The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace - by Dennis Ross

Résumé du document

The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace' is a book by Dennis Ross, it was published in 2004, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ross is an American diplomat, he served as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George Bush and he became the special Middle East coordinator for President Bill Clinton. Thus, he has great knowledge and experience in negotiations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His work was published in the context of the al-Aqsa Intifada. In The Missing Peace, Ross retraces briefly the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, going back to the British Mandate. His focus is on the contemporary process of negotiations, started with the 1991 Madrid Conference. His work deals with the talks between Israel and Syria, the Oslo process, the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu. He also covers the 1997 Hebron Agreement, the Wye River Memorandum and the victory of Ehud Barak in 1998. This leads him to the Camp David Summit, which is at the core of this book review. Camp David has been the subject of many analyses and mythologies. As Slater explains, it is very difficult to assess Camp David because 'all of Barak's proposals were verbal' since he 'refused to allow the creation of an official record.' Thus, significantly, each participant came out with a different version of what had happened. The dominant view is that Prime Minister Ehud Barak formulated the most generous proposals ever made by an Israeli leader and that Yasir Arafat doggedly refused them. Nonetheless, this argument has been largely challenged.

Extraits

[...] Chapter 23, “From Stalemate to Camp David”, is devoted to the preparation of the summit. Ross methodically recounts the numerous steps prior to the decision and the organization of a reunion between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He presents an internal point of view of what happened, himself being an actor of this story. Thus, he exposes what skills the Americans had to deploy to get Prime Minister Barak and Yasir Arafat together. A constant of his narrative is the importance of knowing perfectly his partners. [...]

[...] Thus, I would disagree with Thomas Friedman when he says that The Missing Peace is definitive work on the peace process.” Otherwise, the chapters on Camp David are an excellent introduction to a thought on how should third-party mediators act during an international summit and consider the strengths and the weaknesses of the US in mediation processes. Reading and reflecting on The Missing Peace is a very useful exercise as President Obama attempts to renew the peace process in the Middle East. Bibliography Miller, Aaron David. [...]

[...] Kriesberg summarized these efforts in the following chart: source: Kriesberg, Louis, Mediation and the Transformation of the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict Nonetheless, one needs to be careful to identify the limits of the superpower' powers. Indeed, it tends to favor top-down approach, by brokering deals with top officials. As a consequence, peace agreements are later under the threat of lower level actors. This was very true at the time of the Oslo agreement, when Hamas challenged the accord signed by Arafat. [...]

[...] It does not diminish the value of his work but incites to further reading to challenge some of the author's accounts. The Missing Peace opens a broader question on the role of the United States as a mediator. Since Ross details the tactics deployed by the mediation team at Camp David, he paves the way for an in-depth analysis: Did the American mediators resort to the good devices? First and foremost, the decision of the US to organize a summit has been greatly questioned. [...]

[...] On many occasions, he reports how the Palestinians declined the offers that were made to them, without elaborating counter proposals. This situation comes to an apex when Prime Minister Barak accuses the American team of being biased towards the Palestinians[29]. As the summit ends without a final agreement, Ross puts the blame on Arafat and says the rest of the American team and the President tended to feel the same. While Barak is to be praised, the President implicitly criticizes Arafat[30]. [...]