Should the United States become centrally or peripherally involved in monitoring a cease-fire and the movement of a cease-fire into a new status-quo for Gaza, the contents of this MOU could constitute a workable outline for helping enforce calm in Gaza and on its borders.
Since the June 1967 war, more than two dozen mediators have engaged in Arab‐ Israeli diplomacy seeking to clarify one underlying question: under what conditions and over what period of time would Israel relinquish land attained in the June 1967 War, and what kind of understanding or agreement from an Arab partner would Israel receive in return? The Annapolis Conference in 2007, was again a Transaction but not a Transformation of Outcomes.
Current demographic characteristics and future trends and suggest that Europe faces a potential Arab immigrant onslaught perhaps as great as that America endured during the European immigration of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“A Zionist State in 1939,” Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, CHAI (Atlanta), Winter 2002 “Had not the Nazi crimes been committed against Jews during World War II, the Jewish State would have never come true.” So…
Perspective provides valuable insights in evaluating contemporary diplomacy. Though neither the Palestinian-Israeli-U.S. summit of July 2000 nor the Egyptian-Israeli-U.S. summit of September 1978 ended discussions between Israel and its Arab adversaries, there were more differences than similarities between the two intense and highly charged meetings.
Kenneth W. Stein, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol. XXIII, 2000, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Westview Press, pp. 48-76. For some aspects of Arab-Israeli relations and negotiations, the beginning and end of 1999…
University of Notre Dame political scientist Alan Dowty examines how Jewish history and experience influence Israeli foreign policy in the March 1999 issue of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. View the PDF.
Kenneth W. Stein, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol. XXII, 1998, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Westview Press, pp. 56-89. For almost all of 1998, the Arab-Israeli peace process was analogous to a driver…
Kenneth W. Stein, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol. XXI, 1997, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Westview Press, pp. 71-109. On a macro level, in 1997, Israel and much of the Arab world spent…
Spring/Summer 1997 Kenneth W. Stein, “Continuity and Change in Egyptian-Israeli Relations, 1973-97,” Israel Affairs, Spring/Summer 1997, Vol. 3, Nos. 3 and 4, pp. 296-320 For 25 years, tension, mistrust, and strain have characterized Egyptian-Israeli relations….
Israel State Archives “An Honourable Peace, a Balanced Peace, a Peace That Will Last”: Signing the Peace Treaty Between Israel and Jordan,” a 2024 publication featuring 41 documents from the Israel State Archives’ collection regarding…
October 1991 Kenneth W. Stein and Samuel W. Lewis, Making Peace Among Arabs and Israelis: Lessons From Fifty Years of Negotiating Experience, United States Institute of Peace, Washington, October 1991, second printing 1992, 69 pages.
Kenneth W. Stein, “One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,” in Laurence Silberstein (ed.), New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State, New York University Press,…
In early 1988, for the second time within eight years, the Reagan Administration reacted to events in the Middle East by proposing that the stalled Arab-Israel negotiating process be reactivated, an effort known as the Shultz Initiative.
Hamas absolutely opposes Israel’s right to exist, with its leadership repeatedly declaring that all of Palestine belongs to Moslems.
Peter Bass’s Princeton University Senior thesis is the most comprehensive work on a critical topic that befuddled and dominated Carter’s entire presidency.
Historical context evolves from tepid Jewish support for Carter in the 1976 campaign through ever widening gaps between his administration, Israel and the Jewish community. Carter wanted Middle East policy his way as shaped by Brzezinski. All Israeli leaders chafed at being told what to do, and frequently in public about territorial compromises “they had to make.” American Jews who voted reluctantly for him in 1976, did not do so in the 1980. Carter carried that sting with him for the rest of his life. Bass’s work is superb; thanks are given to him for giving us permission to provide his thesis here.
Henry Kissinger and and Hafez al-Assad meet in Damascus in December 1973 (credit: Agence France-Presse stringer, released by Getty in January 1974). By Ken Stein Sandwiched between the end of the 1973 October Middle East…
Ken Stein explains in detail how Egyptian and Israeli leaders coached their generals into reaching an understanding on how their troops would be disengaged after the war. On that day, a German-born Egyptian career foreign service officer, Omar Sirry was told to pack his toothbrush and go to meet several Israelis along with other Egyptians at the 101 Kilometer marker for talks.
Egyptian President Sadat colluded with Syrian President Assad to attack Israel on October 6, 1973. Sadat’s objective was not to seek Israel’s destruction but to gain a limited success by crossing the canal. He also sought to engage American diplomacy to generate talks with Israel that would see Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian land Israel secured in the June 1967 War. Sadat took a large gamble by attacking Israel yet he unfolded a negotiating process with Israel that lasted through 1979. He achieved his overarching long-term priority of having Egyptian Sinai returned to Egyptian sovereignty.
Otherwise known as Israel’s War of Independence, or, “the nakbah” or disaster to the Arab world because a Jewish state was established, the war was fought between the newly established Jewish state of Israel opposed by Palestinian irregulars, and armies from five Arab states. Official beginning of the war is usually given as May 14, 1948, the date Israel declared itself an independent Jewish state, but the war’s first of four phases began in November 1947. Lasting for two years, the war ended with armistice agreements signed in 1949 between Israel and four Arab states.
Apart from the Zionist movement and the Jewish community in Palestine, the role of President Truman, however, was the most important factor enabling the establishment of the Jewish state.
The 1937 plan to partition Palestine was never implemented. It did, however, remain a workable political option for resolving the conflict between Arabs and Zionists. Britain needed to placate Arab state opposition to Zionism, so it refrained from actively revisiting the partition plan.
November 2, 1917 The Balfour Declaration was the Jewish charter that Herzl failed to obtain from the Ottoman sultan 20 years earlier. The terms were included in the preamble of the Palestine Mandate’s Articles in…
