Crossing the Jordan

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The unresolved issues and supposed hidden agendas behind the Israeli-PLO pact of 1993 are the focus of this revelatory, convincing report and, according to the author, threaten to undermine the historic handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Israeli journalist Segev demonstrates that army hero Rabin, a pragmatist who accepted "land for peace" as a necessary compromise, did not envisage full statehood for a "Palestinian entity." In meetings with American Jewish leaders and briefings with correspondents, Rabin made clear, before his assassination in 1995, that he saw massive resettlement of Palestinian refugees in various Arab countries as a final resolution to the conflict. Criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's expansive settlement activity and intransigent posture, Segev nevertheless calls Arafat the most serious obstacle to peace, faulting the PLO chief's corrupt administration and his reneging on his commitment to end violence.

Segev's report bristles with contentions concerning secret back-channel negotiations (in Stockholm, Oslo, Morocco, Iran, Jordan), CIA monitoring of peace talks, Israel's behind-the-scenes maneuvers during the Gulf War and Rabin's disregard of his 1974 order to assassinate Arafat.

Library Journal

An Israeli journalist with connections in the Arab world and the Israeli political system, Segev goes behind the scenes of the current Arab/Palestinian-Israeli peace process to offer revelations not found elsewhere in print. The mutual recognition established during the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was followed by his assassination, leaving much of the progress mired in controversy. Segev reviews the background to the Madrid Peace conference, the Oslo Accords, and President Clinton's involvement. Most enlightening, however, is his publicizing of secret encounters between Israeli diplomats and their counterparts in the Arab East and Morocco, much of the information garnered from interviews with actual participants. The story is completed through the first year of Benjamin Netanyahu's prime ministership. Complementary to Shalom, Friend (LJ 5/1/96), this remarkably candid expos should be read by anyone interested in the complexity of Middle Eastern politics.

--Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba College, Salisbury, NC
--Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr College Library, PA

Library Journal

An Israeli journalist with connections in the Arab world and the Israeli political system, Segev goes behind the scenes of the current Arab/Palestinian-Israeli peace process to offer revelations not found elsewhere in print. The mutual recognition established during the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was followed by his assassination, leaving much of the progress mired in controversy. Segev reviews the background to the Madrid Peace conference, the Oslo Accords, and President Clinton's involvement. Most enlightening, however, is his publicizing of secret encounters between Israeli diplomats and their counterparts in the Arab East and Morocco, much of the information garnered from interviews with actual participants. The story is completed through the first year of Benjamin Netanyahu's prime ministership. Complementary to Shalom, Friend (LJ 5/1/96), this remarkably candid expos should be read by anyone interested in the complexity of Middle Eastern politics.

--Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba College, Salisbury, NC

Kirkus Reviews

A detailed account of the highly circuitous, incomplete Israeli journey toward a modus vivendi, and possibly a long-term settlement, with the Palestinians and a full-fledged peace with Jordan.

Segev, former Washington and Paris bureau chief for the Israeli daily Maariv and author of The Iranian Conspiracy (1988), focuses primarily on the period between the Madrid Peace Conference (1991) and the first anniversary of Benjamin Netanyahu's election (1997). Among his revelations are that King Hassan of Morocco, as far back as 1958, sought to persuade fellow Arab leaders to recognize Israel and even admit the state into the Arab League; contacts between high Israeli officials and King Hussein go back to at least 1960, when the Mossad foiled two assassination attempts against the Jordanian monarch; and Israeli right-wing critics are at least partly right in arguing that the Oslo accords are far too vague where Israel's security needs are concerned; in fact, that very point was made by then chief of staff, now Labor Party leader Ehud Barak. Segev illustrates how Yitzhak Rabin was persuaded to continue the Oslo secret negotiations initiated first by two Israeli academics, then joined by then foreign minister Shimon Peres; how Peres and Rabin managed to join forces despite decades of political competition and mistrust, though their reconciliation was hardly wholehearted; and how Yasir Arafat's "ineffective and corrupt administration has eroded his credibility, and his leadership is being constantly challenged not only by his opponents but also by many of his closest companions." Segev digresses a bit too such, particularly in dealing with the preþGulf War diplomatic soundings betweenJerusalem and Baghdad, while he gives somewhat short shrift to intra-Palestinian politics and to developments within Syria.

Still, he has uncovered an enormous amount of fascinating information, and has written a book on seminal years in Israeli and Middle Eastern history designed for those who like their diplomatic history thick, rich, colorful, and nuanced.