lion of jordan: the life of king hussein in war and peaceby avi shlaim
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Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace by Avi ShlaimReview by: Jørgen JensehaugenJournal of Peace Research, Vol. 46, No. 4 (july 2009), pp. 605-606Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25654453 .
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Book Notes 605
Norton, Augustus Richard, 2007. Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press. 187 pp. ISBN 9780691131245.
Hezbollah, as an organization, has a reputation that has reached almost mythical proportions. It
is loved by many throughout much of the Arab world, for its stance against Israel, and equally
passionately vilified by much of the western world for the very same reason. Born in civil war,
the party of God was founded in violence, by infamously scaring the USA out of its involve
ment in Lebanon. Slightly less than two decades
later, the group made Israel retreat from southern
Lebanon and then a few years later defeated
Israel in the war of 2006. This same organization runs hospitals and schools, is an active political actor in the Lebanese parliament and has mas
sive popular support among certain groups of the
Lebanese population. Yet, the very same group that claims to defend Lebanon from occupation and to fight injustice also has a brutal history of
turning its guns on its own people, most recently in May 2008. Norton is no apologist. He makes
no attempt to explain away what Hezbollah
does, he merely explains. At times, these expla nations might anger those who wish to vilify the
organization; in other cases, they would anger those who venerate it. Unlike most researchers
who analyze Hezbollah, Norton has not taken
sides. His presentation takes us from the streets
of poorer Shia towns in southern Lebanon,
through popular religious ceremonies and to the
greater politics of the Hezbollah-Iran connection.
This variation of the micro/macro levels enables
the reader to obtain a deeper level of insight into an organization that is far too often presented in
a Manichean light. Norton has done an impres sive job by managing, in such a short book, to
give a down-to-earth presentation of a complex
organization.
Jorgen Jensehaugen
Nusseibeh, Sari, with Anthony David, 2007. Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life. London: Halban. vi + 562 pp. ISBN 9781905559053.
There is much to be gleaned from Sari Nusseibeh's lucid and rational memoirs, which weave a rich tap
estry of a life lived with the backdrop of upheaval, academia, peace processes, Intifadas and religious fanaticism (his bete noire) - all underpinned by the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
while all the time coloured by his good-natured optimism. A deliberately languid pace is matched
only by the sharpness of his observations, though a sense of foreboding begins to cast a shadow
over later chapters. These are the thoughts of
a man who views this conflict with clarity, but
whose own journey to gain such understand
ing has taken a lengthy, complex and above all
privileged route, only to realize he sadly will not see it resolved in his lifetime. In many respects,
Nusseibeh is a mercurial character, who by his
own admission, by virtue of his mixed lineage, is
confused about his identity, yet buoyed up by a
strong sense of attachment and love for a place,
namely East Jerusalem's Old City. Passages that
recollect his 1950s childhood there evoke a heart felt nostalgia that might help explain his (and his
peers') purposeful and lifelong journey thereafter as adults. This is a particularly rewarding read,
then, for those interested in the minutiae of
Palestinian fractional politics and one man's phil
osophical reflections upon it during a historically important period of its development; one which over time saw young idealists become aging revo
lutionaries, Yasser Arafat and Sheikh Yassin being cited as examples. Yet strangely, despite his asso
ciations (for a time he was the PLO's Jerusalem
representative), this is a fate that seems to have
escaped the urbane Nusseibeh, hostage perhaps to his own balanced temperament and enduring intellectual curiosity.
Farrid Shamsuddin
Shlaim, Avi, 2007. Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace. London: Pen
guin, xxii + 698 pp. ISBN 9780141017280.
Biographies can usually say only so much about a political situation, because in essence they
must place the person centre stage - and poli
tics is rarely about individuals. This book is an
exception because, by and large, King Hussein
was Jordan for about 40 years. His devotion to
regional politics placed Jordan centre stage in the Israeli?Arab conflict. As Avi Shlaim illustrates, the stubby little king became the Lion of Jordan
who, despite the odds, pulled Jordan through the stormy seas of Middle East diplomacy and made it one of the leading countries in this diplomacy
-
a place out of proportion with the powers vested
in the kingdom. From his ascent to the throne to
his death in 1999, Hussein worked unrelentingly for a solution to the conflict. He made clear errors
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606 journal of Peace Research volume 461 number 41july 2009
of judgement, such as when he joined the Arab armies in the 1967 war, or when he was unable to distance himself from Saddam Hussein before
it was too late. His hands were stained by Black
September, and his reputation as a supporter of
democracy is undeserved. Yet, his achievements are nothing but astounding. His realist vision
and his willingness to time and again cross the Rubicon by directly speaking to his 'best of enemies', Israel, made him a rare pragmatist in
a conflict that is rooted in emotion. Shlaim has
been able to create a complex picture of an almost
mythical man by applying sharp analysis to an
impressively wide array of sources. It stands not
only as one of the greatest biographies of King Hussein, but as one of the deepest analyses of the
Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian triangle of diplo macy and conflict.
Jorgen Jensehaugen
Simiyu, Robert Romborah, 2008. Militiani sation of Resource Conflicts: The Case of Land-Based
Conflict in the Mount Elgon Region of Western
Kenya. Tshwane (Pretoria): Institute for Security Studies. 80 pp. ISBN 9781920114497.
This book describes how land conflicts in the Mount Elgon region in Western Kenya escalated
from clan-based land conflicts to a situation closely
resembling civil war. Viewing the conflict from an Environmental Security perspective, Simiyu
argues that scarcity and distribution of land lie
at the heart of the conflict. However, he also
argues that this conflict, like most other Kenyan land conflicts, follows a temporal pattern, imply
ing that state-level actors are somehow involved in
the conflict or ambivalent about how to solve the
problems. The book illustrates how state resettle
ment schemes intended to alleviate land scarcity distorted inter- and intra-ethnic relations and by
that contributed to the conflict. However, factors
such as the proliferation of small arms and the lack of other means of making a living than agri culture are also raised. The case also demonstrates
the negative role of declining state interest in the
region by demonstrating how marginalization resulted in the lack of state authority and griev ances towards the country's ruling elite. Simiyu describes how lack of state authority created a
power vacuum, leading to the radicalization of
the insurgents' objectives, thus increasing the
scope of their actions, which in turn stimulated
the formation of local militias countering the
threat of insurgent soldiers. Thus, the book is also an interesting case of conflict escalation. It could
have benefited from relating the conflict more to
national politics, which might have revealed some
thing more general about land-related conflicts in
Kenya. All in all, however, the book should be of interest to anyone interested in the relationship between resource scarcity, distribution and con
flict, or in conflict escalation.
Ole Magnus Theisen
Authors of Book Notes in this issue:
Johan Dittrich Hallherg- PRIO
Helge Holtermann - PRIO David Isenberg
- PRIO
Jorgen Jensehaugen ? PRIO
Kjell Erling Kjellman - PRIO
Ashild Kolas - PRIO
Kristoffer Liden - PRIO HavardM. Nygdrd-PRIO Oystein H. Rolandsen - PRIO Farrid Shamsuddin - PRIO Pinar Tank - PRIO Ole Magnus Theisen - PRIO HenrikUrdal-PRIO
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