Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process [Paperback]

Edward W. Said (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 1996

In works such as Culture and Imperialism, Said has compelled us to question our culture's most privileged myths. Now with this impassioned and incisive book, our foremost Palestinian-American intellectual challenges the official version of the Middle East "peace process." "He challenges and stimulates our thinking in every area."-- Washington Post Book World.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is not an easy book. It's not that Said's ideas are difficult to grasp, but rather, as Said says in his introduction, "this is the first of my books to have been written from start to finish with an Arab audience in mind." Perhaps even more than is usual for Said, author of The Politics of Dispossession and a member of the Palestine National Council from 1979-91, the book has a decidedly partisan spin as when he is shocked that "a Palestinian negotiator once believed that Palestinians were a threat to the settlers!" Still, beyond the rhetoric, readers will find very valid points aimed at both fellow Arabs and the international community. He chides the Arab world for nondemocratic governments and for negotiating without adequate understanding of America and Israel and without knowing their own resources-people, land and water. And he has very real concerns following the Oslo agreement: its failure to address all Palestinians-those in Israel, in the Occupied Territories and the vast diaspora-and the ghettoization of West Bank towns by the $600-million road system announced (post-Oslo) for the Occupied Territories. But generally, Said is an idealist, calling for absolute parity in negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Pragmatically, however, the PLO is negotiating from a position of relative weakness that was made more acute by its disastrous position during the Gulf War, which left it cash-strapped; public feeling in Israel means that a strong Palestinian presence in Jerusalem is unlikely; and, however he tries to downplay it, terrorism is a major factor in Israeli and international attitudes toward Palestinians.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Said, a Palestinian intellectual with impeccable credentials that carry him well within both the halls of American academia and Palestinian political forums, despairs over the failure of his community's leadership to achieve a solid set of goals in the present negotiating process. Most of the material presented here has appeared elsewhere in Arabic-language papers or in one of Said's many publications, but all was written originally for an Arab audience. While the theme may appear to be redundant to many?the Palestinians caved in to U.S. pressure and obstinate Israeli demands without exploiting their advantage of moral position and sound political objectives?the thought processes and manner of deliberation exhibited by Said require attention by everyone interested in the topic. Said's sentiment is echoed by other Palestinians such as Mohamed Rabie (U.S.-PLO Dialogue, Univ. Pr. of Florida, 1995). Recommended for students of diplomacy and in particular the current Palestinian-Israeli peace process.?Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (January 3, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679767258
• ISBN-13: 978-0679767251
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,695,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent voice for truth and justice, March 22, 2001

By 

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

This review is from: Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (Paperback)

Edward Said in this collection of essays written between September 1993 and October 1995 lays bare the reality of what the "peace process" has been about from the beginning. The Palestinian authority gets "limited autonomy" in Palestinian population centers while Israeli troops "redeploy" to outside these centers. The settlements and bypass roads continue to be built at an ever expanding rate, but the world does not notice, at least when the labor party is in power. Jerusalem, which Israel is going to keep no matter what, includes "Greater Jerusalem" i.e. twenty five percent of the West Bank. Israel has veto power over seemingly every decision made by the Palestinian authority or the Palestinian legislature. The policy of "dedevelopment"--Sarah Roy's term--continues. No Palestinian economic enterprise is allowed to compete with the Israeli economy. Palestinians are to continue to serve Israeli business as sweatshop labor. Israel--as it did quite frequently during the last Rabin government--can institute "closures" at a whim, strangling the Palestinians to death, provoking violence and despair. The Palestinian authority continues to be Israel's clumsy and frightened proconsul taking every step to meet Israel's so-called "security" needs while the Palestinians remain exposed to Gush Emunim and Kach and the border guards to say nothing of Arafat's numerous secret police agenicies.

Said can be somewhat recondite at times when he is discoursing on philosphical matters but when dealing with current events in the middle east he is unbelievably clear, graceful and powerful.

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly eye-opening collection of essays, November 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (Paperback)

In this collection, Edward Said comments on the aftermath of the signing of the Oslo Accords. As an American Jew, I have grown up in a staunchly pro-Israel environment. As an American in general, I have been steadily force-fed an image of Palestinians as terroristic religious fanatics by the media. Said's words contradict these stereotypes and capture the acute suffering the Palestinian people have endured as a result of Israeli occupation. He also calls for the resignation of Yasir Arafat, who Said sees to have basically bowed to all Israeli and U.S. demands. If you truly want to understand the Palestinian side of the story that doesn't make it into the newspapers and on to the evening news, read Peace and Its Discontents. Hopefully you will become as outraged as I have and will be motivated to end the injustice that is the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book has openned my eyes to realities often ignored., June 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (Paperback)

Although my original interest in Edward Said's works resulted from my being a Palestinian interested in learning about the Palestinian issue and the different factors involved in it, Edward Said, I recently realized, approaches the Arab-Israeli conflict from a humanist point of view that transcends nationl and nationlaist considerations. Edward Said offers necessary facts and points of view to take into consideration. Most importantly, he uses the Israeli press as a source for his arguements; something the Western and American media in particular have been reluctant to do. Edward Said's childhood was directly influenced by the turn of events in the late forties in what was then called Palestine. He escaped Jerusalem with his family in 1947 and went to live in Egypt. He later went to school in some of the most prestigious American universities, Princeton and Harvard. Eventually, he started teaching in Columbia University in New York City. Edward Said's sense of intellectual criticism has marked his reviews of literature. His masterpiece, Orientalism, published in 1978, was a defining work on the relations between the West and the rest of the world. His latest work " Peace and its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process" comes along a few books that try to remind us of the ever-neglected issue of Palestinian rights. Backed by facts and crtitical pessimism of what lies ahead for the Middle East region, the book deals with several aspects of the Palestinian issue such as Israeli domination and control of Palestinian daily life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These areas that were occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967 are quickly turning into South African-like Bantustans: modern-day reservations where Palestinian merceneries are financed by American and Israeli money to keep the rest of the Palestinians silent and subordiante. Meanwhile, the Palestinian economy remains almost non-existent, destroyed by Israel's 30 year brutal military occupation, with a high ( 29%) unemployment and the only source of income that exists is work in Israeli factories at low wages ( Plaestinian workers get 1/3 of what Israeli workers are paid with no health or social security benefits received at all). Said's criticism of Palestinian Authority Chairmnan Yasser Arafat's authoritarianism attests to his unrelenting courage in telling the truth about the much-loathed Arab leaders that have often purged their opponents in medieval-like prisons. Said today is one of a handful of Palestinian and even Arab intellectuals who have been brave enough to speak their minds about Arab and Palestinian terror regiemes that belong to the Middle Ages but continue to survive due to fear and silence. It is enough to mention that Said remains on a death list in half a dozen Middle Eastern countries. Perhaps the biggest proof of the falseness of the allegations that Said calls for violence and a continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict which never ceased or slowed but rather intensified due to the "Peace Process" is his dedication of his book to the Isreali Holocaust Survivor Professor Israel Shahak who has supported Palestinian rights all his life. Said's ideas and realism appeal to all of us alike: Arabs, Palestinian, Israelis, and Americans concerned with an genuine and real end to the conflict that has taxed the regions resources for the last sixty years.