Roadmap To Nowhere: A Layman's Guide to the Middle East Conflict

by Yitschak Ben Gad and Yitschak Ben-Gad

Who are the Palestinians, and what do they want? Which terrorist groups are based in the Middle East? Who harbors them? Does Israel have legitimate rights to the land? Are the settlements an obstacle... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 089221578X
• ISBN13: 9780892215782
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Balfour Books
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.0" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Bad Title, Excellent Book: Chronicles Events and Causes of Failed Arab-Israeli Peace Initiatives

This book does not get caught up in details of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but is an overview that chronicles the trail of failed peace initiatives, identifies who the individual and group players are, and contends that the Zionist perspective(i.e., pro-Israeli land rights) is justifiable from the view of history, morality, and international law. Surprisingly, the author accomplishes this through a question-and-answer format. The book ends with a critique of our day's most talked about land-for-peace plan: The Road Map to Peace in the Middle East, which is sponsored by the 'Quartet' (EU, UN, USA, Russia), embraced by Arabs, and legitimized and not yet discarded by Israel. Notably missing from this book is the biblical argument for legitimacy of Israeli land rights--that's just not the message of this book. But it is the Bible's consistent position against the land-for-peace approach that is my reason for saying the book title is just wrong in saying 'Roadmap to Nowhere,' since really it is a roadmap to "somewhere": Armageddon! ("I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted MY land."--Joel 3:2 and so on). After the underappreciated but watershed Israeli elections of this week, the book is somewhat now just an argument for arguments sake, as the last significant restraining opposition to the land-for-peace/2-state track (Israel's Likud party and its supporters) has died as evidenced by the populace overwhelmingly electing into office land giveaway parties, no longer offering popular resistance to the the Left/Moderate self-destructive approach. Nonetheless, this book is still helpful for informing, persuading, and strengthening individuals who want to be at peace with God or with their conscience about this issue that actually amounts to the question of destruction of a nation, and not just any nation, but one the Bible calls the apple of God's eye. It is the issue for our time and the issue the entire community of nations is obsessed with, thus for its import and its comprehensiveness in simplicity, I recommend this book.

An excellent guide to the Islamist conflict with the West

This book supplies some fundamental facts that are often overlooked. It makes sense to get this book just to use it to judge other works on the topic. Here is a simple example. Many people know that hundreds of thousands of Jews fled or were expelled from Arab lands in the past several decades. But was this a response to Israel becoming a nation? No. More than 1000 Jews were killed in anti-Jewish rioting in Baghdad, Tripoli, Aden, Aleppo, Damascus, Oudja, Djerade, and Cairo in the decade prior to Israel becoming a state. It wasn't Israel that caused this. As Ben-Gad explains, it was the winning of national independence by Arab countries. For a couple of generations prior to that, European rule had protected the Jews to some extent. The author summarizes the mistakes of the failed Oslo peace process. The biggest problem was legitimizing Arafat as a partner for peace and imposing his rule over Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. Although Arafat talked about his evil intentions all the time, this was ignored. Israeli negotiators were inexperienced, were driven by fantasy rather than reality, were too trusting (they assumed that both sides wanted peace), and did not consult the Israeli army. A very small majority of legislators passed the agreement to sign the Oslo accords, allowing this to suffice was a procedural error in retrospect. Arafat was incorrectly considered as someone who could crush Arab opposition to peace: using a dictator in such a role would have been a moral and strategic error even had Arafat wanted to do all this. The agreements made a mockery of Israeli laws and red lines, giving many of Israel's opponents the feeling that they could get Israel to agree to absolutely anything. There were other big problems with Oslo. One was that once the agreement was signed, Israeli negotiators went far beyond anything that the Israeli public or voters would have agreed to. This could not have happened had the main issues been decided at once, rather than left to the end of the process. Worst of all, Israel was expected to keep its promises while the Arab side was not required to. To his credit, Ben-Gad notes that the Israeli settlements promote peace. There can be no peace if we all agree to something so arbitrary as to ban Jews from the West Bank while allowing Arabs to live in Israel proper. A couple of hundred thousand Jews live in the West Bank, and by doing so, they legitimize the right of over a million Arabs to live in Israel proper. The author points out that the West Bank is not occupied territory but disputed territory. What about the proposed "Road Map" for peace? The author has some concerns about it. The biggest is that it will not stop incitement against Israel. That alone will preclude peace. I'll mention a few of the author's other concerns with the Road Map. It will reward terrorists and give them a state from which to operate. It will freeze West Bank Jewish settlements but not West Bank Ar