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OUP CORRECTED PROOE - FINAL, 10/9/2014, SPi
The Crooked Course:
Step by Step on the Path to Peace
INTRODUCTION
As Immanuel Kant observed, “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing
was ever made.” And the Middle East peace process is no exception. It runs a crooked
course. This work provides a paper trail of the meandering and rocky path of the peace
process. Relevant documents related to the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past century
(since the Sykes—Picot Agreement of 1916) are compiled in this book. It provides an
annotated and chronological overview of attempts to make peace in one of the most
difficult and protracted conflicts in the world, and it includes a full set of accompanying
maps specially made for this edition.
The sheer volume of such a work raises the critical problem of how to present the
documents in a way that facilitates their accessibility and understanding. A simple
chronological ordering would miss important connections between the documents,
which are thus better grouped by common theme. To this end, we have divided the
volume into five thematic Parts. Part I compiles documents related to the formal peace
agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as those related to Israel’s
unilateral disengagement from Gaza. The documents in Part I] relate to the many
informal peace proposals and ideas offered over the years that have served to contribute
to more official processes at a later date. Part III compiles the many important United
Nations documents specifically related to the question of Palestine. Part IV sets the
Israeli-Palestinian issue in a broader context, providing regional papers going back a
century, up to the latest documents. Finally, Part V compiles Israeli and Palestinian
domestic documents relevant to the quest for peace in the Middle East.
Grouping the documents by theme highlights the evolution of particular aspects of
the conflict and the peace process over time. When examined as a group, these
documents provide valuable insights on the events, conditions, and actions that have
been most important in influencing the different phases of the peace process.
For guidance, the reader will find a chronological overview of all the documents and
key events.
Nothing about the quest for peace in the Middle East has been simple or easily attained.
Merely bringing Palestinians and Israelis together was a feat that took decades to
achieve. Despite all the efforts exerted by not only the principal parties, but also local
actors, regional neighbors, and international players, agreements between the two sides
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