War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land

In 1905, an Arab journalist and Ottoman official observed that two important phenomena were rising in the corners of the Turkish Empire: the awakening of Arab nationalism and efforts by European immigrants to found a Jewish state in Palestine. "Both of these movements are destined to fight each other continually," he concluded, "until one of them wins." So it has seemed, and the title of British journalist Anton La Guardia's book speaks volumes: for the last century, when the children of the Diaspora began to return in numbers to Palestine, two visions of that "promised land" have battled for supremacy, with no apparent resolution in sight--as witness the daily headlines. La Guardia charts the origins and course of the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, remarking that much of it owes to all-too-human causes (the humiliation of the Arabs over having been defeated so often and so decisively in five decades of warfare; the mutual hatred of Arafat and Sharon) and offering thoughts from both sides on how peace might be reached, short of the annihilation of one or the other combatant. Those who themselves struggle to comprehend the news from the Middle East will find La Guardia to be a reliable, illuminating guide. --Gregory McNamee