In his review of my book, The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War, Moriel Ram offers praise and criticism. At the risk of sounding ungrateful for the praise, I find his review to be based on careless reading and thus unfounded, thereby doing disservice to readers of IJMES.
A glaring example is offered by the opening sentence of the review, in which Ram states that I primarily focus “on the negotiations between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians” [my emphasis]. But there were no negotiations during the period covered by my book. My underlying argument is that Israel, unwilling to relinquish its war acquisitions, deliberately avoided negotiations with King Husayn and the West Bank leadership, both of whom were eager to reach a peaceful settlement with the Jewish state. Instead, Israel maintained futile contacts with the former and a one-way dialogue with the latter. Ram nevertheless continually invokes the term “negotiations” throughout the review. At one point he remarkably volunteers his own speculative explanation for the “Israeli refusal to expose its opening position in any of the negotiations.” If Israel refused to expose its opening position, what was there to negotiate about?
Another striking example is Ram's treatment of my discussion of Israel's so-called “generous peace offer” of 19 June 1967. According to Ram, on that day Israel proposed to cede most of the territories it had occupied in the war, but the “analytical depth . . . in regards to the attention allocated to the intricate details” is insufficient. “Attention” is indeed the key word here. Had Ram paid adequate attention to the detailed discussion of the subject in the book (pp. 43–47), he would have learned that the “offer” was nothing but a diplomatic maneuver to win over the United States, and was never meant to reach the Arabs.Footnote 1 Likewise, there was no reason for Ram to be “left puzzled as to why no serious leadership emerged from Gaza to take part in the negotiations [“negotiations” again], which were overwhelmingly dominated by a West Bank elite,” because the book provides a clear explanation (pp. 19–20). Furthermore, the fact that from the very start of the occupation Gaza was designated for annexation emphasizes the political irrelevance of the Strip's local leadership, had there been one.
Returning to the parallel Israel–Husayn and Israel–West Bankers contacts, the purpose of this exercise was to mislead the United States into thinking that Israel was weighing its peace options. In reality, however, Israel opted for a “futile discussion” with Husayn that “should last weeks and months” (as Foreign Minister Abba Eban put it; pp. 247–48). And yet for Ram, “Eban's Machiavellian . . . behavior could be explained as the application of a healthy dose of realpolitik when confronted by the complexities of diplomacy.” Complexities? Israel faced a simple, straightforward situation in which King Husayn, with the full support of the United States, expected to negotiate a settlement based on the land-for-peace formula. The “complexities,” then, were of Israel's own making, as a result of its refusal to engage in bona fide negotiations because of its unwillingness to pay the inevitable territorial price for peace.
Ram is evidently more concerned with raising alternative interpretations that have no foundation in the historical record than with the evidence itself. Thus, he fails to find “due investigation” of Israel's “expansionist mentality” (an expression that does not appear in the book even once). But what investigation is needed when Prime Minister Levi Eshkol is quoted as saying explicitly that Israel wanted to retain “the maximum of [the occupied] territory” (p. 282) and the book offers numerous quotations from other policy makers to the same effect? And what was the purpose of facilitating the Palestinians’ exodus from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and later denying their return—as described in Chapter 4 of The Bride and the Dowry (a “mandatory reading” for understanding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, according to Ram)—if not to make the occupied territories available for Jewish settlement? In fact, settlement building in the occupied lands, which started as early as July 1967, serves as decisive proof of Israel's “expansionist mentality.”
Without explaining why, Ram is unconvinced that the period covered by my study constitutes the critical and formative phase of the occupation era. Yet in the next sentence he says that my book deals with “a vital historical moment in the consolidation of the occupation.” Indeed, Ram's review is replete with contradictions, misinterpretations, and mistakes. Only space constraints prevent me from giving the full and very long list. IJMES guidelines require reviewers to examine the “soundness, accuracy, and thoroughness of the scholarship” of the books they review. Reviewers should hold the content of their own reviews to the same standards. With such a flawed reading of my book, Ram's review regrettably fails to meet these criteria.
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In his review of my book, The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War, Moriel Ram offers praise and criticism. At the risk of sounding ungrateful for the praise, I find his review to be based on careless reading and thus unfounded, thereby doing disservice to readers of IJMES.
A glaring example is offered by the opening sentence of the review, in which Ram states that I primarily focus “on the negotiations between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians” [my emphasis]. But there were no negotiations during the period covered by my book. My underlying argument is that Israel, unwilling to relinquish its war acquisitions, deliberately avoided negotiations with King Husayn and the West Bank leadership, both of whom were eager to reach a peaceful settlement with the Jewish state. Instead, Israel maintained futile contacts with the former and a one-way dialogue with the latter. Ram nevertheless continually invokes the term “negotiations” throughout the review. At one point he remarkably volunteers his own speculative explanation for the “Israeli refusal to expose its opening position in any of the negotiations.” If Israel refused to expose its opening position, what was there to negotiate about?
Another striking example is Ram's treatment of my discussion of Israel's so-called “generous peace offer” of 19 June 1967. According to Ram, on that day Israel proposed to cede most of the territories it had occupied in the war, but the “analytical depth . . . in regards to the attention allocated to the intricate details” is insufficient. “Attention” is indeed the key word here. Had Ram paid adequate attention to the detailed discussion of the subject in the book (pp. 43–47), he would have learned that the “offer” was nothing but a diplomatic maneuver to win over the United States, and was never meant to reach the Arabs.Footnote 1 Likewise, there was no reason for Ram to be “left puzzled as to why no serious leadership emerged from Gaza to take part in the negotiations [“negotiations” again], which were overwhelmingly dominated by a West Bank elite,” because the book provides a clear explanation (pp. 19–20). Furthermore, the fact that from the very start of the occupation Gaza was designated for annexation emphasizes the political irrelevance of the Strip's local leadership, had there been one.
Returning to the parallel Israel–Husayn and Israel–West Bankers contacts, the purpose of this exercise was to mislead the United States into thinking that Israel was weighing its peace options. In reality, however, Israel opted for a “futile discussion” with Husayn that “should last weeks and months” (as Foreign Minister Abba Eban put it; pp. 247–48). And yet for Ram, “Eban's Machiavellian . . . behavior could be explained as the application of a healthy dose of realpolitik when confronted by the complexities of diplomacy.” Complexities? Israel faced a simple, straightforward situation in which King Husayn, with the full support of the United States, expected to negotiate a settlement based on the land-for-peace formula. The “complexities,” then, were of Israel's own making, as a result of its refusal to engage in bona fide negotiations because of its unwillingness to pay the inevitable territorial price for peace.
Ram is evidently more concerned with raising alternative interpretations that have no foundation in the historical record than with the evidence itself. Thus, he fails to find “due investigation” of Israel's “expansionist mentality” (an expression that does not appear in the book even once). But what investigation is needed when Prime Minister Levi Eshkol is quoted as saying explicitly that Israel wanted to retain “the maximum of [the occupied] territory” (p. 282) and the book offers numerous quotations from other policy makers to the same effect? And what was the purpose of facilitating the Palestinians’ exodus from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and later denying their return—as described in Chapter 4 of The Bride and the Dowry (a “mandatory reading” for understanding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, according to Ram)—if not to make the occupied territories available for Jewish settlement? In fact, settlement building in the occupied lands, which started as early as July 1967, serves as decisive proof of Israel's “expansionist mentality.”
Without explaining why, Ram is unconvinced that the period covered by my study constitutes the critical and formative phase of the occupation era. Yet in the next sentence he says that my book deals with “a vital historical moment in the consolidation of the occupation.” Indeed, Ram's review is replete with contradictions, misinterpretations, and mistakes. Only space constraints prevent me from giving the full and very long list. IJMES guidelines require reviewers to examine the “soundness, accuracy, and thoroughness of the scholarship” of the books they review. Reviewers should hold the content of their own reviews to the same standards. With such a flawed reading of my book, Ram's review regrettably fails to meet these criteria.