This collection of Thrall's thoughts on Israel/Palestine from around 2010-2016 treads an established path: Oslo — and the overall American-led peace process — was a facade that enabled Israel to further entrench the occupation. Israelis' experience of the status quo — insulated by American support and carte blanche and veto power at the UN — is not nearly enough pressure for them to approach the negotiation table in good faith, or to even consider a concession that is reasonable enough for the Palestinians to accept. It's not necessarily the most groundbreaking insight but the book proves its point with ample evidence.

I especially enjoyed the historical sections: how Carter pressured Israel to enter negotiations, and how the peace with Sadat was a leftover, secondary to the failure to even get Begin to consider any Israeli-Palestinian arrangement. The takedown of Avi Shavit, also, was sharp and rang true: Shavit seems to express horror at the atrocities at Lydd, a synecdoche for the Nakba, while still claiming that it was necessary for the Zionist project to be realized — without examining if the realization of one's project permits the destruction of another's life.


Will flesh this out later — but the most riveting part was the beginning, the history — especially Carter’s role. The rest less new or insightful but I generally very much agree with the idea that Israel needs force to make concessions. Would have been interested in more discussion of BDS as technique to create change ( )

I was excited to review this text, due in no small part to the premise present in the publisher's blurb — namely, that "[i]t is those who have embraced confrontation—through boycotts, lawsuits, protests, civil disobedience, and even violence—who have made the most progress toward a solution." Unfortunately, The Only Language They Understand is undermined by the author's failure to present a genuine class analysis of the conflict. What remains is a patchy, already dated, and ultimately insubstantial survey. ( )

In a myth-busting analysis of the world's most intractable conflict, a star of Middle East reporting, "one of the most important writers" in the field (The New York Times), argues that only one weapon has yielded progress: force.

Well, that was depressing. A collection of essays on the unending struggle; the title comes from early essays arguing that Israel and Palestinian organizations only make concessions when people, including the US, give up on “peace” and particularly only when they’re suffering setbacks. (Since a setback for Israel is a victory for Palestine and vice versa in most cases, one can see how this would make for difficulty.) The Oslo agreement got the PLO invested in keeping the West Bank in line, turning it “from a protector against an occupying army into an agglomeration of self-interested businessmen securing exclusive contracts for it,” and implicated Palestinians in daily collaboration. The US, of course, won’t even think about using most of the possible leverage on Israel it has because that’s not politically feasible: “Listening to them discuss how to devise an end to occupation is like listening to the operator of a bulldozer ask how he can demolish a building with his hammer.” The US also prevents other third parties from taking part in the process in a meaningful way.

There are also a number of other depressing descriptions of/points about the Palestinian situation, including how Israeli police have given up on areas in the West Bank that the Palestinian Authority is forbidden to police, turning them into law-free zones whose residents must still pay taxes. And, in terms of some agreement that would involve Palestinian acceptance of land trades, or a partial area of control, Thrall argues that the problem is that the parties would be “trading fundamentally unlike assets.” Palestinians would give up their intangible moral claims, “acquiescing in the denial of their right to return and bestowing legitimacy on their dispossessors by recognizing the vast majority of their homeland as a Jewish state.” Israelis would commit to physically withdrawing from some land they control now. But the difference is, that once the parties accepted the trade, the Palestinians’ intangible legitimacy would disappear (he says, though I don’t necessarily follow that), and Israel would still have the land until a final settlement was reached. ( )

This book of essays about the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is very interesting reading. The author attempts to be fair about analyzing the costs and benefits to each party of compromising on various key issues. In doing so, he makes a persuasive case that the costs are too high and the benefits too meager for either side to make a compromise that would bring about a workable solution.

Some of the essays provide a history of the conflict and the diplomacy concerning its resolution (including very recent history.); the others analyze the diplomacy and why each attempt failed. I found both the history and analysis compelling reading, and would recommend this book to a friend with an interest in this topic. ( )