Barry Rubin was Deputy Director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and Executive Editor of MERIA: The Middle East Review of International Affairs.
This is the best and clearest political and historical analysis of the Palestine Liberation Organization to appear to date. Rubin, author of Cauldron of Turmoil: America in the Middle East ( LJ 12/92) provides richly detailed examination of how a group of Palestinians, not part of the old guard dominated by the prominent Jerusalem families, created an organization to fulfill a political agenda and achieve a grandiose objective: to establish a Palestinian Arab state in the place of the already existing state of Israel. He examines how the organization groped for a method of operation, fruitlessly employing terrorism, then searching for a more acceptable approach after the 1983 war, and finally moving toward a more diplomatic approach and facing the dilemma of the intifada as a non-PLO initiative. Rubin's effort takes the reader up through the agreement signed with the Israelis in Washington in Sepember 1993. Well suited for a wide range of audiences. See also Shimon Peres's The New Middle East , reviewed above.--Ed.-- Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C .
As a concise documentary work, [this book] elegantly and thoroughly
chronicles the history of the PLO, noting the ideological and
operative distinctions between its principal component, Fatah, and
other more radical branches. -- David B. Green * New York Times
Book Review *
Rubin...meticulously traces the agonizingly erratic course by which
the PLO finally arrived at the negotiating table. He also seeks to
explain the PLO's seeming inability to abandon maximalist aims-the
recovery of all of Palestine and the eradication of the Israeli
state... A lucid and concise...account of the PLO leadership's
management of Palestinian fortunes during the era now coming to a
close. -- Shaul Bakhash * Newsday *
Barry Rubin has a justified reputation as a quick study and a
flowing writer... [This] is the best early analysis of the makings
of the Israeli-PLO accords. -- Michael Widlanski * Jerusalem Post
*
Provides an excellent guide to PLO intentions. In compact and
readable form, Rubin reliably reviews three decades worth of PLO
complexities. More than that, he breaks new ground by getting
behind the PLO's external face-the personality of PLO Chairman
Yasser Arafat and the record of terror-and concentrating on its
internal dynamics... In short, if you want to read one study about
the elusive organization called the Palestine Liberation
Organization, Revolution Until Victory? is the way to go. --
Daniel Pipes * Washington Times *
The question remains: why did the PLO choose the path of
accommodation rather than that of armed struggle? The answers are
found in Barry Rubin's Revolution Until Victory?...an
impressive analysis of that Palestinian umbrella group. -- Sheldon
Kirshner * Canadian Jewish News *
An excellent and timely analytical political history of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), one which investigates and
interprets its political circumstances, strategies, and doctrines
from an inception in the late 1950s to the earthshaking events of
1993 culminating in the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House
lawn. Above all, it provides the reader a vivid portrayal of the
seemingly endless twistings and turnings and reversals of PLO
policies. -- Robert E. Harkavy * Political Science Quarterly *
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
