Part I The Arab–Jewish Conflict: Historical Aspects
1 A COFFEEHOUSE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY JERUSALEM: A Precursor of Modernization
Amnon Cohen
2 “FOREIGN OCCUPIERS AND STEPCHILDREN”: Zionist Discourse and the Palestinians, 1882–1848
Haim Gerber
3 WHY DO COLLABORATORS COLLABORATE? The Case of Palestinians and Zionist Institutions, 1917–1936
Hillel Cohen
4 THE “SHARETTIST OPTION” REVISITED
Neil Caplan
5 FROM EISENHOWER TO JOHNSON: Shifts in US Policy toward the Arab–Israeli Conflict
David Lesch

Part II Israel and the Arab-States: Between War and Peace
6 ISRAEL IN THE MIDDLE EAST OR ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE EAST: A Reappraisal
Elie Podeh
7 SYRIA AND ISRAEL – BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE
Eyal Zisser
8 MODERN IRAQ, THE BA‘TH PARTY AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Amatzia Baram
9 BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS: Lebanon and the Palestine War, 1947–1949 154
Guy Nathaniel Ma’ayan
10 NATIONAL VISIONS AND MULTI-COMMUNAL REALITIES: Lebanon and Israel/Palestine in a Comparative Perspective
Oren Barak
11 THE ECONOMIC FACTOR OF THE ARAB–ISRAELI PEACE PROCESS: The Cases of Egypt, Jordan and Syria
Gad G. Gilbar and Onn Winckler
12 THE HOUSE OF ASAD’S CAPITALISM OF CONVENIENCE: Economics as a Political Weapon
Gil Feiler and Simon Lassman

Part III The Peace Process: Dynamics and Missed Opportunities?
13 THE PROCESS THAT NEVER WAS: Missed Opportunities in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, 1948–2000
Ilan Pappe
14 HUDNA: Origins of the Concept and Its Relevance to the Arab–Israeli Conflict
Joseph Ginat
15 FROM DEPOSIT TO COMMITMENT: The Evolution of US–Israeli–Syrian Peace Negotiations, 1993–2000
Itamar Rabinovich
16 PEACE ACTION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION: An Israeli–Palestinian Exploration
Naomi Chazan
17 BETWEEN COEXISTENCE AND CONFLICT: Jewish–Arab Encounters in Israel
Ifat Maoz
18 BREAKING THE GENETIC CODE OF CONFLICT Or, Why Oslo Failed
Robert L. Rothstein
19 REFUGEES AND THE LEGITIMACY OF PALESTINIAN–ISRAELI PEACE MAKING
Khalil Shikaki

The Contributors
Index

“A festschrift is presented for the well-known Israeli scholar of Ottoman Syria, modern Syria, and Palestinian politics, Moshe Ma‘oz. The collection of 19 essays by authors representing the United States, Israel, Canada, and the Palestinian Authority is divided into three parts — the historical dimension of the Arab–Israeli conflict, the political aspects of the regional conflict, and an examination of the peace process. …Collectively, this set of essays represents simply an outstanding array of perceptive and scholarly analyses of the Arab–Israeli conflict in its present stage and should be a welcomed read to all interested in the topic.” Digest of Middle East Studies

“Arab–Jewish Relations, a tribute to Moshe Ma’oz, comprises nineteen articles written by his colleagues, friends, and students from the United States, Canada, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.
… Khalil Shikaki’s practical, clearly written chapter, the only contribution by a Palestinian scholar, addresses the issue of 1948 and the right of return. Shikaki concludes that ‘only its recognition of the right [of Palestinian refugees] to return can give Israel what it wants most: an end to the conflict and the closing of the refugee’s file without undermining its national character. The recognition would also give all refugees what they want most: a true right to choose’ (p. 374). It is an important article, one that should be required reading in all classes that deal with the Palestinian-Israeli deadlock.” Journal of Palestine Studies

Few people have influenced the field of Middle East studies as deeply as has Professor Moshe Ma’oz. Over the more than forty years of his scholarly career he applied his insight and nuanced perspective to the Ottoman Tanzimat, to contemporary Arab, especially Syrian, politics, to the role of minorities in the region, and to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This festschrift successfully captures the breathtaking scope of his scholarly career.
David Lesch’s and Itamar Rabinovitch’s discussions of the role of the United States in the Middle East serve a similarly useful, yet complicating function. Lesch reviews the slow and reluctant American entanglement in the conflict between Israel its neighbors during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. Rabinovitch relies on his first hand experience to retell the story of the American role in recasting the Israeli position vis-à-vis the Golan Heights under the Clinton Administration. Taken together, these contributions show the importance of American engagement in the region. At the same time, however, they are also illustrative of the historical lesson that the role of the US has been multi-faceted and driven by a mixture of contradictory considerations rather than reflecting the influence of any single variable.
… The final, and most interesting, part of the book deals with various aspects of the peace processes between Israel and its neighbors. Whereas the previous sections were too diffuse, this one is narrowly focused on the Israeli-Syrian and Israel–Palestinian fronts. Certainly, these are the two most pressing questions at the moment. However, the exclusion of the peace processes with Egypt and Jordan (not to mention social and economic relations between Israel and other Arab states and their populations) limits our ability to draw the kinds of more general conclusions about the character of relationships between Israel and its neighbors that the book’s title urges us to consider. Here too, moreover, the lack of a guiding framework is keenly felt. Most noteworthy is the tension between Ilan Pappe’s indictment of Israel for seeking to impose a solution that fits its ‘transactional’ perception of the conflict and Khalil Shikaki’s groundbreaking empirical work on how Palestinian refugees view potential solutions to the refugee problem. Pappe argues that the core issues at heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians – “responsibility, guilt and justice” (p. 233) – are dichotomous variables that cannot be finessed or divided. Shikaki, on the other hand, shows that only a small percentage of the Palestinian refugees are likely to return to the state of Israel and become Israeli citizens in the context of an eventual agreement. In other words, the empirical reality, even in the context of one of the thorniest questions, turns out to be quite amenable to precisely the bargaining and “quantification” that Pappe excoriates. Professor Ma’oz’s work often bridged such gaps between empirical data, theory, and policy. The fact that such a synthesis is ultimately missing from this volume is a side effect of the impossible choice between honouring the breadth of his contribution and pursuing the depth of his influence in any one arena.” Nadav Shelef, University of Wisconsin, writing in MESA Bulletin

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