Author: Edward W Said
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 418
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143029207
Description
A new edition of Edward Said’s passionate critique of the Oslo Accord and its aftermath, updated to include around twenty new essays about the events of 2000-1. Said brilliantly analyses the deficiencies of Oslo, and the reasons why the subsequent Middle East peace process failed so disastrously.
His criticism of the Accord has proved acutely prescient; but he retains hope, writing in an impassioned new introduction about the growing non-violent, secular Palestinian movement, and calling for those on the Israeli, European and American left to support it.
REVIEWS:
The work of the kind of non-aligned intellectual that we need more than ever today.
-Independent
Ever since 1993, Said has been the most trenchant and relentless critic of the Oslo agreements and the process they initiated…these pieces include not only many denunciations of Arafat’s repressive and venal regime but also unsparing criticism of the lack of democracy in the wider Arab world, and of there refusal of many Arab intellectuals to engage in cultural dialogue with their Israeli counterparts. -Financial Times
Bleak and passionate…Oslo, he claims, postponed the hard issues-Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders and sovereignty-foregrounding instead meaningless Israeli declarations about recognition which actually hinder the Palestinian quest for self-determination and liberation…his commitment to a democratic and secular Palestinian state is expressed with characteristic eloquence. -Irish Times
These essays are brilliant displays of rigorous perspective, relentless concentration and impassioned dedication. He is uniquely impressive in the way that he combines appeals to the largest of categories-justice, humanity, civility-with attentiveness to detail…Said avoids infantile loyalties in order to shore up truths, and emerges from this collection as a vital ethical thinker.
-Independent
The work of the kind of non-aligned intellectual that we need more than ever today.
-Independent
Contents
Acknowledgments
Publisher’s Note to Second Edition
Introduction to Second Edition
Introduction to First Edition
The First Step
How Much and For How Long?
Where Negotiations Have Led
Where do We Go from Here?
Reflections on the Role of the Private Sector
Elections, Institutions, Democracy
Post-Election Realities
The Campaign Against Islamic Terror
Modernity, Information, and Governance
Total Rejection and Total Acceptance Are Equivalent
Mandela, Netanyahu, and Arafat
The Theory and Practice of Banning Books and Ideas
On Visiting Wadie
Uprising Against Oslo
Responsibility and Accountability
Intellectuals and the Crisis
Whom to Talk to
The Real Meaning of the Hebron Agreement
The Uses of Culture
Loss of Precision
The Context of Arafat’s American Visit
Deir Yassin Recalled
Thirty Years After
The Debate Continues
The Next Generation?
Are There No Limits to Corruption?
Reparations: Power and Conscience?
Bombs and Bulldozers
Strategies of Hope
Israel at a Loss
Bases for Coexistence
Iraq and the Middle East Crisis
Isaiah Berlin: An Afterthought
Palestine and Israel: A Fifty-Year Perspective
The Challenge of Israel: Fifty Years On
The Problem Is Inhumanity
Gulliver in the Middle East
Making History: Constructing Reality
Scenes from Palestine
End of the Peace Process, or Beginning Something Else
Art, Culture, and Nationalism
Fifty Years of Dispossession
New History, Old Ideas
The Other Wilaya
Breaking the Deadlock: A Third Way
The Final Stage
The End of the Interim Arrangements
Incitement
West Bank Diary
Truth and Reconciliation
A Tragedy in the Making
What Can Separation Mean?
Overdue Protest
Waiting
The Right of Return, At Last
South Lebanon and After
A Final Summit?
One More Chance
The End of Oslo
Occupation Is the Atrocity
Collective Passion
A Vision to Lift the Spirits
Suicidal Ignorance
Emerging alternatives in Palestine
The Screw Turns, Again
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index