The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process

Description

Yossi Beilin was a seminal figure during the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. As deputy foreign minister in the second Rabin government, he was responsible for leading the Oslo process, which was the most important attempt to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This book is the first to tell the story of the left wing and the peace process based on the private archive of Beilin himself. The thousands of documents - shared exclusively with the author - reveal a far more complete picture of Israel's political-diplomatic history in the late 20th century, and provide new information on key events. Avi Shilon offers a critiques of the 'liberal peace-building' project and analyses the connections between the Labour party's economic policy and foreign policy since the 1970s. This book is both a political biography of Beilin and a new history which recounts the diplomatic processes and social-political changes that occurred in Israel in the past four decades.

Avi Shilon is Visiting Scholar and Israel Institute Fellow at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University (NYU) in the U.S. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He has also been a postdoctoral fellow at Tsinghua University, China. He has published the books Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (2016)and Menachem Begin: A Life (2012) as well as articles in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review and Middle East Journal. Shilon also writes for the Ha'aretz newspaper.

Well-researched and insightful book ... absorbing and well-argued. * Fathom * Shilon has provided readers with another significant and illuminating political biography, following upon those he wrote about David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Shilon leaves us eagerly awaiting his next project. * Middle East Journal *