'Commonweal' & Israel.

An observant Jew, I enjoy the broad range of ideas offered by Commonweal, which I find to be an excellent read for religious people of all faiths. Unfortunately, the diversity of ideas usually found in Commonweal does not appear when the subject is Israel. The latest example is Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's review of three books about Israel ("What a Mess," November 5). Steinfels repeatedly gets history wrong. For brevity, I mention only two of several examples. Steinfels writes that in the 1990s, after Oslo, "Hamas, with Israeli encouragement, grew as Arafat's homegrown opposition and today it is a major source of terrorism." In fact, Oslo's acceptance of Arafat was intended by Israel to marginalize Hamas and have it disarmed. She also asserts that "[Ehud] Barak's refusal to prepare another interim agreement, should his offer fail, signaled the demise of the peace process." That is contradicted by Barak's November 2000 offer of an interim deal that would recognize a Palestinian state. Arafat rejected that offer, as well as the December 2000 Clinton plan for a final status agreement.

Steinfels's review of Dennis Ross's book suggests that Ross--Clinton's chief negotiator in the Middle East--assigns equal blame to Israel and the Palestinians for the failure of peace efforts. In fact, as Ethan Bronner's recent review in the New York Times Book Review makes clear, the Ross book puts almost all the blame on Arafat, with Ross concluding that "A comprehensive deal was not possible with Arafat.... He could live with a process, but not with a conclusion."

Steinfels questions whether Ross can be "an honest broker" given that he is Jewish and believes Israel must be secure. For a magazine that celebrated Joseph Lieberman's nomination four years ago, that is most unfortunate. Steinfels wonders whether "Ross was Likudized," ignoring the contempt of Ross by Likud members, who saw his support for Israeli withdrawal from 96 percent of the West Bank and the division of Jerusalem as anathema and a betrayal. After decades of negative pieces, isn't it time for Commonweal to publish something remotely positive about Israel? Can't a Catholic magazine that examines Pope Pius's conduct during the Holocaust and Catholic relations with Jews also take a serious look at both sides of the Middle East conflict?

JOSEPH SCHICK

Flushing, N.Y.

The reviewer replies:

Joseph Schick's basic complaint--Commonweal is negative toward Israel--is extraneous to my review. I will get to that, but let me respond first to his criticisms of the review. Did Israel encourage Hamas as a means of thwarting Arafat? I quote Amos Oz writing in a recent New York Review of Books (July 15, 2004): "Hamas first came into being as a social-welfare organization in the Gaza Strip in 1970 with the tacit support of the then military commander Ariel Sharon. Hamas was ostensibly unpolitical at the time, concentrating on education and social welfare; Sharon expected it to counter the growing influence of Arafat's PLO.'"

Does Barak's November 2000 offer refute Ross's view, and not my mere assertion, that the demise of the peace process followed Barak's unwillingness to prepare another interim agreement? While the final status talks were going on in the summer of 2000, Barak had no fallback position, at least in Ross's telling. By November, it was too late: Ariel Sharon's provocative September 28 "walk" on the Temple Mount with Israeli police was followed almost immediately by the outbreak of the second Intifada, which continues to this day. Could Arafat have stopped the outbreak of violence? Could Barak have stopped Sharon? Probably yes to both. But neither did.

The failure of the 2000 Camp David talks was a tragedy. Does Arafat bear the primary responsibility? Yes; he was the one who said no. But Ross's account suggests that there is plenty of blame to go around for that failure. Bad timing, ill-considered diplomatic maneuvers, and the failure of Barak, and Netanyahu before him, as well as Arafat, to meet the conditions of the Oslo agreement all contributed to the lack of trust and good-will necessary for any final settlement. True, Clinton and Ross blamed Arafat (they were unlikely to blame themselves!); but Ross's minute-by-minute account implicitly acknowledges that Arafat was not solely responsible for the Camp David failure and the end of the Oslo Accords.

I would urge Schick to actually read Ross's The Missing Peace, which does convey the infinitely complex and wholly tragic nature of the Israeli-Palestinian embrace of death. But then, his accusation of bias in Commonweal's stance toward Israel suggests that he sees what he wants to see, and not necessarily the facts of the matter.

MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS