Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter

I read this when it first came out, but it seems very timely now to revisit. I had been under the impression that the Clinton administration had tried earnestly to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the book made it clear that there has been no real attempt on the part of the United States to help the Palestinians since the inception of the conflict. I would say that Bush's statement that a Palestinian State was the presumptive goal of any talks was probably the most effective help the Palestinians have ever received from a US President (and I don't like Bush). The book makes the case that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." That if we or the Israelis had simply paved some roads, built some schools, and kept the lights on, Hamas wouldn't have had a chance to rise to power. As it is, asking the Palestinians to control Hamas is like asking your next door neighbor to go stop the Mafia. Death would have been the immediate result.

The Palestinians are flat on their backs, with no power, literally and figuratively. To use a military solution only, when a social solution is what's so obviously needed is just so Middle Eastern.

One of the things Karl Albrecht points out in both of the books I've read recently is that if women have no power in the situation, no innovation, no creativity, and no lasting organization can exist. Israel allows women power if they become very masculine, but they don't allow women who are feminine to have a say, and it amounts to the same thing as if there were no women in power. The Middle East is plagued with this problem, and there will be no sustainable countries there until that changes.