Search for Peace by Hassan bin TalalReview by: John C. CampbellForeign Affairs, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Winter, 1984), pp. 426-427Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20042243 .

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426 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The Middle East

John C. Campbell ISRAEL'S LEBANON WAR. By Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari. New York:

Simon & Schuster, 1984, 340 pp. $17.95. Two talented Israeli journalists have done a stupendous job in tracking

down the facts on the origins and the course of "Sharon's war." Published

and secret documents, plus interviews with many key Israeli, Lebanese and American participants, provided the raw material for a dramatic narrative

that reads like a historical novel, complete with conversations quoted verbatim. As there are no citations, a reader has to take the authors'

statements more or less on faith, but they do inspire confidence. They are,

incidentally, not neutral observers of this war which they describe as

"anchored in delusion, propelled by deceit, and bound to end in calamity."

THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL: INFLUENCE IN THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP. By Bernard Reich. New York: Praeger, 1984, 236 pp. $29.95 (paper, $13.95).

The bulk of this book consists of a competent history of U.S. relations

with Israel against the background of efforts to prevent war in the Middle

East. The author, who is well acquainted with both the great quantity of

published work on this subject and the political scene in Washington and

in Israel, writes with a sure hand and cool judgment. A concluding chapter,

"explaining" the special relationship and the influence each side exerts or

refrains from exerting on the other, tends to be blandly descriptive and to

play down the importance of domestic pressures, passing up many an

opportunity for mordant comment on the performance of both parties.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1945-1951: ARAB NATIONALISM, THE UNITED STATES, AND POSTWAR IMPERI ALISM. By William Roger Louis. New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford,

1984, 803 pp. $55.00. A historical study of extraordinary value, based on extensive work in the

British archives. The subtitle, clumsy as it is, gives a rough idea of the

book's coverage: British efforts, with limited resources, to maintain histor

ical positions in the face of the challenges of the cold war and of local

nationalism; the shifting of burdens to America; the debacle of Palestine.

It is told in fascinating detail by a scholar with the best of credentials.

SEARCH FOR PEACE. By Hassan bin Talal, Crown Prince of Jordan. New York: St. Martin's, 1984, 152 pp. $16.95.

The Crown Prince is an effective spokesman for his brother, King Hussein, and for the moderate Arab outlook. He discusses Arab unity and

division, Islam, regional economic development, and the record of Jordan under Hashemite leadership. Temperate in tone (except on the subject of

Israel), he makes a strong plea for a more active American policy in search

of a just Arab-Israeli settlement.

A STRANGER IN MY HOUSE: JEWS AND ARABS IN THE WEST BANK. By Walter Reich. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984, 134 pp. $12.95.

An American psychiatrist, probing the feelings and complexes of Jews

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RECENT BOOKS 427

and Arabs, records his talks with a number of them on the future of the West Bank. He gets the anticipated reactions, then speculates on whether and how a political compromise can ever be found in the face of such deeply rooted and irreconcilable convictions.

THE PLO: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION. By Julian Becker. New York: St. Martin's, 1984, 303

pp. $19.95. The main lines of the PLO's turbulent story, including the many bloody

events in which its factions have been involved, can be followed in this book

by a novelist and publicist who has made a specialized study of terrorism. Much of it is based on extensive investigation and rings true. But the

background history loses reliability by oversimplification, the author has

strong feelings of her own, and the PLO is presented only as a terrorist

outfit, never as a political expression or reflection of the Palestinian condi tion.

THOSE I HAVE KNOWN. By Anwar El-Sadat. New York: Continuum, 1984, 140 pp. $12.95.

Brief sketches written or recorded by Sadat during the last year of his life. Outspoken, personal and self-serving, they describe dramatic moments in Sadat's career and give sharp judgments on other leaders (fervently

positive for Nasser, Faisal, Tito and Carter; scornfully negative for Assad,

Qaddafi, and the men in the Kremlin).

THE REIGN OF THE AYATOLLAHS. By Shaul Bakhash. New York: Basic Books, 1984, 276 pp. $18.95. "THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD": IRAN'S ISLAMIC REPUBLIC. By

Cheryl Benard and Zalmay Khalilzad. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, 240 pp. $25.00. THE STATE AND REVOLUTION IN IRAN. By Hossein Bashiriyeh. New York: St. Martin's, 1984, 203 pp. $27.50.

Five years have now provided additional perspective on the Iranian revolution and the nature of Khomeini's Islamic Republic. Bakhash's book is a detailed account of what happened in those years, and especially of the

personal and political conflicts in which the clerical fundamentalists de feated all their rivals. In "The Government of God*', two political scientists

begin by addressing their professional colleagues in the language of the

trade, testing theories of development, modernization and revolution as

they do or do not seem to apply to the reality of Iran; by the time they have finished, however, they have told us a great deal about the internal

problems of the regime and its relations with the outside world. Bashiriyeh's study is concerned above all with how Iran's experience fits classical theories and patterns of revolution and class struggle: he finds the new regime, with its authoritarianism and mass mobilization, a continuation of existing indig enous nationalism re-expressed in terms of Islam. All three books make

ample use of Iranian sources.

THE UNSTABLE GULF: THREATS FROM WITHIN. By Lenore G. Martin. Lexington (Mass.): Lexington Books, 1984, 232 pp. $23.50. GULF SECURITY INTO THE 1980s. Edited by Robert G. Darius, John

W. Amos II, and Ralph H. Magnus. Stanford: Hoover Press, 1984, 134 pp. $21.95 (paper, $10.95).

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