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• A Beirut Heart

  A Beirut Heart is the unforgettable story of an American woman who lived amidst the Lebanese Civil War for eight years and through it all attempted to sustain a life with her Lebanese husband and two small children. Written by Cathy Sultan, the memoir offers a unique illustration of the unsung heroes of war – the women who assume the awesome task of keeping the family united during war time. The book tells the story of how Sultan moved with her family in 1969 to Lebanon. For six years they led an ideal life experiencing the rich culture, exotic food and breathtaking landscape of the city located along the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. After the war began in 1975, their lives changed forever. Sultan recounts how she held the family together by comforting her children after bomb blasts and consoling her physician husband who spent his days treating wounded civilians. To keep sane, she used cooking as her tranquilizer. The unique narrative places us uncomfortably inside something we seldom consider – the domestic element of civil war – and leaves a permanent impression of the destroyed city and its resilient people.

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• Israeli and Palestinian Voices

  Cathy Sultan argues that an unheard majority of Palestinians and Israelis who believe in a just peace offer the only plausible resolution in the world's epicenter of religious conflict. Her case is illustrated through courageous onsite reporting and dramatic interviews secured during East Jerusalem and West Bank violence in March 2002. Her credibility is established through comparable experience during the Lebanese civil war -- an American with small children living with daily deadly effects of an earlier confrontation between Israel and the PLO. A fast-paced narrative and compelling interviews conclude with Sultan's short history tracing 20th Century roots of Middle East conflict to the recent Intifada and U.S. policy responses. Standing in the shoes of those who face each other daily across this dangerous divide forces us to see beyond media stereotypes often reduced to terrorist and victim. This practical primer brings to life a conflict whose complexities Americans must try to understand. (Cathy Sultan is a member of the National Peace Foundation Board of Directors.)(The book can be ordered from the publisher by calling 877-823-9235 or logging onto http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-29488-X)

• Rabble-Rouser for Peace Rabble-Rouser for Peace (by John Allen)

  “This is the story of a slight, sickly black boy, living at the margins of South African society, who grew up to be a towering figure of moral power, religious significance, and political impact—one of the very few great human beings of our age. There is no one on earth who will not profit from reading this story, told with such precision, sympathy, and mounting dramatic tension by John Allen.”                                                                                                                 —Thomas Cahill, author of The Gifts of Jesus   To be a rabble-rouser for peace may seem to be a contradiction in terms. And yet it is the perfect description for Desmond Tutu, Nobel laureate and spiritual father of a democratic South Africa. Tutu understood that justice -- a genuine regard for human rights -- is the only real foundation for peace. And so he stirred up trouble, courageously engaging in heated face-to-face confrontations with South Africa's leaders; he stirred up trouble in the streets, leading peaceful demonstrations amid the barely controlled fury of police battalions; he stirred up trouble on the world stage, seeking international disinvestment in the apartheid economy. Tutu has led one of the great lives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and to read his story in full is to be reminded of the power of one inspired man to change history. In this authorized biography, written by John Allen, a distinguished journalist and longtime associate of Tutu, we are witnesses to courage, stirring oratory, and a demonstration of the power of faith to transform the seemingly intransigent. We know in retrospect that the apartheid resistance movement was successful and that South Africa, though not without its problems, today faces an infinitely brighter future than it might if it had not been for the efforts of Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and other leaders. But no such outcome was ever a certainty. Through the author's personal experiences, total access to the Tutu family and their papers, and considerable research, including the use of new archival material, Allen tells the story of a barefoot schoolboy from a deprived black township who became an international symbol of the democratic spirit and of religious faith. Allen personally observed how Tutu, at genuine risk to his own safety, repeatedly intervened between armed soldiers and stone-throwing students to keep the peace, how he faced constant death threats and angrily stood up to the leaders of the cruel apartheid system. Using his own faith as a cudgel, Tutu asked those officials to confront their own Christian background and made them reconcile their actions with their own professions of belief. Often through the sheer power of moral example and with a lyrical command of the English language, Tutu was able to appeal to the conscience of the world and to the emotions of an angry crowd in the streets. And then, when the battle for South African rights was finally won, it was Tutu who insisted on finding a path to forgive the former oppressors by strongly backing and serving on the unprecedented Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Today, the archbishop continues to appeal to the world's conscience by opposing the continuance of war and the inadequacy of the international response to the AIDS/HIV crisis sweeping Africa. He has led a life of commitment, one that continues to matter. John Allen has movingly captured the flavor and details of that life and marshaled them into a commanding story, one that sheds light on the struggles and triumphs of our times.

   

   

   

  
  
  

   

• Resort of Kings

  During the last five decades, U.S. cultural diplomacy programs have withered because of politics and accidents of history that have subordinated cultural diplomacy to public relations campaigning, now called “public diplomacy.” With anti-Americanism on the rise worldwide, cultural diplomacy should become an immediate priority, but politicians continue to ignore this relatively inexpensive, age-old tool for promoting understanding among nations. Richard Arndt probes the history of American cultural diplomacy to demonstrate its valuable past contributions and to make a plea for reviving it for the future. Cultural relations occur naturally between people in different nations as a result of trade, tourism, student exchanges, entertainment, communications, migration, intermarriage—millions of cross-cultural encounters. But cultural diplomacy only happens when a government decides to channel and to support cultural exchange through planned programs to promote broad national interests. The First Resort of Kings examines the first eight decades of formal U.S. cultural diplomacy, from its tentative beginnings in World War I through the 1990s. Arndt also compares America’s efforts with those of other nations and enriches his narrative by detailing the professional experiences of the men and women who have represented American democracy, education, intellect, art, and literature to the rest of the world. His work shows that this dialogue of American culture and education with the rest of the world is neither a frill nor a domestic political concern but is the deepest cornerstone of a positive, forward-looking U.S. foreign policy. Arndt argues that, particularly in the wake of the Iraq War, America must revive its cultural diplomacy programs as a long-term investment in international goodwill and understanding. RICHARD T. ARNDT is an Advisory Council Member of the National Peace Foundation. He worked for USIA for twenty-four years after earning a doctorate and teaching at Columbia University. Since retiring from the USIA, he has served as the president of the U.S. Fulbright Association, coedited The Fulbright Difference, 1948-1992, chaired the National Peace Foundation, and is currently the president of Americans for UNESCO. He lives in Washington, D.C.

• Search for Common Ground
• The Missing Peace

  THE MISSING PEACE: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace By Dennis Ross. Illustrated. 840 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $35. In December 1999, as Israel and Syria seemed suddenly to be making real progress toward a peace agreement, President Bill Clinton called President Hafez al-Assad with a request. Israel, he said, had rock-solid information on the location in a Damascus cemetery of the remains of three Israeli soldiers who had gone missing in action during the Lebanon war of the 1980's. Would Assad permit an American forensic team to extract the remains? Such a gesture, Clinton noted, would go a long way toward persuading the wary Israeli public that Syria was serious about opening a new era of peaceful relations. Assad, who historically had rejected all steps designed to reach the Israeli public, said yes. The team flew to Damascus, received full Syrian cooperation and dug up the remains. They were not, however, those of the missing Israelis. This episode, which as far as I can tell has never before been made public, is recounted by Dennis Ross in ''The Missing Peace,'' his important, voluminous and keenly balanced memoir of 12 years as the central figure of American Middle East peace policies. The anecdote and its aftermath are a useful illustration of several themes that Ross develops. First, he is persuaded that at a certain moment, Assad was genuinely trying to make a deal with Israel. This is not widely accepted outside the Arab world. Second, Israel and its negotiating partners, both Syrians and Palestinians, were perpetually out of sync with one another. When Ross reported Assad's enthusiasm to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, Barak came back with a new set of demands. And third, Barak did hope to make a far-reaching deal with Syrians and Palestinians, but ambitions for accomplishing both made the attainment of either more difficult. Barak wanted two years to withdraw settlers from the Golan Heights, to be returned to Syria as part of the deal. Why so long? He could not confront settlers from both the Golan Heights and the West Bank simultaneously. Both deals failed, of course, the victims of numerous missteps on all sides. Explaining the collapse of Middle East peace efforts of recent years is the focus of a small and growing library. But no one has the broad perspective of Dennis Ross, who began his service under the first George Bush and continued it through eight years of Clinton and several Israeli governments. For that reason alone, this is a work of historical significance. To the question of what went wrong, Ross offers two answers, one simple and one messy but no less true or important. The simple answer is that in the end Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was the principal cause of the failure. Ross illustrates this in numerous ways. The most important and dramatic is an account of late December 2000, when, with only a few weeks left in his administration, President Clinton suggested a set of guidelines to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli cabinet accepted the framework with several reservations that were within the guidelines laid out by the president. Arafat did not. Ross recounts watching Clinton tell Arafat that by not responding to the American ideas, ''he was killing Barak and the peace camp in Israel.'' Arafat did not budge. As Ross puts it: ''A comprehensive deal was not possible with Arafat. . . . He could live with a process, but not with a conclusion.'' The second explanation, the messier one, is that neither side had taken sufficient steps to grasp the needs and neuroses of the other. Ross says ''the Israelis acted as if all decisions should be informed by their needs, not by possible Palestinian needs or reactions.'' Regarding the Arabs, he writes, ''The kind of transformation that would make it possible for the Arab world to acknowledge that Israel has needs has yet to take place.'' As for the American role, Ross puts it this way: ''Our great failing was not in misreading Arafat. Our great failing was in not creating the earlier tests that would have either exposed Arafat's inability to ultimately make peace or forced him to prepare his people for compromise.'' In truth, another realization emerges from these pages: Israel and the Arabs were always close to abandoning their negotiations. Behind ceremonies that from a distance seemed to indicate reconciliation lay walkouts and shouting matches. The most famous moment of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking was the 1993 handshake between Rabin and Arafat on the South Lawn of the White House, yet until the very end both sides were threatening to stay away. Fifteen minutes before the ceremony, Ross was on one phone shouting at the Palestinians while on the other phone Martin Indyk, a top American official at the time, was shouting at the Israelis. Ross's analysis of the peace process is astute, but the real service he performs in this book is less in explaining the meaning of events than in setting the record straight. There has been much dispute over what was offered to the Palestinians in the 2000 Camp David meeting and in the months that followed. This book should end that discussion. The final deal, made orally to the Palestinians and Israelis by Clinton, is laid out in the appendix. Broadly, the ideas were these: Territory: The Palestinians would get all of Gaza and between 94 and 96 percent of the West Bank. In exchange for what they would not get of the West Bank, Israel would be required to give up between 1 percent and 3 percent of its own land. Security: Israel would withdraw from the West Bank over 36 months with an international force gradually introduced into the area. A small Israeli presence in fixed locations would remain in the Jordan Valley under the authority of the international force for another 36 months. Palestine would be defined as a ''nonmilitarized state'' with a strong internal security force and an international presence for border and deterrence purposes. Jerusalem: What is Arab in the city would be Palestinian and what is Jewish Israeli. Palestinians would have sovereignty over the plaza of the mosques and Israelis over the Western Wall. Refugees: Palestinian refugees would either move to the new state of Palestine, be rehabilitated in their host country, resettle in a third country or be admitted to Israel if Israel so chose. None would have the right to return to Israel against Israel's will. One of the reasons there has been so little clarity regarding this offer is that it evolved over eight months. The first offer made by Israel to the Palestinians in preparation for the July 2000 Camp David summit was for nearly 60 percent of the West Bank. Over time it could grow to 80 percent. The Palestinians walked out, and the next offer was for 87 percent. At Camp David itself, the offer was for 91 percent plus a 1 percent swap. In other words, the Palestinians were right to say no with such consistency. The deal kept improving. What they did not know was when to say yes. As important as this work is to history, I am sorry to report that it makes little contribution to the art of storytelling. It is overly long and frequently dull. In 800-plus pages, Ross offers a landscape virtually devoid of humanity. We do not really get to know any of the leaders or any of Ross's close colleagues. What was it like to negotiate with Assad? We aren't told. Instead, we are treated to endless talk of the need for sleep and a shower. There are a few spots where Ross lets his hair down. He clearly views Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud politician and former prime minister, with contempt, and he says so. And as the Lewinsky and impeachment scandals start to overtake Clinton in late 1998, Ross observes him during a negotiation writing on his yellow legal pad, ''Focus on your job, focus on your job, focus on your job.'' There is also one exceptionally poignant and prescient moment near the book's end. It is Dec. 29, 2000, and Arafat still will not say yes. Ahmed Qurei, known as Abu Ala, a top Palestinian negotiator (later he became prime minister), has come to see Ross, who tells him new president, George W. Bush, will want to have nothing to do with Arafat after Clinton's experience. ''Mark my words,'' Ross reports telling Abu Ala, ''they will disengage from the issue and . . . you will have Sharon as prime minister. He will be elected for sure if there is no deal, and your 97 percent will become 40 to 45 percent; your capital in East Jerusalem will be gone. . . . ''He looked at me sadly and with a note of complete resignation, replied, 'I am afraid it may take another 50 years to settle this now.' ''

• What's Right With Islam

  Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's message can be summed up by what he says in his concluding chapter, "What's right with America and what's right with Islam have a lot in common…As I sailed into New York on the cold wintry morning of Wednesday, December 22, 1965…I beheld the Statue of Liberty and wondered what America had in store for me. Little did I realize then that I was to discover the riches of my faith tradition in this land. Like many immigrants from Muslim lands, I discovered my Islam in America." Imam Feisal has written a book so full of hope for good relations among the Abrahamic religions and between America and the Muslim world that it demands to be read and acted upon everyone, especially our political leadership. He argues that the ideals upon which America was founded are exactly those required for the establishment of the true Islamic state that every Muslim movement since the time of the Prophet and the first Caliph's has purported to have as its goal. This is so, he explains, because the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution emanate from the common natural religious instinct or din al-fitrah. Imam Feisal lays out a roadmap for dialogue and understanding that must be followed if we are to escape ever-worsening conflict. His prescription will not be easy to carry out, but the alternative is continued terrorism and bloodshed. If President Bush reads no other book this year, this should be it!