The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace

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The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace

by Aaron David Miller

3.31 · rating details · 71 ratings · 17 reviews

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller has played a central role in U.S. efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace. His position as an advisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national security advisors has given him a unique perspective on a problem that American leaders have wrestled with for more than half a century. Why has the world’s greatest superpower faile...more

Hardcover, 416 pages

Published March 25th 2008 by Bantam (first published January 1st 2008)

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Feb 23, 2009

Lauren rated it

A wowably infomative and comprehensive look at the efforts to make peace between Israel and Palestine with a very personal flavor.But damn! Miller was dropping names like a shetetl pissing in high cotton (he also dropped COMPLICATED, NON-SENSICAL metaphors like a bullfrog scraping its balls on the ground) so sometimes I felt out of the loop, or that I should have read "The Dummies Guide to the Middle East" first. In fact, I went out right away and BOUGHT "The Dummies Guide to the ...moreA wowably infomative and comprehensive look at the efforts to make peace between Israel and Palestine with a very personal flavor.But damn! Miller was dropping names like a shetetl pissing in high cotton (he also dropped COMPLICATED, NON-SENSICAL metaphors like a bullfrog scraping its balls on the ground) so sometimes I felt out of the loop, or that I should have read "The Dummies Guide to the Middle East" first. In fact, I went out right away and BOUGHT "The Dummies Guide to the Middle East." So I will be reading that soon, and hopefully lots of the people, places and dates will make more sense to me. Also, the Dummies guide has maps.

My favorite parts of this book were probably in comparing American leader's successes and failures in facilitating peace -- from Kissinger and Carter to Clinton and Bush. Most of this stuff I did not know, and understanding America's exact role in everything kind of makes the whole-world make more sense to me.

I do not understand, however, why every political book I read is jammed with metaphorical Dr. Phil-isms, most of them so far removed from the context or what I think they are actually trying to say, that I would sometimes become more confused. I'm sure they make sense to politicians or people invoved, but to me, "dead cat diplomacy" means nothing. Below I have listed some more funny metaphors, that I found in literally 5 minutes scanning through the pages when I was done. (You may think that these would make sense to you if you were reading them in context, but trust me, you'd probably be wrong.):

-"If a bullfrog had wings, it wouldn't scrap its balls on the ground"
-The odds in America's Arab-Isreali diplomacy were not much better than batting a .400 in major-league season.
-The Saudis "could fuck up a two-car funeral"
-"Kissinger wandering around here like a rug merchant in order to bargain over a hundred or two hundred meters."
-"In the end we're really just a shetetl with nukes."
-"Using incentives or disincentives was like punching a bowl of Jell-O." (Punching Jell-O? Or the bowl?)
-"Shoot the dead dog and leave him on the front lawn and these guys are going to be saying 'that's going to happen to me too.' "
-"Pissing in high cotton"

?? Worrrrrrrd.(less)

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Oct 24, 2010

Stephanie rated it

This is probably closer to a 3.5.

Hmm...what do I say about this book? Dr. Miller spent a long time from (as I recall) some of the 70s through the early years of G.W. Bush as part of the U.S. diplomatic team dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In this book, he shares some of his experiences and perspective on the Arab/Israeli peace process, though, strangely, he doesn't seem to go much into recounting his own tales from the front.

My main impression, after reading th...more

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Jul 23, 2009

Clif rated it

I've read many books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This one offers a more personal account than any other I've come across.

Miller was directly involved for twenty years on behalf of the United States in Middle Eastern affairs. His account of what has happened since the 1973 war is quite readable and much easier to follow than the more detailed accounts of specific negotiations available elsewhere.

I believe most readers will finish the book with a good outline of wh...moreI've read many books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This one offers a more personal account than any other I've come across.

Miller was directly involved for twenty years on behalf of the United States in Middle Eastern affairs. His account of what has happened since the 1973 war is quite readable and much easier to follow than the more detailed accounts of specific negotiations available elsewhere.

I believe most readers will finish the book with a good outline of what happened and why from the U.S. point of view.

Miller doesn't hesitate to take on the influence of the American Jewish lobby on United States policy toward Israel. His very extensive interviewing in preparation for the book combines with his personal experience to offer the reader valuable insight on the strengths and failings of the leaders representing all sides from the intensity of Carter, Sadat and Begin at Camp David to the hands off policy of George W. Bush.

Miller is at his best discussing the intricacy of the relationship between the United States and Israel and the difficulties the U.S. faces in attempting to bridge the Arab and the Jewish positions when there is virtually no Arab voice in the State Department or the White House.

We follow his own change in outlook from idealism to pragmatism under a succession of Presidents who try their hand (or not) at an area that has stubbornly resisted solution for over 60 years.

Read this book to discover why it seems that nothing works. Miller's conclusion is that only "tough love" will move things in a positive direction under a President that is willing to take risks to see meaningful progress. Ignoring the situation and hoping the two antagonists will solve their problems alone has proven of no value.

President Obama has taken a definite stand on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. There have been efforts at this before without success. Having read Miller's book, I will be watching closely to see if Obama backs down, as have all Presidents before, from insistence on putting a stop to a practice the whole world except Israel agrees is wrong. (less)

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Jul 28, 2011

Homer H Blass rated it

A very good book on American diplomacy around the Israeli-Palestanian issue. Miller not only worked with American Presidents from Reagan to Bush 2 but he also arranged for a series of interviews with the most important Americans involved before he wrote this book. He feels only three Americans: James Baker; Henry Kissinger; and Jimmy Carter succeeded in their objectives, Kissinger set up the international situation to make the Israeli-Egyptian Treaty possible; Carter got the Israeli-Egyptian Pea...more

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Aug 22, 2009

Cheryl rated it

Shelves: feeding-the-learning-hunger

I have read a lot of books about this conflict as it has always fascinated me. I have an American friend who emigrated to Israel for personal reasons rather than political, but I think it might be impossible to do that without making the political statement also. My eyes were opened a long time ago to the reality of the Palestinian oppression and the apartheid situation being created there. President Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, was another eye opener, although he is critic...moreI have read a lot of books about this conflict as it has always fascinated me. I have an American friend who emigrated to Israel for personal reasons rather than political, but I think it might be impossible to do that without making the political statement also. My eyes were opened a long time ago to the reality of the Palestinian oppression and the apartheid situation being created there. President Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, was another eye opener, although he is criticized for using that term.

This book was the memoir of a man who spent 20 years in the State Department focused on Arab-Israeli negotiations through all the presidencies. He relates personal anecdotes, like his eternal strategy to prevent being kissed by Arafat or the little sayings the people involved might quip like, if you are trying to out swim a shark, you really only have to out swim your friend. The author seems to be honest about the failures and successes over time, and I read one review that said that since he is not a politician, nor seems to be planning to become one, he could be trusted more than say the Secretaries of State he advised who want to preserve their legacy. I guess.

I found it very hard to get into the book, and I know my stumbling block was his characterization of his final enlightenment regarding the Palestinian position as something he should be congratulated for. He thought they were “terrorists” and where was a great leader “who could champion their cause in a manner that would favorably dispose Americans towards them?” Arafat was a clown in his opinion, he couldn’t describe what he looked like any more times in the book than he did, it would have been too long. “Opinion was even less charitable among the Israelis who saw Palestinians both as a threat and as a painful reminder that their nation was founded, in part, on the displacement of another people.” IN PART? SO what should they do, kill them all so there is no reminder of this “in part” displacement? Palestinian losses are always, always disproportionately larger than Israeli.

The author writes this about Arafat: “above all, with every successive encounter, what struck me was his smallness and ordinariness against the backdrop of the very weighty cause he embodied. But whether he was ladling soup into my bowl in Tunis like some solicitous Jewish grandmother, or calling me in Cleveland to extend his condolences after my mother’s death, Arafat became all too human to me. In the end, a small man leading a big cause, he failed the expectations of Americans, Israelis, and his own people.” I think you could call Dubya a very small man leading our nation into the big Iraq war, but what does that prove? Guess what, politicians are human, and being too human is not an insult in my book. It would be great to have superheroes in positions of power, but I think that year Arafat was in power were preferable to say having Osama Bin Laden in power, but that’s just me. He also wrote that Arafat “reveled in his role as victim and struggler” and I believe this was because he rejected the hugely unrealistic 2000 Camp David accords that Clinton bitterly blamed him for; history has shown they would have just strengthened the apartheid situation. The author finally came around to believing in the Palestinian right to have a state of their own, but as the sentence above illustrates, the ordering of importance is always American, Israeli and Palestinian. Which offended me also: if the US is to be a broker, I do understand that our national security and interests are important, but the most important? How selfish and arrogant is that?

I think this sentence killed the book for me:
“To me they were cardboard characters more than anything else.” The Palestinians that is. I shouldn’t be, but I was shocked that our leaders could enter into negotiations and peace talks without even thinking of each side as a full representation of humanity and be treated with some dignity or respect. I like that I can still be shocked by incredibly nonsensical and ridiculous people.

However, I did read more and the author redeemed himself a tiny bit. After someone decided the Americans should get to know some Palestinians and hear their side (isn’t that common sense in any dispute ever?) he wrote: “… The great narrators of the Palestinian story… characterized it by exile, trauma, statelessness, military occupation, cruelty, and especially loss of identity. The nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, resulted in the permanent exile of almost 800,000 Palestinians. The nakba was not just a political and humanitarian disaster…it destroyed an identity that had been rooted for centuries in the history and memory of land, village, and city, without the creation of another.” The author also participated in Seeds of Peace, a non profit conflict resolution group that has young Arabs, Israelis, Indians, and Pakistanis join together to talk and brainstorm and live together for a while, which is fantastic group.

So the book has a lot of the behind the scenes anecdotes behind this conflict, and does show his evolution into a fairer, just diplomat; he writes a lot about politics and the character of each Administration. It is a good summary of the years if you don’t get stuck on the above like I did…

(less)

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Jul 15, 2008

Alan rated it

Part memoir, part history, part journalism, this book by a veteran Arab-Israeli peace negotiator should appeal to Mideast junkies who still believe in the "peace process."
A disclaimer: I covered many of these same events as State Dept. correspondent for Reuters from 1989-94. I was present at some of the events Miller describes; I traveled with Secretaries Baker and Christopher. I even interviewed Miller himself on background a number of times. (He seemed to like chatting to repo...morePart memoir, part history, part journalism, this book by a veteran Arab-Israeli peace negotiator should appeal to Mideast junkies who still believe in the "peace process."
A disclaimer: I covered many of these same events as State Dept. correspondent for Reuters from 1989-94. I was present at some of the events Miller describes; I traveled with Secretaries Baker and Christopher. I even interviewed Miller himself on background a number of times. (He seemed to like chatting to reporters on background but he rarely revealed anything new or interesting). For more on me, go to www.alanelsner.com.
As stated, this book is an uncertain mix of different genres. The personal memoirs I found the most interesting. I wish there were more of these. I'm interested in the various characters Miller dealt with -- Rabin, Peres, Arafat, King Hussein, Presidents Mubarak and Assad. I'm interested in what went on behind the closed doors because I already know what emerged on the public record (I covered a lot of it). Unfortunately, Miller remains coy and discreet. He was never one to give much away and he apparently hasn't changed.
The history in which Miller analyzes the successful Middle East negotiations conducted by Kissinger and President Carter one can basically read elsewhere.
The journalism -- he interviewed many of the key players, is somewhat interesting. But all these actors have a deep interest in presenting events to their best advantage and Miller doesn't really challenge them.
His chapter of the power of the American-Jewish lobby and the fundamentalist Christian-Zionist lobby contained little new.
I picked up a couple of points I disagreed with: Miller claims the Madrid Peace Conference came as a big shock to the press. Not so. The only surprise was the venue. We'd all assumed the conference would be in Lausanne and had already booked hotel rooms.
Miller's account of Baker's trip to see the Kurdish refugees created after the first Gulf War conveniently leaves out the fact that these million plus refugees had fled their homes after the United States allowed Saddam Hussein to crush their revolt -- which they launched at the urging of President Bush.
The true hero of this book for Miller is Jim Baker who I agree was a successful Secretary of State who used the favorable circumstances he was presented with to achieve some modest progress on the Middle East. (Baker and Bush did less well on anticipating Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait or the war in former Yugoslavia).
Miller gives relatively low marks to Clinton who got too bogged down in the details of the negotiations, leaned too far toward Israel and committed to an ill-prepared summit at Camp David that was always destined to fail. Miller loved Rabin, had little time for Netanyahu and is scathing about Barak. He is harsh, but not sufficiently so, about Arafat.
After all the failures and frustrations, Miller is still a true believer. He still believes in the possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and lays out some conditions for that to happen. There may have been some hope in the 1990s (although I personally doubt that Arafat was ever ready to make peace with Israel) but it seems quixotic to hope for much today with Hamas ruling Gaza, the Iranian-backed Hizbollah controlling Lebanon and U.S. prestige so far eroded after eight years of Bush.
This book is recommended for those who already know a lot about the Middle East but would like to know a little about what it was like to be in the middle of those negotiations.
But it falls a little short in my view of what it could have been.(less)

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Aug 03, 2008

Jon rated it

Despite being excessively anecdotal and meandering at times, Miller's book is useful and interesting on several accounts. First, he provides one of the best available outlines of the history of America's role in Arab-Israeli peace processes, especially the Carter-Sadat-Begin Camp David negotiations, as well as the Baker-Arafat-Rabin Madrid and Oslo processes. Second, he details his personal role in the recent and ongoing roles in the frustrated Wye River and Camp David negotiations between Clint...more

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May 27, 2011

Bob Russell rated it

Recommended to Bob by: David Abelson

Written at the end of 2008, this is an excellent history of the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by a high level US government insider during the 1980s and 1990s. The perspective is "how can America help the parties resolve their main issues (Jerusalem, borders, refugees, Palestinian statehood)" and "why should it matter to America" - both very well addressed. Recommended reading for those interested in the history of current events. He quotes Faulkner, "The past is...more

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Nov 11, 2011

Amblingbooks.com marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: available-on-audio, history

"Miller's writing is both approachable and deeply smart; this and his absolute failure to take sides mean that this work will doubtlessly influence and enrage-and certainly inspire."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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Nov 09, 2008

Ray rated it

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The Author, Aaron David Miller, has extensive experience with Mid-East peace negotiations over the years with various U.S. administrations. He describes the atitudes and approaches of past Presidents and Secretaries of State, Arafat, and various Israeli leaders in peace negotiations over the years. He also discusses some of the more subtle influences on U.S. policy, including the effectiveness and significant impact of the Israel Lobby influencing congressional lawmakers, and the lack of an ef...more

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Jan 25, 2009

Al rated it

If I had to pick one guy to explain the historical American point of view regarding this topic, this would be the guy.

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Apr 25, 2010

John rated it

It was a good read, but gloomy. See full review at http://relaxandhavefun.com/?p=581

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Dec 31, 2007

Clyde rated it

Shelves: environment-global-warming-oil-etc

This is what I am currently reading. I could never make it in the diplomatic corps of ANY country. Personally, I have a great difficulty in rewarding peoples peace and appeasement for bad behavior. That pretty much was the message coming from Aaron David Miller. Stay tuned, I will have a full book review in the near future.

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Feb 04, 2012

Alison rated it

Couldn't quite make it through. In theory it's easy to read: conversational and casual, but it's not organized into a story, which makes it hard to follow and care about the players in the book -- even though this is a book you read because you care or are interested in the issue. Kind of disappointing.

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Mar 08, 2010

John rated it

Shelves: politics, read-again

Probably tied with Thomas Friedman's book as my favorite book on the Middle East. Great overview of the last 20 years of American diplomatic involvement by one of the actors. Balanced and self-critical. Made me want to read more about it - what more can you ask for?

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Aug 25, 2008

Esther rated it

Very good history of American's involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Includes interviews with Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, James Baker, Bill Clinton. Miller also offers prescriptions for what a new President and administration should be focused on.

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Aug 18, 2011

Granny rated it

Shelves: quit

Found this too boring, too much profanity, didn't finish it.

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Shelves: commentary, history, international-issues, memoirs

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