"Winner of the BAJS Book Prize, British Association for Jewish Studies" Seth Anziska is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London and a visiting fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Haaretz. He lives in London.
On the fortieth anniversary of the Camp David Accords, a groundbreaking new history that shows how Egyptian-Israeli peace ensured lasting Palestinian statelessness
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.
Combining astute political analysis, extensive original research, and interviews with diplomats, military veterans, and communal leaders, Preventing Palestine offers a bold new interpretation of a highly charged struggle for self-determination. "This splendid book by a young American Jewish scholar is the product of an early emotional and intellectual transformation . . . His combination of original research and personal fearlessness has produced one of the most compelling works of political and diplomatic history I have ever read . . . Anziska has made a major contribution to the history of this conflict."---Charles Kaiser, The Guardian "[A] deeply researched book…. With access to declassified memos and documents scattered around the world by a succession of shattered peace processes, [Anziska] pieces together a single moment in which the seeds for a diminished Palestinian state were laid."---Mehul Srivastava, Financial Times "A deeply insightful and profoundly disturbing book."---James J. Zogby, Jordan Times "An important corrective to the conventional historiography of the period. . . . It will benefit anyone trying to follow the path to today's bleak impasse."---Ian Black, Middle East Centre Blog, London School of Economics "The book must receive the credit it deserves. Anziska did a very good research job and has collected and pieced together an enormous amount of information, including information derived from newly-declassified American and Israeli records, some of which even an avid consumer of books related to the Middle East peace process like me has not previously seen."---Joel Singer, Fathom "Preventing Palestine is a powerful and at times shocking book that sets the new standard for future work on the peace process after 1975. It is indispensable reading for all students of U.S.-Middle East relations and the history of the Arab Israeli conflict."---Paul Thomas, H-Diplo "Preventing Palestine is a fine work of revisionist historiography on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its evolution."---Lorena De
