Beyond the Promised Land; Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/good. 24 cm. 416 pages. Notes on Sources. Index. Some wear and soiling to DJ. Signed by the author. After a century of enmity between Jew and Arab, nearly three decades of occupation, and six years of a bloody intifada, Israeli leaders were doing the unthinkable--shaking hands with their Arab adversaries. That was in 1994! Glenn Frankel is an author, academic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He worked for 27 years for The Washington Post, where he was bureau chief in Richmond, Virginia, Southern Africa, Jerusalem and London, and editor of The Washington Post Sunday magazine. He is the author of four books, the latest of which is High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic, which was published on February 21, 2017. He served as a visiting professor of journalism at Stanford University, and later as director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and G.B. Dealey Regents Professor in Journalism. Derived from a Kirkus review: An erudite, astute synopsis of Israel's economic, social, and political upheavals from 1987 to 1993. Frankel served as Jerusalem bureau chief for the Washington Post from 1986 to 1989, collected an impressive amount of material in the course of his reporting. He uses it to build a history of the tumultuous events that have challenged Israel in recent years: the intifada, the Persian Gulf War, the influx of Soviet Jews, the interactions of Knesset members, the confrontations between President Bush and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and the momentous Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. Frankel's prevailing theme in his analysis of these events is that a younger, more progressive-minded citizenship is now shaping Israel's future. Displaying impeccable precision and clarity, Frankel delves deep into the mindsets and backgrounds of Israelis and Arabs--VIPs and civilians alike--to elucidate their often complex, emotion-filled decisions. He explains, for instance, why European-born Yitzhak Shamir was unable to move forward with peace while his Israeli-born successor, Yitzhak Rabin, was. Deftly written, this history is a jewel.