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Compendium--The Arab-Israeli Conflict
By Associate Editor Richard Schoonover
*
Readers of American Diplomacy will appreciate that in the recent past this publication has served up a considerable quantity and variety of articles, commentaries, and analyses on the Arab-Israeli situation. Many of these pieces have survived quite well the volatile shifts of developments in that part of the world and deserve a second reading by those of us seeking better understanding of the underlying issues of the conflict. As I scoured the American Diplomacy archives for this purpose (an exercise I commend to all who might wish to explore an international affairs issue in depth), I found the following seven articles of particular value to me, a non-specialist on the region's problems, in coming to grips with some of the fundamental factors which feed tensions in the Middle East.
Some of the articles are purely analytical (see those by Schrader and Dale), while others are more provocative (e.g., the two Jones pieces and the DeAtkine analysis). But in one way or another all caused me to reflect more deeply about the daily--even hourly--headlines to which we are subjected, as they probe the palpable problems of terrorism, religion, economics, the military, and international involvement that are all part of the story.
Were you to delve into the archives, you might select other items to review and other themes to pursue. But if you don't have unlimited time, I highly recommend these for a starter. Each title is linked to its archival source in American Diplomacy. Note that the month and year following each sets forth when the item first appeared in the journal; in two instances, we later repeated the publication.
| "Religion in Diplomatic History | 6/1999; reprinted 10/2001 | by Walter McDougal |
| "Terrorism: Its Cause and Cure" | 3/1997; reprinted 9/2001 | by Curtis F. Jones |
| "Patterns of international Terrorism" | 12/2001 | by Holger Schrader |
| "Middle East Water Problems" | 8/2001 | by William N. Dale |
| "Geopolitics of the Middle East Crisis" | 2/1999 | by Robert K. Olson |
| "The American Burden of Hegemony in the Middle East" | 12/2001 | by Curtis F. Jones |
| "Why Arabs Lose Wars" | 12/2000 | by Norvell B. DeAtkine |
Endnotes
Note *: Dick Schoonover, who is retired from the Foreign Service, has accompanied his wife, Amb. Brenda Schoonover, on her current assignment as deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Brussels. Back