Oslo and Other Illusions

The High Cost of Peace: How Washington’s Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism, by Yossef Bodansky (Prima, 652 pp., $27.95)

ON a fine September day in 1993, the so-called Oslo peace process reached its zenith in a signing ceremony on the White House lawn. With the expression on his face of one who was soothing a great deal of other people’s pain, President Clinton shepherded Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for the Israelis, and Yasser Arafat for the Palestinians, to the table to wield their pens and commit themselves to a program of negotiation in place of the customary violence. The lamb was to lie down with the lion, and nobody any longer need spell out which party was the lamb and which the lion. Normality at last had reached the Middle East, and Clinton could anticipate a Nobel

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

The High Cost of Peace: How Washington’s Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism, by Yossef Bodansky (Prima, 652 pp., $27.95)

ON a fine September day in 1993, the so-called Oslo peace process reached its zenith in a signing ceremony on the White House lawn. With the expression on his face of one who was soothing a great deal of other people’s pain, President Clinton shepherded Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for the Israelis, and Yasser Arafat for the Palestinians, to the table to wield their pens and commit themselves to a program of negotiation in place of the customary violence. The lamb was to lie down with the lion, and nobody any longer need spell out which party was the lamb and which the lion. Normality at last had reached the Middle East, and Clinton could anticipate a Nobel