Clayton SwisherThe Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story About the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process (Nation Books)

Clayton Swishers "The Truth About Camp David" tells the story of the - apparent - frenzy of peace negotiations that occurred during the tail end of the Clinton administration after the overtly intransigent Benyamin Netenyahu was replaced by Labours Ehud Barak.If you get your news from mainstream organisations, say the BBC, then chances are you will shrug your shoulders or shake your head at the outcome of the Israeli- Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian talks: can't these guys ever live at peace! If you read a newspaper that's sympathetic to the Israeli position (i.e. practically any newspaper in the U.S. and a good few here in the U.K.) then you probably feel, to quote the much cited remark of Abbas Eban, that the "Palestinians never miss a chance to miss peace." The great achievement of Clayton Swishers remarkable book is to explode these twin myths of "equivalence" between the parties, and Palestinian intransigence-Israeli victimhood. Instead the reader is presented with the real story, the product of Swishers detailed research and scores of hours of interviews with the participants. It is one in which the U.S. is the dishonest broker, the Israelis behave like burglars expecting to hang onto half the loot in peace, and the Palestinians (and Syrians) are cajoled, coerced, misled and marginalised and finally cast as villains.The early part of the book details the fruits of Baraks Syria first policy that led to the non-event summit in Geneva which came about when president Assad was misled by the Americans into believing the Israelis were ready to honour former prime-minister Rabins committment to comply with international law and exit the Golan. The larger and later part concerns the build-up to the Camp David summit as well as a detailed account of the event itself.The personalities, procedure and substance of the negotiations are clearly narrated in a straight-forward prose. The main actors are undoubtedly foregrounded: their past involvements with the Israeli-Arab conflict as well as what they say and do during the negotiations are covered in detail. Particularly fascinating are the accounts of the senior U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross (more pro-Israel than many on the Israeli side) and Ehud Barak. This is complemented with a substantial amount of attention to the reality within the Occupied Territories, Israel proper and (to a lesser degree) the United States. The final part of the book looks at the post summit spinning that laid the blame firmly at the Palestinian door, and how the path was firmly set for the second Intifada to eventually explode.This is a substantial and important work that along with Edward Saids trilogy on the peace process (Peace and Its Discontents, The End of the Peace Process and From Oslo to Iraq and the Roadmap), Tanya Reinharts The Road Map to Nowhere and Jonathan Cooks Disappearing Palestine provide a clear and moral account of the Israeli-Palestine conflict in the 1990's and 2000's. Well recommended.

Extremely well written and researched history of important negotiations which are widely misreported, often wilfully so. Mr Wisher has patiently interviewed many of the most important actors and close observers to these negotiations and pieced together this history of vested interest, subterfuge, suspicion, weakness, partiality and ultimately back-stabbing to explain how and why this sincere attempt to achieve an historic peace finally ran off the rails. This is an important book which should be read by anyone interested in the truth about events relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict.