Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy.

• Author: Mohamad, Husam
• Position: Review

Kathleen Christison. Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1999. 370 pages. Hardcover $40.00.

Kathleen christison, a former CIA analyst, amazes readers with the depth of analysis and timely arguments supported by first-hand experiences and detailed evaluation to approaches and conducts connecting US policymakers with the Palestine issue over the past five decades. The text is mainly concerned with examining Washington's perceptions, attitudes, policies, and most importantly exploring the effects of the Israeli centered frame of reference on the Palestinian Arabs. The study points out discrepancies in Washington's handling of Palestinian and Israeli claims, and reveals that the special bond between Israel and the US is largely responsible for the lack of substantial progress in Middle East peace. Although the US took a more active role, in the past decade, in upholding the process of peace between the parties, Christison is skeptical of US ability to act as an impartial peace broker. Many opportunities to resolve the conflict between Arabs and Israelis were lost or abandoned because of pressures from pro-Israelis on US policymakers. Israel's special attachment with US policymakers, the media, lobbyists, Congress and the public at large is a theme that runs throughout the book. For much of this century, the US special relations with Israel has undermined Palestinian political claims and downplayed the seriousness of their tragedy. Christison's questioning of the lack of moral equality in American responses and treatments of both Arab and Jewish tragedies is a major theme in the text.

Although historical, this book is unique in its presentation of variations among the past twelve American presidents with regard to the levels and sources of their knowledge on Palestine and the Palestinians. Most mentioned presidents, if not all, were influenced by a pro-Israeli agenda that made them unaware of the Palestinian tragedy or its outcome. The lack of a successful Palestinian public relations network in the US, coupled with a presence of an American unconditional backup for Israel, further explains the absence of US sympathy for the Palestinians. Consequently, US policy in the Middle East has been largely rooted in a political reality that could only recognize the old Israeli version of the conflict. The emergence, in the 1980s, of new Israeli revisionist historians, (i.e. Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris), who presented fresh studies recognizing the Palestinian tragedy has not been quite sufficient to revise the old frame of reference on Palestine.

Christison begins telling the story of US perspectives on Palestine with Mark Twain's stereotypical description of Palestinians as primitive "beggars by nature" (p.16). From this point on, the formation of the US frame of reference that supported Zionism since the early phases of the century began steadily unfolding. To many US presidents...