Because of that linkage, and because of American fears of repercussions from Arab nations should they appear too cozy with Israel, those relations have not always been as close as one might assume.
As the subtitle suggests, this is not a history of Arab-Israeli peace efforts per se, but rather of the evolution of Israeli-American diplomatic relations - except these two matters are so inextricably linked as to pose an almost semantic difference. Ross, who served most notably as President Clinton’s special envoy to the Middle East, has produced a work that is simultaneously comprehensive, quite fair-minded and somewhat ponderous. Well, yes, as a matter of fact how about the diplomat who has devoted his professional life to trying to bring about that peace, who has tirelessly toiled in the face of such grinding futility? This is surely not how Dennis Ross, one of the United States’ chief Middle Eastern policy makers through four recent administrations, would characterize his career, but it was with a degree of morbid curiosity that I turned to his latest book, “Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship From Truman to Obama.” This while knowing that on the Big Story that forever haunts this land - a peace settlement between its two peoples - there’s apt to be no story at all, that on one’s deathbed 30 or 40 years from now, this newspaper is likely to run a story titled “Mideast Peace Talks Falter.” Truly, could any job be worse? With the place so firmly fixed in the world’s attention, one would have to constantly sift through the mundane in search of something meaningful to say (“Hmm, a bus drivers’ strike in Haifa maybe that’s a metaphor”) amid a population with the dispiriting habit of prefacing answers to an interviewer’s questions with history lessons that can start anywhere from 98 to 2,000 years back. Having periodically reported from Israel and Palestine over the past 30 years, I’ve often wondered what could be worse than to be a journalist permanently posted there.
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