Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Palestinians in the Nineteenth-Century Mind 16
2. Woodrow Wilson: “Rising Above” Self-Determination 26
3. Franklin Roosevelt: Locked In 45
4. Harry Truman: History Belongs to the Victors 61
5. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson: Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law 95 6. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford: An Unrecognizable Episode 124
7. Jimmy Carter: Making a Difference 157
8. Ronald Reagan: Missed Opportunities 195
9. George Bush: No Illusions 242
10. The Pictures in Our Heads 274
Notes 295
Selected Bibliography 339
Index 351
INTRODUCTION [full text]
Malcolm Kerr, the late scholar of the modern Arab world, wrote in 1980 that the conventional wisdom about the Arab-Israeli conflict had become so entrenched in the United States that diplomats were severely inhibited in their ability to formulate policy. Kerr maintained that a body of assumptions and misconceptions, rarely challenged or debated, had grown up around the origins of the conflict, and serious discourse had ceased among the public and except in rare instances among policymakers as well. Policymakers tend in general, he observed, to try to avoid controversy, and with regard to the Arab- Israeli conflict, it had thus become the natural inclination of the very people inside government whose job it was to study the issues to fall back instead on the analysis prevailing in Congress, in the press, and among the general public.[i]