Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, second edition by Avi
Shlaim
Review by: Matthew Hughes
Source: Middle East Journal , Autumn 2015, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Autumn 2015), pp. 625-627
Published by: Middle East Institute

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 MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL * 625

Book Reviews the iron wall," the window to peace having

closed with Rabin's death and with Israel
back on the track of maximal security, "des-
tined to live by the sword" (p. 595).
ARAB-ISRAELI The text of the second edition up to Ne-
tanyahu taking power in 1996 varies from
CONFLICT the first edition only in parts of chapter six
on the effects of the Six Day War that ab-
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab sorb Avi Raz's 2012 book The Bride and
World, second edition, by Avi Shlaim. the Dowry : Israel Jordan , and the Pales-
tinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967
New York: W.W. Norton, 2014. 900 pages.
$21.95. War (pp. 271, 279-280, 283-284). Shlaim
has also included some of the information

Reviewed by Matthew Hughes from his 2007 biography of King Husayn,

Lion of Jordan, for the new edition of Iron
This is the second edition of a book Wall. So why spend money on a second edi-
published in 2000, one reviewed favorably
tion, especially when the original text is
almost entirely the same as that in the first
at the time by this reviewer for the Britain-
based Institute of Historical Research's issue of the book? Readers will buy the up-
dated edition for the substantial extra text
online Reviews in History. Avi Shlaim's
thesis, set out in the first edition, is that- over
Is- 200 pages in five lengthy, discrete
raeli foreign policy after 1948 followedchapters
the plus an epilogue - covering the
period after 1996 that takes the book (in the
"iron wall" thinking of the Zionist thinker
Ze'ev Jabotinsky from the 1920s, where epilogue)
an up to 2013 and which reworks the
iron wall of absolute security and force wasIron Wall from a political history to a book
the prerequisite for any Jewish state beforethat is grounded in history while also being
contemporary. More than this, the extra text
it embarked on negotiations with the Arabs.
Crucially, for Jabotinsky, this was a two- sharpens and completes Shlaim's original
stage process: first, security and strength, wall thesis. The new edition is tougher
iron
and then, political dialogue and settlement.on Israel than the first version, more pas-
For Shlaim, the first part of the iron wallsionate
de- in tone, pulls fewer punches, super-
termined the course of the Arab-Israeli con-charging the original text, giving it added
life
flict, with an aggressive Israel led by David and vigor: "Jabotinsky believed in peace
Ben-Gurion provoking a succession of wars, through strength; Netanyahu was addicted
preferring fighting to dialogue, torpedoing to military domination . . . Jabotinsky saw
Jewish military power as a means to an end;
peace negotiations, and blind to the final po-
litical settlement stage of the iron wall.
Netanyahu saw it sometimes as a means to
This changed in the early 1990s withachieving
the security and sometimes as an end
in itself' (p. 627).
ascent of Yitzhak Rabin as Israel's prime
The second edition also closes off
minister, a former soldier and proponent of
the unfinished business of the effects of
the iron wall who had made the mental leap
Rabin's murder, making it a more satisfy-
to political dialogue, taking for the first time
the road to peace with the Palestinians ing -read, with the reader being able to chart
Israel's course after his death (sadly, back
positive-sum rather than zero-sum relations
- and someone who was willing to trade to the iron wall). Having seen the hope of
Rabin's political moves up to 1995, Sh-
land for a durable two-state peace. Shlaim's
original edition of the book ended just laim
af- is angry and saddened by the leaders
who followed: Netanyahu, Ehud Barak,
ter Rabin's assassination in 1995 by a Jew-
Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and back to
ish extremist furious at the peace process,
Netanyahu
and the subsequent election of the rightist
in 2009, whom Shlaim said
hard-liner Binyamin Netanyahu in 1996. had formed one of "the most aggressively
right-wing,
Shlaim's final chapter was entitled "back to chauvinistic, and racist govern-
ments in Israel's history ... led by a man
MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL * VOLUME 69, NO. 4 AUTUMN 2015
HTTP://DX.DOI.ORG/ 10.375 1/69.4.3

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626 ★ MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

whose ambition was to go down in history raeli army's special operations unit, Sayeret
not as a peacemaker but as the leader who Matkal) and arrogance that combined to sty-
secured Greater Israel" (p. 805). mie the return of the Golan Heights.
This is not a book for uncritical support- The leitmotif here is of Israel's funda-
ers of Israel, or those who are convinced mental unwillingness to give up any land
that the barrier to peace lies with Palestin- for peace and its willingness to use settle-
ian religious extremism, violent terror,ment ve- building in the West Bank as a means
nal corruption, and political intransigence. to scupper the waves of peace talks after
The extra detail on the Six Day War - sig- 1995, all of which Shlaim summarizes with
nificant as the land seized would be the root incisive erudition. The aim was to play for
cause of much of what was to follow - is time to extend Israel's reach into the West
telling and sets the tone as it strengthens
Bank to the point where a viable Palestinian
state would be impossible (p. 808). Shlaim
Shlaim's suspicion that Israel did not want
peace as far back as 1967, preferring to reimagines
hold supposed extremists, presenting
on to the land seized in war and to blame Hamas, for instance, as honest interlocu-
the Arabs for the deadlock. In fact, the tors
Ar- willing to hold meaningful talks and to
abide by cease-fires, but targeted by Israel
abs after 1967 oifered "total peace for total
withdrawal" (p. 279), but the Israelis hadasno
it "would stand firm in defense of the na-
intention of withdrawing. tional rights of the Palestinian people and
refuse to settle for an emasculated Palestin-
This recasting of Israel is significant,
presenting Israeli diplomacy as duplici-ian state on Israel's terms" (pp. 799-800).
tous and baseless, underpinning the timeSuccessive Israeli invasions of Gaza (and
line after 1995. In the five substantive new Lebanon) were unnecessary, deliberate de-
chapters on the period after 1995, the Pal- cisions by Israel to use military force.
estinians are subsidiary players to internal This is a readable, greatly expanded,
Israeli politics as successive Israeli leadersstrongly argued, interesting, and informed
sought decision through trickery, prevarica- new edition, one that will appeal to the
tion, terror, and unilateral action, such as the
general reader, as a textbook for students,
withdrawal of settlers from the Gaza Strip in and to the specialist reader focused on Is-
2005, a move designed to strengthen Israel's rael as the deadlock in the peace process. It
hold on the West Bank. Thus, where somealso sheds light on the international politics
observers would see Palestinian suicide surrounding the United States' tergiversa-
bombers as, say, the cause of the failure ofit pretended to act as honest broker
tions as
the peace talks after Rabin's death, ones while
thatall the while supporting Israeli de-
brought Netanyahu to power in 1996, mands.
Sh- Shlaim has also teased out remark-
laim puts the emphasis on Israel's decision able primary source material that gives
to assassinate the Palestinian bomb-maker
radically new insights into key moments
in the peace talks; letters and interviews
Yahya 'Ayyash (known as "the Engineer")
as the driver for the escalation in violence
that suggest Israeli perfidiousness. Shlaim
that helped to bring down the peace moves brings to life the Israeli military-political
started by Rabin (p. 577). decision-making elite that emerges as far
The election of the Labor Party's Ehudfrom monolithic in terms of what it hoped
Barak in 1999 and the departure of Netan- to get from talks with the Palestinians. That
yahu - likened here to a pneumatic drill being the case, the argument that Israelis
combined as one to scupper peace moves
that finally falls silent in a neighborhood,
can seem stretched; at times, rather than
allowing peace and quiet to reign - did not
Machiavellian plotters, the Israelis seem
change Israeli policy. While Barak pushed
confused as to what to do. Certainly, the
for peace, initially with Syria, it was not Syr-
ian intransigence and unreasonablenesscentrality
in of Shlaim's iron wall argument
insisting on reestablishing the 1967 prewarcreates tensions, ones that Shlaim shapes
border that would have given Syria access to push forward his book. In the polarized,
Manichean world of the Arab-Israeli con-
to Lake Tiberias, but rather Barak's military
mind-set (he was a former officer in the flict,
Is- Shlaim's study will excite those who

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 MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL ★ 627

see the Zionist colonial project as the root

Zionist takeover of the country in pursuit of
cause for the conflict in the region, ittheir
willdeclared aim of a Jewish state. Would
stimulate those who see both sides at fault post-war Palestine become the prime, in-
ternationally approved destination of these
in some measure for the impasse, and it will
perplex and confound those who blame theJewish survivors, alleviating their humani-
Arabs and the Palestinians. tarian plight while solving the European
This is a hopeful book but it does not "Jewish question" through the creation of
end hopefully. Shlaim's view is that ifaIs- Jewish state? Could mass immigration of
rael acts as honest broker, the key issuesJews be brought into strife-torn Palestine,
are resolvable, and the Palestinians will whose population was almost 70% Arab at
fall into line: the status of Jerusalem, the the time, without provoking the violent op-
right of return for dispossessed Palestin- position of the entire Arab world?
ians from 1948, and the percentage of Anyone interested in the origins of the
land to be forged into a Palestinian state.Israeli-Arab conflict, the impact of the Ho-
This will also ensure Israel's survival as a locaust on the creation of Israel, and Ameri-
democracy for, as Shlaim says aboutcan thepost-war policy in the region will have
land and peoples taken in 1967, after Karl many reasons to welcome this fine new
Marx, a people that oppresses another publication, the third in a series devoted to
cannot itself remain free. the writings and activities of a little-known
American diplomat.1 James G. McDon-
Matthew Hughes is Chair in History at ald (1886-1964), a quirky, quintessential
Brunei University and Head of the Depart-maverick hailing from the Midwest, was a
ment of Politics and History. man of humanitarian bent who had already
made a name for himself as the League of
To the Gates of Jerusalem: The Diaries Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees
(Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany
and Papers of James G. McDonald,
- resigning in late 1935 in protest against
1945-1947, edited by Norman J. W. Goda,
the impossibility of fulfilling his task.2 Af-
Barbara McDonald Stewart, Severin Hoch-
ter serving as chairman of Franklin Delano
berg, and Richard Breitman. Bloomington, Roosevelt's advisory committee on refu-
IN: Indiana University Press, in association gees and becoming a confidant of the presi-
with the United States Holocaust Memorial dent, McDonald was one of six Americans
Museum, 2015. 297 pages. $30. whom Harry Truman appointed in late 1945
to the Anglo-American Committee of In-
Reviewed by Neil Caplan quiry Regarding the Problems of European
Jewry and Palestine (hereafter A ACI).
In June 1945, United States president To the Gates of Jerusalem takes read-
Harry S Truman dispatched Earl Harri- ers back through the crucial stages in the
son into Allied-occupied Europe to reportrun up to the historic United Nations vote
on the conditions affecting Jewish refu-recommending the partition of Palestine on
gees being held in displaced persons (DP) November 29, 1947. Perhaps the most use-
camps. On the basis of Harrison's report, ful revelations in McDonald's diaries are the
Truman began in late August pressing the intimate and colorful behind-the-scenes por-
newly elected Labour government in Lon- traits he paints of the AACI: its main play-
don to immediately grant immigration ers, their maneuvering, and his impressions
certificates for 100,000 Jews to enter Pal-
estine. By this time Mandatory Palestine
was becoming a war zone, with Zionist mi-
1 The two earlier volumes were Advocate for
litias engaging in anti-British rebellion and
the Doomed , 1932-1935 (2007), Refugees and
terrorism. This activity, together with the Rescue, 1935-1945 (2009).
growing traffic in ships running the British
2 His 34-page letter of resignation is available
blockade with their "illegal" immigrants,online at the World Digital Library: www.wdl.
led many Palestinians to fear an imminent org/en/item/1 1604/.

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