The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War

Description

Israel’s victory in the June 1967 Six Day War provided a unique opportunity for resolving the decades-old Arab-Zionist conflict. Having seized the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, Israel for the first time in its history had something concrete to offer its Arab neighbors: it could trade land for peace. Yet the political deadlock persisted after the guns fell silent. This book sets out to find out why. Avi Raz places Israel’s conduct under an uncompromising lens. He meticulously examines the critical two years following the June war and substantially revises our understanding of how and why Israeli-Arab secret contacts came to naught. Mining newly declassified records in Israeli, American, British, and UN archives, as well as private papers of individual participants, Raz dispels the myth of overall Arab intransigence and arrives at new and unexpected conclusions. In short, he concludes that Israel’s postwar diplomacy was deliberately ineffective because its leaders preferred land over peace with its neighbors. The book throws a great deal of light not only on the post-1967 period but also on the problems and pitfalls of peacemaking in the Middle East today. Contents Maps Prologue. Two Peoples, One Land Preface Dramatis Personae Abbreviations Introduction One. The Two Options: 5 June– Early July 1967 Two. The Jerusalem Syndrome: Late June– July 1967 Three. In Search of Docile Leadership: July– September 1967 Four. The Right of No Return: June– September 1967 Five. An Entity versus a King: September– November 1967 Six. A One- Way Dialogue: December 1967– January 1968 Seven. Go- Betweens: February– Early May 1968 Eight. The Double Game Redoubled: Mid- May–October 1968 Nine. “Th e Whole World Is Against Us”: Epilogue Notes Sources and Bibliography Index