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Article Excerpt
The Arab-Israeli Conflict--A History, by David W. Lesch. Oxford University Press, 2008. 495 pages. $38.95, paperback.
Professor Lesch has tried, in his words, "to create a vehicle through which college students can more readily learn about this immensely important topic ... [with] a smoother and more comfortable ride than the other ones in the literature" (p. ix). It is indeed about 100 pages shorter than its principal competitor, Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, sixth edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006), about the same price, and slightly more up to date. Lesch genuinely tries to be "as objective as possible" (p. ix) and offers interesting perspectives, especially on relations between Israel and Syria, with whose young leader, Beshar al-Asad, he benefited from many hours of exclusive interviews.
Concerning the discussions between Syria and Israel mediated by the Clinton administration, Lesch offers a succinct and balanced analysis. He leaves it up to the reader to decide which explanation of the breakdown of the Syrian-Israeli track was more accurate, that of Beshar or that of Dennis Ross, Clinton's principal negotiator. The track finally collapsed in March 2000, when President Hafiz al-Asad met President Clinton in Geneva. At the meeting Clinton conveyed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's proposal to return most of the Golan Heights to Syria. Beshar, who by then was fully integrated into the Syrian leadership as the presumed successor to his ailing father, explained to Lesch...
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