Futile Diplomacy: The United Nations, the Great Powers and Middle East Peacemaking 1948-1954

These two volumes provide a careful and balanced behind-the-scenes account of the intricate diplomatic activity of the period between the first and second Arab-Israeli wars. Exploiting a range of available archive sources as well as extensive secondary sources, they provide an authoritative analysis of the positions and strategies which the principal parties and the would-be mediators adopted in the elusive search for a stable peace. The author examines the recurring deadlocks in terms of the motives and calculations of the various parties, and reveals how new incentives of pressures offered by outsiders proved incapable of reversing the serious deterioration of Arab-Israeli relations as the region headed for war at Suez.
The text of each volume comprises both analytical-historical chapters and a selection of primary documents from archival sources.