Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel [Paperback]

Glenn Frankel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 1996

Glenn Frankel, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work as The Washington Post's Jerusalem bureau chief, pulls no punches in this thorough exploration of the birth of a new Israel. His remarkable access -- to figures ranging from the most senior officials to the young Palestinian street fighters -- informs his sweeping account of years of civil unrest, political upheaval and diplomatic crisis. The result is an unprecedented look at the people caught up in the dance between Israel and the Palestinians.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Sisyphean task known as "the Middle East peace process" having broken again in the mid-1990s, Washington Post reporter Glenn Frankel's account of a "new Israel" painfully emerging acquires a renewed and enhanced significance. Frankel, the Post's Jerusalem bureau chief from 1986 to 1989, is himself an American Jew, a background that makes him both uniquely equipped and inevitably embroiled in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Interviews with key players such as Natan Sharansky, Yitzhak Samir, and Israeli general Amram Mitzna enliven this important work.

From Publishers Weekly

Israel is making the transition from a collectivist, mobilized garrison state to a more open, pluralistic, consumer-oriented and democratic country, according to Frankel, former Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post (and now its London correspondent). This superb, gripping piece of reportage is a pivotal account of a new Israel struggling to be born. Frankel views the Palestinian intifada-which shattered Israel's status quo, forcing Yitzhak Shamir's government into a halfhearted peace proposal that almost caused his downfall-as the opening step in the process of change. Among the other catalytic forces he identifies are the slow crumbling of Israel's centralized socialist-oriented economic establishment; the arrival of a half-million Soviet Jewish refugees, which exposed weaknesses in Israel's housing and education sectors and job market; and the rise of the ultra-religious yet populist Shas Party, which preaches reconciliation between hawks and doves. Interviews with Shamir, Russian Jewish activist Natan Sharansky, Israeli army general Amram Mitzna, who was in charge of suppressing the Palestinian uprising, and with Palestinian activists and Israelis of diverse political views flesh out this chronicle. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone (June 5, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684823470
• ISBN-13: 978-0684823478
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,131,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beyond the Promised Land, July 24, 2001

By 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel (Paperback)

At first glance, it appears Frankel has written yet another in the sequence of prominent American journalists’ books about Israel and the Arabs. But his book differs from those by David Shipler and Thomas Friedman in two respects: his topic is not the Arab-Israeli conflict but Israel; and he has a specific thesis that pervades the volume. The title makes that thesis clear: by “beyond the promised land,” the author means that Israel is, chrysalis-like, emerging from its Zionist stage (“a small, collectivist, mobilized garrison-state under siege”) and entering something very different (“a more open, pluralistic, bourgeois and democratic country”). The author welcomes this “new Israel,” as he calls it, arguing that it is “much closer to the benign fate that Herzl and others originally predicted” for the Jewish state. He draws on his three-year residency in Israel during 1986-89 and subsequent trips to the country to produce a lively, chronologically-oriented argument to back up this thesis, one inspired by an affection for and a familiarity with his subject matter.

So far, so good. But Frankel’s account suffers a fault that suffuses the book and much reduces its value: he has an acutely partisan view of Israeli politics, admiring Labor and nearly despising Likud. In a typical passage, he terms the change of government in 1992 the ending of “right-wing Likud domination” and “a return to the more pragmatic, less ideological rule of the left-of-center Labor Party.” "Beyond the Promised Land" would have been a much better book had the author reigned in his prejudices.