Israel and Palestine do not exist in a vacuum. Other countries in the region, as well as world powers-most notably the United States-all contribute to the complexity of the situation. The United States functions as Israel's prime supporter, financially, militarily, and in the UN, having exercised an unprecedented number of vetoes on UN Security Council votes considered harmful to Israel. Most countries in the region have mixed relations with Israel at best. The Saudi Plan for peace has been discussed in Chapter 3. Iraq and Syria have long been enemies of Israel. Lebanon and Iran have a mixed history in their relations with Israel; Israel has invaded Lebanon twice and Lebanon is divided in its sentiments. Iran allied with Israel under the Shah, but is currently one of its prime enemies. Egypt is walking a tightrope between the heavily US-subsidized government and the famed "Arab street"-popular dissent-but currently has a formal peace treaty with Israel (1979-). Jordan, too, has a formal peace treaty with Israel, but is included in this chapter because the "Jordanian option"-the idea that Jordan should be the Palestinian state-is regaining support in Israel after being little discussed since the 1994 peace treaty.-SRP
October 6, 2007
There are books that change people's consciousness and change history. Some tell a story, like Harriet Beech Stowe's 1851 Uncle Tom's Cabin, which gave a huge impetus to the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Others take the form of a political treatise, like Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat, which gave birth to the Zionist Movement. Or they can be scientific in nature, like Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which changed the way humanity sees itself. And perhaps political satire, too, can shake the world, like Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
The impact of these books was amplified by their timing. They