The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After [Hardcover]

Edward W. Said (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0375409300 | ISBN-13: 978-0375409301 | Publication Date: April 4, 2000 | Edition: First

In this important collection of fifty pieces, Edward Said questions the very foundations of the Oslo accords. Signed in September 1993 on the White House lawn by Israel and the PLO, the accords were immediately hailed as a success and a breakthrough for peace in the Middle East, but Said realized that the imbalance of power between the signees would set up a problematic dynamic, bringing only an illusionary stability. The later interim agreements of Taba, Hebron, and the Wye Plantation would already limit the next phase -- the final-status negotiations set to conclude this year, when the future condition of refugees, Jerusalem, borders, water and compensations must be decided.

Incisively cutting through the hyperbole in the press surrounding the accords, these pieces document the historic content but also give otherwise unreported accounts of what has really gone on in the occupied territory since the signing. The continuing expansion of Israeli settlements, the repressive leadership and inflated bureaucracy of Yasir Arafat, Said's own return to Jerusalem after forty-five years, the subsequent banning of his books by the Palestinian Authority, and Oslo's inability to recognize Palestine's self-determination are among the issues of peace and justice he discusses.

Together these essays are an eloquent and courageous statement for peaceful coexistence and equality between two peoples, and for an end to the separation of Jews and non-Jews -- the only hope for a lasting solution in the Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his 18th book, Palestinian writer and Columbia University literary scholar Said (author of the highly praised memoir Out of Place) once again brings acute insight to a controversial subject. In 50 essays (most of which were originally published in the Cairo Ahram Weekly and London's al-Hayat), he offers a bleak and somewhat cynical view of the Middle East peace process since Oslo. Deeply concerned with the fate of the Palestinian people, and without mincing words, Said probes their relationship to the Israeli government and their lives under Arafat's Palestinian Authority. He skewers the Oslo Agreements--arguing that Palestinians merely surrendered to the Israelis--as well as the Palestinian Authority and Arafat. (Peace, he points out, can only exist if equality and respect exist; as a result, he urges Palestinians to resist Israeli settlements with nonviolent demonstrations and to create stable, democratic institutions that can coexist peaceably with Israel.) Throughout, Said also comments on the role of intellectuals in political discourse, the Holocaust and, in a particularly poignant essay, the political development of his son, Wadie. Although they're stimulating, because these essays originated as newspaper columns, they're also occasionally repetitive, and some of the events that inspired them have receded into oblivion. Still, on the whole, this is a potent analysis--one that refuses to follow a party line--of the complexities and stark realities of Middle Eastern politics. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The Oslo "peace process," which resulted in the signing of an agreement between Israel and Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat, has been the subject of numerous books, articles, and commentaries. In this refreshing and intelligently argued book, Palestinian American Said (English and comparative literature, Columbia Univ.; Orientalism; Culture and Imperialism) provides a sobering analysis of the pitfalls of the Oslo agreement. Most of the essays in this collection have appeared in Cairo's al-Ahram Weekly and al-Hayat, London's Arabic-language daily. Each essay is Said's reflection on a dimension of the Palestinian predicament. Said convincingly explains why the "peace process" has had damaging effects on the fabric of Palestinian society and polity. (It puts nothing in writing, for instance, about the further expansion of Israeli settlements.) He is as critical of the corruption, incompetence, and authoritarianism of the Palestinian Authority as he is of American and Israeli postures. In his vintage style, Said forces the reader to look beyond clich s, sound bites, myths, and conventional thinking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.DNader Entessar, Spring Hill Coll., Mobile, AL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; First edition (April 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375409300
• ISBN-13: 978-0375409301
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,818,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Master Hammers Home The Realities Of The Peace Process, November 18, 2000

By 

Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (Hardcover)

Edward Said opposes the "peace process" because it has been deliberately designed to confine Palestinians to cantons which are isolated from one another, over which Israel controls overall sovereignty, water , exits and entrances, overall security and so on. The "peace process" has allowed Israel to extend its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip, with arrangements lest costly than the old direct military rule, letting the Palestinian Authority have "limited autonomy" in Palestinian population centers, the cantons, while it retains all the best land and continues expropriating Palestinian land and building more settlements, most fervently under the "moderate" Labor governments, contrary to much illusion. Israel currently retains direct rule in about seventy two percent of the West Bank and about fourty percent of the Gaza Strip. Said makes very clear that he believes the "peace process" to be similar to the effort in apartheid South Africa to establish batustans,"homelands" for the blacks. Doubtless, he says, the Palestinian cantons will one day be declared a "Palestinian state" but it will actually be no more than a caricature of the bantustans of South Africa.

He was on close terms with Arafat and many of the top PLO leaders before 1993. He offers an utterly scathing critique of Arafat and the PLO leadership. He portrays them as unbelievable morons and unbelievably corrupt and brutal. He says the main reason the PLO succumbed to Israel's offer in 1993 was that Arafat and his goons were facing an internal rebellion within the PLO because of their corruption, stupidity and lack of democracy. So they jumped at an agreement that made them Israel's collaborator and gave them protection. Their main duty is to round up, and often torture and sometimes murder all people whom Israel believes to be a threat to its always threatened "security" a very elastic concept which includes a great many non-violent persons

Since 1993, Arafat has spent all of the Palestinian Authority's money funding twelve or thirteen secret police agencies and buying off his enemies, real or potential, often with salaries for government jobs that entail absolutely nothing. He graphically portrays Arafat's incredible stupidity as he has endlessly begged the Israelis for more crumbs, and is always hoodwinked. Probably the best chapter in the book (and by far the longest) is "On Visiting Wadie" where he describes, among other incidents, an interview he was granted with the acid tongued PA minister Yasser Abd Rabbo, that was very cordial. Several months later Rabbo, on Arafat's orders, sent goons to all bookstores under Palestinian jurisdiction to seize Said's books and carry them away.

A point that he constantly reiterates throughout this book is something that he says that he has been making to Arafat and other Palestinians for years. He says that Palestinians need to try to emulate the international educational efforts, lobbying and other forms of activism of the old anti-apartheid movement of South Africa. The Arab world, he notes, is currently run by dictatorships of varrying degrees of brutality, most of them propped up by the West, and is at an all time low. Arabs, he says, especially the various kept intellectuals of the pro-Western regimes, are immensely ignorant of Israel. They focus all their attention on the Labor party, but not on any genuine elements of peace in Israel like Israel Shahak or the late General Matti Peled or his daughter who expressed sympathy for the Palestinians after her daughter was blown up by a Hamas suicide bomb. Or the composer Daniel Barenboim, with whom Said has developed a friendship. Or Israel's revisionist historians like Benny Morris, Illan Pappe, Zeev Sternhell, Tom Segev, etc. who were interviewed about their findings on Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestians in 1948 on Israel's fiftieth aniversary special on Israeli TV (of all places) in 1998.

In the rest of the book, among other subjects, he has some interesting things to say about the late Sir Isiah Berlin (especially Berlin's relationship with Noam Chomsky),the difference between Labor and Likud, comparing Shimon Peres and Bibi Netanyahu, with some rather amusing anecdotes about his encounters with Bibi in the late 80's and the great labor party fraud Yossi Beilin, from whom he takes two very pertinent quotes about the true nature of the peace process (page 170).

77 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful voice for Palestinian statehood and sovereignty, October 21, 2000

By 

Orchard Gate "pi_eater" (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (Hardcover)

Some critics have chosen to question what Edward Said means by 'real peace' and claim that, in truth, he seeks the destruction of Israel. No one who reads this book can be left in any doubt as to what he believes are the conditions necessary for a just and lasting peace.

For decades Edward Said has been a powerful advocate of a two-state solution, preserving the state of Israel within its pre 1967 borders. In this book he again and again condemns those who continue to argue for the elimination of the state of Israel and urges his fellow Arabs to accept the reality of the Jewish state. Indeed, he even goes as far as to brand those who refuse to have any dialogue with Israelis as racist. Anyone who was under the slightest illusion that Said is in any way making a case that even approximates to the destruction of Israel can be left in no doubt by the articles republished in his latest book.

Said argues very powerfully that the Israelis must recognise the wrong that has been done to the Palestinians, and that those who have been forced from their homes at gunpoint, dispossessed, their houses seized or bulldozed should either be permitted to return to their homes or should be compensated (not that all should have an automatic right or return). The Jews have been very vociferous in their campaign to see compensation paid to Jews for losses and suffering inflicted by the Nazis. Why then should they refuse to compensate those who have been dispossessed by Israel, the victims' victims, the Palestinians whose only crime was to live in Palestine?

Although some may think it is absurd to allow the native inhabitants of the land of Palestine the right to return to the land from which they have been expelled over the past fifty years, it is hard for Jews and their supporters to maintain such a position. After all, the principal of the Jewish Right of Return - which says that the land of Israel belong to Jews, wherever they live and that all Jews have an automatic right to 'return' - is the very cornerstone upon which the state of Israel was founded..

Said makes clear the historical context in which the dispute over Jerusalem must be seen. Israel has illegally occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. Its annexation is not recognised by any country in the world and the United Nations has consistently resolved that Israel must withdraw from all illegally occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, which has an overwhelmingly Arab population. The fact that Jews have lived their throughout history has no bearing on matters: Jews have also lived in a great many cities for a great many centuries - are we to allow Israel to annex any city with an ancient Jewish presence?

Then, of course, there is violence. Said's very simple point, which has been amply borne out by recent events in Israel and Palestine, is that if there is to be any hope for a lasting peace it must be founded upon a genuine settlement of the conflict, not some phony 'peace deal' which amounts to little more than formalising the Israeli dispossession of the native population. This is not threatening anyone but rather making plain the simple idea that peace must be made and not taken for granted. Peace must be based on mutual respect and an agreement reached between two parties treating each other as equals, something which Israel has consistently refused to do. (for example, the Palestinians are repeatedly required to 'recognise' Israel and guarantee the security not only of Israelis but also illegal Jewish settlers, but Israel refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Palestinians claim to statehood and refuses to guarantee the security of Palestinians).

Edward Said's book is a powerful, thoughtful statement from a committed Palestinian nationalist and highly respected academic. I do not agree with all he says but, nevertheless, I found the book thought provoking and engaging.

25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquently Written, Powerfully Argued, October 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (Hardcover)

This is a magnificent collection of essays that Edward Said originally published in newspapers and magazines like al-Ahram and al-Hayat. All of the essays are eloquently written and powerfully argued to expose the injustices of the so-called peace process. Too few intellectuals (unfortunately) have the moral courage and insight of Edward Said.