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Book Review
MIDDLE EAST

Primer on a permanent war zone

Chronicle of a War Foretold: How Mideast Peace Became America's Fight

By Norman Spector

Douglas & McIntyre,

180 pages, $24.95

Norman Spector was the first Jewish-Canadian ambassador to Israel, a position he held in the Mulroney government between 1992 and 1995. Fluent in Hebrew, proficient in Arabic and trusted by both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Spector successfully combatted foreign-service suspicions of "double loyalty" among Jews in strategic Middle Eastern postings. Following the assassination of Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, Spector began to write opinion pieces on the Middle East. This slim volume collects his columns written over the past eight years.

The essays are divided into five sections, each focussing on a particular theme: background to the conflict, the major players, the Oslo Agreement and its failure, the shortcomings of the international community (mainly Canada) in solving the conflict, and the effects of 9/11. Each section begins with an overview, and the articles are arranged chronologically, providing a sense of continuity in what could otherwise be a disjointed array of commentaries.

Although journalistic accounts of the conflict are legion, Spector offers something unique by drawing parallels between the conflict and Canadian affairs. Like Meech Lake, the Oslo Accords failed because they were negotiated in secret, by parties who did not trust each other, and their benefits were oversold to a wary public. Palestine, like Quebec, is the site of a struggle between "two nations warring in the bosom of a single state and region." Israel and Quebec are islands in Arab and Anglophone seas, and both contain substantial minorities who identify culturally with the surrounding region.

Spector combines firm support for Israel with a liberal and humanitarian approach to the Palestinians, whose nationalist aspirations he endorses within the framework of a two-state solution. He notes on several occasions that this solution cannot be implemented so long as Palestinians demand a "right of return" for the refugees of 1948 and their descendants to Israel as well as the future Palestinian state. Spector's insistence that Yasir Arafat be held accountable for his many lies, evasions and incendiary speeches should open the eyes of Canada's principled Left, which labours under the false assumption that victimization automatically instills virtue.

Spector challenges conventional wisdom that the post-1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza lies at the heart of the current conflict. He points out that Arab intransigence towards Israel dates back to the creation of the state, which invading Arab armies attempted to kill at birth. Moreover, even in our own day, some Middle Eastern regimes, such as those in Iran and Iraq, along with fundamentalist Muslim movements such as the Palestinian Hamas, deny Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state even within pre-1967 borders.

There are two serious problems, however, with Spector's argument. Its focus on continuities in Arab hostility to Israel overlooks the tremendous changes in the region wrought by the Oslo Accords, which fostered economic, and at times diplomatic, normalization between Israel and several Middle Eastern and North African states. In large portions of the Middle East, public-opinion polling suggests considerable willingness to accept Israel as a permanent presence in the region should the occupation end and a full-fledged Palestinian state be created alongside of Israel.

Second, by blurring the distinctions between 1948 and 1967, Spector allows for the elision, if not evasion, of the troubling moral questions surrounding Israel's prolonged and often brutal occupation of the territories. The existence and the nature of the occupation are, in fact, burning issues in Arab and Muslim consciousness. It accomplishes little to note that the world is filled with oppressive regimes whose actions are far worse than what Israel has done in the territories. However critical Palestinians may be of their own corrupt and tyrannical autonomous institutions, they are considered preferable to Israeli rule. Ironically, in the nationalist imagination, "freedom" can often mean the right to be oppressed by one's own people.

At the end of the book, Spector calls for a "thorough military thrashing of Iraq," followed by its complete reconstruction. As with its occupation of Japan and Germany 60 years ago, the United States will "help jar the Arab world into modernity." These comments bespeak faulty judgment and reasoning. The Arab world is, in most aspects, thoroughly modern, even in the ways it expresses its criticism of the West (e.g., Al-Jazeera). What's more, a Marshall Plan will be far less welcome than it was in post-war Germany, for the Allied occupation involved cultural siblings, whereas in the Middle East, the United States is seen as a cultural and political foe.

Nor can MacArthur's occupation of Japan provide a model for the Arab world. Japan was homogeneous and hierarchical, and thus easy to control, whereas the Middle East is heterogenous and fissured. Japan's religious system was highly flexible and accommodating of fluctuations in sovereignty, but Islam has difficulty accepting non-Muslim domination in the Arab heartland. And Israel, a Jewish state in a Muslim expanse, ruling millions of Palestinian Arabs, controlling the Muslim holy sites of Jerusalem, is at the centre of the storm. Spector presents a serviceable introduction to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but a number of sustained journalistic accounts, such as Thomas Friedman's classic From Beirut to Jerusalem (1990) or David Shipler's Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land (2002) combine analytical depth with a fluid style. Historian Benny Morris's Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (2001) is even more successful at capturing the complexity of the issues involved. Thus, although A War Foretold makes for a good first book on the Arab-Israeli conflict, it should not be your last.

Derek J. Penslar is Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History and director of the Jewish studies program at the University of Toronto.