Absence of Peace

Suicide bombings continue remorselessly to traumatize the Israeli people as the world's media bring dramatic pictures of the terror and carnage caused. Much less publicized, however, is the daily anger, poverty and fear of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians as a result of the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, economic sanctions and constant retaliations. This book looks at why the signing of the Oslo Accords failed to lead to peace. Nicholas Guyatt argues that the problem is not just the incomplete implementation of the Accords, but their very conception. There can be no economically viable Palestinian state, nor one acceptable to the Palestinians, so long as its territory remains fragmented, the Palestinian Authority becomes a surrogate policeman for the Israeli government, and the Palestinian enclaves are dependent on Israel for access to the power, jobs and the outside world. This book needs to be read by all those who are puzzled by why the Oslo process seems to be making so little progress, and who wish to understand whether there may be alternatives holding out more hope of a permanent and just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.