20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Historical Recap, August 4, 2002
This review is from: War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land (Hardcover)
Journalist Anton La Guardia spent most of the 1990s in Israel as a reporter, much like Thomas Friedman spent most of the 1980s in the Middle East before writing his masterpiece "From Beruit to Jerusalem." There are important similarities and differences between the two books. Whereas Friedman's book examined the broader perspective of Middle East politics, "War Without End" is concerned exclusively with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Addtionally, while Firedman's book used history as a backdrop for a telling of his own experiences, La Guardia's book concentrates on historical writing punctuated only occasionally by his first person accounts.
That said, La Guardia has produced an excellent one volume history of the conflict. He sets the stage by explianing the origins of Zionism and of the European anti-Semetism that caused it to gain force. He then gives an overview the history of the Ottoman and British rule over Palestine, the 1948 UN Mandate and Israeli War for Independence, and the subsequent Arab-Israeli conflicts. After this, the rest of the book is devoted to the many conflicts between the Israelis and the Palenstinians as well as the internal conflicts between various factions within Israel and of the ineptitude of the PLO leadership. La Guardia gives a balanced account, and is critical of the excesses and mistakes committed by both parties.
One comes away from the book with a clearer understanding of recent conflict. Though chronologically disjointed, the narrative covers events all the way up until early 2002. The odd structuring of the book is most likely due to the numerous rewrites La Guardia admits in the preface to doing as events continued to unfold. His most valuable service is that, like with Friedman's book, he cuts through the ideological and religious issues to give readers a relatively clear picture of just what lies behind the world's most intractable conflict.
Overall, a well written and readable book that works a tad better as a work of history than as a work of journalism.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dense melding of history, June 25, 2002
This review is from: War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land (Hardcover)
Outstanding book. Does a great job of combining biblical lore, modern history (last 100 years), and recent tragic events.
Why do the Arabs and Jews feel entitled to the land? Who is the aggressor? Who is the victim? Who is being stubborn? How can the conflict get more divided over time, with no benefit to either side? Each side is guilty and innocent. No simple answers are given, only context. Not much optimism, just the facts.
The book does jump around, but not in haphazard way. The chapters are groups of stories, with a common thread. If you want to read one book to understand the conflict in Israel/Palestine, buy this one!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Opinionated yet valuable history of 20th-century Palestine, September 20, 2003
This review is from: War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land (Hardcover)
A combination of history and journalism, La Guardia's useful and readable book covers the formation of Israel, its recently immigrated Jewish populations, and the exiled or (to risk a loaded word) subjugated, mostly Islamic, Arab natives. While the book sketches the historical events of the last two millennia that led the world to the current impasse and describes the rise of Zionism and its role in the creation of the state, the bulk of its pages focuses on events since 1948.
Discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become so heated that it is surely impossible to write a book that would satisfy even a plurality of readers, much less most of them. La Guardia is not impartial: on the whole, his sympathies tend to lie with the plight of the Palestinians (and part of this bias may well be unavoidable, considering the disadvantaged David vs. well-armed Goliath nature of the conflict). Yet he also understands the motives, emotions, and events that supported both Zionism and the formation of a Jewish state early in the first half of the twentieth century.
His blunt criticisms are equally harsh, directed at the international blindness that seemingly pretended that Palestine was an empty territory before and especially after World War 2, the incendiary Israeli policy of permitting settlements amidst Palestinian territory, the anti-Semitism tainting the Palestinian cause, the intractable religious fanaticism that infects both sides. Furthermore, he is scathing in his criticism of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. For example, he excoriates Arafat's cynical manipulations, his administration of "a fiefdom in his own image," and his "laissez-faire attitude" to Palestinian violence. Similarly, he disparages Sharon for his role in the Phalangist massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Although extremists of either stripe will undoubtedly disagree, La Guardia's biases inform rather than contaminate his reporting.
The journalistic aspects of the book yield its one major shortcoming. Instead of presenting the history of Palestine/Israel in some linear fashion, his chapters divide his materials, very loosely, into a potpourri of overlapping topics: religious background, the early immigrations and kibbutzim, a history of twentieth century events, the shadow of the Holocaust and the creation of the Palestinian diaspora (provocatively titled "Victims of Victims"), the assorted native and immigrant Jewish communities, and recent political events. La Guardia mixes interviews, historical narration, and flashbacks; since he occasionally refers to people and events before he's introduced them, the result may well be confusing to those who don't already have a general historical background.
Written by a foreign observer with an impressive understanding of the Middle East, "War without End" is, for the most part, factually reliable--and the opinionated presentation of those facts will enlighten rather than prejudice. The reader closes the book, however, with a sinking pessimism reinforced by the book's title: that this morass really has no solution that we can expect to see in our lifetimes.
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