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Irene L. Gendzier , Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East (New York : Columbia University Press , 2015). Pp. 432. $40.00 cloth, $28.00 paper. ISBNs: 9780231152891 , 9780231152891
Policy
The interconnections between oil, Israel, and the United States are profoundly complex. They are the rich materials that Irene Gendzier, a longtime observer of the Middle East, analyzes in this provocative volume. She focuses on the crucial period 1945 to 1949 during which Israel was founded as a modern nation-state, and the US government made the decision to recognize it diplomatically. In doing so, US policymakers faced a difficult choice between the interests of its oil industry and the desire to support the Zionist cause--or did they?
The central claim of this book is that "the choice facing policymakers was not oil versus Israel but rather oil and Israel. In the years that followed, it was oil and Israel versus reform and revolution in the Arab world" (p. xviii). Indeed, once Truman recognized the Provisional Government of Israel as a de facto authority on 14 May 1948, the game changed significantly. Prior to that date, Gendzier argues, the United States endorsed the repatriation of Palestinian refugees in accord with UN General Assembly Resolution 194. After Israel's declaration of independence, however, the government decided to rethink Israel's military potential as a strategic ally. And crucially, it was oil interests in the Middle East that the United States wanted most to defend against outside powers, especially the Soviet Union. Having made the decision to recognize and back Israel, the United States then saw Israel as a strategic partner in the job of defending US oil interests in the Middle East, if push came to shove. Naturally, according to Gendzier, Washington subsequently decided to defer to Israel with respect to the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, the question of boundaries, and the fate of Jerusalem--issues that continue to haunt Arab-Israeli relations to this day.
A central insight animating the book's analysis is the recognition that economic interests (i.e., oil) were a guiding force in US policy towards the entire region. She writes, "In the immediate postwar years, the United States defined its policy in the...