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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