mutually contradictory. The process of choosing among these opinions, all of them lodged within Ayatollah Khomeini's powerful charisma, is essentially the "reinventing" of the book's title. Thus, after Khomeini's death, a conservative cleric or a radical reformer could easily delve into the canon and choose the ultimate authoritative support for his position. The "struggle" of the title is the continuing dialectic set up between opposing choices or interpretations.
Managing the Oil Wealth: Opec's Windfalls and Pitfalls, by Jahangir Amuzegar.
London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. 282 pages. $24.50, paperback.
Suzanne Maloney
Brookings Institution
Three years ago, the price of oil plunged below $10 per barrel on the world market. This marked its nadir since the 1973 Arab embargo that first sent prices spiraling and secured the global sway of the nascent cartel of oil-producing states, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). At its twenty-fifth anniversary, OPEC's future looked grim, with its member governments feuding over how best to stabilize plummeting prices and fumbling to salvage their individual treasuries. Today it might be tempting to assume that these troubles are finished and long forgotten. After all, the oil producers managed to mitigate the price collapse relatively quickly, with some help from Alan Greenspan and the Asian economic recovery. These days, oil price hikes provoke outrage at the gasoline pumps from American consumers and fulmination about OPEC from the U.S. government, while the producers reap revenues that far exceed their budgetary planning.
But in spite of occasional Congressional blustering over OPEC's market dominance, the challenges for producers remain perversely complex, even in this time of plenty. For OPEC, the roller-coaster oil market of the past few years only highlights its members' extreme vulnerability to price volatility and the importance of maintaining stable supplies in the midst of political turmoil, such as the long stand-off between Iraq and the world community. At home, recent windfall revenues for oil producers have confounded the earlier urgency of needed economic reforms and intensified domestic political pressures for payoffs now.
For a deeper understanding of the burdens that accompany the oil bonanza, readers should take up Jahangir Amuzegar's superb new reference work, Managing The Oil Wealth: OPEC's Windfalls and Pitfalls. The book, recently updated and re-issued from its initial 1999 release, renders a steadfastly dispassionate portrayal of the decidedly mixed blessings that accompany vast petroleum endowments, and the uneven record of producer states in making optimal use of that bounty. Amuzegar is a highly respected international economist whose previous posts include service at the International Monetary Fund and leadership of Iran's Finance Ministry during the final years of Mohammad Reza Shah's reign. He has deployed his profound understanding of the region and its development challenges to address the wider scope of political economic dilemmas facing oil-producing states. The result is a statistically rich and meticulously researched historical overview of the performance of 13 OPEC member states over the past 27 years.
Turkey Today: A Nation Divided over Islam's Revival, by Marvine Howe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. xviii + 310 pages, with notes, bibliography and index. $26.00, hardcover.
Umut Uzer
Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia
Carl Brown in Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 219) argues that books written by journalists on Islamism, particularly if they entail interviews and on-site contacts with Islamists, would be extremely beneficial in complementing the works of the academics. Marvine Howe has written such a book. It involves extensive reportage moving from the president of the republic down to university students and artists. The quantity and quality of the interviewees are remarkable in that they include university professors, Islamist politicians, judges, painters, journalists and members of civil society -- a substantial number of the main actors on the Turkish political scene in the 1990s.
Ms. Howe, New York Times bureau chief in Ankara 1979-83, returned to Turkey in 1995 to analyze the changes that Turkey had undergone in the last decade. Her aim is to present a clear picture of contemporary Turkish politics for the general reader with a particular emphasis on the continued role of Islam, despite the wide-ranging reforms of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk that were undertaken in 1920s and 1930s (p.xii).
She detects a strong societal fragmentation between those who advocate secularism and those who promote an Islamic lifestyle. The secularists, who are ardent supporters of Ataturk, comprise the ruling elite among which businessmen, professors, artists, bankers, members of the military and civil-society associations occupy a central place. Islamists, on the other hand, constitute a "parallel society," with the Islamic counterparts of banks, journals, newspapers and television channels (pp. 2, 4, 225). The interface between these two Turkeys seems to be the main source of conflict in the 1990s.
Turkey's Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel, and Russia, 1991-2000: The Kurdish and Islamist Questions, by Robert Olson. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001. ix + 240 pages, with maps, bibliography and index. $19.95, paperback.
Julia Nanay
Director, The Petroleum Finance Company
Turkey today is pivotal in U.S. foreign-policy considerations, epitomizing the lynchpin in a dizzying range of U.S. economic, political and military objectives. By force of its geography, Turkey is a European, Asian and Middle Eastern country. It cuts across continents, amalgamates ethnic groups, and tries to be a good neighbor to an array of countries with which the United States has poor relations or none at all. It balances its role in NATO with a military alliance with Israel and with the conflicting political and military approaches of some of its most important economic partners. Turkey's delicate foreign-relations balancing act is matched by increasingly delicate maneuvers on the domestic political front. Confronting enormous regional complexities, Turkey today is also faced with a "make or break" domestic economic crisis with serious political repercussions. Sitting on the sidelines is the Turkish military, which still plays the governing role in the country's foreign and domestic political direction. ...
Robert Olson's timely book, Turkey's Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia, 1991-2000, addresses the most important bilateral dilemmas that have vexed the Turkish state over the last decade in its relations with two of its neighbors (Iran and Syria) and two of its strategic partners (Israel and Russia). Olson analyzes Turkish relations with these countries through the prism of the trans-state challenges posed by Kurdish nationalism and their contending and often conflicting approaches to the Islamist question (particularly in the case of Iran). Olson sees the Kurdish and Islamist questions as dominating Turkish foreign policy since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, arguing that Iran, Syria and Russia have each used these issues to exert political and economic pressure on Turkey. These three have cleverly exploited the Kurdish and Islamist questions to reward or punish Turkey. Their current handling of the Kurdish question in particular is the appropriate barometer by which to gauge the state of Turkey's bilateral relations with each country in question.
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