Beacon Broadside

Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East

An examination of the failure of the United States as a broker in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, through three key historical moments 

For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. In this book, acclaimed historian Rashid Khalidi zeroes in on the United States's role as the purported impartial broker in this failed peace process. 

Khalidi closely analyzes three historical moments that illuminate how the United States' involvement has, in fact, thwarted progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine. The first moment he investigates is the "Reagan Plan" of 1982, when Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin refused to accept the Reagan administration's proposal to reframe the Camp David Accords more impartially. The second moment covers the period after the Madrid Peace Conference, from 1991 to 1993, during which negotiations between Israel and Palestine were brokered by the United States until the signing of the secretly negotiated Oslo accords. Finally, Khalidi takes on President Barack Obama's retreat from plans to insist on halting the settlements in the West Bank. 

Through in-depth research into and keen analysis of these three moments, as well as his own firsthand experience as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the 1991 pre-Oslo negotiations in Washington, DC, Khalidi reveals how the United States and Israel have actively colluded to prevent a Palestinian state and resolve the situation in Israel's favor. Brokers of Deceit bares the truth about why peace in the Middle East has been impossible to achieve: for decades, US policymakers have masqueraded as unbiased agents working to bring the two sides together, when, in fact, they have been the agents of continuing injustice, effectively preventing the difficult but essential steps needed to achieve peace in the region. 

Upcoming Events

March 13th, 8pm: Cambridge Forum, Cambridge MA. 

April 1st, 7:30pm: Middle East Institute, Columbia University, New York. 

April 5th, 7pm: Politics & Prose, Washington, DC.

 

About the Author

Rashid Khalidi is the author of several books about the Middle East, including Palestinian Identity, Resurrecting Empire, The Iron Cage, and Sowing Crisis. His writing on Middle Eastern history and politics has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many journals. For his work on the Middle East, Professor Khalidi has received fellowships and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York.

In the Media 

Click here to read a post by Khalidi at the Foreign Policy website.

“Unpacking these episodes in sharp, take-no-prisoners prose, Khalidi maintains that the U.S. and Israel, ‘by far the most powerful actors in the Middle East,’ through successive administrations and a variety of key officials … have conspired to deny Palestinians any semblance of self-determination. A stinging indictment of one-sided policymaking destined, if undisturbed, to result in even greater violence.” —Kirkus Reviews

“What has happened to the Palestinian people since 1948 is one of the great crimes of modern history. Of course, Israel bears primary responsibility for this tragedy. However, as Rashid Khalidi shows in his smart new book, American presidents from Truman to Obama have sided with Israel at almost every turn and helped it inflict immense pain and humiliation on the Palestinians. At the same time, they have employed high-sounding but dishonest rhetoric to cover up Israel’s brutal behavior. As Brokers of Deceit makes clear, the United States richly deserves to be called ‘Israel’s lawyer.’” —John J. Mearsheimer, coauthor of The Israel Lobby 

Drawing on his own experience as a Palestinian negotiator and recently released documents, Rashid Khalidi mounts a frontal attack on the myths and misconceptions that have come to surround America’s role in the so-called ‘peace process,’ which is all process and no peace. The title is not too strong: the book demonstrates conclusively that far from serving as an honest broker, the United States continues to act as Israel’s lawyer—with dire consequences for its own interests, for the Palestinians, and for the entire region. Professor Khalidi deserves much credit for his superb exposition of the fatal gap between the rhetoric and reality of American diplomacy on this critically important issue.” —Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World 

“Khalidi has combined history, common sense, and his firsthand understanding of Arab-Israeli peace talks, as brokered by Washington, to make the case that American national security interests would be best served by a just peace in the Middle East. Instead, he writes with great sadness, Washington’s efforts to be an honest broker fall ‘somewhere between high irony and farce’—and put democratic America, with its avowed commitment to freedom for all, in the position of enabling the continued subjugation of the Palestinian people. This is an important book” —Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker

“For those of us who believe that a two-state solution is the path to justice and peace for Israel and Palestine, Rashid Khalidi’s trenchant analysis is powerful and disturbing. The United States has failed repeatedly to be an honest broker, accepting the status quo of Israeli occupation and settlements when a true peace agreement would be deeply in the interest of all parties, Israel, Palestine, and the US itself. Khalidi emphasizes that the deceptions of language and deed have serious long-term costs and that the United States might soon impose and incur still greater costs through ill-conceived policies vis-à-vis Syria, Iran, and other countries in the Middle East.” —Jeffrey D. Sachs, author of The End of Poverty 

“Rashid Khalidi is arguably the foremost U.S. historian of the modern Middle East.” —Warren I. Cohen, Los Angeles Times Book Review 

“With a deep knowledge of the Middle East and a felicitous literary style, Khalidi . . . examines the history of U.S. involvement in the area against the backdrop of European colonialism.” —Ronald Steel, The Nation 

“Khalidi’s role is as a historian, working to show how historical forces, largely ignored in the U.S., have shaped the modern Middle East. He takes particular delight in demolishing the various clichés used to describe the Middle East, bred out of what he terms ‘America’s historical amnesia.’” —Chris Hedges, New York Times

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Observation Post by Philip C. Winslow: The Murder of a Peacemaker

Today's post is the latest in a Beacon Broadside series: Observation Post by journalist and foreign correspondent Philip C. Winslow. Over a career that has spanned more than twenty-five years, Winslow has reported on world events for the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, Maclean's magazine, ABC radio news, CTV News, and CBC radio. He also served in two United Nations peacekeeping missions and worked for the UN in the West Bank for nearly three years. He is the author of Victory For Us Is to See You Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis and Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Land Mines and the Global Legacy of War.

Juliano Mer-Khamis was assassinated in the Jenin refugee camp on April 4, 2011.

The 52-year-old radical filmmaker, actor and director was shot five times by a masked gunman outside The Freedom Theatre, in the West Bank town once better known for its suicide bombers than for theater. In the refugee camp, Mer-Khamis's murder triggered two things: quiet outrage and just plain quiet. His drama productions and classes provide an oxygen-rich outlet for many children in the traumatized camp, but have badly upset conservative elements.

Mer-Khamis, who was half-Arab and half-Jewish by birth, was a provocateur and challenger, and knew the risks. Practically foretelling his own murder he once remarked that after all his work it would be a shame to die from a Palestinian bullet. He told Israel's Army Radio in 2009 that he was "one hundred percent Palestinian and one hundred percent Jewish". The comment reflected the tightrope nature of his bold cross-cultural ventures: To be one-hundred percent anything in Israel or occupied Palestine invites criticism or opprobrium; to boast a two-hundred percent identity is confrontational.

Yet confrontational, in the sense of demanding unfettered thought and expression, is what Mer-Khamis was all about. Plays such as Animal Farm and The Lieutenant of Inishmore may have opened young minds in Jenin but they also brought arson, broken windows, death threats and schedule postponements.

Juliano's mother, Arna Mer, laid the foundations. A Zionist who fought in the Palmach and later married a Palestinian Christian, Arna was as tough and colorful as Jerusalem stone, and devoted her later years to working for the rights of Palestinians under occupation. I wrote about Arna and her original drama group, and reactionary undercurrents in Jenin in April 2009.

The original theater was destroyed by Israeli forces in 2002, perhaps the most violent year of the second intifada. Juliano later made the documentary Arna's Children. You can read more about Arna and her life here.

Was Juliano too provocative? The answer can depend on the audience. Animal Farm, where children play the role of pigs, certainly was too much for some in a long-isolated town where drama and music schools are regarded as suspicious and subversive. Having children wear pig masks, and implying criticism of leaders – men, whose worldview is tightly bound with the concept of honor – is asking for trouble head-on.

What else? Adnan Hindi, the head of the camp's Popular Committee, has taken a hard line in the past about music performances. The Guardian reported Hindi's reaction to the murder and about a leaflet that circulated in the camp justifying it, as intolerant and backward-looking as the language was.

A couple days after the murder, Palestinian Authority (PA) police arrested a suspect. That news immediately degenerated into a Palestinian slanging match over whether the then-suspect was a member of Hamas (the ruling party in Gaza) or had connections to Fatah (the predominant party in the West Bank). The suspect apparently was later released.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (of Fatah) then took an unusual step to set things right and paper over the political chasm, by announcing that both Mer-Khamis and Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian peace activist who was abducted and killed in Gaza by a Salafist group in mid-April, would be awarded the Medal of Jerusalem.

"The assassination of the two activists does not reflect the traditions, habits and morals of the Palestinian people and all humans," Abbas said. I won't quibble with the president over whether assassination is a human tradition: The award was a small step reflecting Abbas's opposition to violence and another attempt to heal the destructive Hamas-Fatah quarrel.

I asked some friends about Mer-Khamis, and about what the theater means for Jenin.

"I know we have some crazy people among us who do not think right," a longtime Palestinian friend in Jenin told me.

"What I am sure of is this [murder] did not happen in our name as Palestinians and did not happen in the name of Islam. What Juliano did for Jenin camp was great, what he did for the children was great, and when he was killed [it] was a sad day for everyone who knew him. . . . Whoever killed Juliano and the Italian should be punished, and anyone behind them should be stopped . . . they are not working to the benefit of Palestine; on the contrary they . . . help the Israeli occupation, to make our picture darker in front of the world."

Juliano's plan to stage a controversial German play about teenage sexuality may have been the last straw in a society where dancing, or even the appearance of girls and boys on the same stage, is likely to be condemned as prurient.

Reconciliation attempts sometimes forge unexpected alliances. Zakaria Zubeidi, a close friend of Mer-Khamis and co-founder of The Freedom Theatre, is a former member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and was long on Israel's most-wanted list. Depressingly, Zubeidi was quoted as saying that "there will be no forgiveness" for Juliano's killers. Despite Zubeidi's current peace credentials, "no forgiveness" sounds rather fatwa-like. Hopefully the pronouncement will not be part of the cycle of retribution. (In a sidebar to the murder of Arrigoni in Gaza, Hamas exacted punishment on the Italian's killers in distinctive fashion.)

An old friend who knows Jenin well and has more than twenty years experience as an observer in the Middle East said that Juliano could have been more accommodating to Jenin cultural and religious customs. "Children in the camp certainly benefited from the theater," he said. "But Jenin was slowly, slowly recovering from the total disaster of 2002, and Juliano had served in the IDF [the Israel Defense Forces], and was a Jew and an Israeli. As the wound [of the intifada] was slowly healing, it might not have been the best time and place to implement such extreme things. I can understand that it created a lot of tension in people's minds."

This friend, a skilled negotiator, is habitually cautious and patient about trying to shift people's positions. "[The traditional Muslim view] is the fact on the ground, and if you want to change things you have to get people's trust, and then when the time is right you can introduce Western thinking and modern ideas. And you have to earn the trust of the whole society – not just the children, but the parents and the elders".

Someone else remarked that it was a shame that Mer-Khamis, who was passionately of both communities, was never fully accepted by either. His mother, equally passionate for justice and freedom, would have understood. When Arna died in 1995, some Israelis vehemently opposed her burial in Israel, and she was at last laid to rest at the Ramot Menashe kibbutz. Some photos of her son's funeral, in the same kibbutz, are here, and there are numerous tributes on Facebook.

Finally, I asked an Israeli friend, a former army officer and a conciliation expert, to assess Juliano's work. "He was a very unusual bird – for us and [for] them. I believe he came up too early. But this is the only way changes can be done, and someone pays the bill [for all] of us."

What happens to the theater without Juliano? The theater coordinator, Rawand Arkavi, told the Guardian: "We were cautious before but now we don't care if they shoot all of us. We will keep the theatre going". My Palestinian friend echoed the determination: "The time of fear is gone".

My U.S. Passport

Today's post is from Aviva Chomsky, professor of history and coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State College. The author of several books—including her latest, "They Take Our Jobs!" And 20 Other Myths About Immigration—Chomsky has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants' rights issues for over twenty-five years.

During a week in Nogales in March, working with the No More Deaths documentation project, I must have met several hundred deportees. They were arrested for a crime that no U.S. citizen can commit: entering the United States without official permission. Only people who are not U.S. citizens need special permission to enter U.S. territory.

When you get your U.S. passport in the mail, it comes with a flyer that says "With your U.S. passport, the World is Yours!" Holders of the U.S. passport are accustomed to simply arriving at the border of another country, showing their passport, and easily crossing in. Rarely, they have to apply beforehand for a visa. If they pay the fee and fill out the application correctly, the visa is routinely granted. Holders of a U.S. passport tend to believe that freedom to travel is their birthright, a view reinforced by the literature that comes with their passport. For the cost of a plane ticket, they can leave the country they were born in any time they want.

For most of the world's population, though, freedom to travel is a distant dream. They can't leave the country of their birth because instead of that magical ownership of the world that comes with a U.S. passport, they are citizens of countries in Africa, Latin America, or most of Asia. Many of them are also poor, and people of color. They can't leave their countries because no other country will let them in. Least of all the United States. We live in a kind of global apartheid, where whole countries—almost all of them in the First World—shut themselves off to travelers, while assuming that their own citizens have the right to travel anywhere they choose. Meanwhile the citizens of other countries—mostly in the Third World—can't travel at all because no country will let them in.

Observation Post by Philip C. Winslow: Evictions in Sheikh Jarrah

Today's post is the latest in a Beacon Broadside series: Observation Post by journalist and foreign correspondent Philip C. Winslow. Over a career that has spanned more than twenty-five years, Winslow has reported on world events for the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, Maclean's magazine, ABC radio news, CTV News, and CBC radio. He also served in two United Nations peacekeeping missions and worked for the UN in the West Bank for nearly three years. He is the author of Victory For Us Is to See You Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis and Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Land Mines and the Global Legacy of War.

In occupied East Jerusalem just north of the Old City, the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah for years has been the crucible of the struggle by radical Jewish settlers to “Judaize” Jerusalem, as the common term goes. As a word, “Judaize” is slightly less cumbersome than “de-Palestinianize” (the latter is my term), but the intent and the effects are the same.

Although settlers’ organizations, facilitated in various ways by Israeli governments and protected by the security forces, routinely have taken over Palestinian property in other parts of East Jerusalem and in the West Bank, the symbolic heart of the struggle is here, for ownership or enforced control of the old stone homes on Sheikh Jarrah’s tree-lined streets.

On August 2, following an Israeli court decision, 53 Palestinian men, women and children were evicted from their homes in a nighttime raid. The Palestinians are classed as refugees who lost their homes in 1948. Shortly after the families and their furniture were on the street, security forces ushered Jewish settlers into the homes. A friend of mine and long-time Jerusalem resident said: “It was one of the worst things I witnessed in all my years here. It was bad enough kicking out women and children from their homes, but heavily armed police escorting settlers into the homes within half an hour in front of the distraught families, and obviously proud of their actions – that was really something.”

If you have a strong stomach, you can watch the evictions and the aftermath in this series of videos, after the jump.