Palestinians between Israel and Jordan : squaring the triangle/

The triangle of the subtitle consists of the Occupied Territories, Israel, and Jordan, with their Palestinian residents. The solution to the Palestinian problem advanced by the author (a former career Israeli intelligence officer) is essentially that "Jordan is Palestine." This solution is advanced by such extremists as Ariel Sharon within the present Israeli Likud government. In what amounts to a 190-page essay (which has a bibliography but no footnotes), this argument is set forward with temperance and overall concern for the way in which the oppression of the Palestinians frustrates their nationhood and erodes the moral authority of Israel. While the argument is dispassionate, it is also significantly flawed in its denial of Jordanian nationhood. The author argues that Jordan is not an independent Arab state with its own legitimacy but merely a majority Palestinian population with an upstart Hashemite monarchy imposed upon it. This ignores the fact that the kingdom has been historically stabilized by its Bedouin population and the significant assimilation of the majority Palestinians. The author also errs in factual assessments of Jordan (e.g., the monarchy is said to be an "anomaly" of "Saudi Arabian" origin, when in fact it originated in the Arabian peninsula before WW I and the establishment of Saudi Arabia). The book will thus interest only those highly specialized library collections where a "specimen" representation of the "Jordan is Palestine" argument is important for the completeness of the scholarly record.-L. J. Cantori, University of Maryland, Baltimore County