Aaron Miller brings a truly unique insight into one of the world's most intractable yet fascinating conflicts: the search for Arab-Israeli peace. Not only does he provide a first-hand account of U.S. involvement in the region going back 20 years, he does so in an engaging, objective and often entertaining way. The book is part history lesson, part autobiography and part novel, written in such a way as to make it both accessible to newcomers and essential reading for scholars, diplomats and the myriad people engaged in the search for peace.

Part memoir, part history, part journalism, this book by a veteran Arab-Israeli peace negotiator should appeal to Mideast junkies who still believe in the "peace process."
A disclaimer: I covered many of these same events as State Dept. correspondent for Reuters from 1989-94. I was present at some of the events Miller describes; I traveled with Secretaries Baker and Christopher. I even interviewed Miller himself on background a number of times. (He seemed to enjoy chatting to reporters on background but he rarely revealed anything interesting or useful). For more about me and my latest book The Nazi Hunter: A Novelgo to www.alanelsner.com.
This book is an uncertain mix of different genres. The personal memoir I found the most interesting. I wish there were more of these vignettes. I'm interested in the various characters Miller dealt with -- Rabin, Peres, Arafat, King Hussein, Presidents Mubarak and Assad. I'm interested in what went on behind the closed doors because I already know what emerged on the public record (I covered a lot of it). Unfortunately, Miller remains overly coy and discreet. He was never one to give much away and he apparently hasn't changed.
The history segment, in which Miller analyzes the successful Middle East negotiations conducted by Kissinger and President Carter, one can basically read about elsewhere.
The journalism -- he interviewed many of the key players, is somewhat interesting. But most of these actors have a deep interest in presenting events to their best advantage and Miller doesn't really challenge them.
His chapter of the power of the American-Jewish lobby and the fundamentalist Christian-Zionist lobby contained little new.
I picked up a couple of points I disagreed with: Miller claims the Madrid Peace Conference came as a big shock to the press. Not so. The only surprise was the venue. We'd all assumed the conference would be in Lausanne and had already booked hotel rooms.
Miller's account of Baker's trip to see the Kurdish refugees created after the first Gulf War conveniently leaves out the fact that these million plus refugees had fled their homes after the United States allowed Saddam Hussein to crush their revolt -- which they launched at the urging of President Bush. Miller notes that Baker, who had traveled thousands of miles by plane, helicopter and jeep, to see these refugees, stayed less than 10 minutes once he arrived.
The true hero of this book for Miller is Jim Baker who I agree was a largely successful Secretary of State who used the favorable circumstances he was presented with to achieve some modest progress on the Middle East. (He and Bush can be criticized for other failures -- their lack of attention to the looming war in Yugoslavia and the failure to anticipate Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.)
Miller gives relatively low marks to Clinton who got too bogged down in the little details of the negotiations, leaned too far toward Israel and committed himself to an ill-prepared summit at Camp David that was always destined to fail.
Miller loves Rabin, has little time for Netanyahu and is scathing about Barak. He is harsh, but not sufficiently so, about Arafat.
After all the failures and frustrations, Miller is still a true believer. He still believes in the possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and lays out some conditions for that to happen. There may have been missed opportunities in the 1990s (although I personally doubt that either Assad or Arafat were ever ready to make peace with Israel) but it seems quixotic to hope for much today with Hamas ruling Gaza, the Iranian-backed Hizbollah controlling Lebanon and U.S. prestige so far eroded after eight years of Bush.
This book is recommended for those who already know a lot about the Middle East but would like to know a little more about what it was like to be in the middle of those negotiations.
But it falls a touch short in my view of what it could have been.

Let me start with the praise: "The Much Too Promised Land" is the best book I know about the Arab-Israeli peace process of the 1990s. As much as any book I read does, it offers a detailed account without being bogged down in details. As an American negotiator, Aaron Miller might have bogged down in the day to day of the negotiations (like Dennis Ross in The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace). Instead this well written book manages to convey something of the bigger picture, of the underlying causes of successful or unsuccessful peace negotiations.

The book's main thesis is that America is successful in brokering negotiations when it pressures both Israelis and Arabs - but especially the Israelis. The key concept is "tough love". Miller's contrasts the successful episodes of US intervention in the Israeli Arab process: Kissinger's negotiating disengagement between Israel and Syria and Egypt after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Carter's involvement in the Egyptian Israeli Peace, and George H. W. Bush's secretary of State, James Baker, gathering Israelis, Palestinians, and Arabs to the Madrid convention after the first Gulf War - with the failure of the Clinton administration in the Oslo process. The former, according to Miller, succeeded because America pressured both sides; the latter failed because America was unwilling to press them.

None of Miller's apparent successes offer genuine evidence for his thesis. It's hard to see why the 1973 redeployments are more significant than the ones after the 1948, 1956 or 2006 Israeli Arab Wars. If they have lasted longer, surely it is because of the Arabs and Israelis' interests, not Kissinger's genius. The Madrid convention in 1991 was a symbolic achievement, but served few practical goals. It's hard to avoid the impression that it was an exercise in futility and a waste of everyone's time and money.

Only the Egyptian Israeli accords were a genuine success, and even there it's unclear to what extent they were America's success. Sadat, definitely the greatest Arab leader of the 20th century and probably the greatest Middle Eastern leader since Ben Gurion, had made the breakthrough of going to Jerusalem without US prodding. I guess he would have found the way to make peace without America as well. Counterfactuals are of course highly speculative, whoever might have sponsored the peace, Carter was the one who had done it in practice, and he does deserve the credit. But he had labored under auspicious circumstances.

The biggest and best part of the book is dedicated to the failures of the Israeli Palestinian Oslo process during the Clinton years. I broadly agree with Miller's points that the Oslo accords were faulty designed - their step-by-step offered endless opportunities for opponents of both sides to wreck the process. But could America have salvaged the process by laying more pressure? I doubt it. Palestinians undermined the peace by terror attacks which the PLO did little or nothing to stop; Israel undermined it by expanding the Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. America had pressured the Palestinians plenty to deliver on security, to no avail. And no American administration has ever managed to pressure Israel effectively on the Settlements.

I agree with Miller that America bears some of the blame for the breakdown of the Peace process during the Barak years. Ehud Barak, newly elected as Israel's prime minister, and convinced that he knew everything there was to know about Israel, the Arabs, the Peace, and everything else, hubristically tried to end the one hundred years old Arab Israeli conflict in 2 years. That was probably impossible under any circumstances, and but was not helped by Barak's style of unilateral action. Cooler minds in America should have known better, and refused to play along.

But it's hard to fault the Americans for encouraging an enthusiastic Israeli leader willing to go further towards peace than any past Israeli primer. If an Israeli PM was willing to take giants risks for peace, it would have been very difficult for an American administration to stop and say "not so fast". The primary responsibility for the faulty process during the Barak years lies at Barak's door.

After a brief chapter condemning the inactivity of George W. Bush's administration while the Palestinian Israeli scene continued to deteriorate (but could they realistically have made much of a difference?), Miller calls for a renewed American involvement in the peace process, based on the principle of tough love.

But perhaps the lesson we should learn from the travesty of the 1990s Peace process is that genuine, long term peace between Israelis and Arabs in not yet in the offering. Following the violent Al Aqsa Intifada, neither Israelis nor Arabs seem particularly inclined towards great "painful" concessions.

Perhaps a new American administration should focus not on making peace, but on preventing war. Four Israeli premiers failed to make a peace with Syria in the 1990s, but a low violence cold war has lasted for thirty five years. Why not take the Israeli-Syrian status quo as the model for Arab/Israeli solutions. Maybe America's slogan should be not "tough love" but "think small".

The book is about peace efforts between Israel and Palestinians/Arabs, as brokered by the United States. Aaron David Miller begins the book by briefly describing his life and career. He describes various personalities that influenced him as well as the people he worked for and with. This part of the book spans somewhere between 50 and 100 pages and is actually pretty boring since it doesn't touch on scholarship at all.

He then goes on to describe the Jewish pro-Israel lobby, such as AIPAC. He provides his own opinion and analysis on the extent of influence of the lobby on our foreign policy. His analysis clearly lacks any sort of scholarship or even hard evidence and is therefore rendered useless and unnecessary in the book.

The middle (2nd) part of the book contains descriptions and history of 3 major players in Israeli-Arab peace efforts: Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter and James Baker. He focuses on these 3 personalities because they were the ones who went against Israel, relative to other American leaders and negotiators and forced Israel to make concessions. This part of the book is interesting as it provides insight into these 3 powerful leaders and their reasoning. Also this section is filled with more historical content pertaining to negotiation efforts, strategies and basic analysis. However, it's worth keeping in mind that analysis is very subjective and not scholarly. However, for relatively casual observers of the peace process, it's plenty of information and is quite intriguing.

Finally, the last (3rd) part of the book is about Clinton's and G. W. Bush's years as it pertains to peace efforts between Israel and Palestinians. Again, this part of the book makes more references to negotiations, strategies, tactics, shortcomings and results.

While the book lacks a clear thesis, broad analysis, and academic scholarship, it does provide some basic information about peace efforts brokered by the US. The book is also somewhat disorganized as it sporadically jumps from topic to topic without clearly and thoroughly addressing the issues. If there is some thesis, it is that if America wants to truly contribute to peace efforts between Israel and Palestinians/Arabs, it cannot take its eye off the ball and must be prepared to address it thoroughly, not when there is a crisis, like a terrorist attack. The author clearly believes that it's in America's best interest to address peace efforts, because it enhances America's image in the Middle East which would in his view decrease terrorism and recruiting of new terrorists by the like of Al Queda. That also happens to be his central criticism of America's efforts in the peace process.

Overall, the book is easy to read and understand, but is somewhat disorganized within chapters and lacks scholarly analysis, and a strong thesis. Also, keep in mind that peace efforts are described from a very subjective and individual point of view, not from an academic perspective.

I bought the audio cd version of this book, which I heard on a 500 mile drive. The book is a combination of history and insight, with the author's perspective. It was much more personal than detached. He is positive about both Democratic and Republican President for whom he has worked, but not afraid to discuss their shortcomings. He was there, on the front lines, as a negotiator.
I enjoyed the books, and would recommend it, but would have bought an abridged edition had it been available.

Aaron Miller's book is a must read for anyone who wants to know the issues on this subject.

There is no end of reasons for anyone interested in Israel and Palestine to read this book. Miller worked for the State Department for a quarter century, under six different Secretaries of State and five presidents. The two Camp David summits essentially bookend his career.

The book is a veritable fountain of insight into American Middle East diplomacy. Miller never loses sight of both the political complications of attempts to bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, nor of the human elements that are such a vital part of diplomacy.

Unusual for a book of its kind, The Much Too Promised Land is exceptionally well-written and fully engages the reader throughout. It's that rarest of creations, a book of politics and history that's also a real page-turner.

Miller gives us priceless material on a quarter-century of American engagement in the Middle East; is unsparing in his criticism, including of himself; but is also quite clear in his praise. One gets a really good picture of what worked and what didn't and why. We also get a picture of the circumstances, which is crucial to understanding why a given course of action might work in 1978 but not in 2007, or might fail at one time but succeed at another.

Perhaps the most important point Miller brings out in his book, though this is not his focus, is the role of the "Israel Lobby" in American policy-making. Miller makes clear what I, among others, have been saying for years-that the "Lobby" is certainly powerful and effective and has an impact, but decisions are not based on what it wants. Miller illustrates well the importance of citizens organizing lobbying forces promoting reasonable policies but also makes clear where the power of lobbying ends and the leadership of a president begins. Click here and here for more of my own work on this issue. We'll get back to the issue of lobbying below.

Miller's book is simply indispensible for anyone wanting to truly understand America's policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict from Carter to George W.

Arron David Brown's The Much Too Promised Land presents a well written history of the Arab - Israeli conflict since its inception in 1948. Brown, who served in the State Department for over 25 years, and served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, maintains a nonpartisan approach in his analysis. No one will deny Israel's right to exist, especially as it is presently celebrating its 60th year of independence. Yet, the plight of the Palestinians is a real one, and they are under the occupation of the Israelis. I would hope that the 2008 presidential candidates read this book, along with anyone else who would like to see peace in this volatile region of the world.

Miller, product of a strong pro-Israel upbringing, offers a balanced look at the never-ending Mid-East problem. His assessment is that the U.S. has not held Israel to its agreements and needs to be much harder on our ally. At the same time, he also sees the Palestinian leaders as their own worst enemy.

The bulk of "The Much Too Promised Land" is taken up with Miller's reminiscing over activities and involvement in the Mid-East peace process. While interesting, the format makes it difficult for readers to assimilate the material into a structured format.

Miller believes enhancing American credibility in the area will require making the issue a top and ongoing priority (certainly not the case with Bush '43) as we did with the Cold War, casting American involvement in the light of our broad national interest that goes beyond support for Israel, and recognizing the settlement enterprise (demanding expansion, land confiscation, bypass roads, and a different set of legal rules to govern 2.5 million Palestinians and 250,000 Israeli Jews residing in the West Bank) is a major, on-going problem. Finally, we also need to broaden our involvement to include Hamas, Syria, and Jordan. Meanwhile, our involvement in Iraq has also reduced American stature among Arabs.

In The Much Too Promised Land, Aaron David Miller presents and blends diplomatic and political history, a personal memoir, and offers advice on the future U.S. role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Miller is unique in his ability to present personal anecdotes and experiences from the peace process and he demonstrates an intimate understanding of the complex and existential issues facing the parties. He is candid and honest, admitting his personal mistakes from his twenty-plus years in the Department of State, and also identifies the errors of those who served around him. The Much Too Promised Land is more than just a diplomatic history however, and provides a readable, accessible book that at times made this reader laugh out loud - not an easy task considering the weighty issues being discussed. The book is a must read, and the supporting website, which is complete with audio clips from many of Miller's interviews with key policymakers is also a great resource.

This is a great read for anyone that is looking to have an insider's view of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Personal anecdotes add to an interesting and informative analysis regarding the history of the conflict. The author offers intimate knowledge of the missed opportunities and the prospects for peace in the future. Very informative and great read for anyone interested in a relevant and significant topic.

Aaron Miller has guts. This book tells the truth about Middle East diplomacy under the last three Presidents and concedes that the most adept was under George HW Bush. Why? The Bush/Baker team was fair and not simply a rubber stamp for the Israelis.
Read this Miller quote on Dennis Ross. Honest and true. So is this brilliant funny and fascinating memoir.

"Dennis, like myself, had a inherent tendency to see the world of Arab-Israeli politics first from Israel's vantage point rather than from that of the Palestinians. Not that he didn't understand Arab or Palestinian sensitivities. But his own strong Jewish identity, and his commitment to Israel's security combined with something else: a deep conviction that if you couldn't gain Israel's confidence, you have zero chance of erecting any kind of peace process. And to Dennis, achieving this goal required a degree of coordination with the Israeli's, sensitivity toward their substantive concerns, and public defense of their positions. Baker's good judgment and toughness balanced and controlled this inclination, which was not the case under Clinton."

Author (who interviewed Jimmy Carter plus many secretaries of state for this book) is way too easy on Carter as the author has tons to say about Carter handling Sadat and Begin at Camp David (and getting an Israeli peace!) but fairly little to say about Carter letting the pro-Israeli Shah of Iran fall and letting the anti-Israeli Khomeini rise in 1979. A book called World war 4 talks much of how Carter allowed Khomeini's ultra-deadly anti-Israeli government rise in 1979 (before the US hostage crisis started). An irony first class in Miller's book is when he talks of how bad current Iranian president Ahmadinejad is with all his Israeli bashing, holocaust denying and Hamas supporting and other stuff. But the author doesn't mention how because of Carter's ultra-mishandling of the Iranian situation in 1979 is the reason the bad Ahmadinejad (who followed Khomeini's principals) is now in in business. The author also never mentions how Ahmadinejad was a former hostage captor (see Kenneth Timmerman's books Countdown To Crisis for more on this). On other points the author does an ok job of making Saddam Husseion look bad running Iraq (mentioning how brutal Saddam was to Iraqi kurds plus the Iraqi's wrong invasion of Kuwait in 1990 among other things) but a key fact about Saddam is missing from this book and that is how in 1994 he again tried to take Kuwait (this is mentioned in The New York Times Almanac of 2008 and My Life by Bill Clinton). Without a mention of this it is impossible to see why the US had to take Saddam down in 2003 (as he was in fact still internationally dangerous years after Desert Storm contrary to popular thought about him!).