Binyamin Netanyahu

Frequently interviewed in the American news media, well known to viewers of programs such as Nightline and Face the Nation, Benjamin Netanyahu is one of Israel's best-known leaders. In this evocative and meticulously researched book, five years in the making, he traces the origins, history and politics of Israel's relationship with the Arab world and the West. He provides the most clear-sighted view yet of Israel's precarious situation among the Arabs - and lays out his own ideas for peace in the Middle East. During the Gulf War, Mr. Netanyahu, then Israel's deputy foreign minister and its former ambassador to the United Nations, showed a CNN reporter a map of the Middle East. "Here's the Arab world," he said, "walking" his wide-open hands across its breadth. "And here is Israel," he went on - easily covering the entire country with his thumb.^ How is it that this minuscule Jewish state, 40 miles wide including the West Bank, has become the hostile target not only of an Arab world more than 500 times its size but of so much of the West? How is it that a small nation, whose historical right to its homeland was recognized by international consensus at the beginning of this century, now finds the legitimacy of that commitment scorned and eroded? How has the only democracy in the Middle East become the focus of western criticism of the kind never directed at the surrounding Arab tyrannies? Mr. Netanyahu punctures the myriad falsehoods leveled against Israel today by using the facts of history, ancient and modern, to establish his country's case forcefully. He demonstrates the ways in which the Arabs, abetted by much of the world, have forced Israel to shrink to one-fifth the size of the national home originally promised to the Jewish people.^ He scrutinizes the tactics of the Arab regimes in fabricating the "Palestinian question" to disguise their own aggressive designs. And he unmasks the PLO, vividly documenting startling PLO statements and strategies regarding Israel never before exposed in the West. An enduring peace between Arabs and Israelis is attainable, Mr. Netanyahu argues - but only if it takes into account the nature of Middle Eastern politics and the volatile forces within Arab and Islamic society. In a powerfully argued summation sure to startle Jews and non-Jews alike, he proposes a sweeping reevaluation of the Jewish attitude toward political realities, tempered by experience and avoiding the extremes of utter passivity and fatalistic defiance, that can do much to assure the Jewish state a position of permanence among the nations.^ Certain to be controversial, this book is a passionate, closely reasoned work of contemporary history and current affairs, shattering in its revelations, news making in its proposals, and inspiring in its message.

In this book, the author offers an approach to understanding and fighting the increase in domestic and international terrorism throughout the world. Citing diverse examples from around the globe, he demonstrates that domestic terrorist groups are usually no match for an advanced technological society which can successfully roll back terror without any significant curtailment of civil liberties. But he sees an even more potent threat from the new international terrorism which is increasingly the product of Islamic militants, who draw their inspiration and directives from Iran and its growing cadre of satellite states. The spread of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, coupled with the possibility that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, poses a more frightening threat from an adversary less rational and therefore less controllable than was Soviet Communism. How democracies can defend themselves against this new threat concludes this book.

"From the rise of Zionism to the latest peace initiatives, Benjamin Netanyahu traces the origins, history, and politics of Israel's relationship with the Arab world and the West. He exposes some of the most common - and often shocking - misrepresentations and myths about Arab-Israeli issues, replacing them with facts. And he explores the themes that have shaped his vision of Israel and its position in the world: What is the foundation of the Jewish claim to the land of Israel? What is the real source of conflict between Arabs and Israelis? How has the West both contributed to and jeopardized Israel's security throughout the decades? How have Arab groups used warfare to achieve what might have been otherwise unattainable ends? Why is the status of the West Bank, as well as Gaza and the Golan Heights, so crucial to Israel? Why is any hope for peace in the Middle East linked to a clear recognition of Israel's right to exist? Even with the collapse of the Soviet Union, why is a strong Israel essential to the stability of the world?"--BOOK JACKET.