Making Peace with the PLO

Abstract

This is a timely and engaging book about the secret peace talks between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It is a detailed case study of Israeli decision making that produced a sea change in Israeli policy in a period of serious challenges to Israel from Islamic militants within and outside Israeli-controlled areas. Mak.ovsky underscores that a signif­icant factor in Israel's dramatic shift toward the PLO was the latter's promise to control and repress Islamist mi1itants, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The book gets its detailed and highly nuanced portrayal of the Israeli and PLO decisions from a number of interviews with Israeli and PLO officials, Israeli academician, and trained and critical observers of Israeli politic . The author presents a highly complex picture of the dynamics between Yitzhak. Rabin and Shimon Peres and the impact of the domestic environment on Rabin's calculations to enter into negotiations with the PLO and Arafat. The sections on Israeli domestic politics and the relationship between Rabin, Peres, and Yossi Beilin are essential for any comprehensive understanding of how Israel is likely to pursue future negotia­tions with Syria and the PLO in Rabin's absence. The book starts with a quick survey of the historical background of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict Although significantly weakened by the Israeli inva­sion of Lebanon in 1982, the PLO was not destroyed and Israel failed to reduce its support in the occupied areas (p. 6). The intifada not only saved the PLO from political oblivion, it asserted the importance of the inside, nondiaspora Palestinians in the struggle against Israel, which Arafat i currently trying to undo. The American-sponsored Madrid peace talks allowed Arafat to get a foothold in the negotiations as part of the Jordanian delegation. The Shamir government argued that negotiations were limited to "personal autonomy" for the Palestinians, a position the Palestinian delegation flatly rejected. The second chapter focuses on the background that got the Oslo process started. Initially, the PLO asked the Norwegians to get involved in order to start a dialogue between them (PLO) and Israel. International academic conferences ...