Cursed Victory

by Ahron Bregman

Overview

In a move that would forever alter the map of the Middle East, Israel captured the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula in 1967's brief but pivotal Six Day War. Cursed Victory is the first complete history of the war's troubled aftermath—a military occupation of the Palestinian territories that is now well into its fifth decade.Drawing on unprecedented access to high-level sources, top-secret memos and never-before-published letters, the book provides a gripping chronicle of how what Israel promised would be an 'enlightened occupation' quickly turned sour, and the anguished diplomatic attempts to bring it to an end. Bregman sheds fresh light on critical moments in the peace process, taking readers behind the scenes as decisions were made and as crucial opportunities to resolve the conflict were missed. Moving from Jerusalem to New York, Oslo to Beirut, and from the late 1960s to the present day, Cursed Victory provides vivid portraits of the key players, including Moshe Dayan, King Hussein of Jordan, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat. As Bregman concludes, the occupation has become a dark stain on Israel's history. Cursed Victory is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the ongoing conflict in the region.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605987811
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	05/15/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Born in Israel in 1958, Ahron Bregman was a soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War and reached the rank of captain. He then studied in Jerusalem and London, completing a doctorate in War Studies at King's College London. He is the author of Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947 and A History of Israel. An academic and journalist, Bregman teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Table of Contents

Preface to the American Edition ix

List of Illustrations xvii

List of Maps xix

A Note on Sources xxvii

A Personal Note xxix

Introduction xxxiii

A Note on Occupation xli

Part 1 The First Decade, 1967-1977

1 West Bank and Jerusalem 3

2 Gaza Strip 56

3 Golan Heights 71

4 Sinai 86

Part 2 The Second Decade, 1977-1987

5 Likud Years 101

6 Black December, 1987 131

Part 3 War and Diplomacy, 1987-2007

7 Intifada 145

8 Gulf, Madrid, Oslo, 1991-1995 164

9 Missed Opportunities, 1995-1999 186

10 Golan First, 1999-2000 201

11 Camp David II, 2000 217

12 Al-Aqsa Intifada, 2000-2001 247

13 Sharon and Arafat, 2001-2004 268

14 Unilateralism and Its Rewards, 2004-2007 289

Into a Fifth Decade of Occupation 305

Select Bibliography 309

Notes 317

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/23/2015
Bregman (Elusive Peace), a political scientist and IDF veteran, is now one of Israel’s most prominent refuseniks, well-known for his principled opposition to the occupation of Palestine. Here, he outlines the history of both military and diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East since 1948, arguing that Israeli obstinacy and caprice has repeatedly stymied the peace process. Bregman gives the Israelis the lion’s share of blame: the “wholesale shifting of people for colonial strategic ends was a prominent feature of the era that followed the 1967 war and the Israelis made no secret of their annoyance that their newly captured lands came complete with people already living there.” Bregman accuses the Israeli leadership of seeking armed conflict with the Palestinians, in which the Israelis enjoy overwhelming tactical superiority, rather than engaging in negotiations or collaborative efforts, where they feel off-balance. Describing the second intifada, he says the Israeli army’s heavy-handedness managed to gradually “transform the Palestinian uprising into an armed insurgency.” As the occupation enters its fifth decade, he also criticizes the Palestinians for being “too divided” and calls on the international community to put greater pressure on Israel. Bregman’s deep familiarity with the material and his stylistic clarity will appeal to readers seeking an overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Maps & illus. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Impressive. Cursed Victory fills an important gap in the literature on the occupied territories. A comprehensive, chronological account.

Pacific Standard

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. Bregman takes his readers through the entire torturous narrative of the Israeli occupation of the captured territories. 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.

Open Letters Monthly

It is the best available book on the Israeli occupation of the Territories and why it should be ended ASAP; and one written with the kind of lucidity and insight only somebody who passionately loves his country can muster.

Martin van Creveld

Mr. Bregman knows his subject first-hand. A detailed and well thought-out book.

The Economist

Bregman tells this bleak story well, and what a catalogue of grief it is. A damning verdict.

Sunday Times (London)

Lucid ... timely ... Bregman has assets which lift this account above many on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One is access to some hitherto secret material. Cursed Victory is a highly readable study, an excellent starting point for those wanting to know more about how military victory turned into a tragedy.

The Independent

A bombshell book. The nuggets provided in Bregman's book shed light on the extent of Israel's intelligence collection agencies' work not only in times of war, but also as Israel engaged with its neighbors in peace talks. Bregman has a flair for exposing sensational details kept in secret by all parties for years.

The Jewish Daily Forward

Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on phone calls between President Bill Clinton and Syria's late strongman Hafez al-Assad during sensitive Middle East peace negotiations 15 years ago. Evidence is cited in verbatim transcripts of the calls revealed by political scientist and author Ahron Bregman in his forthcoming book Cursed Victory.”

Jeff Stein

Bregman has enjoyed unparalleled access to high-level sources that enabled him to quote directly from top-secret memos, letters, and intelligence reports that are unlikely ever to be made public. Bregman's account of the conflict born of the cursed victory is intelligent, informative, and rich in telling details.

The Guardian

04/15/2015
Bregman, an Israeli native who served in the country's military during the 1982 Lebanon war, abandoned his homeland when he refused to serve as a reservist during the first intifada. Now a journalist and academic at the University of London's King College, Bregman (A History of Israel; Israel's Wars) has written several books about Israel and its neighbors. His latest is a scathing history of Israel and its occupied territories following the 1967 Six-Day war. The book is critical of Israel at nearly every juncture and skims over Palestinian offenses and agency from 1967–2007. Bregman had access to previously secret documents including former prime minister Ehud Barak's abortive negotiations with Syria over the Golan. His argument focuses on Israel's missteps and lost opportunities to resolve the long-standing conflict. Previously published in the UK in 2014, this American edition—which benefits from Bregman's remarkable access to high-level Israeli and American sources that enable him to quote from memos, letters, and telephone conversations—is likely to be a source of much debate and controversy. VERDICT Well-written and rich in details and first-hand testimony, this work will be an important addition to collections focusing on contemporary foreign affairs, the intelligence communities, and the Israeli Palestinian conflict.—Herbert E. Shapiro, Lifelong Learning Soc., Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton

Library Journal

2015-02-04
As the Israeli occupation digs in, an Israeli-English journalist and academic unforgivingly delineates its long, gruesome history.Since the book's first appearance in the U.K. last summer, war between the Palestinians and Israelis has again broken out in a brutal new chapter of this ongoing, inexorable conflict, as noted by Bregman (Department of War Studies/King's Coll. London; Warfare in the Middle East Since 1945, 2008, etc.), who served in the Israeli Army during its war in Lebanon in 1982. Israel's manipulative economic system and policies in the Israeli-occupied territories since the victory of the Six-Day War of 1967 gained vast tracts of land from Egypt, Jordan and Syria have allowed Israel, over four decades, to become a brutal occupier. Bregman claims that the time for making a deal with the Palestinians was ripe during the first decade of that occupation, when Moshe Dayan was still defense minister and his "invisible occupation" was fairly benign and tolerant—before the right-wing Likud Party rendered the occupation "irreversible." However, in short order, Palestinian land was seized by specious legal means, and messianic settlers were allowed to move into the biblical Hebron (West Bank) in 1968, which Dayan himself recognized later as a catastrophic precedent. Many of the finer points of the demarcations of territory are in dispute, but what remains is the perceived need by Israel to isolate these regions—e.g., after the barriers were erected between the Golan and the rest of Syria in 1975, the residents climbed to "Hills of Shouts" with megaphones to exchange news between families—severely control their economies, restrict movement and maintain surveillance on their citizens, leading to one angry and desperate outbreak after another by the oppressed. After numerous failed peace negotiations and two intifadas, Bregman asserts pessimistically that it may take "many generations before a true reconciliation takes hold." A plainspoken but urgent account that is deeply critical of Israel's policies.

Kirkus Reviews