Israel Undercover

In brief, Posner's book is designed to take a realistic look behind the scenes of the struggle in the Middle East between Israel and the Arabs.

It is not a hopeful work, but its hard-nosed realism provides a context in which compromise can be seen as the only alternative to complete destruction.

As Posner writes, an overview of the region itself yields a discouraging portrait if one takes what one finds at face value. As the author writes: "In the Middle East, there are those who believe that the land cannot support both victor and vanquished. The terrain is barren, the water scarce. It is as if an unspoken commandment echoes through the region: destroy your enemy or see him rise again to steal your well and cut your throat. The dust and the sand seem to have left little room for compromise. Victory in battle is not enough; one has to annihilate the enemy" (1).

The book is designed to both take us behind the scenes to the gritty reality of undercover work, and to warn us that the distrust and paranoia in the region are so rampant that unless something is done to ease the tension the most disastrous results for the world will inevitably come about.

The final argument of the book is that some form of compromise must be achieved between the combatants in the Mi

. . .
Jews if a Cold War-type atmosphere could be fostered between the two sides. A Cold War in the Middle East does not sound like the best of all worlds, but in Posner's view it is the best of all real worlds. On the other hand, when we consider that the Cold War is said to have ended between the soviet Union and the United States, we begin to have a clearer understanding of the depth of the problem in the Middle East. That is, the Soviet Union and the United States have been able to at least begin to dismantle the Cold War machinery because the history of the Soviet-American conflict is a brief one with short roots, at least when we compare it to the centuries-old struggle between the Arabs and the Jews. This reality, however, should not discourage us from hoping for a realistic compromise in the Middle East along the lines proposed by Posner, as long as we realize that the two sides are not going to be friendly for a very long time, if ever. This realistic assessment by Posner is an extremely harsh one: Instead of a grand NATO-like alliance or 'strategic consensus' of moderate, pro-Western Middle Eastern regimes, a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace would seem to augur a cold-war type of coexistence between two intractable
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Middle East, Middle Eastern, Arab Jew, Arabs Jews, Israel Arabs, Union United, War II, Jews Arabs, Cold War, middle east, Jews Similarly, soviet union, arabs jews, soviet union united, union united, soviets americans, cold war, middle eastern, belief systems, competing belief systems, posner writes, view situation, secret warfare hidden, warfare hidden diplomacy,
Approximate Word count = 1560
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)