I very much enjoyed reading this book as it offers an eloquent account of the Israeli-Palestinian failed peace process written from a very personal perspective of the former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs.
I have known Ben-Ami for many years, having worked for him at his Tel Aviv Center during the 1990s. I also supported his career in the Labour Party. Ben-Ami is a sharp intellectual who is committed to peace.
Ben-Ami did his best to negotiate between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Often he came up with innovative ideas designed to break many impasses along the way. However, despite his best efforts, peace remained elusive.
He writes that this book pretends to offer the most nonpartisan, comprehensive, and balanced account by an insider representing one of the parties. Indeed, the most interesting parts of the book (I and II) are those where Ben-Ami was directly involved: The discussions leading to Camp David 2000, the Clinton Parameters, and the Taba peace summit. Part III covers the years 2001-2020, during which Israel evacuated Gaza, Prime Minister Olmert negotiated peace with the Palestinian leader Abbas and Obama’s peace initiative.
I am using this book for research on a book I am working on.
A high-level insider's history of the efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from 2000 Camp David Talks to the present, that explains why successive attempts have all failed.
The clash between Israel and Palestine has been one of the most emotionally engaging causes of modern times. Prophets without Honor tells the story of the grueling attempts to solve the conflict and examines the reasons for its resilience. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who participated at a high level in the July 2000 Camp David peace talks that almost led to a historic deal, uses his insider experience to illuminate the specific factors that…
Peter Wallensteen is a peace academic and activist who was involved in many initiatives to resolve conflicts. I have been following his extensive scholarship for many years.
This book is his magnum opus. Wallenstein opens this erudite and comprehensive volume with an autobiographical account of his upbringing and what brought him to make peace research the focal point of his life. Part II deals with ethics, the use of sanctions in international relations, peace mediation, and the role of international organisations, especially the United Nations, in settling conflicts. Part III focuses on war while Part IV focuses on peace and on academic diplomacy of the kind Wallensteen was involved.
I find this to be a rich, industrious, and thoughtful book. It is a nice summery of a very impressive career. I regard Peter as one of the leading scholars in the world on peace and conflict resolution.
This book provides a broad overview of what peace research is all about by an author who has been involved in the field for more than half a century. Among other things it gives a unique review of how peace research emerged in Sweden as the author was a key actor in the most crucial events during this formative period. The book also portrays how the discipline has grown from an initial focus on "alternatives to war" to the comprehensive study of the many dimensions of a "lasting and positive peace".
The author's own work covers causes of war, sanctions,…
This is the best book in international relations that I read this year. It raises an important contribution to the literature.
In this thoughtful book, Lerner provides a new understanding and application of the "narrative identity approach" in International Relations. Combining theory with applications, Lerner studied the long-term impacts of colonialism on Indian state-building, the Holocaust in Israeli security discourses, and the role of PTSD in reimaging US foreign policy.
The book is wide-ranging, and it uncovers new grounds. It is learned and original, combining an insightful theoretical framework with fascinating case studies. To my mind, Lerner makes a compelling case for viewing historical events through a new perspective. The theoretical framework he offers is interesting and relevant, the analysis is comprehensive and thorough, and the book is clear and coherent. I highly recommend it.
The Hedley Bull Prize in International Relations jury, of which I was a member, has decided that Adam Lerner's book From the Ashes of History should receive Honourable Mentioning.
In recent years, calls for reparations and restorative justice, alongside the rise of populist grievance politics, have demonstrated the stubborn resilience of traumatic memory. From the transnational Black Lives Matter movement's calls for reckoning with the legacy of slavery and racial oppression, to continued efforts to secure recognition of the Armenian genocide or Imperial Japan's human rights abuses, international politics is replete with examples of past violence reasserting itself in the present. But how should scholars understand trauma's long-term impacts? Why do some traumas lie dormant for generations, only to surface anew in pivotal moments? And how does trauma scale…
Why do the French care so much about women’s dress? How can we explain the French obsession with women’s dress? Why are they obsessed only with Muslim dress, and not with other forms of dress? What makes Muslim dress so special to deserve such a close attention, and treatment? How can we explain those strong French sentiments designed to protect the Republic against women’s dress? How this obsession, that translates into coercive laws, can be reconciled with the French motto of liberté, égalité and fraternité? And if such coercion cannot be reconciled with the French motto, what rationalizations are utilized by the French decision-makers to explain negation of basic liberties, signaling out Muslim women and undermining community fraternity? These were the questions that ignited my research for this book. The Republic, Secularism and Security analyses French cultural policies in the face of what the French government perceives as a challenge to its Republican secular raison d'être. Islamic ways of life seem to challenge existing conventions relating to freedom of religion and to the distinction between private and public.
