BY TOPIC: ceasefire

The Wages Of Force: Expansion, Not Peace [Book Review]

by Ellen Cantarow | March 27, 2009 | Books

In 1997 Hamas offered Israel a 30-year truce. Jordan’s King Hussein delivered the offer: Israel’s response was to send Mossad agents to Jordan where they tried to kill Hamas leader Khaled Meshal by dropping poison in his ear. The incident (described by former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy in his book, Man in the Shadows), not only deeply embarrassed the King, it also failed to kill Meshal. (Other peace bids were made; all were rejected, though none, perhaps, as dramatically as this.)  The 1997 assassination attempt illustrates what Zeev Maoz, in his landmark work, Defending the Holy Land, calls Israel’s “over my dead body” approach to peace.