For seventy years Israel has existed as a state, and for forty years it has honored a peace treaty with Egypt that is widely viewed as a triumph of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. Yet the Palestinians - the would-be beneficiaries of a vision for a comprehensive regional settlement that led to the Camp David Accords in 1978 - remain stateless to this day. How and why Palestinian statelessness persists are the central questions of Seth Anziska's groundbreaking book, which explores the complex legacy of the agreement brokered by President Jimmy Carter. Based on newly declassified international sources, Preventing Palestine charts the emergence of the Middle East peace process, including the establishment of a separate track to deal with the issue of Palestine. At the very start of this process, Anziska argues, Egyptian-Israeli peace came at the expense of the sovereignty of the Palestinians, whose aspirations for a homeland alongside Israel faced crippling challenges. With the introduction of the idea of restrictive autonomy, Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the chances for Palestinian statehood narrowed even further. The first Intifada in 1987 and the end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for a Palestinian state, but many players, refusing to see Palestinians as a nation or a people, continued to steer international diplomacy away from their cause.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist, The Daily Beast, St. Louis Post-Dispatch In September 1978, three world leaders—Menachem Begin of Israel, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and U.S. president Jimmy Carter—met at Camp David to broker a peace agreement between the two Middle East nations. During the thirteen-day conference, Begin and Sadat got into screaming matches and had to be physically separated; both attempted to walk away multiple times. Yet, by the end, a treaty had been forged—one that has quietly stood for more than three decades, proving that peace in the Middle East is possible. Wright combines politics, scripture, and the participants’ personal histories into a compelling narrative of the fragile peace process. Begin was an Orthodox Jew whose parents had perished in the Holocaust; Sadat was a pious Muslim inspired since boyhood by stories of martyrdom; Carter, who knew the Bible by heart, was driven by his faith to pursue a treaty, even as his advisers warned him of the political cost. Wright reveals an extraordinary moment of lifelong enemies working together—and the profound difficulties inherent in the process. Thirteen Days in September is a timely revisiting of this diplomatic triumph and an inside look at how peace is made.

The collapse of both sets of Arab-Israeli negotiations in 2000 led not only to recrimination and bloodshed, with the outbreak of the second intifada, but to the creation of a new myth. Syrian and Palestinian intransigence was blamed for the current disastrous state of affairs, as both parties rejected a "generous" peace offering from the Israelis that would have brought peace to the region. The Truth About Camp David shatters that myth. Based on the riveting, eyewitness accounts of more than forty direct participants involved in the latest rounds of Arab-Israeli negotiations, including the Camp David 2000 summit, former federal investigator-turned-investigative journalist Clayton E. Swisher provides a compelling counter-narrative to the commonly accepted history. The Truth About Camp David details the tragic inner workings of the Clinton Administration's negotiating mayhem, their eleventh hour blunders and miscalculations, and their concluding decision to end the Oslo process with blame and disengagement. It is not only a fascinating historical look at Middle East politics on the brink of disaster, but a revelatory portrait of how all-too-human American political considerations helped facilitate the present crisis.

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.

In September 1978, William Quandt, a member of the White House National Security Council staff, spent thirteen momentous days at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, where three world leaders were holding secret negotiations. When U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin emerged on September 17, they announced a monumental accomplishment: the first peace agreement between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors. Praised by some for laying the foundations for peace between Egypt and Israel, the accords have also been criticized for failing to achieve a comprehensive settlement, including a resolution of the Palestinian question. But supporters and critics alike recognize the importance of what happened at Camp David, and both groups acknowledge the vital role played by the United States in reaching an agreement. There are few eyewitness accounts of the Camp David negotiations. Of the three leaders present, only Jimmy Carter wrote specifically of the talks in Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (1982). Neither Sadat nor Begin ever wrote about Camp David. Quandt's book is not only an eyewitness account but a scholar's reconstruction of the event, with insights into the people, politics, and policies. His Camp David has provided a comprehensive and lasting guide to the difficult negotiations surrounding the talks, including the fraught scenario leading up to the meetings at the presidential retreat and the accord that would lead to Sadat and Begin jointly receiving the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. Praise for Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics "The most authoritative account of a major historic event, written with scrupulous scholarship by a key behind-the-scenes participant." —Zbigniew Brzezinski, Adviser to the President for National Security Affairs, 1977–81 "An excellent piece of work... will represent a major contribution to the acade

A perceptive and provocative history of Henry Kissinger's diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East that illuminates the unique challenges and barriers Kissinger and his successors have faced in their attempts to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. “A wealth of lessons for today, not only about the challenges in that region but also about the art of diplomacy . . . the drama, dazzling maneuvers, and grand strategic vision.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker More than twenty years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Martin Indyk—a former United States ambassador to Israel and special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2013—has experienced these political frustrations and disappointments firsthand. Now, in an attempt to understand the arc of American diplomatic influence in the Middle East, he returns to the origins of American-led peace efforts and to the man who created the Middle East peace process—Henry Kissinger. Based on newly available documents from American and Israeli archives, extensive interviews with Kissinger, and Indyk's own interactions with some of the main players, the author takes readers inside the negotiations. Here is a roster of larger-than-life characters—Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Hafez al-Assad, and Kissinger himself. Indyk's account is both that of a historian poring over the records of these events, as well as an inside player seeking to glean lessons for Middle East peacemaking. He makes clear that understanding Kissinger's design for Middle East peacemaking is key to comprehending how to—and how not to—make peace.

Since the Camp David agreements of September 1978, the Middle East has experienced a series of major military and political developments that have affected not just the nations of the region and the two superpowers, but the rest of the world as well. The fall of the Shah of Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraqi invasion of Iran, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon—to name only a few events—have had a major impact. In this volume, a group of internationally recognized scholars, many of whom are present and former U.S. government officials, analyze these Middle Eastern developments from the perspectives of the superpowers, the region in general, and the five major actors during this period (Egypt, Israel, the PLO, Syria, and Iran). Although the individual authors speak from differing perspectives and viewpoints in their analyses, the book as a whole presents a balanced examination of the key developments in the volatile Middle East since Camp David.

The United States is locked into three prolonged conflicts without much hope of early resolution. Iran is pursuing a nuclear program; the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has seen unrelenting intercommunal violence; and the Taliban have got back into Afghanistan. George W. Bush will almost certainly leave office without solving any of these big foreign policy issues that have defined his presidency. Sir Lawrence Freedman, distinguished historian of 20th-century military and political strategy, teases out the roots of each engagement over the last thirty years and demonstrates with clarity and scholarship the influence of these conflicts upon each other. How is it that the US manages to find itself fighting on three different fronts? Freedman supplies a context to recent events and warns against easy assumptions: neo-conservatives, supporters of Israel and the hawks are not the sole reasons for the failure to develop a viable foreign policy in the Middle East. The story is infinitely more complex and is often marked by great drama. Unique in its focus, this book will offer new revelations about the history of the US in the region, and about America’s role in the wider world. A Choice of Enemies is essential reading for anyone concerned with the complex politics of the Middle East and with the future of American foreign policy. “Freedman is not just a good historian but a terse, readable writer.” Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times (UK)

The former dean of the Yale School of Management and Undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration chronicles the 1971 August meeting at Camp David, where President Nixon unilaterally ended the last vestiges of the gold standard—breaking the link between gold and the dollar—transforming the entire global monetary system. Over the course of three days—from August 13 to 15, 1971—at a secret meeting at Camp David, President Richard Nixon and his brain trust changed the course of history. Before that weekend, all national currencies were valued to the U.S. dollar, which was convertible to gold at a fixed rate. That system, established by the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of World War II, was the foundation of the international monetary system that helped fuel the greatest expansion of middle-class prosperity the world has ever seen. In making his decision, Nixon shocked world leaders, bankers, investors, traders and everyone involved in global finance. Jeffrey E. Garten argues that many of the roots of America’s dramatic retrenchment in world affairs began with that momentous event that was an admission that America could no longer afford to uphold the global monetary system. It opened the way for massive market instability and speculation that has plagued the world economy ever since, but at the same time it made possible the gigantic expansion of trade and investment across borders which created our modern era of once unimaginable progress. Based on extensive historical research and interviews with several participants at Camp David, and informed by Garten’s own insights from positions in four presidential administrations and on Wall Street, Three Days at Camp David chronicles this critical turning point, analyzes its impact on the American economy and world markets, and explores its ramifications now and for the future.