From Beirut to Jerusalem

Occasionally Friedman is unfair in his assesment of Israel's actions. In particular failing to discuss the PLO's cross boarder raids into Northern Israel that left scores of civilian causalities and how it motivated Israeli public opinion is left insufficiently discussed. Probably that is due to Friedaman's desire to indict Israel's Likud government which he saw as hostile to his belief in the need to create a PLO-Israel dialogue.

What makes the book interesting is in the story of how a state sandwiched between two regional powers was unable to survive. Interestingly, that is partially because Beirut tried to play both sides. That puts it in contrast to Jordan, a similarly situated state that, after the '67 War, through its lot entirely with Israel and has prospered under its protection.

A little should be added about Friedman's idea of a direct PLO-Israel dialogue. Within a few years of this book Israel had in fact followed the course he recommended, recognizing the PLO and the rights of the Palestinians to have a state of there own. Friedman always thought that painful compromise by Israel would engender a Palestinian willingness to make similar compromises, like letting Israel annex the 4% of the West Bank which were majority Israeli, share Jerusalem, and accept demilitarization as well as a shared Jerusalem as long as the deal came with buckets of foreign aid. 10 years after this book was written, Israel's Prime Minister Barak offered exactly that deal as Friedman envisioned it and he like the rest of the world was shocked when Arafat rejected it, deciding instead on a course of violence.

Despite the fact that this book is quite dated, it is still a good read. Those interested in the topic might also want to look at the work of Bernard Lewis, Chaim Herzog's "The Arab Israeli Wars" and Itimar Rabinovitch's work on the Lebanese conflict.


The way the Middle East was   December 3, 2001
Patrick Ruffini (Alexandria, VA)
106 out of 140 found this review helpful

Although Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem is currently enjoying a new wave of popularity, the potential reader should know that this is very distinctly a story about the Middle East in the 1980s, and offers but the merest foreshadowing of current developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict. That being said, Friedman's work still offers a relatively good account of the roots of the conflict (explaining, for instance, how Palestinians who actually seemed on their way to assimilating into Israeli society instead dramatically rejected it with the 1987 intifada). The author's sensitive rendition of the Lebanese civil war in the first half of this work is possibly the highlight of the book.

Friedman's kinetic (and sometimes glib) writing style is an advantage insofar as it leads him to cover all the bases -- giving "equal time" to describing both increasing secularization and countervailing religious movements in modern Israel. Even though Friedman is definitely in the "peace" camp, he is relatively fair to those who aren't. The book's disadvantage is that a sophisticated analysis of Israeli motives is not matched by a similarly insightful analysis of Palestinian desires -- and this leads the author to overstate the prospects for peace. The main stumbling blocks of the "peace process" today -- the fanatical devotion of the suicide bombers on the one hand and Arafat's unwillingness to crush the radicals who enjoy broad support in the West Bank and Gaza on the other -- are mentioned as afterthoughts in Friedman's concluding chapter.

In the end, Friedman makes the strongest potential argument for undertaking a peace process, one that is seldom mentioned in the Western media -- that idea that "disgorging" the Arab territories would enable Israel to be more authentically Jewish, forestalling a Palestinian population boom that would eventually overwhelm Israel if continued under the status quo. Friedman identified self-interested motivations on both sides for a Palestinian state. Over ten years later, it is not clear that a West Bank/Gaza state is really what the Palestinians are after. If it is was, why all the bombs right after the peace process began? What would have possessed Arafat to reject full statehood at Camp David last year? The answer probably lies in the vain hope that Arabs can eventually overwhelm Israel from within -- creating a state instead of Israel, not a state beside Israel. The Middle East is indeed a far more dangerous place than Friedman even realized back then.


Good Book on Seldom Understood Part of the World!   September 23, 2000
Brian Leverenz (Palatine, IL United States)
53 out of 69 found this review helpful

Those of you who follow and followed the events in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and the Gulf War, but seek a broader explanation of the sources of antagonism and conflict in the ARab world, would be enlightened and entertained by FRiedman's book. A Pulitzer prize winning correspondent for the New York Times, he spent ten years in Beirut and Jerusalem reporting first handthe violence, suspicion and hatred that is part of life in that region. The standing norm in the Middle East, according to Friedman is what he calls "Hama Rules" the pitiless and remorseless pursuit of political and economic ends through bloodshed. This attitude is rampant in all of its regimes, including Israel. Its source is the tribal politics and and deep rooted political tradition of authoritarianism, as well s the centuries of colonialism and subjugation that the region's peoples have endured. With a reporters eye for detail, Friedman analyzes many of the decisions that are familiar to us: the Reagan decision to send marines to Lebanon, The Palestenian uprising in Israel, the history of the PLO and the Arab-Israeli conflict are all analyzed in detail. Friedman is careful to point outthat the region's conflicts are not merely between Arab and Jew, but between Muslims and Christians, between Arabs, between different Muslim sects and different nation-states. In fact, Friedman finds the region's complexities beyond the comprehension of most American diplomats (no surprise!). This lack of understanding has resulted in numerous foreign policy blunders by the U.S. The first version of the book was written prior to the Gulf War, but its observations are still relevant, though you can now get a new edition. Hussein's regime is discussed at length and characterized as merely the latest version of "Hama Rules." Despite possible bias as a result of his Jewish heritage, Friedmans reporting is critical of both the Israeli's brutal treatment of the palestenians and of the PLO's disregard for the lives of its own people. My one criticism of the book is that Friedman has an idealized view of the nature of a Jewish state. This is to his credit, but as a result he often holds the Israeli's to a higher moral standard in their behavior than he does the other nations and groups, especially the PLO. But for those of us who believe in the power of reason to settle disputes and are infected with American optimism and values, the book is a grim reminder that there are places in the world that operate very differently from what we understand. He explains many of these differences in the book, often thru his deft personal touch and numerous firsthand experiences. Highly recommended!


A Fair, Firsthand Account from the Middle East   November 3, 2001
miked99 (New York, NY)
43 out of 54 found this review helpful

I had previously read Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and was basically disappointed with that book. "From Beirut to Jerusalem", his first and more widely acclaimed, is much better. I am on the opposite end of the spectrum as Friedman, politically, so I was not expecting to agree with him on every view and suggestion for solution that he describes in this book, but his writing was entertaining, his stories amazing, and his opinions very fair to both sides.

The book begins with Friedman's description of life in the middle of the Lebanese civil war. Friedman lived in the heart of Beirut when it was the worst place anyone could be at the time. His firsthand stories of bombings, murders, and simple terrorism, range from unimaginably scary to darkly humorous. Eventually Friedman and his wife move from Beirut to Jerusalem, where the second half of the book begins. This second part is much more applicable to today's news and debates since it is from an area in the middle of daily battles, whereas Lebanon's civil war has died down.

Friedman, although Jewish, has many misgivings about Israeli actions in their conflicts of the past several decades. But unlike most of his workmates and friends at the New York Times, Friedman is also not afraid to tell the whole truth when detailing Arab atrocities. Friedman's account of Hafez al-Asad's massacre of his own people in the town of Hama, Syria, is one that should be read by every Westerner -- especially those on the left who think the Jews, aided by America, simply "stole" a small plot of Arab land from an otherwise friendly group of people.

This book won many awards and is very unique in that it is a wide-ranging report from the world's greatest newspaper's leading foreign affairs writer. Many may dislike Friedman for his controversial views, (i.e. saying the famous Elian/machine gun picture brought joy to his heart), but in "From Beirut to Jerusalem", he is very honest and comes as close to playing the middle ground as is possible in a dispute that seems to have no middle, and will likely never end.


Fascinating   August 18, 2000
42 out of 53 found this review helpful

This is an extremely well written book about the Middle East conflict. The book is divided into two main sections, Beirut, and Jerusalem.

The Beirut section is about the Lebanese civil war -- Friedman discusses everything from the history of the war, to the different factions of Lebanese society, to why and how the U.S. became involved. His analyses are generally on-target, and his personal stories about living in Beirut as a correspondent during the war make the section especially engaging.

The Jerusalem section begins with a couple of chapters about Jewish culture and the origins of Israel; then goes with great depth into the history and analysis of the Palestinian - Israeli conflict.

Reading this book sparked in me an interest in the affairs of the Middle East. It also gave me the background necessary to delve further into the topic and understand the history behind the current headlines on the region

Highly reccomended