A01=Itamar Rabinovich
Acquiescence
Al-Manar
Alawites
Anwar Sadat
Arab citizens of Israel
Arab-Israeli conflict
Arabs
Ariel Sharon
Armistice
Assassination
Author_Itamar Rabinovich
Benjamin Netanyahu
Camp David Accords
Casus belli
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Ceasefire
Comprehensive Agreement
Conflict resolution
Containment
David Elazar
De facto
Dennis Ross
Diktat
Diplomacy
Dual containment
Ehud
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Equal footing
Fair Deal
Foreign policy
Free economic zone
Golan Heights
Hafez al-Assad
Hamas
Hegemony
Henry Kissinger
Israel
Israelis
Land for peace
Likud
Limited war
May 17 Agreement
Middle East
Mutual assured destruction
National security
Netanyahu
Open border
Operation Accountability
Oslo Accords
Oslo II Accord
Palestinians
Peace treaty
Peaceful coexistence
Peacemaking
Peres
Precedent
Preventive diplomacy
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Shimon Peres
Shlomo
Slow movement (culture)
Sovereignty
Special Relationship
State formation
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Syrians
Terrorism
Treaty
Yasser Arafat
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Shamir
Product details
- ISBN 9780691010236
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 197 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 21 Jul 1999
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A major casualty of the assassin's bullet that struck down Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a prospective peace accord between Syria and Israel. For the first time, a negotiator who had unique access to Rabin, as well as detailed knowledge of Syrian history and politics, tells the inside story of the failed negotiations. His account provides a key to understanding not only U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East but also the larger Arab-Israeli peace process. During the period from 1992 to 1996, Itamar Rabinovich was Israel's ambassador to Washington, and the chief negotiator with Syria. In this book, he looks back at the course of negotiations, terms of which were known to a surprisingly small group of American, Israeli, and Syrian officials. After Benjamin Netanyahu's election as Israel's prime minister in May 1996, a controversy developed. Even with Netanyahu's change of policy and harder line toward Damascus, Syria began claiming that both Rabin and his successor Peres had pledged full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Rabinovich takes the reader through the maze of diplomatic subtleties to explain the differences between hypothetical discussion and actual commitment.
"To the students of past history and contemporary politics," he writes, "nothing is more beguiling than the myriad threads that run across the invisible line which separates the two." The threads of this story include details of Rabin's negotiations and their impact through two subsequent Israeli administrations in less than a year, the American and Egyptian roles, and the ongoing debate between Syria and Israel on the factual and legal bases for resuming talks. The author portrays all sides and participants with remarkable flair and empathy, as only a privileged player in the events could do. In any assessment of future negotiations in the Middle East, Itamar Rabinovich's book will prove indispensable.
Itamar Rabinovich is Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, where he holds the Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair in the Contemporary History of the Middle East, and A. D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. Among his books are The War for Lebanon: 1970-1985, Israel in the Middle East, and The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations.
