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This is a frail foundation for such an ambitious thesis. Nothing remotely resembling "a serious effort to negotiate" anything seems to have taken place in 1913 or thereabouts. Certainly nothing took place that has any bearing on "what we today would call a Middle East peace agreement." The argument that by moving the threshold of scholarly examination of the "origins of the Arab-Israeli dispute" back a few years from its usual place (in the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917) we could find the answer to why Arabs and Jews cannot get along will not cause historians to sit up and notice. It is not at all clear that the parties were getting along any better then than now. Even if we had no other historical evidence than what appears in this present book we could not fail to see that the Arab population of these Ottoman domains were resolved to prevent Jews from taking root in the land. If, here and there, there are edifying illustrations of toleration and even friendship across the divide, the same can be found today.
What this account lacks is some sustained address to the ancient causes of Arab hostility towards the Jews; for that, we need at least some acknowledgement of the theological root of the matter. Marcus's assumption seems to be that nothing really justifies the refusal of Arabs and Jews to get along, and therefore there is no point in inquiring into the causes of this failure.
Students of the Ottoman regime in its last days will certainly enjoy reading this well-written book, with its convincing character sketches and glimpses into daily life of the time and place. Some glaring misinterpretations and errors of fact will, however, diminish confidence in the value of Marcus' estimable archival research. For example: (i) Muslims do not hold that Muhammad "took his last step on earth" at the site of the cave which is enclosed under the Dome of the Rock (p. 36); (ii) Simon the Just is not "a popular biblical figure" (p.44; he was a High Priest of the Second Temple Period); (iii) Theodor Herzl's encounter with the Kaiser in Jerusalem on November 1, 1898 was not his one and only "chance to present his ideas to the German leader"(p. 37; he had done this already on two previous occasions, once through a highly placed intermediary in the Kaiser's court and the other face-to-face, just a few days earlier in Istanbul).
Michael B. Oren, hitherto best known as the author of a major scholarly account of the Six Day War of 1967, has undertaken to draw together into one large book everything that can be found about the entire history of American involvement in the Middle East—a history, he demonstrates convincingly, as old as the Republic itself. The result is a truly awesome book, the fruit of prodigious research expressed in a commanding style.
Is it a stretch to begin a narrative about America's involvement in the Middle East in the year of the Declaration of Independence? Not at all. Oren demonstrates that in the moment of declaring their independence the leaders of the Continental Congress were fully aware that among other more obvious and immediate consequences (such as that they might all be going to the gallows very soon) was that the new nation, should it succeed, would then go out into the world unprotected by the British navy, without the advantage of membership in the British Empire. Most American eyes were on the dim prospects for American trade in the British West Indies, but this issue was cleared away diplomatically over the first few years of the existence of the independent nation. A more formidable obstacle—one that could only be removed by a demonstration of power—was the harassment of American trade by the pirate regimes of the Barbary Coast, nominally fiefs of the far-flung Ottoman Empire. Britain and France had signed treaties of understanding with these states, acquiring protection from piracy. It seemed shameful at the time and does so still today, but it was the price of admission to the Mediterranean. It was the new United States of America that eventually put finis to this shameful practice. But before that could happen, the loose confederation of states had to become a nation.
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