The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine

by Nathan Thrall

In a myth-busting analysis of the world's most intractable conflict, a star of Middle East reporting, "one of the most important writers" in the field ( The New York Times ), argues that only one weapon has yielded force.

Scattered over the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace proposals, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions, and state-building efforts. The conventional story is that these well-meaning attempts at peacemaking were repeatedly, perhaps terminally, thwarted by violence.

Through a rich interweaving of reportage, historical narrative, and powerful analysis, Nathan Thrall presents a startling counter-history. He shows that force―including but not limited to violence―has impelled each side to make its largest concessions, from Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution to Israeli territorial withdrawals. This simple fact has been neglected by the world powers, which have expended countless resources on initiatives meant to diminish friction between the parties. By quashing any hint of confrontation, promising an imminent negotiated solution, facilitating security cooperation, developing the institutions of a still unborn Palestinian state, and providing bounteous economic and military assistance, the United States and Europe have merely entrenched the conflict by lessening the incentives to end it. Thrall’s important book upends the beliefs steering these failed policies, revealing how the aversion of pain, not the promise of peace, has driven compromise for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Published as Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza reaches its fiftieth anniversary, which is also the centenary of the Balfour Declaration that first promised a Jewish national home in Palestine, The Only Language They Understand advances a bold thesis that shatters ingrained positions of both left and right and provides a new and eye-opening understanding of this most vexed of lands.

Genres: Politics, History, Middle East, Nonfiction, Israel, Religion

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 16, 2017

About the author

Nathan Thrall is an American author, essayist, and journalist, who is known for his 2023 nonfiction work A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, and is a contributor to several literary magazines. As of 2023 he is a professor at Bard College in New York state.

Thrall is the former director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, where from 2010 until 2020 he covered Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel's relations with its neighbors.

Thrall is Jewish, and his mother is a Jewish émigrée from the Soviet Union.

Reviews

[Matthew Petti · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title makes it sound like just another “why can’t we all get along” Israel-Palestine book, but Nathan Thrall’s collection of essays is quite radical.

Rather than a frustrating backwards attitude, Thrall sees “force is the only language they understand” as a basically true statement about both Israelis and Palestinians. The only progress towards Israeli-Palestinian (or broader Israeli-Arab) peace has come because one side feared painful consequences from the status quo. And only the threat of further pain — whether military, economic, or political — can push forward any kind of resolution.

That’s where we get to the real spicy part. Thrall sees U.S.-led efforts to push “coexistence” and “institution-building” not as a path to peace, but as a part of a policy to “thwart actions that would raise the cost of the status quo” for Israel and Palestinian elites, thus prolonging the conflict. Liberals see Israeli-Palestinian differences as a matter of poor understanding or mistrust, but Thrall points out that specific actors gain a material benefit from the frozen conflict.

Specifically, Israel gets to entrench its control over territory while outsourcing the costs to Palestinian factions and international donors. While most Palestinians suffer from military occupation or continued dispossession, Palestinian “technocrats with seven- and eight-word job titles” can rest assured in their job security. Simply put, the people with guns are not going to be talked into risking their comfortable positions through sermons about non-violence.

All of this would seem quite obvious, but U.S. policy is dominated by either naive liberals, or pro-Israel right-wingers who believe that Arabs are impossible to reason with. It’s a bit of an “emperor’s new clothes” situation, and Thrall is the only person in the expert-industrial complex willing to call out the nakedness.

The book is the most unsparing when it comes to liberals, who often believe that they are pushing peace and Palestinian rights for Israel’s own good. President Obama treated Israel as a child that did not want to eat its vegetables, and needed to be bribed with candy. Of course, Israeli leaders have been more than willing to pocket the candy (multibillion-dollar weapons systems) without eating bitter herbs (an independent Palestine) that they don’t actually see the nutritional value in.

It’s not to say that Thrall supports violence as the only solution. As he mentions, the acts of valor “most highly revered in Palestinian memory” have been popular uprisings rather than armed raids, “because nonviolence permitted and encouraged the sort of collectivism, solidarity, and broad-based participation that violence did not.” But as long as the “international community” tries to cushion everyone, the only change in either direction will come through violence.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book free from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. The Only Language They Understand was written by Nathan Thrall and published by Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company in 2017. Some of the chapters have been previously published in The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. They have also appeared in Foreign Affairs online, and in a report for the International Crisis Group.

FORCE! The Only Language They Understand is force! This is a meticulously-researched, incisively-analyzed, and skillfully-written account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — especially after the establishment of the Jewish state by the United Nations in 1947 and the subsequent 1948 war between the parties. The account is comprehensive. The author begins his narrative with a brief history of Zionism and events in the former Mandatory Palestine that goes back as far as the late 1800’s. He relates this history of events from first the Jewish, and then the Palestinian perspectives. He also includes descriptions of the roles played by other world leaders, especially the United States, during this time. His perspective seems to be free of any overt bias.

Israel is regarded by many (although not, necessarily, the author) to be a theocracy, and there is ample evidence in history to indicate as much. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, provides one definition of the word as: “1.1. the commonwealth of Israel from the time of Moses until the election of Saul as King.” Theocracies seem to be able to justify behavior that would be unacceptable in other forms of government. One example might be the harsh brutality exhibited by some Israeli Jews when inflicting violence on innocent Palestinian civilians. The author relates the story of “[a]n innocent Eritrean asylum seeker at the site of an attack [who] was shot and then, as he lay bleeding to death, kicked repeatedly in the head.” He also tells us how darker skinned Jews must shout out their Jewishness before boarding buses in Israel in order to avoid being stabbed or beaten, and how Yemenites (Jews of Yemeni descent) have printed T-shirts that read: “Calm down, I’m a Yemenite” so that they will not be attacked by right-wing Jews while going about their business in Israel and the West Bank.

Lest you think that the author was being one-sided in his criticisms of Zionism and Israeli Jews when pointing out the cynical hypocrisy of the Israeli government, he also takes on the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Fatah Party, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Hamas, an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that has morphed into a political party that now controls Gaza. In this book, the author is an equal-opportunity critic. He tells us about the murders of innocent Jewish teenagers and other civilians by radical Palestinians. In addition, the author tells us which American Presidents were the most effective in helping to stop the violence and gain a solution to the seemingly-intractable problems that have plagued the region — largely as the result of Zionism. He describes the effectiveness of President Carter, and the ineffectiveness of President Obama in leading negotiations to resolve the conflict. He tells us which Israeli leaders fanned the flames of violence, and which ones quelled them.

Murder, violence and bloodshed have been the legacy of Zionism in the former Palestine. Encouraged by failed and faulty US foreign policy, both sides in the conflict have become reluctant to arrive at a lasting agreement that could bring permanent peace to the region. This is especially true of Israel, which has benefited greatly from the US lack of even-handedness in dealing with the issues involved. The author is especially critical of the failures of the Obama Administration and its Secretary of State, John Kerry. The author’s opinion is that it was the Carter Administration, and Jimmy Carter, personally, who contributed the most to a lasting settlement in Palestine. No other US President’s accomplishments matched those of Jimmy Carter, so Thrall is an equal-opportunity critic when it comes to Democratic and Republican US Presidents.

I think that this book will finally tell the truth to its readers about what has been happening in Israel and its occupied territories over the years. It seems relatively objective, but it is sure to provoke anger on both sides, and especially on the part of unquestioning supporters of the Israeli government. What the world has not learned about the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (and its occupants) from its news media outlets, or from its political leaders, it can learn from reading the facts as set forth in this book. The end of the book includes a brief coda, and a comprehensive set of End Notes that is organized by chapter. The author’s assertions are assiduously sourced and verified.

I think it would have been helpful to readers if the author and publisher had thought to include some simple graphics, such as maps of the disputed territories and how their boundaries changed as a result of the conflicts that plagued the region during the period described by this book. Best of all would be if the maps were to be inserted into the book at the places where the conflicts that changed the borders are described by the author.

This is a really thought-provoking work. It is well-researched and clearly-analyzed. Anybody should be able to read it and understand what they have read. If you care at all about what happens in the Middle East, and you should, then be sure to learn the facts as related in this book. Before voting for any potential American President, Senator, or Congressman, we Americans need to be aware of the facts, and not just the politically spun nonsense that emanates from Washington these days. Read the book. You’ll be glad you did, and you will have a lot to think about.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few international issues are as intractable as the Israel-Palestine conflict and there are many books that have been written about it. There is Innocent Abroad: U.S. Diplomacy and the Effort to Transform the Middle East by Martin S. Indyk, which is a firsthand account of the peace process. And there is My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit, which deals with the historical roots of the conflict. But few of these books are as critical of the current process as this one. Mr. Thrall's analysis is incredibly insightful and disheartening as he concludes that peace between the two parties has metastasized into a stalemate where everyone has become comfortable with there being neither peace nor war. His conclusions about how US policy during the Obama years and moving forward has done little and often will be counterproductive. His conclusion from his historical analysis in the first chapter and throughout is that only force has moved either side to make the concessions necessary to move towards peace. And he is not talking about the rhetorical kind of force Pres. Obama deployed during his first term in office, but military action. Quite honestly, this is the best analysis you will find on the issue today.

However, this book is not perfect. First, his first chapter, which examines the history of the conflict from Israel's founding to the present, was very long at nearly 80 pages. It would've been better if he had broken this up a little bit. Second, his analysis of the Palestinians' historical position in the first chapter doesn't neatly fall in line with Mr. Thrall's initial thesis that force is necessary to move the parties forward. Finally, one chapter is dedicated to a criticism of Ari Shavit's My Promised Land. This chapter felt unfairly harsh and unnecessary and Mr. Thrall's criticism of Mr. Shavit's politics extends into other chapters as well.

Still, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the current state of the peace process in Israel-Palestine.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be seemingly dispassionate and fair while also not couching anything - but could have been a hair too reductionist.

“Every American president has tried to finish what Jimmy Carter started. Each has failed and these failures have led to a widespread conclusion, not just in the United States but throughout the world, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be insoluble. The parties are intransigent. The issues are intractable. The interests of political leaders are too narrow. And on each side the power of constituencies opposed to partition is too great. Palestinian leaders are paralyzed by their lack of legitimacy. Israeli governments are constrained by fractious coalition politics. American presidents are shackled by the power of Israel's domestic supporters. Arab states are divided and distracted by more urgent concerns. The role of religion; dueling claims to sovereignty over sacred spaces; large refugee populations; demands for restitution too great to be satisfied; the smallness of the territory; Israel's vulnerability to surprise attack; the trauma of the Holocaust; the freshness of wounds from terrible violence; the absence of trust; and the irreconcilability of conflicting historical narratives all, it would seem, render the conflict too difficult to resolve.”

“In fall 2003 members of [Israel’s] security elite condemned the occupation with unprecedented vehemence. Sharon received two open letters protesting his policies in the occupied territories. One from Israeli Air Force pilots pledging to refuse to continue hitting innocent civilians and objecting to the long occupation which corrupts all of Israeli society. Another from members of the Army’s most prestigious special forces unit… vowing to no longer participate in the regime of oppression in the territories and the denial of human rights to millions of Palestinians and to no longer serve as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise. Similarly harsh criticisms came in a joint interview with four former chiefs of the Shindet, among the most authoritative security figures in the country, who called for a dismantlement of settlements and a territorial withdrawal.”

“Despite the evidence that severe pressure including violence has repeatedly elicited Israeli compromise many wish to deny the causal relationship for fear that such an admission would lead to the application of still more coercive force.”

“[Terrorism] put the Palestinian issue atop the world’s agenda, asserted Palestinian identity and independence of decision making and mobilized a political constituency instilling in Palestinians a sense that they were not helpless refugees but proud revolutionaries.”

“What Palestinians saw as a great concession, sacrificing justice for the sake of peace and consenting to a state on less than one fourth of their homeland, Israel viewed as an unreasonable, unjust, and maximalist demand for withdrawal from every inch of the territory it had conquered in 1967.”

“Critics maligned the modest gains of Oslo but there was little reason to believe that refusal of it would have brought full independence within grasp.”

“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” -Abba Eban

“Each neglected to offer the most logical and parsimonious explanation for failure. No agreement was reached because at least one of the parties preferred to maintain the impasse…. The deal’s cost is much higher than the cost of making no deal.”

“..the policy of differentiation...does not so much constitute pressure on Israel as serve as a substitute for it. Thereby helping to prolong an occupation it is ostensibly meant to bring to an end…Differentiation allows them to thread the needle of being both pro-Israel and anti-occupation, the accepted view in polite society… Sanctions… could change Israeli policy overnight but the possibility of imposing them has been delayed if not thwarted by the fact that critics of the occupation have instead advocated for a reasonable sounding yet ineffective alternative.”

“A peaceful partition of Palestine is achievable, but too many insist on sparing Israelis and Palestinians the pain of outside force so that they may instead continue to be generous with each other in the suffering they inflict.”

“After the war, progress took precedence over reflection, [Ari] Shavit writes. Survival was all. Denial took root: the Holocaust was not mentioned; Sephardic and Middle-Eastern Jewish culture were marginalized; Palestinian refugees were forgotten. History was erased.”

“Instead it provides a window into the thinking of the largest section of the Israeli electorate, the amorphous conflicted center, which after Oslo's failure, the second intifada, and the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza, has come to the view that Jewish and Palestinian nationalism can't be reconciled.”

“Many dislike the suggestion that there is any tension between their commitment to liberalism and their Zionism.”

“He chastises the left for failing to acknowledge the centrality of the Palestinian refugee issue but not because he thinks the refugees' needs must be addressed. Shavit, like Israeli officials, brings up Palestinian refugees only to assert that the conflict can't be resolved. In short, he justifies inaction but cloaks it in empathy.”

“Of course Shavit is right that during the centuries prior to 1948 native American suffered a much worse fate than the Palestinians who are not killed in numbers so great as to deprive them of their current numerical advantage over Israeli Jews but that doesn't make the attention now paid to the plight of Palestinians hypocritical we're simply a result of Zionism emerging at a later time. It's hard to imagine an American commentator getting away with telling Native Americans that he refused to condemn past misdeeds, that Native American anguish was necessary for the greater good of America, and that it was the Native Americans moral and reasonable obligation to overcome that trauma, as Shavit said to Charlie Rose about the massacres and explosions of 1948.”

“Indignation against negotiations for the sake of negotiations, as many have come to view talks, distracted Palestinians from the cost of inaction. During the years that Palestinians leaders refused to enter formal direct talks, Israel advanced settlement construction in the West Bank, consolidated control over East Jerusalem, and further isolated Gaza. The PLO gained nothing in return. If it had come to the table it might not have been able to slow Israel's advance but it likely would have gained some concessions. Of course Palestinian leaders were not exclusively to blame for the standstill. Most were responding to the contradictory demands of their constituents. West Bankers seem to want to have it both ways, to wage more effective resistance to the occupation but without reducing living standards or suffering the setbacks of another intifada. The West Bank leadership indulged the contradiction, failing to communicate clearly to its people and possibly even to itself that these two objectives were at odds with each other. There was little incentive for Palestinian leaders to pull the national movement out of this tangle since the public had already made its preferences known.”

“Palestinians were certain that Abbas' cooperative strategy would fail but they had little faith that the alternatives would do better.”

“Palestinian society is afflicted with dependency and it is dependent on forces which wish to preserve the status quo.”

“The lesson of the 2014 conflict was rather different. Although a devastating war had brought only limited and meager relaxations of the closure, the benefits of cooperating, indeed of continuing to provide Israel with the sort of security that its top generals openly praised, were more meager still.”

“[Asher] Susser documents how the gaps between the two sides, or at least some leading spokesmen from the two sides, have narrowed on issues derived driving from the 1967 war (borders, settlements and security arrangements) while little, if any, real progress was made in resolving the 1948 question of refugee return.”

“As the list of failed negotiations grows, Israelis will be more prone to ask themselves whether the time has come to postpone hopes of a full peace in order to achieve, perhaps through ceasefires or additional withdrawals, a further separation. It would thereby fortify a situation which is more than one state but less than two. Which is, in fact, all that was ever on offer.”

“[Kerry] operated under the misapprehension that after decades of failed efforts, peace had remained elusive not because Israel and Palestine held irreconcilable positions but primarily because they did not trust each other.”

“A 2003 survey showed that among those refugees willing to choose compensation instead of a return to Israel, 65% believed the fair amount would be $100,000 to $500,000 per family. Prior to the Camp David negotiations in 2000, US officials estimated that a combined total of up to 20 billion dollars might be available to Palestinians refugees and Jewish refugees from Arab countries, meaning that Palestinians could expect to receive no more than $1,000 to $3,000 per refugee. All neglect how unacceptable their proposals are to refugees, whose support will be indispensable for a lasting agreement since they make up a majority of Palestinians worldwide and roughly 45% of the population of the West Bank and Gaza.”

“Most important, all three groups underrate how ineffectual and often detrimental US actions and policies have been. Whether the incremental steps favored by the skeptics or the final status talks promoted by embracers and reproachers, the groups justify their positions on the grounds that they advance the parties toward a two state peace. Yet the effect, in practice if not in intention, has been to create false hopes. For two decades the notion that peace may come in the near future has excused taking little more than minimal and inadequate steps to lessen the hardships imposed by occupation today.”

“The choice for the PLO has never been between inadequate US parameters and existing UN resolutions. It has been rather between refusing to negotiate while Israel's occupation grows more deeply entrenched and negotiating with no parameters at all. The latter meant talks being held on Israel's terms. That was why some Palestinians saw a parameters resolution as a risky yet perhaps worthwhile gamble, Weakening their position on paper in the hopes of strengthening it in practice.”

“Until its final day in power, the Obama administration continued to believe that Israel would move toward a two-state solution if only the United States explained that the alternative was apartheid. The logic was irrefutable, they believed, so it was inevitable that Israel wouldn't eventually grasp its truth.”

[Aaron Kheifets · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: my brother wrote this book.

Nathan is one of the authorities in the world when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His writing is dry but offers readers a peak behind the curtain at how leaders make decisions (and demonstrates the cynical but simple lens one needs to read between the lines of the press releases). If you're used to reading academic or technical writing, you'll have absolutely no problem gaining a lot from this book. It's a peak at the playbook of those in conflict, struggling to gain the upper hand.

[Siobhan Kennelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is excellent but not light reading. Nathan Thrall is a Pulitzer winning American Jewish journalist living in Israel. This book is a collection of essays on Israel/Palestine published in 2017. It is meticulously researched and gives a deeper understanding of the history of the failed negotiations and the reasons for those failures - myth busting based on actual facts and evidence. It is not a quick or easy read but I would recommend to anyone wanting better understanding of facts than propaganda

[marty martinage · Rating 4 out of 5]

if u have a war history dad, this book’s approach feels like a good way to help explain the history of palestinian occupation. used things i learned in this book to talk to my own war history dad & now he wants to read it himself!

[Hamid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful, thorough thesis suggesting that the biggest moves in the Israel-Palestine conflict have been a result of "force". "Force" here defined widely as everything from violence (the 1973 war) to pressure (Jimmy Carter forcing Begin into action). Mostly force as an external action but with some internal examples (eg the First Intifada or certain of Sharon's actions).

Whereas the opposite is true, where Israel has been left to its own devices, its own force as the vastly more dominant partner in any negotiations, has furthered occupation and eventual eruption of violence.

It's an excellent book complete with excellent citations and deserves a place in the pantheon of both histories and political analysis of the conflict.

My only disappointment is that this doesn't (yet?) cover the Trump years and of course so much has happened in the last months of 2023 that this deserves at the very least an update or a second volume in the coming years.

[Austin Hampton · Rating 5 out of 5]

essential

[Bob Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to learn and understand the history and complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The most recent 10/7/23 Hamas attack on Israel had this reader looking for an objective, factual and historical perspective on a conflict that has lasted my entire lifetime. Nathan Thrall delivers more than I expected in The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine. The main theses that only FORCE has brought about change and compromise is well documented by Thrall. While the Palestinians have accepted a two state solution and Israel’s right to exist, there are many more important issues that go unresolved and actually have become worse over time. Understanding what the Palestinians want and what the Israelis are willing to give is paramount to a deeper understanding of this worsening conflict. My takeaways are as follows:
Palestine is not a recognized state with an elected government. While Hamas (considered a terrorist organization) was elected to oversee Gaza, they have no control or authority in the West Bank and are excluded from negotiations with Israel and the US. While Palestinians accept a two state solution, Hamas does not. Israel has never agreed to a two state solution nor have they agreed to a final territory that would be Palestine. Palestinians want their capital in East Jerusalem; they want the West Bank returned to the Palestinians as defined before the 1967 war; and they want reparations for the Palestinian refugees who were driven from their homeland. Israel has avoided a resolution to these demands.
Israel has built a separation wall around Gaza and through Jerusalem with checkpoints and limited Palestinian access to the West Bank and Israel. Israel continues to build settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem in violation of UN and International agreements. Palestinians are denied the rights that Israeli citizens have while (for many) their standard of living is below the poverty level.
This is not to say that the Israelis are completely to blame. They have reacted to the violence, attacks and atrocities against them.
Neither side Trusts the other side.
Thrall asserts that the US has done little to improve or resolve the conflict. If anything, the US has made the situation worse.
I am reminded of the Native American Indians who faced a similar fate as they were driven from their homes, treaty’s broken, citizenship denied and livelihood restricted. This is a heartbreaking story without a happy ending.
In addition to this book, I strongly recommend Nathan Thrall’s recently released book: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy!

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death to Israel. Free Palestine.

[aneez · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Only Language They Understand" is an insightful analysis of the "intractable" Israeli-Palestine conflict. Thrall convincingly motivates that the only way to achieve a comprehensive accord is by application of force (i.e. all forms of pressure including violence) that threatens significant costs. The author builds this case in the first section of the book where he looks at how concessions were won from the belligerent parties. Naturally his confidence on the middle east peace process is quite low. In the uni-polar world between the Israeli government which sees Palestine as nothing close to an existential threat, the US which sees no strategic gain in independent Palestine, and the Palestinians unable to escape "Oslo Trap" and force Israel to meet its barest minimum required for an independent state, the peace process is going nowhere.

The rest of the book is mostly collection of opinion pieces written in the past few years focusing on PA, Hamas, US sponsored peace talks etc. Of which his analysis on the causes of the 2014 Gaza war between Hamas and Israel, and reason for Hamas enjoying credibility within Palestinian community I found quite interesting and insightful. The book suffers a bit because of this structure, being a bit repetitive and confusing (i guess because it is non-chronological). Nevertheless it is an excellent book, to get a deeper understanding of the conflict.

Other interesting points touched in the book:
1) Informal contacts & trade between Israel and the Arab world (+ Turkey & Pakistan) in spite of the public postures is growing, and set continue on this trend given the recent tensions surrounding.
2) The countries in which the BDS movement has made the largest gains South Africa and UK - Israeli exports have in fact sharply risen.
3) The alternative to two-state solution is not a one-apartheid state, as Israel can anytime unilaterally withdraw any time from the West bank.
4) There was once a serious proposal under Begin to give Israeli citizenship to all Palestinians in West bank and Gaza
5)He is quite hard on the Obama administration and goes on to show each and every one of Obama's predecessors at oval office made progress on the conflict unlike Obama.
6) He is ruthless in his criticism of PA vacillating between collaborating and confronting going nowhere meanwhile loosing all credibility with people who they are supposed to represent.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, and bought it to get a look at the internals of Palestinian politics. But the book does not remotely live up to the title/thesis.

Thrall wants to tell a story where the only language both the Israelis and Palestinians understand is force. The actual story he tells is not that. Throughout the book, the Israelis are smart and strategic (if often unethical) about pursuing their goals, including backing off low priority goals when they get pushback. The Palestinians, in contrast, are totally incapable of deciding on or intelligently pursuing goals unless faced with the immediate threat of destruction. And that is of course what the old saying about only understanding force refers to -- the inability to behave in their own rational self-interest except when faced with extreme violence.

There's plenty of interesting and thoughtful political analysis once you get past the thesis being kinda f***ed. But even that is heavy on sane-washing Hamas and other Islamist groups -- trying to come up with rational-sounding reasons for their behavior while ignoring that their end goal is to maximize civilian death on both sides. It just very hard to understand why Hamas does what it does if you can't bring yourself to grapple with that fact.

[Robin J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nathan Thrall writes about the complex situation in Israel and Palestine in a clear and easy to follow fashion, which balances nicely with his take-no-prisoners attitude toward the various participants in the conflict. I learned a lot from Thrall's essays.

[Gadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of Thrall's thoughts on Israel/Palestine from around 2010-2016 treads an established path: Oslo — and the overall American-led peace process — was a facade that enabled Israel to further entrench the occupation. Israelis' experience of the status quo — insulated by American support and carte blanche and veto power at the UN — is not nearly enough pressure for them to approach the negotiation table in good faith, or to even consider a concession that is reasonable enough for the Palestinians to accept. It's not necessarily the most groundbreaking insight but the book proves its point with ample evidence.

I especially enjoyed the historical sections: how Carter pressured Israel to enter negotiations, and how the peace with Sadat was a leftover, secondary to the failure to even get Begin to consider any Israeli-Palestinian arrangement. The takedown of Avi Shavit, also, was sharp and rang true: Shavit seems to express horror at the atrocities at Lydd, a synecdoche for the Nakba, while still claiming that it was necessary for the Zionist project to be realized — without examining if the realization of one's project permits the destruction of another's life.


Will flesh this out later — but the most riveting part was the beginning, the history — especially Carter’s role. The rest less new or insightful but I generally very much agree with the idea that Israel needs force to make concessions. Would have been interested in more discussion of BDS as technique to create change

[Alex Linschoten · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of articles from recent years. Thrall is an analyst associated with the International Crisis Group and the New York Review of Books. If you've followed his work, you'll be familiar with these pieces. The headliner article opens the volume outlining an argument that suggests force (from any/all parties, including those external to the conflict) is actually far more efficient as a way of achieving results. The argument was intriguing, though I don't really know enough to be able to judge the veracity of what he's suggesting. Certainly, it was a reminder to decouple moral claims from what is practically possible. Thrall comes off as a sensitive analyst in this book, sparing nobody -- least of all Ari Shavit and his book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel -- in the various pieces that follow.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not entirely sure what this book is or wants to be. I picked it up because it was the talk of the 2017 Association for Israel Studies conference and I figured it would be wise to read it (if only to know what all the fuss was about). The controversial part comes at the beginning, where Thrall lays out -- not entirely convincingly -- his argument that only through violence has either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict achieved real results. The essays that make up the second half of this book, however, seem to at least distract from, if not outright contradict, this bold claim. It's worth reading if you want to understand what Israeli scholars are reading and talking about right now, but it's not particularly useful as a guide to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In that sense, it's not unlike J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" in that its relevance stems more from the fact that lots of knowledgeable people are reading it rather than from what it has to say.

[Ain Sakinah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book about a very difficult seemingly unsolvable challenge

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author takes the position that only through shows of force and threats can the two sides be compelled to make the painful concessions necessary for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. He rejects the utility of trust-building measures because they ease tensions and hence perpetuate the status quo.

After a lengthy introduction outlining the 100+ year modern history of Israel, the rest of the book is mostly comprised of collected essays from the time of the Obama administration. As a result, it's a bit repetitive and disjointed and somewhat out of date, and it would have made for a better book had he turned them into a single consistent narrative (but that would have been a lot of work, so it's understandable why he left them as is).

Overall, he seems to try and remain objective and impartial, with plenty of criticism for all sides. But in several places he comes across as a lot more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, dwelling on harsh Israeli responses to terrorist attacks that he briefly mentions then brushes aside as distractions to what he sees as the real issue, which is Israel's ongoing reluctance to withdraw completely from the "occupied territories" including the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Nevermind that elsewhere he criticizes the Israeli "peace camp" for focusing exclusively on the 1967 borders and ignoring 1948. Ultimately, he skirts around the crux of the issue, that the Palestinians have never fundamentally the validity of Israel's existence, and still strive to return to their grandparent's homes in Jaffa, Lod, and Haifa. He offers no solutions to the Hamas charter calling for the destruction of Israel or the popular calls for a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea," other than advocating US pressure on Israel to dismantle every settlement in what they view as their ancestral homeland of "Judea and Samaria." This one-sided attitude extends to lavishing praise on controversial Palestinian figures like Bassem Tamimi for standing up to Israeli oppression and excoriating left-wing Israelis like Ari Shavit [who was subsequently accused of sexual harassment and forced to resign] for not completely rejecting Zionism.

In perhaps the most prescient statement in the context of the tragedy of October 7 and ensuing devastation in Gaza is this observation from August 2015 [Chapter 10]: "Leaving these issues unresolved was a recipe for future violence."

[Brian Magid · Rating 4 out of 5]

started reading during long days alone at the cold spring harbor library when I was home for a month. thrall's clear eyed no-bullshit approach to diplomacy was a welcome reprieve in companionship from hotheaded emotional arguments with my family on this topic. this book is randomly out of print but I found a copy at West Hollywood library upon returning to my lonely west coast life and just finished it this morning. the most essential essays here are about the failure of U.S. diplomacy strategies, and the abortive ways in which attempts to "condemn" Israeli settlement growth act as a substitute for genuine diplomatic pressure; an approach that serves to distance the annexationist wing of the occupation from the government that supports, finances and arms it; a shield for the occupation that such policies are ostensibly meant to bring to an end. the book is bleak but not hopeless. cuts through lots of noise about "trust building" and "no partner for peace" and all the other bad narratives that bedevil this conflict and determines clearly and simply that the parties involved in any diplomatic negotiation only make deals when force is present; when the risk of maintaining the status quo becomes more dangerous than the vision of a better world.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

The central thesis of Thrall's commentary and history of negotiations between Palestinians and Israel is that progress has only been achieved when both sides are forced by outside powers to make significant compromises. Throughout the book Thrall dismantles the mythology of Israel's founding revealing several of the massacres, forced expulsions, and ethnic cleansing that laid the groundwork for Israel's 1949 borders. He also attacks the Zionist mythology that the only reason an agreement has not been achieved is that Israel has no "willing partner" for peace.

Some of Thrall's harshest criticism is saved for the United States, specifically the Obama administration, and its role in negotiations. Thrall argues consistently that the Carter and Eisenhower administrations, and to a lesser extent the HW Bush and Clinton administrations were able to apply real pressure on the two sides that forced the two sides to compromise. Ultimately I agree with much of what Thrall argues throughout the book. I highly recommend that anyone interested in understanding the conflict read this book. I also highly recommend reading it alongside Khalid Elgindy's Blindspot.

[Garv Taneja · Rating 4 out of 5]

By simply following the daily news, one could be forgiven to believe that Israel - Palestine conflict is unsolvable and that both the parties are equally responsible for the disastrous situation as it stands. But Nathan Thrall, in this book very carefully unravels that argument with plain facts and historical context.

He demonstrates that only time any meaningful steps were taken towards peace in this conflict were a result of constant and immense pressure by international community (along with the US), applied equally to both Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

Furthermore, a fair and long-lasting solution for the conflict will only be achieved if the governments of the world, especially US understands the power imbalance among the two nations and acts to bridge that gap with diplomacy and force.

[Corto · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend recommended this as "the pollyanna" version o the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Well. I read it and I seemed to have missed the "pollyanna" part.

Like everything connected to the I/P conflict, this is a grim, bleak, and depressing book. Thrall has a clear bias, but the facts are indisputable. Whether you agree with, or like Thrall, this is still a good primer on the "diplomatic" history between the Israelis, the Palestinians, and Washington.

TL/DR: The conflict is intractable. No compromise will be acceptable to either side. The spiral of violence will continue forever. At least that's what I got out of it.

[Amal Ghandour · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read!

Nathan Thrall, in this illuminating book, delves into the tinniest details of the war on Palestine and reveals the dynamics that have actually shaped Israeli strategies and the Palestinian struggle. He succeeds in proving his main point: almost always force, military and political, worked in shifting positions.

Deservedly, the US gets special attention. Thrall successfully debunks the conventional wisdom that US cuddling of Israel is the best approach to winning concessions. What transpired between the US and Israel during the Cater Administration was an especially fascinating read.

[Flowergarden24 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good to read for the background on where all of this hate came from. Part 1 was so full of details that I would never remember but starting at Part 2, I really felt like I was getting what I was looking for. I just want a concise explanation of what occurred a long time ago up to today. I also want a feeling of whether there could ever be a peaceful solution plus what would the real solution look like. I'm thinking now that the answer is no.

[Apollinaire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-opening, paradigm-shifting, factual. Written in the perfect key: no sentiment, no hyperbole, and yet interpretatively ingenious and persuasive.

I recommend to anyone, from radical to centrist, coming to this Hamas-Israel war feeling overwhelmed, and also discontent with the complacency and self-righteousness of the usual positions. Wherever you stand, Thrall will probably deposit you somewhere else.

[Malachi Antal · Rating 3 out of 5]

writer actually gave objective enough history on Zionism.

nice historic read on Lydda, the Palestinian village ethnically cleansed to link Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

background on each United States presidency failure to solve Arab-Israeli conflict

points mirrored, House of Spies, novel with historic Allon versus fictitious Allon

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little dry, but I learned a lot of important history. I often felt angry about the treatment of the Palestinian people while reading this and had to take many breaks.

His new book is much more engaging but even more infuriating.

[geniusreaderryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As analytical as it is dense; a must read for those who are looking for an in-depth analysis of the state of Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. relations (?) from the late 20th century through the Obama era.