Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy Towards Palestine and Israel Since 1945.

• Author: Williams, Ian

Reviewed by Ian Williams

"What a long strange road it's been," as the Grateful Dead's Gerry Garcia said. The survivors of the Middle East conflict have reason to be grateful to Donald Neff's book as it meticulously chronicles U.S. diplomacy's long journey through the Middle East - with principles being dropped at regular intervals. By this stage of the journey, the baggage-free position of the administration is that if Israel wants it, it's legal - and it can have it. Neff follows the trail, stopping en route to examine these caches of abandoned principle, many of which he has obligingly included in the copious appendices.

In fairness to American professional diplomacy, the shedding of principles has not gone unchallenged. Neff documents the perennial tension between what U.S. diplomatic professionals and the international community have considered essential principles for resolution of Middle Eastern problems, and the pragmatic pull of pro-Israeli domestic political power in the U.S.

Of course, he is not breaking new ground in claiming that this shift has been overwhelmingly in favor of Israel. However, he provides meticulous documentation of these changes in policy, which is what gives his narrative such shock value. Fatalistically, many of us have come to accept uncritical and unprincipled support for Israel as a fundamental of American policy, so it comes almost as a surprise to be reminded that Washington once did have principles on the issue, and was prepared to push for solutions that in some measure were unpalatable to Israel. Alas, as the title suggests, those pillars of principle are now toppled, and AIPAC, their toppler, is on better ground than Ozymandias in saying "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

Fallen Pillars is a tightly focused study of U.S. diplomacy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Based as it is on official records, it is frontloaded, in that the earlier period is, of course, much better documented with material now in the public domain. Donald Neff has watched and described the process over so many years that one cannot help admire the scholarly detachment with which he writes. His indignation is masterfully restrained and understated -- but it is clearly there.

However in the Washington of the last three decades, purple prose has been unnecessary to rouse inquisitorial fire. The mere statement of the truth is enough to raise indignation on the part of the perpetrator. Almost contemporaneously with the...