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WORK TITLE: A Path to Peace
WORK NOTES: with George J. Mitchell
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Alon-Sachar/2110826448 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/alonsachar/ * https://peacenow.org/entry.php?id=21927#.WOuH04grJPY
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in CA.
EDUCATION:University of California, Santa Barbara, B.A., 2005; American University in Cairo, M.A., 2006; Stanford University Law School, J.D., 2016.
ADDRESS
CAREER
U.S. State Department, foreign affairs officer for Israel and Palestinian affairs, 2006-09, adviser and aide to U.S. Middle East peace envoy George J. Mitchell, 2009-11, adviser to U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro, 2011-12; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom LLP & Affiliates, summer associate, 2014; SurveyMonkey, law clerk, 2014-15; Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher LLP, summer associate, 2015, associate, 2016-.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Alon Sachar attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the American University in Cairo, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s, respectively, in the field of Near and Middle Eastern studies. He speaks both Arabic and Hebrew. In 2013 he entered Stanford University Law School and obtained a J.D. in 2016. At present he works as a law associate with Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher LLP in San Francisco.
Before studying for the bar, Sachar worked at the U.S. State Department, as foreign affairs officer for Israel and Palestinian affairs, adviser and aide to U.S. Middle East peace envoy George J. Mitchell, and then adviser to U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel B. Shapiro. In his positions with the U.S. State Department, he was involved in peace negotiations with the Israelis, Palestinians, and Arabs. Sachar cowrote, with former U.S. senator George Mitchell, A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East. The book looks at the arguments for and against a two-state solution to the unrest in the Middle East and offers a prescription for peace. A critic in Publishers Weekly described the book as “admirably concise” in its summation of the years-long dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians. While the summation may seem “inconclusive,” the critic found it to be a “testament to the level of nuance in this scrupulous book.”
In Kirkus Reviews, a correspondent found the appraisal “realistic” and noted “Mitchell is careful not to ruffle too many feathers in his analysis, but many readers will wonder if officials on either side will follow his proposals.” John Waterbury, writing in Foreign Affairs, termed the book “important but uneven” and thought the “authors should have put more flesh on the bones of their account.” Writing in Xpress Reviews, reviewer Joel Neuberg appreciated the book’s “statement of principles essential to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement” but downplayed the prospect that the current administration of Donald Trump would heed the call. In the New York Times Online, Dan Ephron agreed that the “path to peace” chapter was “useful” but likewise believed that “Israelis and Palestinians no longer view such a plan as viable.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Foreign Affairs, January-February, 2017, John Waterbury, review of A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East, p. 172.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of A Path to Peace.
Library Journal, June 15, 2016, review of A Path to Peace, p. 53.
Publishers Weekly, October 3, 2016, review of A Path to Peace, p. 111.
Xpress Reviews, February 24, 2017, Joel Neuberg, review of A Path to Peace.
ONLINE
New York Times Book Review Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (December 7, 2016), Dan Ephron, review of A Path to Peace.*
Alon Sachar has worked to advance Middle East peace under two US administrations. He served as an adviser to the US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro in Tel Aviv from 2011-2012, and to President Obama’s Special Envoys for Middle East Peace, George J. Mitchell and David Hale, from 2009 to 2011. In those capacities, Alon participated in negotiations with Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab states. From 2006 to 2009, he served in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, focusing on the US bilateral relationships with Israel and the Palestinians as well as Arab-Israeli relations. Alon has also worked out of the US Consulate in Jerusalem, which serves as the US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians. Today, Alon is a lawyer based in California where he was born and raised. He is the author, with George J. Mitchell, of A Path to Peace.
Alon Sachar has worked to advance Middle East peace under two US administrations. He served as an adviser to the US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro in Tel Aviv from 2011-2012, and to President Obama’s Special Envoys for Middle East Peace, George J. Mitchell and David Hale, from 2009 to 2011. In those capacities, Alon participated in negotiations with Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab states. From 2006 to 2009, he served in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, focusing on the US bilateral relationships with Israel and the Palestinians as well as Arab-Israeli relations.
A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East
263.40 (Oct. 3, 2016): p111.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East
George J. Mitchell, with Alon Sachar. Simon & Schuster, $26 (272p) ISBN 978-1-5011-5391-4
This admirably concise summary of decades of Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the many futile attempts at diplomatic resolution provides some context to the current impasse and the United States' role in keeping negotiations going. Mitchell ('The Negotiator), a former U.S. senator who served as Special Envoy for Middle East Peace from 2009 to 2011, rarely strays from the bland language of political process, but nonetheless provides a valuably high-level perspective. His points often seem obvious: "History has shown that real breakthroughs between Israelis and Arabs occur only when the parties themselves realize that the cost of continued conflict outweighs the risk of an agreement." Yet amid his summaries of seemingly endless negotiations, his message--that both parties are likely to eventually take "the painful and politically difficult steps" needed for a two-state solution--remains constant. The brisk narration of events from Israel's founding up to the efforts of George W. Bush's administration gets more detailed and slightly more critical when Mitchell covers his own time as an envoy for President Obama. Mitchell's careful statements may simply seem inconclusive to the more casual reader, but this is only a testament to the level of nuance in this scrupulous book. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider/ICM Partners. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 111. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166627&it=r&asid=4943a3056e2ec3bbd6c850082e7597d2. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466166627
George J. Mitchell, Alon Sachar: A PATH TO PEACE
(Sept. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
George J. Mitchell, Alon Sachar A PATH TO PEACE Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) 26.00 11, 29 ISBN: 978-1-5011-5391-4
A former U.S. senator and diplomatic negotiator considers the history of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy over three-plus decades and what prospects for peace still exist.Is a two-state solution still viable or a one-state undemocratic solution the grudging alternative? Mitchell (The Negotiator, 2015, etc.) is a revered, longtime peace negotiator and “special envoy” (in Northern Ireland and in Israel) and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1999), and his co-author, Sachar, is a high-level State Department official with years of experience with the Middle East. As a diplomat, Mitchell has good manners and does not attack either side, though he is realistic in his historical assessment while still representing the pro-Israel U.S. His analysis of peace negotiations begins with the founding of the state of Israel and the “special relationship” the U.S. engendered by President Harry Truman’s recognition of the founding “just eleven minutes after their 1948 declaration of independence.” The American arming of Israel during the Cold War has been key in its ability to resist attack by its Arab neighbors, who were often supported by the Soviet Union, yet the U.S. also sold arms to Arab states, such as Jordan. The U.S. has vociferously denounced Israel’s “unrealistic vision of greater Israel” and pushed for “land for peace” concessions, while in 2002, George W. Bush “became the first U.S. president to make the establishment of a viable Palestinian state an explicit foreign policy objective.” Mitchell tiptoes through the various (failed) peace negotiations, from Camp David to Madrid to Oslo to Annapolis, and the Israeli political turnover, which has greatly affected the prospects for peace. Moreover, the author is stern regarding the Palestinian National Authority leadership, the corruption under Yasser Arafat, and the strong-armed disarray under current president Mahmoud Abbas. Mitchell is careful not to ruffle too many feathers in his analysis, but many readers will wonder if officials on either side will follow his proposals.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"George J. Mitchell, Alon Sachar: A PATH TO PEACE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463216139&it=r&asid=d7a59f9f8e160aaf874db60102078fd7. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463216139
Mitchell, George with Alon Sachar. A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East
141.11 (June 15, 2016): p53.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Mitchell, George with Alon Sachar. A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East. S. & S. Nov. 2016. 192p. ISBN 9781501153914. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781501153938. HISTORY/MIDDLE EAST
Former Senate Majority Leader Mitchell was crucial to brokering the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that led to peace in Northern Ireland. But as U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace from 2009 to 2011, where he focused on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was not so successful. Here, with an insider's insight, he chronicles Israeli-Palestinian negotiations through the years and lays out the concessions he believes both sides must make if peace is ever to be achieved.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Mitchell, George with Alon Sachar. A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East." Library Journal, 15 June 2016, p. 53. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA455185360&it=r&asid=94348f78b0e3cae1b2cfae801bb2831b. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A455185360
Middle East
John Waterbury
96.1 (January-February 2017): p172.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East
BY GEORGE J. MITCHELL AND ALON SACHAR. Simon & Schuster, 2016, 192 pp.
This important but uneven book retells the well-known story of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the failed efforts to end it. The authors reject a one-state solution, arguing that it would inevitably disintegrate into a violent and uncontrolled partition. They call on U.S. President Barack Obama, as he approaches the end of his time in office, to emulate his predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush by issuing a comprehensive but purposefully imprecise declaration of principles on how to resolve the conflict. Obama's successor in the White House, they write, should build on that declaration to relaunch negotiations--but only if the antagonists accept the general validity of the U.S. principles. The authors should have put more flesh on the bones of their account of the two years (2009-11) that Mitchell spent as Obama's special envoy for Middle East peace. They also make scant mention of Mitchell's long career in the U.S. Senate and refer only briefly to the lessons Mitchell learned as one of the architects of the 1998 peace agreement in Northern Ireland.
The Land Is Full: Addressing Overpopulation in Israel
BY ALON TAL. Yale University Press, 2016, 408 pp.
Tal, one of Israel's leading environmentalists, unabashedly embraces a Malthusian vision of contemporary Israel: there are too many Jews and too many Arabs. In its zeal to reverse the legacy of the Holocaust, the state has pursued disastrous pro-natal policies, such as providing financial awards to couples who bear children and housing subsides to large families. Israel's carrying capacity has been greatly outstripped; the country is heavily dependent on imports for food. Nevertheless, voices such as Tal's are dismissed as unpatriotic, even anti-Semitic. Tal's book occasionally wanders as it uses the theme of overpopulation to explore a wide range of topics, such as Israeli society's patriarchal values and the status of women in the country. Other topics, such as agricultural self-sufficiency, are left dangling. Despite Israel's pro-natal agenda, total fertility is trending down in all sectors of society. Tal urges the government to reverse course and try to accelerate that trend, but he doesn't say whether or not he favors a suspension of Jewish immigration. He implies, however, that the country is unlikely to witness future influxes on the scale of the nearly one million Jews who arrived from the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states between 1989 and 2006.
The Rope
BY KANAN MAKIYA. Pantheon, 2016, 336 pp.
"I am the distillation of 5,000 years of your history," the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, declares to two Shiite guards as he awaits his execution by hanging in 2006, in Makiya's fictionalized account of what took place at the gallows. One of those guards is the protagonist of Makiya's novel, a beautifully written cri de coeur that takes place in the years following the U. S. invasion in 2003, of which Makiya was an early and vocal proponent. The book's young hero, a follower of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, witnesses the wreckage wreaked by every group of Iraqis, but particularly by his fellow Shiites, many of whom had a chance to build a different Iraq but succumbed to deceit, greed, and treachery. (The occupying Americans were doubtless guilty of stupidity but not of masterminding the debacle that followed the invasion.) At the novel's heart are the deaths of a father and a son. The revered Ayatollah Abul Qasim al-Khoei died in 1992 while imprisoned by Saddam; his son Abdul Majid al-Khoei was murdered in 2003, allegedly at the behest of Sadr, who saw him as a rival. Their specters haunt the lives of the protagonist's family and close friends, one of whom becomes a killer of Sunnis whose preferred weapon is a power drill.
The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East
BY JAY SOLOMON. Random House, 2016, 352 pp.
For four years, Solomon reported for The Wall Street Journal on the negotiations that ultimately led to the 2015 nuclear deal between the world's major powers and Iran, an agreement that indisputably represents the most important foreign policy achievement of the Obama years. This book offers little new information. Its strongest sections chronicle the long and successful battle of the U.S. Treasury Department to inflict crippling financial controls and sanctions on Iran. Solomon stresses, however, that Congress had to push the Obama administration hard to get it to apply the maximum pressure. He suggests that a desire to negotiate successfully with Iran came to dominate the administration's Middle East policy. Solomon argues that in order to get to yes with Iran, Barack Obama declined to support the Iranian demonstrations protesting the results of the 2009 election; chose not to respond with military force when Iran's ally, Syria, used chemical weapons in the summer of 2013; and did not challenge Iran's meddling in Iraqi politics. And Solomon points out that the final nuclear agreement required major U.S. concessions regarding Iran's centrifuges, enrichment facilities, and heavy-water facility. In about ten years, when the deal's main terms expire, we will know whether Obama gave away too much.
Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, Politics, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards
BY AFSHON OSTOVAR. Oxford University Press, 2016, 320 pp.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was born in the first weeks of the Iranian Revolution, in February 1979, and has arguably become the Islamic Republic's most powerful institution. It spearheaded all of Iran's engagements during the Iran-Iraq War. The IRGC'S Quds Force, commanded by the redoubtable Qasem Soleimani, has internationalized the Iranian Revolution by involving itself in conflicts in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. And the IRGC'S domestic feeder organization, the Basij militia, has been a bulwark of internal support for Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Ostovar provides a careful and dispassionate history of the organization and its domestic and foreign exploits. The IRGC cannot be reduced to a vanguard of impassioned religious warriors, although that aspect of it is important. It has economic interests to protect and is closely allied with Khamenei. Ostovar asks but does not answer the question of whether the next supreme leader will follow Khamenei's example and ally himself closely with the IRGC or align himself more with the preferences of Iranian civil society. Whatever course he chooses, the IRGe will rely on its proven survival instincts. Donald Trump will be the seventh U.S. president it has confronted.
Waterbury, John
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Waterbury, John. "Middle East." Foreign Affairs, Jan.-Feb. 2017, p. 172+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477642128&it=r&asid=9bd50211ef146ea463feed0f74839481. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477642128
Mitchell, George J. & Alon Sachar. A Path to Peace: A Brief History of IsraeliPalestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East
Joel Neuberg
(Feb. 24, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Mitchell, George J. & Alon Sachar. A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East. S. & S. Nov. 2016. 272p. notes. index. ISBN 9781501153914. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781501153938. POL SCI
Former U.S. Senate majority leader, architect of the Northern Ireland peace agreement, and U.S. special envoy for Middle East peace Mitchell and former adviser to the U.S. ambassador to Israel and special envoys for Middle East peace Sachar should be ideally suited to evaluate the prospects of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet 95 percent of their book is a detailed insiders' history of five decades of U.S. failures to mediate a solution to the conflict. Much of this history was covered in previous books, most recently in Doomed To Succeed by the nearly equally qualified Dennis Ross, but the final five percent suggests a statement of principles essential to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement and "for our next president" (the authors expected that to be Hillary Clinton) "to create incentives to reach agreement and then, when the parties are ready, to find a path into negotiations." The history is as good as any on the subject, the suggested principles are a useful summary of the long-standing positions of the United States, but the likelihood of the new president creating the incentives necessary to reach agreement are extremely remote.
Verdict Of interest to those who are hoping for peaceful solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [See Prepub Alert, 5/16/16.]--Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Jr. Coll. Lib., CA
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Neuberg, Joel. "Mitchell, George J. & Alon Sachar. A Path to Peace: A Brief History of IsraeliPalestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East." Xpress Reviews, 24 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA489080910&it=r&asid=3a677ad8ff10ed3dcb14b5ff9dc06d55. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A489080910
George J. Mitchell on Israeli-Palestinian Diplomacy
By DAN EPHRONDEC. 7, 2016
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George J. Mitchell, left, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in 2010. Credit Fadi Arouri/Getty Images
A PATH TO PEACE
A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East
By George J. Mitchell and Alon Sachar
258 pp. Simon & Schuster. $26.
American mediation between Israelis and Palestinians over the decades has failed to produce a lasting peace deal, but it has spawned something else in good numbers: book deals. On my shelf alone, I count four books written by American officials who played a role in trying to bring the two sides together. The satisfying ones among these books reveal what really happens in rooms journalists almost never get to enter — the haggling, the outbursts, the inching toward compromise and then the stubborn clinging to old positions. For all the news coverage of Israel and Palestine, a good insider’s account can still surprise and illuminate.
“A Path to Peace,” by George J. Mitchell and Alon Sachar, is the latest addition to the genre. Though it includes an admirably measured recounting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — no easy task — the book falls short in most other ways. Mitchell, a former United States senator from Maine, served as President Obama’s envoy for Middle East peace from 2009 to 2011. Sachar worked as his adviser. Both men came to the job with plenty of experience. Mitchell brokered the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland (and wrote a book about his experience), and Sachar worked on Middle East issues for the State Department. Yet their first-person insights fail to surface until the reader has burrowed halfway through the book.
When the authors finally do get to describing events in which they themselves played roles, their observations are often bland and the scenes they describe thinly rendered. “The mood was pleasant and upbeat,” they write about a diplomatic dinner in Washington. The discussions were “detailed and frequent,” they remark elsewhere. Obama’s persistent quarreling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel over settlement expansion is treated dryly, in just a few pages. For close readers of news from the region, the authors make an interesting point: The president, they explain, never intended for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to be conditional on a settlement freeze. Reporters simply misrepresented the American position. But the broader drama, the clashes between the two leaders, the character sketches, are all missing from this account.
In part, the book’s shortcomings are due to the fact that diplomacy occurred only in small doses during Mitchell’s mission. Throughout most of the two-year period, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, refused to negotiate directly with Israel. For Mitchell, that meant shuttling back and forth between the two sides — an exercise known euphemistically as “proximity talks” — instead of meeting them together in a single room. Since the authors’ chronicle rarely goes beyond the journalistic accounts written at the time, and since nothing ultimately came of these talks, sections of the book can feel gratuitous. Oddly, Mitchell and Sachar make no mention of a subsequent push for peace by Secretary of State John Kerry. In 2013, Kerry managed to bring the two sides to the table for direct talks that lasted several months. But by then Mitchell had left his post.
The authors wind up their account with a prescriptive chapter, a path to peace. It includes some useful suggestions. But what stands out here and elsewhere in the book is the unwillingness — by the authors and by American administrations generally — to re-examine core assumptions after decades of failure and offer something new. Instead, Mitchell and Sachar recite a peace plan that the United States has been advocating since the end of the Clinton administration in 2000. It’s not a bad plan — a division of the territory, a compromise in Jerusalem, two states for two long-warring nations. But 16 years later, many Israelis and Palestinians no longer view such a plan as viable. American envoys keep trying, but the region is moving on.
Dan Ephron is the author of “Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel.”