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nations? And if so, does this uniqueness call for a "unique" solution
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to the Arab-Israeli conflict? These and many other questions are
raised by the authors of these two books. They seem to confirm
Churchill's belief that the emergence of the State of Israel is, for bet-
ter or worse, the greatest event of the twentieth century. But even
those who disagree with Churchill cannot remain indifferent to the
multiple shocks created by the transformation of the Jews from in–
dividual objects into collective subjects of history.
Conor Cruise O'Brien is conscious of this fact. His book, he
warns his readers, is a "highly personal" one.
It
could not be other–
wise for one who has been a close observer during more than thirty
years of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet only a politician of his ex-
perience, a diplomat of his international standing, and a journalist
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gifted with his stylish curiosity could have turned seven hundred
pages of compressed Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli history into a book
as captivating as a novel.
Brilliant style and an impressive grasp of facts are not the only
(
merits of this
tour de force.
Although O'Brien does not conceal his
sympathy for Israel, his knowledge of the Irish drama , so similar and
yet so different from the Zionist one, allows him to look at the Arab-
Israeli conflict from angles that are both new and thought-provok-
ing. This becomes particularly clear when he analyzes the causes
and consequences of "political overkill," a self-defeating practice
that, from the endemic anti-Jewish feelings of the British adminis-
tration in Palestine to the Israeli military arrogance in Lebanon, and
passing through the irresponsible extremism of the Palestinian
leaders from the Mufti of Jerusalem to Arafat, explains many of the
"miraculous" reversals of situation that have paved the way to the
present.
For example, "political overkill," as O'Brien observes, is ap–
parent in the refusal of the Palestinian leadership to agree in the
1930s to participate in the consultative councils proposed by the
Mandatory Government. Ironically, these councils, using numerical
representation as a basis, would have confined the Jews to perpetual
minority status in Palestine . Additionally, such short-sightedness or
"overkill" is evidenced by the Palestinians' rejection , against the ad–
vice of Egypt and Iraq , of the partition plan proposed by the Peel
Commission in 1937, which would have created an Arab state in
eighty percent of Mandatory Palestine. Equally self-defeating in
O'Brien's eyes was Britain's behavior towards Palestine in the 1940s,
especially when compared with its actions towards Ireland in the
