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Lost Years

Bush, Sharon, and Failure in the Middle East

Mark Matthews
August 2007     ISBN: 156858332X


George W. Bush first met Ariel Sharon in 1998 on a fact-finding trip to Israel when he was still governor of Texas and contemplating a run for the White House. By then, Sharon had learned from bruising experience, "Don't thumb your nose at Washington. Co-opt Washington," in the words of a U.S. diplomat who knew him well. From the memorable helicopter tour he gave the future president on that visit until he was incapacitated by a stroke seven years later, Sharon tried to enlist Bush in his dual strategies of quelling a Palestinian uprising and fixing the Jewish state's permanent borders.

Bush met him part way, but had his own bold ideas: a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a Middle East where democracy replaced tyranny. Neither leader grasped the essential first step toward achieving his vision: a process of tedious negotiation and mutual compromise between Israel and its longtime enemies.

Through on-the-ground reporting, extensive research and numerous interviews, Lost Years describes how two risk-taking leaders took a bad Middle East situation and unintentionally made it worse, pursuing parallel preemptive wars that destabilized the region and pushed Israelis and Palestinians further away from peace. The book documents a series of opportunities to stem the bitter conflict that were allowed to lapse through a combination of inattention, deliberate evasion, political pressure and sheer blindness. It portrays a U.S. president so torn between fighting terrorism and seeking peace that he fails at both, missing the chance to enlist a tough but pragmatic Israeli warrior-politician in his vision for the region. In the end, Bush was drawn into endorsing a half-loaf Israeli "disengagement" plan that left all the region's grievances untreated.

The book cuts through the ideologies and intellectual paralysis that characterize so much debate about the Middle East to offer a fresh look at a U.S.-Israeli relationship that is close, deep, enduring and troubled.

What readers are saying

"A tour de force! (and a 'must read') by a veteran journalist whose prodigiously sourced account shines a pitiless glare on the seven year downward spiral in the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio. Matthews paints a complex, balanced portrait of the devilish diplomatic minuet and litany of missed opportunities over which George Bush and Ariel Sharon together presided, leaving bleak prospects for all future seekers of peace in the Holy Land."

--Samuel Lewis, Former US Ambassador to Israel and Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff

About the Authors

Mark Matthews has covered the Arab-Israeli conflict for the Baltimore Sun for the past fifteen years, covering all the landmark events in recent Mideast diplomacy: the Madrid conference of 1991, the Yitzhak Rabin-Yasser Arafat handshake, the aftermath of Rabin's assassination, and the rise of the Intifada in 2000. He lives in Washington D.C.
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