Book Review: Cursed Victory

Cursed Victory -Israel and the Occupied Territories: A Historyby Ahron BregmanPegasus Books 2015Author Ahron Bregman may be one of the most pointedly qualified people on Earth to write a book about the Israeli occupation of Palestine that began in the wake of 1967's Six Day War. Not only was he himself an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, but also a decade later he made headlines for refusing to serve in the occupied territories, emigrating to England instead, where he teaches and lectures on the Arab-Israeli conflict while hewing to no party line. He's known many of the key players in the conflict over the last forty years, and among the hundreds of published sources on the subject, he's able to draw on an array of unpublished letters and transcribed phone conversations, including some frank and, as he quite rightly guesses, unpublishable comments by some of the world leaders who've been involved in negotiations.He didn't need those private sources to tell the story, of course. Learning at this grotesquely late date that Ariel Sharon or Bill Clinton or Yasser Arafat were, in unguarded moments, every bit as caustic and cynical as the rest of the world has since become about this subject is surely the least surprising and most depressing little revelation imaginable. Scandalous comments feel like pea-shots against the almost impenetrably larger scandal of the subject itself.In stately, objective (and therefore occasionally dull) prose, Bregman takes his readers through the entire torturous narrative of the Israeli occupation of the captured territories, all the broken deals, all the fruitless negotiations, all the grandstanding on both sides, and of course all the sporadic bloodshed. Bregman begins his story with a note of almost disinterested Big Picture detachment:

It is reasonable to believe that, like other occupations before it, the Israeli occupation will, at some point in the future, collapse, and a Palestinian state will emerge on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But states are not given to people on silver platters, and the Palestinians will have to keep fighting for one ...

And when he's brought his story down to 2007 (the point at which he ends his narrative), he's still striking that same note, looking at the state of the situation in its fifth decade:

Clearly, the option of the first decade- sticking to the status quo - is no longer available, and the alternative of the second – building settlements in an attempt physically to swallow the occupied territories into Israel – was never realist. The strategy of the fourth decade – unilateralism – has lost all support within Israel, which brings us back to the strategy of the early 1990s, namely an attempt to end the occupation through peace negotiations with Palestinians and Arabs. But for peace negotiations to resume in a meaningful way the international community, and particularly the US, will have to be tough with Israel and when necessary bribe it into compromise. If the past four decades have proved anything, it is that Israelis will not give up the occupied territories easily.

The tone of stern optimism here sits extremely awkwardly next to the actual story Bregman has just finished telling. It's a story of remorseless hatreds and brutal injustices, and it tends to give the lie to Bregman's mentions of “the international community,” since it's almost solely the enormous support of the United States that underwrites Israel's actions (to an extent that makes the notion of “bribing” Israel into compromise about as nonsensical as slipping bribes to a crooked employee in order to get his behavior to change). It's clearly the author's intention to avoid podium-pounding invective in this book, and he succeeds – this is an entirely sober account of an insane and vicious reality. The victors will take more comfort from that than the victims, as always.