View from the Fence: The Arab-Israeli Conflict from the Present to Its Roots Book

"View from the Fence" has been shortlisted for this year's Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prizes for fiction and non-fiction. Dr. Neill Lochery has worked as an advisor to Middle Eastern politicians on both sides of the political divide as well as elsewhere in the Middle East and is a leading specialist in the politics and history of the area. As neither an Arab nor a Jew, he is able to go beyond the traditional narratives employed by partisan writers who dominate much of the current literature on the Middle East. Lochery's ability to see all sides drives the argument in this book about the possibilities for peace in the future. The Arab-Israeli conflict has for too long been seen as a simple tale of right versus wrong, good versus evil or, since the 1967 War, the strong versus the weak. This original account from an author outside the fray shows that the conflict ranges beyond Jew versus Arab, and shatters a series of myths surrounding the conflict itself. These include assumptions about how the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, affected later events to the notion that the Palestinian Authority president, Yasir Arafat, alone rejected a peace agreement with Israel in 2000 that would have ended the conflict. Viewing this intractable dilemma from only one perspective simply generates further propaganda for whichever side. This book provides a full grasp of the issues which drive the conflict, including the attempts by the United States to broker a settlement.