Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process

Here it is - the disgraceful story of Yasser Arafat, trapped like a rat in a corner after foolishly supporting Iraq's Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. Rather than be completely marginalized in the aftermath, he saved his own skin by agreeing to a US and Israeli dictated 'peace process' that gave the Palestinians nothing but a municipal authority over a bunch of Bantustans, with himself installed as a their puppet dictator. Of course, since then things have just gone downhill. If it weren't so tragic it would make for really black comedy.

Edward Said in this collection of essays written between September 1993 and October 1995 lays bare the reality of what the "peace process" has been about from the beginning. The Palestinian authority gets "limited autonomy" in Palestinian population centers while Israeli troops "redeploy" to outside these centers. The settlements and bypass roads continue to be built at an ever expanding rate, but the world does not notice, at least when the labor party is in power. Jerusalem, which Israel is going to keep no matter what, includes "Greater Jerusalem" i.e. twenty five percent of the West Bank. Israel has veto power over seemingly every decision made by the Palestinian authority or the Palestinian legislature. The policy of "dedevelopment"--Sarah Roy's term--continues. No Palestinian economic enterprise is allowed to compete with the Israeli economy. Palestinians are to continue to serve Israeli business as sweatshop labor. Israel--as it did quite frequently during the last Rabin government--can institute "closures" at a whim, strangling the Palestinians to death, provoking violence and despair. The Palestinian authority continues to be Israel's clumsy and frightened proconsul taking every step to meet Israel's so-called "security" needs while the Palestinians remain exposed to Gush Emunim and Kach and the border guards to say nothing of Arafat's numerous secret police agenicies.Said can be somewhat recondite at times when he is discoursing on philosphical matters but when dealing with current events in the middle east he is unbelievably clear, graceful and powerful.

Said is a true intellectual, one who indeed speaks "truth to power". Daring, honest, and passionate, this book is for those who are brave enough to hear the real story of Israel's occupation of Palestine.

In this collection, Edward Said comments on the aftermath of the signing of the Oslo Accords. As an American Jew, I have grown up in a staunchly pro-Israel environment. As an American in general, I have been steadily force-fed an image of Palestinians as terroristic religious fanatics by the media. Said's words contradict these stereotypes and capture the acute suffering the Palestinian people have endured as a result of Israeli occupation. He also calls for the resignation of Yasir Arafat, who Said sees to have basically bowed to all Israeli and U.S. demands. If you truly want to understand the Palestinian side of the story that doesn't make it into the newspapers and on to the evening news, read Peace and Its Discontents. Hopefully you will become as outraged as I have and will be motivated to end the injustice that is the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Although my original interest in Edward Said's works resulted from my being a Palestinian interested in learning about the Palestinian issue and the different factors involved in it, Edward Said, I recently realized, approaches the Arab-Israeli conflict from a humanist point of view that transcends nationl and nationlaist considerations. Edward Said offers necessary facts and points of view to take into consideration. Most importantly, he uses the Israeli press as a source for his arguements; something the Western and American media in particular have been reluctant to do. Edward Said's childhood was directly influenced by the turn of events in the late forties in what was then called Palestine. He escaped Jerusalem with his family in 1947 and went to live in Egypt. He later went to school in some of the most prestigious American universities, Princeton and Harvard. Eventually, he started teaching in Columbia University in New York City. Edward Said's sense of intellectual criticism has marked his reviews of literature. His masterpiece, Orientalism, published in 1978, was a defining work on the relations between the West and the rest of the world. His latest work " Peace and its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process" comes along a few books that try to remind us of the ever-neglected issue of Palestinian rights. Backed by facts and crtitical pessimism of what lies ahead for the Middle East region, the book deals with several aspects of the Palestinian issue such as Israeli domination and control of Palestinian daily life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These areas that were occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967 are quickly turning into South African-like Bantustans: modern-day reservations where Palestinian merceneries are financed by American and Israeli money to keep the rest of the Palestinians silent and subordiante. Meanwhile, the Palestinian economy remains almost non-existent, destroyed by Israel's 30 year brutal military occupation, with a high ( 29%) unemployment and the only source of income that exists is work in Israeli factories at low wages ( Plaestinian workers get 1/3 of what Israeli workers are paid with no health or social security benefits received at all). Said's criticism of Palestinian Authority Chairmnan Yasser Arafat's authoritarianism attests to his unrelenting courage in telling the truth about the much-loathed Arab leaders that have often purged their opponents in medieval-like prisons. Said today is one of a handful of Palestinian and even Arab intellectuals who have been brave enough to speak their minds about Arab and Palestinian terror regiemes that belong to the Middle Ages but continue to survive due to fear and silence. It is enough to mention that Said remains on a death list in half a dozen Middle Eastern countries. Perhaps the biggest proof of the falseness of the allegations that Said calls for violence and a continuation of the Ara