December 2011, Page 70

Books

Israeli Rejectionism: A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process

By Zalman Amit & Daphna Levit, Pluto, 2011, paperback, 208 pp. List: $30; AET: $23.

Reviewed by Andrew Stimson

In an all-too-familiar refrain, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently told the Jerusalem Post that renewed Palestinian calls for a settlement freeze were merely a "ruse to avoid direct negotiations." Of course, he failed to acknowledge the fact that any future Palestinian state would be impossible to sustain with existing illegal settlements where only Jews are allowed to live. Statements such as the prime minister's are themselves "ruses" used to distract attention from the truth of Israeli rejectionism. As authors Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit note, "Israel was never primarily interested in establishing peace with its neighbors unless such a peace was totally on its own terms."

Amit, a behavioral neuroscientist and Levit, a financial analyst, grew up in the newly created state of Israel and were ardent Zionists and kibbutzniks. Both eagerly served in the Israeli military and believed that Israel unwaveringly desired peace with its Arab neighbors. Their faith was shaken, however, by Israel's actions in the aftermath of the 1967 war, as it demolished Arab neighborhoods near the Western Wall, annexed East Jerusalem, and supported the establishment of settlements in Hebron and Nablus. The authors ultimately became active members of the Israeli peace movement and in the early 2000s began discussing the need to write a book focused specifically on Israel's long-standing rejection of the entire concept of peace with the Palestinians.

Amit and Levit expertly explore the motives behind many of Israel's leaders, including its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who regularly blocked opportunities for compromise with Arab negotiators. Fast forward to the 1979 Camp David accords, in which Israel finally relinquished the Sinai. According to Amit and Levit the treaty with Egypt, which was imposed on Israel, taught Israeli elites that maintaining a state of hostility with its neighbors was preferable to territorial concessions and compromise regarding refugees.

Israeli Rejectionism provides ample historical evidence of Israeli expansionism at the cost of peace, as well as its strategy of stalling peace negotiations with the Palestinians to ensure their desired outcome. Particularly noteworthy is the authors' dissection of Ariel Sharon's decision to remove Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip. Sharon, they argue, implemented the disengagement program to deliberately avoid negotiations with the Palestinians while being able to claim that the Palestinians refused to make a comparable effort.

Amit and Levit conclusively demonstrate that peace has never been Israel's top priority. Its military strength ensures that reciprocity with the Palestinians will never be possible. Yet, Israelis have placed themselves in a "self-imposed ghetto," reinforcing a sense of victimhood by keeping themselves in conflict with those around them. Many of the arguments in Israeli Rejectionism have been featured in other works, yet this compact volume provides a concise summary of the problem at hand, and a series of excellent rebuttals to those who believe that Israel could have peace if the Arabs only were willing.

Zahra's Paradise

By Amir & Khalil, First Second, 2011, hardcover, 272 pp. List: $19.99; AET: $13.

The simple black-and-white drawings found in Zahra's Paradise deliver an emotional impact that prose and non-fiction rarely achieves. This graphic novel artfully explores the hypocrisy of the Iranian religious elite and their basij enforcers, and the strength and resilience of the Iranian people. The book's prologue sets the poetic narrative by depicting a grizzly scene in which a pious father mercilessly slaughters a bag full of puppies his son has just named. After performing an act of ablution, he throws the bag into a river to drown the survivors as their mother watches helplessly. As the story's main character navigates a labyrinthine bureaucracy searching for his brother, missing since the post-election protests of 2009, these stark images reappear, punctuating the banal cruelty of contemporary Iran.

The authors, based in the United States, have chosen to remain anonymous, fearing for the safety of their families in Iran. The paradise at the center of their work is a huge cemetery in southern Tehran. Interred there not only are many of the Islamic Republic's victims, such as Neda Aga Sultan, a protester made world-famous in 2009 through images of her death, but many of its flag-bearers as well, including the father of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Kohmeini. This dichotomy becomes a theme that runs throughout Zahra's Paradise. How could Iranian society, heir to a long tradition of poets, philosophers and miniaturists, produce such grotesque public displays as the large cranes festooned with corpses hanging amid a modern metropolitan backdrop?

Beautifully drawn and well written, Zahra's Paradise is a worthy chronicle of a revolution that may have been delayed, but is not broken.