This book argues that domestic Israeli politics have been a key factor in determining Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking in the period from 1988 to the present.

One message of Peace Process is that the United States has had, and will continue to have, a crucial role in helping Israel and her Arab neighbors reach peace. If American presidents play their role with skill, they can make a lasting contribution. But just as likely, they may misread the realities of the Middle East and add to the impasse by their own errors.

This book argues that domestic Israeli politics have been a key factor in determining Israeli-Palestinian peacmaking in the period from 1988 to the present.

Eight years after the second Palestinian uprising, the Oslo accords signed in 1993 seem to have failed. This book explores one of the major aspects of the bilateral peace process – the composition and behaviour of the Palestinian negotiating team, which deeply impacted the outcome of the negotiations between 1991 and 1997.

The Oslo secret negotiations from 1992 to 1993 were some of the most astonishing and also successful negotiations in the Middle East, leading to the mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel. Through an in-depth examination of the Oslo negotiations, this book argues that at the core of the negotiations was a fascinating dilemma of recognition. Overcoming this dilemma was at the centre of the secret negotiations. A thorough analysis documents how decision makers tried to communicate without being able to engage in face-to-face negotiations, and highlights the significance of the role of third parties in the conflict resolution process, stressing in particular the importance of the European Union’s power in bringing the sides together. This is a comprehensive account of the Oslo negotiations, focusing particularly on the timely issue of non-recognition – which is of great importance today given the recent emergence of the rise of Hamas as the dominant Palestinian political force.

This book examines the international politics of the Red Sea region from the Cold War to the present. It argues that the Red Sea region demonstrates well the characteristics of a sub-regional system, with increasing economic and social interdependence, greater regional integration, with the stronger regional powers – Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia – seeking to establish their influence over the sub-region, and with all states forming regional alliances to protect their interests and to fend off possible encroachment of others.

The position of the Persian Gulf as the main highway between East and West has long given this region special significance both within the Middle East and in global affairs more generally. This book examines the history of international relations in the Gulf since the 1820s as great powers such as Britain and the US, and regional powers such as Iran and Iraq, vied for supremacy over this geopolitically vital region. It focuses on the struggle for control over the islands of the Gulf, in particular the three islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb – an issue that remains highly contentious today. It describes how for 170 years Britain eroded Iranian influence in the Gulf, both directly by asserting colonial rule over Iranian islands and port districts, and also through claiming Iranian islands for their protégés on the Arab littoral. It shows how, after Britain's withdrawal, these islands became a pawn in the animosity and conflict that pitted, at one time, Arab radicals and nationalists against monarchical Iran, and, later, the conservative-moderate Arab camp against Islamic Iran. It goes on to explore the impact of the rise of American power in the Gulf since the start of the 1990s, its policy of containment of Iran and Iraq, and how this has provided encouragement to the ambitions of the Persian Gulf Arab littoral states, especially the UAE, towards the islands of the Gulf.

Although Christians form a significant proportion of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel, very little research has, until now, been undertaken to examine their complicated position within Israel. This book demonstrates the limits of analyses which characterise state-minority relations in Israel in terms of a so-called Jewish-Muslim conflict, and of studies which portray Palestinian Christians as part of a wider exclusively religious-based transnational Christian community. This book locates its analysis of Palestinian Christians within a broader understanding of Israel as a Jewish ethnocratic state. It describes the main characteristics of the Palestinian Christian community in Israel and examines a number of problematic assumptions which have been made about them and their relationship to the state. Finally, it examines a number of intra-communal conflicts which have taken place in recent years between Christians and Muslims, and between Christians and Druze, and probes the role which the state and various state attitudes have played in influencing or determining those conflicts and, as a result, the general status of Palestinian Christians in Israel today.

For decades, ideological discourses have dominated the Arab world. Inevitably, this has had a profound impact on the mind-set of many Arab scholars. In Israelism: Arab Scholarship on Israel, a Critical Assessment - now available in paperback - author Hassan A. Barari critically assesses the status of Israeli Studies in the Arab World. Scholars' incompetence and their lack of significant area studies skills have contributed to the underdevelopment of Israeli Studies in most Arab counties. However, the persistence of the Arab-Israel conflict, the injustice that has befallen the Palestinians, and the hegemonic ideological discourses have also greatly informed the epistemology and ontology of Arab scholarship on Israel. The author argues that, with a few rare exceptions - and despite the existence of a multitude of books, articles, and studies that have tackled Israel - Israeli Studies in the Arab world remains, by and large, weighed down by one-sided projections, ideological spin, prejudice, and a necessity to expose rather than to understand the other.

Since its creation, the State of Israel has been a magnet for attention. A country beset by conflict in its region and faced with the need to integrate mainly Jewish immigrants of disparate backgrounds into a modern and advanced democratic state and society, Israel has preoccupied observers, scholars and journalists since its independence in May 1948. Although a Jewish state Israel is also a democratic state that guarantees the rights of all of its citizens, including its large Arab and Moslem minority, in law and in practice. Israel and its modern history and politics have been the subject of substantial and often highly partisan literature, being hotly and vigorously debated both at home and abroad. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Israel contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1100 cross-referenced entries onsignificant persons, places, events, government institutions, political parties, and battles, as well as entries on Israel’s economy, society, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the various diplomatic and political personalities, institutions, organizations, events, concepts, and documents that together define the political life of the Jewish state of Israel.