Book Reviews : The Art of the Impossible: Diplomatic Alternatives in the Middle East. By MICHAEL REISMAN. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Pp. 161. $1.95.)

• Date: 01 December 1971
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297102400425
• Published date: 01 December 1971
• Subject Matter: Articles

824
bureaucratic mQres - in the role of a critic albeit, but offering the conventional
critique. Perhaps the State Department and the nation it serves need to heed such
establishment critics.
DAVID HOWARD DAVIS
Rutgers University
The Art of the Impossible: Diplomatic Alternatives in the Middle East. By
MICHAEL REISMAN. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Pp. 161.
$1.95.)
This is an excellent, although brief, attempt to focus on the complex major
problems in the Middle East today and to propose &dquo;possibilities for positive and
creative action&dquo; in their solution. The author notes the gross mishandling of the
Middle East area during and after World War I characterized by conflicting
promises to Arabs and Zionists by the Allies which eventually resulted in the
United Nations Partition Plan of 1947. The creation of the state of Israel was
realized; the Palestinian state envisioned in the Plan was stillborn and the succes-
sion of wars ensued.
The author, an associate professor, Yale Law School, significantly points out
that the United Arab Republic (Egypt) and Israel, the primary protagonists, have
reached a condition of near &dquo;garrison statehood.&dquo; He could have well argued that
all of Israel’s neighbors, especially Syria and Jordan, as well as nearby Iraq, have
developed &dquo;military postures&dquo; of their own under the guise of the Arab-Israeli
conflict, but also for their own nationalist objectives. The Sinai Peninsula receives
special attention as a major geopolitical issue for which he proposes a &dquo;technique
for effective neutralization with the creation of a Sinai Development Trust which
would be &dquo;an international or global corporation, capitalized by investments from
the United States and the Soviet Union as well as from all the states of the
Middle East....&dquo; This is faintly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles’ Suez Canal
User’s Association proposed in 1956 and basically with the same objective in the
establishment...